is, with the presidents party facing its first election. we know the history. despite that democrats who are eight days out from election, which i think at the beginning of the cycle, most people probably thought it was going to be a republican, if not landslide, strong election. the chance to hold senate, fighting chance to hold house. good chance to win important secretary of state's races, good chance to hold major governors races. the one thing that concerns me and some of the early voting, we should not define too much early voting, is the younger electorate has not shown up to the place. that is something you are trying to rectify over these last eight days. >> you turn out, he, and the modeling in terms ofoutcomes. david plouffe, michael steele, thank you both. that is all in on this monday night. the rachel maddow show starts now. >> thank you, my friend. and thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. happy halloween. my costume is perfect.

i know. thank you. nailed it. i defy anyone to ever surpass my childless old white lesbian costume. i know it's my greatest contribution to our culture. if you ever want to buy one, i recommend just xeroxing a photo of this screen. anyway, happy halloween. his name is jair bolsonaro. and he just did something nobody has ever done before. jair bolsonaro is the very trumpy, very, very far right president of brazil. and in brazil, if you are lucky enough to get elected president, and you run for re-election, you win re-election. no brazilian president running for re-election has ever lost. before jair bolsonaro. it was close, but he lost this weekend. first brazilian president to ever lose a bid for re-election. now, i mentioned that he's trumpy. one of the ways in which he is trumpy is that he's had a hard

core base of supporters who thought everything he did was great, but everybody else thought he was a pretty terrible president. and in fact, the polls were indicating clearly for months and months and months that the majority of the population of brazil considered him to be such a bad president that he was on track to lose re-election. the polls have been foretelling this story for months. and as the polls predicted correctly as it turned out, that jair bolsonaro would lose this effort at re-election, he did the things that these guys are do when they're facing that prospect. he started telling his supporters in advance that if he loses the election, they shouldn't accept the results. it will only be because the election was rigged against him. he told his supporters that if he lost the election, they should not only not accept the result, they should be ready to go for war. go to war for him. that was the word he used, go to

war. jair bolsonaro in his case, he also got the military substantially in line with some sort of plan along these lines which raised fears that not only would he refuse the acknowledge the election result if he lost, like trump, not only would he make false claims of fraud in the election, like trump, not only would he encourage his supporters to themselves reject the election results, including by force, like trump, in bolsonaro's case, because of the way he courted the military ahead of this election, he also raised additional fears that he would attempt a military coup. what trump national security adviser mike flynn advised trump to do, declare martial law, send in the actual military against the rest of the country, to use military force to keep the ousted president in power. so bolsonaro lost the election last night, sunday night, in brazil. so far, he has said nothing in response. he hasn't been seen in public.

he has made no public remarks. one public statement from his son who is kind of a donald trump jr. of brazil if don jr. was a senator. he put out a statement thanking all their supporters and voters. not exactly conceding but at least acknowledging something was over. something but it wasn't clear. but bolsonaro himself hasn't conceded and nobody knows what he's going do. it was publicly reported in brazil today that bolsonaro was going to make some sort of public address. it was reported that a concession speech has been written for him and that was the speech he was going to make this afternoon or tonight. he didn't do that. and then after he didn't appear by the expected time this afternoon, soon thereafter it was reported that he won't make any remarks tonight at all. he won't make remarks until tomorrow. where upon what? what's he going to do? is he going to concede? is he going to call for war?

is it going to be something in between? there are 26 states in brazil. bolsonaro's supporters as of tonight have blocked roads and bridges so far in 20 of brazil's 26 states. over 200 road blocks in all, including a total road block across the main highway in brazil between the two largest cities in the country, sao paulo and rio de janeiro. they also blocked the main bridge between rio and its suburbs across the bay. nobody knows how long these kinds of blockades are going to last or if they're going to escalate. nobody knows if bolsonaro is going to try to call off the military and roll tanks into the streets to take over by force. but news reports in brazil say while bolsonaro was busy not giving his planned concession speech, he was meeting for hours with his defense secretary. so what's going to happen tomorrow in brazil? we don't know.

