hi there, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. practically every aspect of the twice impeached disgraced ex-president's time in public life is today under scrutiny. his years as a real estate mogul, his one-term presidency, and his efforts to end our democracy to secure a second perm and his post-presidential

life as well when he held on to documents contain something of the nation's most sensitive national security secrets and then stonewalled efforts by the government to retrieve those documents. we'll start with the trump organization going on trial. jury selection began in the case brought by the manhattan d.a. against the trump family business alleging a 15-year scheme in which top executives were compensated off the books in order to avoid paying taxes. as "the new york times" reports the trial marks a reversal of fortune for the ex-president's business. the business that was the basis for the image trump peddled to voters as a businessman and deal maker, even if that image was smoke and mirrors. from the reporting the dawn of donald trump's presidency his family business appeared poised for a windfall. it unveiled new hotel lines, held ribbon cuttings around the world and attracted major tournaments to his golf clubs enough for eric trump who ran

the company while his father was in the white house to remark the stars have aligned. five years later the stars have faded and this week will drive home the reversal of fortune as the company faces a highly public reckoning a criminal trial in manhattan where the d.a.'s office will accuse it of tax fraud and other crime. the trial in state supreme court will present an embarrassing scene for the former president pushing to the forefront one of several criminal investigations swirling around him. taken together the probes into trump's conduct form a legal firestorm that could have major consequences for the country given that trump remains the leader of the republican party and sits the nexus of a current domestic violence extremism threat. "the washington post" reports the investigation into trump's handling of classified documents, which first burst into public view just a few months ago, is actually moving along two tracks. one in public and one behind closed doors. from that "post" reporting,

quote, in the more public facing part, litigation over the appointment of a special master to sift through thousands of seized documents has he reverberated through every level of the federal court system with the special master essentially an outside expert voicing skepticism about trump's claims that some of the materials should be shielded from the fbi. in contrast the bureau's investigative activity harder to track though details are slowly trickling out. agents have interviewed multiple witnesses about the handling of government papers at mar-a-lago. "washington post" reported a trump employee told federal agents he moved boxes of documents at mar-a-lago at the direction of the former president and that fbi has the video surveillance tapes to back that up. experts say those pieces of evidence suggest the government could be building criminal cases alleging obstruction and destruction of government property. and then there is the sprawling,

far more public facing congressional investigation into the capitol insurrection by the january 6th select committee who has subpoenaed the ex-president himself for documents and testimony. vice chair liz cheney said on sunday the committee uncovered evidence of multiple criminal offenses and the seriousness of what happened on january 6th means that trump must come in and testify. >> the committee treats this matter with great seriousness and we are going to proceed in terms of the questioning of the former president under oath. it may take multiple days and it will be done with a level of rigor and discipline and seriousness that it deserves. we are not going to allow the former president -- he's not going to turn this into a circus. this isn't going to be his first debate against joe biden and circus and food fight that became.

this is far too set of issues and we've made clear what his obligations are. >> multiple investigations focused on years of potential misconduct by the ex-president and his allies and associates is where we begin today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. "washington post" congressional investigations reporter jackie alemany is back. also joining us tim o'brien, executive editor of bloomberg opinion and barbara mcquade, law professor at the university of michigan to keep us honest and they are all msnbc contributors. jackie, liz cheney is always deliberate but never focused so much of her public sort of rhetoric around trump's criminality. let me play a little bit more from this interview about what she thinks doj has to do about all that. >> i think that there are multiple criminal offenses that the committee -- i don't want to

get in front of the committee -- but we are looking at and i think it's very important for everybody to recognize that when you're faced with a set of facts and evidence as clear as this is and some have said well, you know, we don't know what his intent was, maybe he thought he won the election, we actually know that that's not the case. we've put on testimony that showed he admitted he lost. even if he thought that he had won, you may not send an armed mob to the capitol. you may not sit for 187 minutes and refuse to stop the attack while it's under way. you may not send out a tweet that incites further violence. we've been very clear about a number of different criminal offenses at issue here. if the department of justice determines that they have the evidence that we believe is there and make a decision not to prosecute i think that really calls into question whether or not we're a nation of laws. >> jackie, this is the farthest

that liz cheney has gone in saying we have put it out there, we have shown that he lost, and he knew it, we have shown that the scheme was illegal, and he knew it and tied him to the violence. if doj doesn't prosecute it calls into question what we're a nation of laws. wow. >> yeah. i think we're going to be seeing a lot more of that kind of rhetoric from congresswoman cheney and other members of the committee at this point, most of their investigative work is done. they are now in the process of preparing the report and we have been told by sources that there is going to be sort of a -- more of a pivot now making sure there's consistent pressure on the department of justice to actually pursue and prosecute this case in the way that select committee believes it should be based on the evidence that they found and the evidence that they have displayed publicly. chairman thompson told reporters last week that the department --

that congressional committee is not yet in the mode of sharing information with the department of justice, but that would be done along with actually sharing all of that information, the transcripts, interviews with thousands of witnesses, all of the document requests with the american public as well once the report is written at the conclusion of their work, but again, in the meantime especially as we're going to be seeing less from the committee as a whole, and they're in their quiet period writing the report we are going to see, again, public pressure from lawmakers on the depth of justice. >> barbara mcquade, some people minimized the importance of whether or not the committee sends over criminal referral. this isn't about the technical aspect of whether they refer trump's criminally, about whether we take a case to the country, we have produced evidence of his intent, witnesses from cassidy hutchinson you hadn't talked to

before we put her in a public hearing and if you do not prosecute it calls into question whether or not we're a nation of laws and rules. >> yes. statement like liz chaineny's make prosecutors uncomfortable because prosecutors are not supposed to act based on public pressure from anybody, most certainly not politicians, because they're supposed to decide cases based on facts and law and not political pressure. they can't ignore the facts. what the committee has done is present to the nation facts that do seem to demonstrate at least probable cause, if not sufficient guilt to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that donald trump is culpable here. i don't know that they've made the case for his link to the violence at the capitol. lots of good circumstantial evidence, but i think they've made the case of a conspiracy to defraud the united states by knowing that it is a lie that election was stolen and pressuring mike pence to throw out the results nonetheless. that, to me, strikes me as a

core of a very strong case and i can't imagine the justice department can see that evidence and think it is not advance the federal interest to bring that case. >> i think liz cheney wouldn't argue she's placing are pressure on doj as a public official. she is herself a lame duck congresswoman but to your point, about the strength of the evidence, let me ask you, i think what they're saying is that even if you were that diluted, quote, you may not send an armed mob to the capitol or sit for 87 minutes and refuse to stop the attack, you may not send out a tweet that incites further violence, sounds like around the violence she's looking at what the committee talks about as dereliction of duty. is that a specific crime you can charge someone of, barbara? >> it's not a federal offense, but there is an interesting legal theory here for manslaughter, which federal crime -- federal law defiance as a death that he occurs on

federal property when a person acts with a reckless mens rea or even gross negligence. donald trump, unlike most ordinary citizens, has not only a duty not to do something bad, but affirmative duty to take action to protect people. i think you could possibly put together a theory based on the facts that liz cheney just described, to make donald trump responsible for the deaths that occurred that day. >> that's incredible. tim o'brien, you're the only person who has gone toe to toe with donald trump in a legal capacity. i'm guessing that his delusions of sort of the authority of the presidency make him feel somewhat bulletproof in both the documents says -- even though that is clearly intensifying or nearing a point where he could face charges -- as well as around the investigations of january 6th, but his excuse and images that come to mind soft

underbelly starts today, tell me how that's received and monitored inside trump world? >> i think they're going to be worried about allen weisselberg because allen was fred trump's accountant before he was donald trump's cfo, and he knows where all the financial bodies are buried, and i think they're worried about his testimony to the point that they've already signaled they're going to accuse him of lying. i think that's a pretty extraordinary posture for the defense to take because, you know, allen weisselberg's goodwill and his testimony is going to be an important factor here. he has, you know, in practice, refused to cooperate with the manhattan d.a.'s investigation or in theory, but in practice, he actually is going to have to cooperate because the nature of his sentencing is going to induce him to be truthful and cooperative. it doesn't really behoove the

trump organization to alienate allen weisselberg but they've chosen to go that route and i think it suggests they understand how damaging he could be. he's the wildcard in all of this. i think, you know, cy vance, alvin bragg's predecessor, left alvin bragg a gigantic problem and headache he should have resolved before he left office because the manhattan's d.a.'s own lawyers were divided whether to indict donald trump. they weren't sure -- there was a faction in the office that believed they had the evidence and another faction that didn't. brad has backed away from that. they've indicted the trump organization and the business and they've, obviously, indicted allen weisselberg. trump himself is not at risk here. i don't think the organization now is at the kind of risk it's going to be in the new york attorney general's case which i think is an authentically

existential risk to the trump organization. but allen weisselberg is just a humongous wild card because he knows things that go beyond what is in the purview of the court, financial fraud or sketchy reimbursement of 1.7 or so million dollars. but he knows a lot of other things, and i think one of the interesting dynamics to watch here is whether allen weisselberg starts to spill more than anyone expected him to. >> tim, let me read some of "the washington post" reporting on the trial that started today. prosecutors say the case focuses on what they describe as a 15-year tax cheating scheme involving untaxed benefits like luxury cars and expensive apartments for executives including weisselberg who has been painted as the linchpin to the tax avoidance operation. weisselberg began his employment of the trump organize in 73 before rising to chief financial

organization, weisselberg, an employee, was an accountant and comptroller among a set of executives who received substantial portions of their income through indirect and disguised means according to an indictment filed on july 1st, 2021. i can't imagine he was the only one. how much are these practices of, quote, receiving substantial portions of their income through disguised means, how much is the practice on trial and is anyone else endangered by that. >> i think anyone who was in the senior ranks of that tiny company which includes donald trump's children, it includes other executives at the company, and they all played -- the trump organization routinely played fast and loose with the rules and their accounting. i think at the end of the day, they will try to make an argument that the people representing the trump organization, that they were following guidance from outside

accountants or that weisselberg and jeff mccanny and some of the other executives did what they did based on outside advice and may be lying about the advice they received. but all of this is just -- is just a farce because nothing happened inside the trump organization of substance without the approval and guidance of donald trump himself. this was not a big company. you know, the trump organization is almost, you know, an oxymoron. it wasn't very organized and it was not very big. it was a mom and pop shop with, you know, a couple dozen people there. and donald trump ruled the roost. i think that's going to have to come home, i think, in some of these cases when push comes to shove around fraud charges. >> you know, it's a amazing, whether it's, you know, a family business or the nation's most classified intelligence products, the same chain of command has been revealed, jackie, through you and your

colleagues' reporting on the mar-a-lago investigation. i mean, the scoop last week that it was at trump's direction that boxes with the documents in them were moved around mar-a-lago. ties him to everything that ever happened in this post-presidency in the same way tim can attest to him being tied to everything that ever happened in his family business. talk about where that investigation stands and what we know at the beginning of a new week? >> yeah. nicolle, that is a really excellent point. all of this consistently comes from the top down, the only difference now is that the former president is actually finally being investigated. but right now you have these two parallel tracks running as my colleagues perry and devlin reported out. you have the public track playing out for all of us to see in raymond derry, the special master, sifting through 13,000 of the sieged documents, 103 of

those classified documents were put aside. dearie has not been happy with the way trump's legal team has been handling this claiming privilege over the first batch of documents they've gone through, trump's lawyers and the federal government have been going through the documents simultaneously with dearie serving as the arbiter and mediator to decide, you know, what constitutes as executive materials and is covered by executive privilege, but as he said to trump's legal team yesterday, where is the beef in that he did not see valid legal responses being put forward by the former president's team as to why, you know, they were exerting privilege over certain things. privately now, the doj has been conducting their investigation as well and, you know, our colleagues pointed out and a number of people i spoke to

today said that the things that the doj can glean from the analysis of the documents that were taken extend far wider than i think, you know, the average person would realize at first glance much this story, such as, you know, who looked at these documents? even the unclassified portion of the documents can tell us a bit about the way the classified materials were handled. whether or not there were specific time periods. if there was a pattern of time periods. if it -- if there was a pattern of topic, of subject that president was -- the former president was consistently sort of taking out of the routine briefings or batch of papers he was given on any given day. but that investigation has been ongoing. they're moving as we've been told faster than the january 6th investigation and there has been, you know, some reporting leaking out about that. the latest being that some of

the information that was taken by the former president was with regards to iran and china. >> yeah. i mean, barbara, this is such an interesting piece of reporting that what we focus on is what we can see and what we can see are the filings, but what is opaque is likely a far graver threat to donald trump and likely moving along much more quickly than the battles over documents which play out in filings and in courthouses. what in your view -- i mean it seems that the doj has alleged that the ex-president has committed the crimes of obstruction of justice and it's clear that they have probable cause to believe the underlying crime is provable as well. what in your view is the threat facing donald trump today? >> i think that once we get past all of this special master litigation, and we will, what we will be left with is allegations and it sounds like strong evidence that donald trump

willfully -- classified documents and lied about it. this is what anyone else is charged with a crime for. when you talk about factors that caused him to recommend against charges for hoda kotb back in 2016 some of the things he looked at was to say i've looked at all the past cases and usually we require an aggravating factor before we charge someone for mishandling classified documents. those aggravating factors include willfully mishandling of the information, exposing it in way to be compromised by outside sources or obstruction of justice. three for three with regards to the donald trump here. i don't see how they charge. uniformity matter in the way they handle cases. the threat of criminal prosecution i think is very high for donald trump here >> i was at a street fair yesterday and there was like a spin the dial and i thought today's show that way.

spin the dial and you've got criminal exposure everywhere you land. no better people to talk to about it than the three of you. jackie, tim, barbara, thank you so much for starting us off today. when we come back, more on the highly classified and sensitive national defense documents taken from the ex-president. what does the intelligence community know and want to know about what was taken and who may have seen it. jim himes will be our guest on that and much more. he's back from ukraine. political polarization, i don't have to tell any of you is at an all-time high driven by elected members of congress rallying voters amping up the rhetoric aimed at democrats. we'll talk about the super charged voters ahead of the midterms. later in the program, the lies spread about the 2020 election and holding those who knowingly pushed the false claims accountable. trying to make sure it never happens again. all those stories and more when

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♪ ♪ no more waiting. no more running. [ screaming ] we finish this tonight. on day when the u.s. attorney general and the fbi director warned about alleged schemes against the united states announcing charges against 13 individuals who tried to, quote, unlawfully exert influence in this country for china, we're again reminded two weeks before the midterm elections of the importance of reliable safeguards against ever present national security threats that includes the elect the members of congress with intelligence and oversight roles whose fears were confirmed by "the washington post" reporting on friday about what twice

impeached and now subpoenaed ex-president have brought home with him to mar-a-lago highly sensitive intelligence on china and iran putting at risk potentially the lives of u.s. intelligence employees, intelligence gathering methods and possible retaliation. joining us now congressman jim himes of connecticut. we've wanted to talk to you about so many of these things that have burst into public view and you're just back from ukraine. first, we're so focused on our own pretty slen dids efforts to destroy our democracy in the republican party, but we forget there are foreign actors that represent a threat as well. any reaction to the news from the doj? >> i'm not surprised. thanks for having me on. we've known for a long time that our antagonists abroad, china, russia, iran, north korea, the have an interest in influencing our elections and do it in

different ways. we know what russia did in 2016 with the purchase of ads on social media an the creation of fake accounts. the chinese are more targeted. they're in the business of supporting candidates they think might be more pro china than others and in a subtle way than the russians do. i'm not surprised. like you, i must say, you know, this is something that intelligence committee and all of us need to be cognizant of but it feels to me like, you know, when you've got a state like nevada that has basically emptied their bure crocksy for counting the votes an replacing them with people who have easy jobs, simply to install donald trump as president, i worry more about the domestic stuff than in the intelligence committee >> i don't want to get off topic but if you read through the papers this weekend, the threats to our elections in two and a half weeks are pervasive and dire, they include violence, do

you think it's time to ask for friends and allies to come over and help us monitor our elections. we used to do that in burgeoning and threatened democracies? >> i'm not there, and i know why you're asking what you're asking and you're not wrong. the kind of intimidation that is threatened around polling places. you've seen the pictures of the guys with assault weapons near boxes is intimidating. that used to be third world countries that didn't care about democracy. but no, look, this is something for us to work out ourselves and, you know, we -- at some point the united states is going to need to collectively decide that not only are we going to oppose russians and chinese and north koreans and iranians messing with our elections but not allow the republican party either. one of the things we can do to take the vulnerabilities off the table is pass the electoral count act in the united states congress that deals with the

levers they tried to use after donald trump was defeated in november of 2020. >> work on the intelligence committee used to be completely bipartisan, and it used to be really about protecting ourselves from threats abroad. has your work changed at all now that you have to also have threats within? >> well, i'm happy to report, nicolle n a world of not a lot of good news, actually the intelligence committee, now that we're no longer in the business of investigating the so-called perfect call donald trump made to ukraine and the russia interference in 2016 we've gone back to being quite bipartisan. my trip to ukrainian i was there with a republican ranking member of the committee to send a unified message to the ukrainians that united states congress is behind ukraine. we're doing better. we're doing better in the absence of donald trump in the white house. >> kevin mccarthy has threatened

to cut off foreign aid and military assistance to ukraine should republicans retake the house. is zelenskyy worried about that? >> yeah. i'm not usually in the business of defending what kevin mccarthy says, but i think his language was there won't be a blank check and as a purely literal matter there never has been and never will there be a blank check. i'm not sure -- i'm trying to be optimistic and hope that worst is not true. but look, he has people in his caucuses that are very important to him becoming speaker of the house if the republicans take the majority, some of whom want to cut off aid for reasons that are too dark to talk about. the ranking member of the intelligence committee was side by side with me in front of president zelenskyy saying this is something we care about in a bipartisan way. even if there are some fringy folks, you know, here and there who think otherwise. >> what did you learn? i mean, there's nothing like being there and nothing i understand like being in the room with president zelenskyy

whose leadership acumen and ability to sort of marshal his country, not just the people, to withstand a campaign of terror on the part of the russians tell us what they need from the west? >> it's a very strange feeling in kyiv right now because on the one hand the city is sort of going about its business. people are stopping in for coffee and going to work, but at any moment they could be obliterated by one of the missiles that comes in on a daily basis. most of it the russians trying to take out the power infrastructure. it's a strange feeling because they live under that fear, something ha we don't know here in this country. on the other hand, my takeaway, president zelenskyy down to the guys who are working in the lobbies of the hotel without exception everybody i talked to in ukraine said i'll tell you how this ends. this ends when every single russian is off every single inch of ukrainian land. i highlight that for you right now because there's conversation happening in the united states

about negotiations and that's fine, you know, there should always be discussions and negotiation, but the ukrainians are very serious about getting what they deserve, which is all of the russians out of their country and by the way, accountability for the war crimes that have been committed and help with the rebuilding of the country that russia destroyed. >> you're confident even if -- i hate making prediction, confident the ukrainians have bipartisan support for standing with them as long as it takes to get all the russians off their soil? >> i've abouting more humble about making predictions around the congress in the last couple years but i have confident that all aid to ukraine is not going to dry up. the reason i'm being hesitant to talk to you about, you know, to be specific about this is that, you know, the fight really is in the republican party and, you know, mccarthy has his political calculations right now that i'm not necessarily privy to. i will tell you 100% confidently that the vast majority of

republicans and the vast majority of democrats support continued aggressive aid to assist the ukrainians. >> why do you think we can't marshal bipartisan support for protecting our own spell -- intelligence products? what do you think your colleagues aren't as worried what donald trump took to mar-a-lago as democrats are? >> it's not that they're not as worried, they're less willing to talk about about. >> who is worried? have they said it in public? we'll find it. if there's been a republican voicing concerns about the intelligence committee in public i want to show that? >> that's the distinction i'm trying to draw here. i spent a lot of time with my republican colleagues and many of them know what they would say if hillary clinton found with top secret fbi information in new york state they know that. they don't want to say it publicly because if you attract the attention of donald trump it's game over. you know this, right.

there were nine votes on the republican side for impeachment against donald trump and eight of those nine are now gone. >> yeah. >> that's just the world they live in. >> what can we do about that? you sound more optimistic than at many points in the last two years? do you think his presidency is farther in the rearview mirror or do you think around national security we can purge him from the pollution he ushered in or do you think there's a real threat among your colleagues he will be president again? >> yeah. i don't know if i am more optimistic. but i will tell you this, my republican colleagues live in fear of winding up like liz cheney or adam kinzinger in a new line of work, but they also like to win. mitch mcconnell likes to win. donald trump, other than the election of 2016 in which he received a minority of the popular vote, and he was

legitimately elected by the electoral college but he has an unbroken string of losses. he lost the house, had lost the senate, narrowly i will admit, but a lot of what my republican colleagues think of the future of donald trump politically will have to do with what happens in the election coming up in two weeks. again f he continues his almost unbroken streak of losing, republicans don't ever want to be in the cross hairs of donald trump, but they also don't really like to lose. >> such a fascinating dynamic. thank you for taking our candid questions. congressman, thanks so much. >> thanks, nicolle. up for us, political polarization bringing the country to a breaking point. the twice impeached president's backers in congress are regularly attacking their democratic colleagues using anger and violent language to rally right wing voters ahead of the midterms. what can be done about it next. t i was always the competitive one in our family...

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you don't need a degree in political science to understand just how unprecedented and toxic this moment in american politics is. you can feel it. pick up the paper, look at the stories on the front paim or turn on the tv for ten minutes. it's more than a feeling. it's a provable fact. "the new york times" used natural language processing to analyze 4 million items that included tweets, facebook ads,

newsletters and speeches the result not only an impressive accounting of a decade's worth of inflammatory rhetoric but its primary sources, from that piece, quote, in the year and a half after the january 6th capitol riot republicans on average used divisive words and phrases twice as often as democrats in tweets and six times as often in e-mails to their constituents. republicans who voted to reject the 2020 election results are ter forefront of the poison. alarmingly an expert described their use of devil terms, things that are so unquestionably bad that you can't have a debate about them. that's where we are. devil terms. let's bring in former republican congressman david jolly and jason johnson from morgan state university and the host of the podcast a word with jason johnson, both msnbc contributors. you two may be the only people

not shocked by this reporting. i feel like it's the substantial of our conversations over the not just the last two years, but i almost dropped my newspaper. i scrubbed my glasses. i saw devil on the front pain of the sunday paper and said what. when you look -- we cover the violence almost with our tree against the branches but when you step back the story is the forest and the forest has been planted with poisonous rhetoric they invoke the devil, jason? >> yeah. and i think, nicolle, like there's no exor sism or magical wand or holy water that biden administration can throw on this and take this out of the republican organization because they have been committed to this for really longer than ten years. nicolle, actually, you know, i am the political scientist so i was looking at the data and did background work on this. it actually even is worse than what's reported because you have to understand that when it comes

to terms that are considered polarizing, fascism and nazi are polarizing terms but unfortunately those are the correct ways to describe what is happening with republicans. so in many respects if you took some of that data out, it would be worse. you would see five times as many republicans using these devil terms, terms that are absolutely dangerous and polarizing to society. unfortunately, oftentimes, i think for too long their rhetoric was put on an equal ground with democrats and people in favor of democracy. they will said you're in favor of a cult eating children and democrats and democracy defenders would say that's the kind of language you use in fascism and then the report would be democrats call republicans fascist and republicans say the democrats are groomers. these are not on equal terms. one is the truth and the other is a lie. that's what we have to talk about every day because it makes it looks like that kind of

behavior and language is normalized. >> i think what jason is indicting is this i think in our politics in the past having two sides of a debate was what our muscle memory brought to us. it's inappropriate for this moment and david, that was never -- for, you know, exactly five years, how trump won all -- defeated all the republicans. he's an asymmetrical sort of warrior. but jonathan greenblatt sitting here and saying that the danger of the rise in anti-semitism is the silence of the most powerful leaders in the republican party, and i said, why won't mitch mcconnell and kevin mccarthy condemn anti-semitism from donald trump, and he wouldn't tell me what their conversations sounded like and kanye, i mean, you got celebrities, you know, dropping any association with kanye and mitch mcconnell and kevin mccarthy won't condemn

donald trump's anti-semitic attacks and said mitch mcconnell won't defend his wife when trump called her coco chow. whatever the racist smear was against her. the silence, the acquiescence of the most powerful republicans in our country what do we do about that? >> yeah. i can tell you why mitch mcconnell and kevin mccarthy won't denounce kanye and anti-semitism and racist insults to mcconnell's wife because they are weak cowards with no moral fiber and an inability to lead the country in the right direction. it's hard to say those words but goes to your premise, we're in an era there are no two sides to every issue. the two sides should not be given equity in how they handle the critical matters. it's important to recognize that this language, these words, work. right. it is a reflection of our culture but importantly it's a reflection of our candidates.

i remember, nicolle, as a first time candidate i was a little green. we sent out a mailer that when i saw it, when i received it in my mailbox i said wow, like, i'm not sure i would have said that. i had a conversation with my team and my team kind of told me look, if you have hesitations like that let us know. the mail should reflect who you are. i learned my lesson and owned those words. i never did it again. but there are candidates day after day that continue to do it again. it's right we hold mcconnell and mccarthy and candidates up and down the ballot responsible for this. i think the paradox here is that you can't actually beat back this issue by arguing about this issue because we know it works, right. ron desantis's leadership of it divide and hate and culture wars have been rewarded with a majority opinion in the state of florida. the paradox is the way you defeat people with that spirit is on different issues, on

issues that resonate politically that build a majority around your policies and leadership that counter the hate and die vision. it's not a natural response to those who use these words if you will, but it's the strategic response to redirect where we're going as a country. >> i don't love polls, but i do want to put this up. we covered one last week-long the lines. 21% of americans think threats to democracy is an issue. it's an nbc news poll. it tops all the questions about the economy. i think and said this before women are deleting ovulation trackers. i don't think you can poll for abortion anymore. i think people are afraid. what do you detect and what do you think is out there in the public consciousness right now? >> the problem, nicolle, that i see with polls that talk about people fearing about threats of democracy, unless your polling

is sophisticated you're catching multiple people in that. you have election deniers who will say the same thing and they're liars and disturbed, right. in addition to your regular americans who are saying, hey, i went to vote in georgia and found out that someone who has never met me, seen me, can launch a voter challenge against me early voting just based on my zip code and demographics. those are two people who can say my number one concern is the protection of american democracy but they're coming from it from opposite ends. that's part of the problem we have sometimes in our discussion of these issues. you have one side, which is the majority of the american people who just want to go to work, eat dinner, stay safe, pay less in gas prices and know that they have their same mel rights they woke up with this year and then you have another group of people who are essentially fascists and want an authoritarian government. we have to stop pretending we're talking about friends and neighbors. you're talking about people who want to imprison women in their

bodies and make them subjective to men. who don't think black people should have a right to do anything but play sports. a group of people who attack everybody of a different religion. i am old enough to know or old enough and been around long enough, i never imagined that we would see the same kind of racism towards faith that we saw in the early 2000s against muslims. it's happening right now against jewish people. like the anti-semitism is hitting the levels we saw during the gulf war, right. that's what we're facing in america right now. unless we talk about that's way and the polling reflects that it makes it seem like the people who are a danger to the rest of us are on equal footing of those of us trying to live regular lives >> not that jason needs me to do this but to prove jason's point we have to sneak in a break but i will show you what that looks like in america in 2022. don't go anywhere. nywhere.

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♪ will you make something better? ♪ will you create something entirely new? ♪ our dell technologies advisors provide you with the tools and expertise you need to do incredible things. because we believe there's an innovator in all of us. we're back with david and jason. jason, this is what happened, to your point. this is saturday in southern california. this is a banner that says "kanye is right about the jews." a number of people, not covered -- faces not covered. it's not dark. they're standing in front of that sign, the nazi salute, saying "honk if you know." the third banner promoted a video platform that has

anti-semitic content. it's operated -- i'm not going to name their name. but anti-semitic conspiracy theorists are behind all of this. this is where we are. this is who we are right now. >> yeah. and i think, nicolle, i've got to say not only is this disturbing, right? like it's disturbing in the way that anybody who is of any kind of faith or even non-faith to see anyone being targeted for discrimination and threats of violence and implications of violence. we've seen people show up at places of would worship and shoot. but the fact it's now starting to come from entertainers. right? and people are platforming this. it's one thing to hear it from politicians because one could argue that there are other people in that person's district who believe in their anti-semitism, who believe in their racism, who believe in their homophobia. they may actually be speaking for other people. but this is someone who is merely an entertainer, and people are still volunteering to buy their product after they've decided that i'm going to go to

war with large swaths of the american people. that's how dangerous this has become. it used to be cute to hang out with trump, and now it's something that people want to rally behind and engage in this sort of again, proto-fascist behavior. that's why we can't pretend these things are on equal ground. the vast majority of americans simply want to live their lives. then you have about 35% who simply want to be authoritarians. this election is not the most important one in our lives. this is not republicans vs. democrats. this is fascism vs. a levee. this is the brick wall. this is the maginot line. and i'm sure fox news is going to catch this and say it's crazy. but it's true. and they know it's true. because they'll be on the receiving end of this violence as well as soon as people are done abusing the minorities in this country and then they start going for everybody else. >> fox news is busy developing itself from a $1.7 billion defamation case. you speak your truth, jason. david jolly, i want to show

you -- actually, i don't have time to show you. and i don't have to show you. and i shouldn't give them any more air time. but no condemnation. what the republican candidates are doing this weekend was not promising to honor the results of their election. we are losing our democracy before our he very eyes. and maybe it's happening too slowly for people to say hey, maybe we should -- maybe it is time that we have election watchers here. i am old enough to remember when we did that in other countries. where do you think we are going to be? after these midterms. >> this is a bit of an existential moment. it's true. when a leading republican candidate like kari lake says i'm not going to accept the results if i lose and when secretaries of state across the country on the republican side of the ticket are going to basically hold hostage the '24 presidential election, that is something you see in other countries but it has become mainstream for republicans. and it goes to this issue of racism and anti-semitism and basic protection of democracy.

the great shame on today's republican party is the unwillingness to condemn these narratives that have emerged and instead provide a permission structure for it. you know, earlier today i said to my wife, wow, i hit that governor pretty hard in some analysis and she said what did you say? i said his policies were racist. and she said they are. and the reality is it's not actually that hard if you take yourself out of a political profile to condemn race sxmz anti-semitism and try to protect democracy. today's republicans are failing to do that. it does create an existential moment on november 8th. >> zme count on the fact that it's hard for the rest of us to say these things. they count on the fact that we're afraid of, as jason said, fox news will grab and cut. i appreciate both of you for telling the truth here. david jolly and jason johnson, thank you so much. we're going to turn next to that billion-dollar defamation case brought by dominion voting systems. we'll hear what the ceo is saying about the damage the

election lies spread on conservative airwaves did to his employees and his company. don't go anywhere. s and his com. don't go anywhere. try downy light in-wash freshness boosters. it has long-lasting light scent, no heavy perfumes, and no dyes. finally, a light scent that lasts all day. downy light!

how strong is dominion's case against fox and the other? >> i think it is much stronger than most defamation cases that i have seen. i might say it is the strongest. >> how many defamation cases have you seen? >> i have litigated myself hundreds. and i'm certainly aware of every significant defamation case in the last 40 years. >> and this is the strongest one? >> in my judgment. >> hi again, everyone.

it's 5:00 in new york. i'm sure that landed with a thud over at fox news. dominion's case against fox is the strongest one yet? that's according to lee levine. he's a defamation lawyer. he has been for more than 40 years. and he simply examined the facts behind the lawsuit, that dominion voting systems filed against fox news for spreading harmful lies good its machines immediately following the 2020 election. dominion's fight to hold a tv network accountable for propagating lies is part of the large theme we'll be covering this hour. our elections and our democracy very much on the line in the midterms. the election technology company has sued fox news to the tune of $1.6 billion. that lawsuit was filed in march of 2021. in it dominion alleges it has been irreparably damaged by fox fanning the flames of the conspiracy that dominion voting equipment was rigged against donald trump. from their lawsuit, "fox took a small flame and took it into a forest fire. as the dominant media company among those viewers dissatisfied

with the election results, fox gave these fictions a prominence they otherwise would never have achieved." now, key to dominion's case is that fox promoted the falsehoods and continuously invited guests on, people like sidney powell and rudy giuliani, who touted the lies even after fox knew that the claims were not true. dominion's ceo john pulos in an interview with "60 minutes" last night spoke candidly about how his company repeatedly went to fox and told them what they were airing were lies. >> people have been put into danger. their families have been put into danger. their lives have been upended. and all because of lies. it was a very clear calculation, that they knew they were lies and they were repeating them and endorsing them. >> dominion began alerting fox news and other networks of the false allegations they were broadcasting november 12th. four days after sidney powell first discussed dominion with maria bartiromo. but dominion says fox news never

retracted their reporting. >> you gave them a lot of chances to correct their statements. >> they still haven't corrected them. >> so far we know many fox news personalities-s people like sean hannity, tucker carlson, maria bartiromo, have been deposed for questioning in the case. "the new york times" also reported just last week that fox news ceo suzanne scott is expected to be deposed very soon. the trial is expected to start in april. neither side has shown any signs of reaching a settlement. dominion's fight to proclaim the facts about the 2020 election and hold the disseminators of lies accountable is where we begin the hour with some of our favorite reporters and friends. former fbi counterintelligence agent pete strzok is here. also joining us jeremy peters, "new york times" reporter and an msnbc contributor. and our good friend john heilemann's back. host and executive producer of showtime's "the circus." executive editor of "the recount." also an msnbc national affairs analyst in his free time. jeremy peters, you have a killer story on all of this from last

week. take us through it. >> so you're absolutely right. this is unlike any defamation case that we've seen against a major media company in a very long time and perhaps a generation. and that's because usually defamation cases are built around one single statement or even a clause in a newspaper article or something that was said on a single broadcast. what dominion has here is instance after instance, night after night, lie after lie, on broadcast. and that's what makes this case so strong, because not only has fox refused to retract anything that its hosts and its guests said about a supposed conspiracy that everyone from hugo chavez to, you know, the german government was involved in supposedly stealing the election from donald trump, but you have just kind of a nonsensical

narrative here about votes that were apparently transferred from voting machine to voting machine, and it's just so demonstrably false that the dominion people over the last several months have been gathering evidence from e-mails, text messages of fox news producers, executives, talent, and it's gotten to the point right now where both sides are girding for a trial and i think a settlement is probably at this point far off because as far as i've understood, as my sources have told me, the only thing dominion would accept is an apology and a bunch of money and fox is not at this point prepared to give up either of those. >> so we don't have access to what has been produced by fox news through the process of discovery, but we do have access to some of sean hannity's e-mails from the january 6th

committee. here's what he sent to mark meadows on december 31st, 2020. "we can't lose the entire white house counsel's office. i do not see january 6th happening the way he's being told. after the 6th he should announce he will lead a nationwide effort to reform voting integrity, go to florida, watch joe mess up, stay engaged, when he speaks people will listen." behind the scenes fox news personalities know that trump had lost the election and that joe biden was going to be president. on their airwaves fox news broadcast election deniers and people that were touting lies they knew were lies on the air. let me show you some of that. these are the lies they were telling. this was the fact check fox news was receiving in real time. >> the dominion voting systems, the smartmatic technology software, and the software that goes in other computerized voting systems here as well, not

just dominion, were created in venezuela at the direction of hugo chavez. >> were you associated with the late hugo chavez? >> absolutely not. >> a very, very dangerous foreign company that did the votes in 27 states, a company that's not american, a company that's foreign, a company that has close, close ties with venezuela and therefore china. >> i can cut all of this sort. we were founded in toronto, which is where my family was from, and there's nothing to do with venezuela. >> we have a company that's very suspect. its name is dominion. with the turn of a dial or the change of a chip you can press a button for trump and the vote goes to biden. >> can you flip votes in the computer system? can you add votes that did not exist? >> absolutely not. >> we have to go to paper. maybe it takes longer. but the only secure system is

paper. >> we do have paper ballots. what the machines do is they count those paper ballots in a way that makes it very easy for people to verify after the fact through the means of audits and recounts. >> pete strzok, this case is of interest i think to all of us because in some ways companies have more recourses. i mean, the lives of shay moss and ruby freeman were irreparably harmed by the very same lies. but oddly in our system a company can mount a lawsuit like this a little more easily than a person. what do you think of the evidence that's public facing? >> well, i think it's very compelling at the moment. i think you're absolutely right. what dominion brings to the table is, one, a significant amount of resources to have a very well-funded legal effort. and i think in terms of their motivation, as was noted, it's not to cut some sort of deal. it's to get an apology and a lot of money. and if that's not forthcoming to

go to trial and do that. i think it was very interesting to listen to the defamation expert on "60 minutes" that you played because defamation gets thrown around a lot by a lot of people who don't really understand the law. but it is a very challenging law to establish that somebody's defamed somebody certainly in a corporate setting. it's a standard of actual malice when you have a public figure, which is in itself a subjective definition. and it essentially means somebody knew something to be untrue and went ahead and publgd it anyway or they were reckless in failing to pursue the truth. and i think dominion has strong evidence that they sat there and they were providing the truth again and again and again to fox and it's rare you're going to have some witness say yeah, i knew this was false and i told them to go ahead and do it or to demonstrate that sort of recklessness that would be required. but what we're seeing through discovery is certainly these sort of dual messaging. on the one hand you have the fox personalities allegedly saying things on air and bringing in witnesses -- or people to talk on their shows saying one thing,

and then behind the scenes they're saying something very, very different. that difference is something that, you know, attorneys are going to look for. those differences are something that can be used with a jury to say hey, look, this was intentional. no matter what they were saying on the air, no matter what they're saying in court, behind the scenes they knew exactly what they were doing. they knew that this information was false. and i think it brings and builds a very compelling narrative against fox in this case. >> so john heilemann, this is from jeremy's reporting on this. a judge has granted dominion access to suzanne scott's e-mails and text memgz from the period after the 2020 election when fox's anch orgz and gefrts amplified some of the outrageous falsehoods about dominion and its supposed role in a plot to steal the collection. so far those messages contained at least one instance in which ms. scott expressed skepticism about the dubious claims of voter fraud her company kept promoting. that kind of evidence is what dominion hopes will ultimately

convince a jury that fox broadcast information it knew to be false, which would leave the company on the hook for significant damages. what do you -- when you watch this process and attempt at accountability for the damage done by lies, you cannot help but think about liz cheney and bennie thompson's impassioned pleas to protect our democracy with the same sort of legal framework. what do you make of this case and where it stands and how much it matters? >> hi, nicolle. it's been a while since i've seen you. it's great to be here. i wish i'd been able to get into the bureau there today. apparently, i've been -- they said no. don't come. keep your distance. so i'm in a secure location and contemplating what you're talking about. i mean, i think for journalists the way the libel laws and defamation laws have been structured are a really important part of our democratic system, right? and all of us who do our work under the blanket of them are

glad that the standards are high. those standards, knowledge of falsity, reckless disregard for truth, that if you can't be proved to have engaged in one of those two things you're protected under the first amendment. we think those are important protections, to let the fourth estate do what it does aggressively and make mistakes. good faith mistakes. we make mistakes. and we have to be able to make good faith mistakes if we're going to do our job in a democracy. on the other hand, there is nothing that makes our -- that takes our credibility and makes -- and puts our freedoms more in jeopardy than when you see a company like fox news do what it did in the case of dominion. so this case, it's really hard to win these cases, right? but as jeremy's reporting points out and in what we know of this case, there is -- and again, we don't have access to all the information, but on the basis of what we know, there seems to be a pretty good case here of meeting that high bar. knowledge of falsity, reckless disregard for the truth. one of the two of those things. and i will say that i think, you know, fox news and people who

also pulled the blanket of the protections of the law that those of us who tried to do our work in good faith and don't impact -- it's always been gaulg for those of us who need those protections to see people like fox news become complacent and engage in random acts of propaganda and if not reckless disregard for truth and knowledge of falsity something close to that on almost a daily basis and to see them kind of take advantage of the protections that good faith journalists are working under all the time has been galling. so although i never want to root for the press to be prosecuted when it's trying to do its job, fox news isn't the press in this case. and it wasn't trying to do its job. it was trying to run a disinformation campaign to try to keep an illegitimate president in office. and that is a thing that it would only be good for the country, for the press, and in some ways for reaffirming the importance of these protections for us when we are operating in good faith, which we do 95% of

the time in the real press, it would only be good for all of us to see someone who had gotten -- an organization that was taking advantage unfairly of those freedoms, to see them pay a price if it can be proven that that's what they were doing. and it looks to me like there's a pretty good sense of arguments that that will be the case. >> yeah. i mean, jernly, and again, this is what the hannity text to mark meadows are a window into. this isn't about what you can and can't say on tv. and as john is talking about, that benefits all of us. having as much latitude to get ourselves in trouble as possible. i don't know what twitter would do if we didn't have all that latitude. but this is about what they knew and what they said. what they knew about the fact there was no fraud and what they were saying on their broadcasts. now, the fox news defense doesn't even seem to address that. it seems to be that they're saying, "there's nothing more newsworthy than covering the then president of the united states and his lawyers' allegations." so even though the defense seems to rest on the fact that we were

just covering what he said. is that what it boils down to? >> but that's not what fox did. they didn't cover just what he said. you and i and other journalists covered what trump and giuliani and sidney powell were saying. where fox's case falls apart and where dominion believes it has the strongest evidence in proving this defamation is that people like maria bartiromo, lou dobbs, jeanine pirro were promoting this lie. they were endorsing it. they were saying that they had evidence, they had seen evidence themselves. and that's where this crosses over into uncharted territory as far as libel law is concerned against a huge media corporation like fox and why frankly this case is such a huge deal. because you have not seen anything like this in our lifetime. i mean, you'd have to go back to

like the cbs news versus general westmoreland case in the 1980s in order to get anything along the magnitude of this. and that case was settled. and i don't have any indication so far in my reporting that either side wants to settle this case. it's that -- the stakes are that high. and the evidence is that indicting. the first amendment is a very high bar. let's be clear here. i don't want to make it sound like fox is going to lose this because the first amendment has these protections built into it that make these cases very, very difficult to win if you're a company like dominion. but as far as i've seen, as far as the sources i've spoken to, the evidence that they have so far is going to make it very hard to convince a jury otherwise, which is why i think dominion is eager to put this in front of a jury.

>> let me show all of you what happened to dominion, what the real world consequences are, because the ceo made very clear that this is not in the past tense, that the threats of physical violence and murder are ongoing. this is the ceo, john poulos, of dominion. >> last friday we had an office on lockdown. two days prior to that i was on a phone call with one of our employees who's a mother of two, very upset and crying. it's hard to talk about. >> had something been said to her personally? >> a very disgusting death threat in detail. >> received? >> on her personal cell phone. >> just for the crime of working at dominion. about which many, many, many hundreds of lies have been told by fox news anchors. pete strzok, i think the other thing that people are watching

is is there a price to be paid for that anymore or is that the country we live in you no? >> nicolle, it's sad to see this is absolutely the way a certain portion of the base of trump supporters respond to anybody identified as an adversary, whether it's somebody in government, whether it's somebody working at a poll watching or a poll ballot place, whether it's somebody at dominion. but the fact of the matter is prosecution -- criminal cases exist for two reasons. one is to punish the offender. the other is to provide a deterrent effect. regardless of where this ends up, whether it results in a settlement or goes to trial, there has got to be an impact on all those people it's been reported were deposed, sean hannity, tucker carlson, gene pirro, lou dobbs, on and on and on up to the leadership of fox. much like alex jones and these very large judgments against him for horrible statements about sandy hook. at the end of the day, this litigation does serve a

deterrent effect, or i hope it does that before somebody particularly like fox goes out and lauchbz into another round of crazy conspiracy theories in the 2022 election or the 2024 election they're going to have this experience in the back of their mind. and it is a good, you know, corrective mechanism to bring these extraordinarily abusive behaviors on the part of these very large actors back into some semblance of control or at least i certainly hope it does. but the threat of a $1.6 billion judgment does a lot to focus your attention on the law and what is and isn't appropriate behavior. >> jeremy peters, thank you for your reporting on this. we'll keep calling you back as we watch this trial shape up. and thank you for starting us off. pete and john, stick around. when we come back, supreme court justice clarence thomas once again under scrutiny today for his ruling protecting senator lindsey graham from having to testify before the georgia grand jury investigating the attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

it's a stunning ruling in the context of all the scrutiny that the supreme court is facing and especially considering that justice thomas's wife, ginni thomas, played a key role in the effort to overturn president joe biden's victory. we'll talk about that story and bring you that reporting next. plus, there's brand new reporting about how allies of the disgraced ex-president led by michael flynn have on a mission to gather intelligence in an effort to enact radical changes to the way americans vote. one of the reporters who broke that story will be our guest. and president barack obama tells a new generation of voters that they have the power to save us, to change the direction of our country, but they've got to vote. the former president's message ahead of the midterms. we'll show it to you later in the hour. "deadline: white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. quick break. don't go anywhere. so you can easily manage your team's devices. on the network with more 5g coverage. only from t-mobile for business.

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this afternoon supreme court justice clarence thomas gave senator lindsey graham a lifeline, a temporary reprieve from a court order forcing graham to testify in front of a georgia grand jury about his efforts to interfere in the 2020 election in that state. last week a unanimous three-judge panel including two trump appointees on the 11th circuit turned down an attempt by graham to block a subpoena from fulton county d.a. fani willis. it comes amid growing concerns about justice thomas's ability to be impartial in these cases, especially the ones involving the efforts to overturn the 2020 election in which we now know and his wife does not deny she played a key role. prosecutors have until thursday to respond. we're back with pete and john. john heilemann, these stories

are so provocative, i guess, because john roberts would have you believe he cares. he cares that in the gallup poll the supreme court has plunged over 20, 25 points. in terms of what the public thinks of it and how much it trusts it. and yet today clarence thomas, whose wife doesn't lie about still believing that donald trump should be reinstated, should be the president and that joe biden stole the election, he's deciding cases involving an investigation into justice that. >> yeah. i mean, i think, nicolle, that -- actually, i think john roberts does care about it. i don't know exactly what john roberts can do about it in these cases. it's not as though -- the chief justice does not have -- i'm the wrong person to have on to talk about what the powers of the chief justice are in toto. there are so few cases in which the chief justice has been called upon to use all of the powers the chief justice has. but i think in some cases there's not much that he can do.

now, there is some question obviously about whether roberts could step outside the traditional role and decide to do things that no supreme court justice has ever done, like try to call on clarence thomas to recuse himself from cases where he seems to have a conflict. but i do think that one of the things that the poison fruit at the center of all this is as we've learned more about ginni thomas and her role we've never gone back really and had a full accounting of clarence thomas's role on those cases that he's ruled on where he now seems to have been obviously conflicted. we had -- there's been so much news around all of this. now have an understanding about her. but at the time when we learned about her role at the outset, the question was whether clarence thomas should recuse himself from any related cases. this would not necessarily be one of them. maybe it would be. maybe it wouldn't be. i'm not sure what the standard would be. but i don't know if people feel it's a settled matter. i don't feel that people are comfortable with what we know about her role and how little we know about how her role might

have affected his decisions then and now. >> yeah. john, that's a good point. he does have this -- i think there are three decisions. one, he's the only one that dissents that the congressional probe receiving records and documents. and that's how we learn, that's how we see as a public ginni thomas's text threads with mark meadows, which are provocative and disturbing and alarming. there are two others. i think one gorsuch votes with him. but they're all the election cases. and i don't know either what roberts can do, but they give a lot of speeches. they give a whole lot of public speeches, very public facing, designed to garner press about how sad they are about the integrity of the court. it seems that if you care about an institution and there are only nine members of it you all could have breakfast and decide that maybe the nine of us can go above and beyond and try to, i don't know, salvage what the court looks like it's doing. i guess we're talking about everybody doing the extraordinary and maybe nobody

cares enough to do that. >> well, i think -- look, there's another additional problem to this, and i'm all with you, nicolle. you'd think that -- there are a lot of things. asking the court, asking john roberts, asking anybody who's a member of that court who ostensibly cares about its public reputation to go above and beyond at this moment in history when above and beyond is what we need to sort of save the country, to save the democracy, asking the chief justice to be just like the rest of us and go above and beyond is not an unreasonable request. i think that one of the problems in all of this comes back to another element, which is the secrecy around the court. and the reality is as we sit here today -- and i'm not trying to let john roberts off the hook. i'm just saying as you and i sit here today we have no idea what he might or might not have done inside the court with the exception of one extraordinary leak of a draft opinion in the dobbs case, the supreme court operates largely in the shadows and we don't know chawhat conversations have taken place.

we have very good reporters covering it you but much of what goes on inside those chambers is still unknown to us in real time. we can't actually have the definitive view of what roberts has or hasn't done. >> and all of this, at its core, pete strzok, is about what graham did either on his own because he thought it was a good idea or as part of donald trump's conspiracy to overthrow the 2020 election that he lost. here's raffensperger, former -- current georgia secretary of state, describing what graham said to him. and then i'm going to play right after that graham denying doing said things. >> senator graham applied for us to audit the envelopes and throw out the ballots for counties who had the highest frequency error of signatures. >> just an implication that look hard and see how many ballots you can throw out. >> did you or did you not ask him to throw out votes? >> no, that's ridiculous. i talked to him about how you verify signatures. >> why is the senator from south carolina calling the secretary

of state in georgia anyway? >> because the future of the country hangs in the balance. >> so again, pete strzok, the denial that he was interfering in the results of the election and he did so at the same time that donald trump was on the phone asking raffensperger to find 11,780 votes, just find them, find them, how important is graham to the criminal investigation? >> well, nicolle, it's hard to say. i think as far as it goes to a broader context of whether or not we should have elected senators and representatives involving themselves in voting fraud potentially activities like this, it's very important. there may be a legitimate question of law here. the issue is not whether or not the supreme court should take a look at it. the question is whether or not clarence thomas, given the fact, let's think back to ginni thomas i think it was in early november texting mark meadows that the biden crime family and other ballot conspiracy theorists in the lamestream media and others are being arrested and put on -- literally said put on barges off the coast of guantanamo so that

they can face tribunals for sedition. this person married to a supreme court justice talking about the biden crime family, that supreme court justice in a moment of a crisis of confidence about the supreme court should not be the one who is the one person granting the stay. that easily is something that he could have and should have in my opinion recused from. and again, when it comes to senator graham-i think it's critically important to understand what the boundaries are and are not for elected federal representatives, how that matters in the big scheme of things of what georgia is facing. i think there is a lot of compelling evidence across the board. if you don't good lindsey graham, might there also be many other sources of very valuable evidence pointing to this fraud? sure. but i think it is important for the supreme court to salvage and maintain its credibility that this is absolutely something that, you know, thomas should not have taken part in. and as john said and you've noted, this is becoming a

pattern of behavior. >> right. >> this is not something where oh, it popped up. this is something that now we have seen three times with the same person involved in the same matters that really causes appropriate arched eyebrows about what exactly is going on and what the justices are thinking. >> that's exactly it. and the perception is undeniable. so if there's no there there, you know, pull back the curtains, as john said they never do. pete strzok, thank you so much for spending some time with us today. heilemann sticks around. even from afar, we need you for the whole hour, john. when we come back, we'll have brand new in-depth reporting on the shadowy effort by mike flynn to take his anti-democracy campaign state to state all across the country in a bid to radically change the way we vote. one of the reporters who broke that incredible story will be our guest after a quick break. stay with us. stay with us i rode horses... i really do take care of myself. i try to stay in shape. that's really important, especially as you age. i noticed after kids that my body totally changed. i started noticing a little pudge.

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do you believe the violence on january 6th was justified morally? >> i take the fifth. >> do you believe the violence on january 6th was justified legally? >> fifth. >> general flynn, do you believe in the peaceful transition of power in the united states of america? >> the fifth. >> invoke the fifth amendment when asked if he believes in the peaceful transfer of power in america. that was trump ally michael flynn, the recipient of a pardon, displaying his contempt for democracy in front of the

january 6th select committee. now brand new reporting by reuters delves deeper into flynn's crusade, and that's what it is, to take his anti-democratic efforts and ideology state by state by state through an organization he's called the america project. reuters writes in th. "the america project finances litigation seeking to overturn the 2020 election and public campaigns challenging the integrity of u.s. voting systems. it also donates heavily to groups backing pro-trump election deniers who are campaigning for top state offices. it is also trying to change the very way that we vote in america." the organization is sending so-called surveyors undercover to interview local elections officials as part of a, quote, national effort to gather intelligence for prominent allies of former u.s. president donald trump who promote stolen election conspiracy theories, that intelligence will be used primarily to campaign for radical changes in the u.s.

voting system that elections officials overwhelmingly oppose. as part of their work the surveyors misled election officials, again, from that reuters reporting, quote, "many surveyors working with the america project told election officials they were politically neutral and engaged in voter education. one surveyor told reuters that the surveyors only pretended to be non-partisan. the real objective was to gather technical information on voting machines to help wage a campaign against them, he said." mike flynn did not respond to a request from reuters for comment. let's bring in reuters political investigations editor jason zappe. he shares a byline on this reporting. john heilemann's still here. first of all, what a triumph of journalism in specifically unpacking the assault on elections and democracy. take me through the reporting. >> nicolle, thank you. we, our political investigations team examines the america project, as you mentioned, you know, this was co-founded by

mike flynn and as you've documented on your show many times, he was a prominent voice in the stop the steal movement to overturn the 2020 election. we found that the america project was involved in something akin to a covert intelligence-gathering operation in eight battleground states where they met with and interviewed more than 260 election officials. we spoke with 45 of those officials. in nearly every case they said they felt like they'd been deceived. the people who conducted the interviews never made clear that they were from the america project. they described themselves as non-partisan people, grassroots people who just wanted to learn more about how the elections are conducted. in reality, this was a survey by a group with a mission to get rid of voting machines and to make radical changes to the way that americans vote.

we also found there were some significant mistakes in the surveys that were published by the america project. in at least 13 cases the group misrepresented what the election officials said. in one, for example, in crawford county, pennsylvania the america project said that they spoke with an official there who said among other things that the county uses surveillance cameras to monitor drop boxes. we contacted the county elections office and we spoke with the chief clerk and when we told her this she was baffled. she confirmed to us that the county actually didn't participate in the survey at all and they don't even use drop boxes. the election officials we spoke with are concerned that this could add to a wave of misinformation that's already undermining confidence in elections heading into the midterms. >> jason, i was going to read that exact example because it's

an easy way to understand the -- it's sort of half, you know, incompetent intelligence protocols, but the greatest danger is the combination of intimidation of a fake surveyor and then catastrophic incompetence. and i have the same poll from the story. we don't have any drop boxes. that's how we know that's not true. i'm not going to play in but i just want to read this to you. "frontline" did a documentary on michael flynn. it aired last week. and flynn says this. "you don't want to allow the enemy to choose the terrain to fight on. the terrain that i have chosen to fight on is the local battlefield, the local terrain. and i think that's the terrain that will win the day." who's the enemy? do you think that michael flynn is talking about. are we the enemy? who's the enemy? >> i mean, i think in many cases this gets down to something that's a phenomenon that's been going on for the past year. steve bannon called it on his "war room" podcast in february '21, you know, a sort of a need

to rebuild the republican party from the ground up, sort of county by county. some people describe this as a precinct strategy. it's clear that there's been this enormous pressure on local county officials, whether it's county commissioners, whether it's election officials, to kind of cave in to the pressure, this unrelenting sort of allegations that somehow the 2020 election was rigged or there was fraud despite this being disproven on countless occasions by courts and proven to be false. and so this kind of unrelenting pressure is just -- is going on on the county level, on the local level. and i think that's what that comment gets to, the strategy to kind of put pressure on counties to change the way that they run elections, to in some cases get rid of the machines altogether and go to hand counting, which

experts say is actually more vulnerable to fraud, more vulnerable to errors and more vulnerable to manipulation by bad actors. >> and all the machines do is actually count the paper ballots. which is remarkable. it's such an important piece of reporting. i'm so happy to have you here to talk about it. jason szep, thank you. >> nicolle, thank you. ahead for us, one of the democratic party's biggest superstars is now playing a major role ahead of the midterms. president barack obama urging younger voters to get out and vote. a message only he can deliver. we'll play it for you after a quick break.

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for those of you who are just turning 18 and were only 3 or 4 when i was elected, my name's barack obama. i was the 44th president of the united states. and i have the best jump shot in white house history. >> oh! >> that's what i do! >> i've heard a lot recently about how voting doesn't solve everything. and i can see how you might think that. it won't make outer banks or euphoria season 3 or rihanna's new album drop any faster. it won't make sending gifts any less cool. wait, gifs aren't cool anymore? it won't even help you understand the most complicated questions in the universe, like why do i know so much about pete davidson's dating life? but here's what voting does do. it allows you to make your voice heard on the big issues. and it reinforces the incredible work you've done between

elections, holding your leaders accountable. >> that was former president barack obama urging gen z to get out and vote. it comes as the former president is about to hit the road and ramp up his midterm election efforts on behalf of candidates. later in the week he will travel to atlanta and detroit and milwaukee and las vegas to do grassroots events to encourage early voting with the elections just two weeks away. joining us, tim miller, writer at large for the bulwark, former democratic congresswoman donna everidge. john heilemann's is still here. the thing about young voters is they don't vote in big numbers but when they vote they have a big number. you only need to plus them up a little bit. very interesting targeted message to gen z. and i feel so old that they were 3 or 4 when he became president. >> i know. i feel really old. look, i think it's really clear, barack obama is still cool whether you're gen x, y, or z or you're one of the old folks.

so this is the time of the season when democrats really do need to bring out their big guns to turn those votes. and this generation, again, as you say, it doesn't take a lot of them but all of these elections are going to be decided on the margins. so if barack obama in his coolness can get out the vote for a couple of extra percent of them then democrats stand a chance to do much better out there in the field. >> john heilemann, no one gave a more impassioned speech or warning about what would befall this country if donald trump won than former president barack obama at president joe biden's convention. this was obviously a lighter message. but in terms of cutting cut right through to the stakes of the election, i'm not sure anyone makes that case more effectively than president obama. >> yeah, look, they do have a

creative team that can make a video like that, the fierce urgency of now and also mocking himself with dad humor. i think the question, really, in the end here, though, is going to be somewhere about young voters. but it's still the case -- i was talking to david axelrod about this for the he will or high water podcast that comes out tomorrow. democratic turnout right now is so important in most of the states that barack obama is going to. he's going to place where is there's a senate race and a governor's race that are very close. wisconsin, nevada, michigan but also georgia. you know, he's trying to basically hit places where he could hit a governor the race and senators race statement. in a lot of case where is the turnout of the democratic base, in particular black turnout is essential to winning some of the close races. i think one of the things that david axelrod saw that i also

find is although it's true, and we see it in the polling, that the future of american democracy is in a place in our polling we haven't seen in our lifetimes covering politics, there's still a question of whether people are going to act on it or not. they say, but will they act on it? will it be salient to them? especially members of the democratic base. will they turn out because of that and turn out up and down the ticket? all those lower races. that's something obama does. you can hear him pulling a speech we'll hear a lot of. a closing argument that tries to up the ante, raise the stakes, how important it is to turn out upballot and downballot. those races matter a lot. some don't seem to totally get that. >> which is amazing. it's amazing after everything that's happened. the other piece i think that people are hoping president obama can i think put together more firmly is this idea that

they are not separate issues. it's not, i care about democracy and inflation. i care about democracy, but inflation. it's you do not have thriving economies in autocracies, and that is the cliff over which republicans will take you, and everything is on the line. have you heard much of that effectively deliver in the a way that connects on the campaign trail? >> i've heard some of it. i think the democrats have some campaigns that are doing well, whitmer in michigan, tim ryan. carrying messages well. there are other places they aren't. i wrote about arizona, the bulwark, how katie hobbs is struggling delivering that message. they need more messengers like barack obama, and the victim of -- good luck such this generational talent carrying a message for them for a decade, i guess when all of these kid were in the single digit age range, and now they have more focus able to do. that for joe biden's strengths,

that really isn't one of them. haven't seen much of the vice president during the midterm cycle, so obama's kind of filling a gap right now for the campaigns in particular that could use it. >> donna, i guess the question that i insert here is, they always want more, right? why didn't he start sooner? what do you make of how he decides how much is the right amount? >> i think you have to start where voters rm vote we ares really just honing in on this election, and you want them at the maximum attention. so, you know, whether it's two weeks before an election or a month before the election, i think it's really important that you have a great messenger out there who's trying to reach voters. and as i said, these elections are really going to be decided by the thinnest of margins, so in a voter turns out and they care about choice, let's go get

them. i think what -- and climate and i think what president obama is trying to do is make sure he has a message that can resonate with those voters who might otherwise decide to stay home and give them a reason to vote. >> heilman, you're out there, you and tim, and you've all been out on the trail. what are you hearing? >> i mean, look, i think -- you mean broadly or on this question? >> broadly. you pick. your choice. >> well, look, i think it's broadly right -- i think it's overstated the notion that the tide has totally turned and now we're looking at a giant republican red wave. i think democrats still have a pretty decent chance. we don't know what's going to happen. i do think that the turn of the national narrative towards

inflation and the republicans have effectively driven -- maybe not fairly, but effectively, the crime argument in a loft places has made the house -- it's hard to see a way, democrats. you thought they had a 1 in 4 chance, i think most democratic strategists will tell you they think the house is gone. it's not probably going to be a 60 or 70 seat republican red wave but solid republican night in the house. but the senate races are so close. they're so close. the main thing everyone in the world is looking at in politics right now is this senate debate tonight in pennsylvania between fetterman and oz. it's maybe the most important capitol hill debate of the cycle. highest stakes, biggest audience, and could determine who wins the race and that determines who controls the senate. >> never enough time with you guys. quick break for us. we'll be right back. k for us we'll be right back. you heard town named... dinosaur?

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thank you so much for letting us into your homes during these truly extraordinary times. we are grateful. "the beat" with ari melber starts right now. happy monday. >> happy monday, thanks, nicolle. i'm ari melber. tomorrow marks just two weeks out until these midterms. ♪♪ we got the music and the star. our leadoff hitter is none other than james carville here to make sense of it all. it is election month, and we say that because we're seeing this shift to longer voting windows is becoming a habit for many people. i'll give you one quick example. over