president biden has already called the guy who beat bolsonaro and offered his congratulations, offered a statement from the white house recognizing the election results and congratulating the new president-elect. but even as president biden was calling the new president elect, the newspapers in brazil today carried a statement from trump adviser steve bannon saying there's no possibility that the election results are correct, that bolsonaro should start a months-long ballot by ballot audit of the results and that whatever he does, he definitely shouldn't leave office. he should stay in office despite the election results. in a live stream last night, responding to the election results in brazil, steve bannon said it more bluntly. he said bolsonaro, quote, can't concede. can't concede. why not? why can't he concede? why do you care, steve bannon? this is the part that's about us, that's about us and our country and our election next

week. because why do you think it is that this top white house adviser to former president donald trump, why do you think it is that he's telling this guy in brazil, this trump-like far right buffoonish unpopular brazilian president who has been voted out of office, why is steve bannon telling him he shouldn't admit to the election results, he shouldn't admit he's been voted out? he cannot concede. why do you think bannon is doing that? do you think steve bannon has some substantive fact-based beliefs about the integrity of brazil's elections. you think he has facts he knows that have made him concerned about how votes are counted in sao paulo? you think he has important information about something being wrong with a voting machine in santa caterina or some other place in brazil he's never been to that i'm probably mispronouncing. why do you think steve bannon cares? why did trump endorse bolsonaro

and endorse his voter fraud claims even in advance of the election? why is it that we can be absolutely 100% sure that if trump were still president instead of joe biden, the u.s. government itself would be refusing to acknowledge that bolsonaro just lost this election? why? why do they do this? it is not about brazil. it is about us. it is about propagating and inculcating into us or at least inculcating into their supporters this assertion, this belief, this conviction that elections are bad. that elections are suspect, that elections are for suckers. and anybody who is not a sucker shouldn't believe any election results anywhere. elections suck. they're a hoax, they're a racket, we shouldn't use them, we know better. and this line of attack, it isn't about any one election. it's not about any particular allegation of something being

wrong with some particular election. it's about elections as elections. it's about elections as a category. and you can see it at work in all these different instances, right? that's how you can see it sort of, there's no exceptions here. it's a rule. you can see it at work with trump and steve bannon insisting that trumpy guys all around the world shouldn't have to abide by election results. you can see it at home coming into sharper focus now. now that we're eight days out from the next national election. trump issuing a new endorsement of the republican candidate who's running against senator maggie hassan in new hampshire in this election. trump endorses him now by saying outright what he likes about the guy is he's, quote, a strong and proud election denier. so they're embracing that term now. you must be a strong and proud election denier, trump's words, in order to get his endorsement as the de facto leader of the

republican party. you also see it in that odd footage that's being aired by fox news over the past few days of trump calling the republican senate candidate in arizona, this guy blake masters, the one who is running against democratic senator mark kelly. trump tells him on the call that, hey, blake masters, you're doing great but you need to go harder and louder and more insistent on the issue of election denial. you need to be volunteering all the time, saying elections shouldn't count. and blag masters says oh, yes, i'll do that, i'll go hard on that issue. why does trump need that? why does trump need that from this senate candidate in arizona or this senate candidate in nevada? they're not going to be voting on anything related to the 2020 election where trump lost. why does trump want to do this? why does he want all republican candidates at every level to insist that elections are for suckers? and that election results don't count? the reason he wants to do this

is so this idea that elections shouldn't be the way we do things anymore becomes the rallying cry and the operating principle of the republican party. and it's working within the republican party. i mean, ever since trump won the republican nomination for president in 2016, thanks to a republican primary system he said was rigged and fraudulent, and then he won the general election that year, and still said there was fraud in that election. there were millions of illegal votes cast in that election, even in elections he wins he says there was fraud, right? right through to the 2020 campaign, where even before the election, he claimed that election was fraudulent and that it shouldn't count. why would you try to undermine faith in an election that you won? why would you try to undermine faith in elections in other countries that most americans can't spell? why would you try to get everybody in your party to say that election results don't count even when they're not in a position to reverse some sort of election result to put you back

in power? it's so that the idea that elections don't count becomes the operating principle of the republican party. say elections are messed up. insist that you have proof of some kind that you can't show right now, but you have it. proof that the elections are messed up. on the basis of your false claims that the elections are messed up, then set about actually messing up elections. to prove your point. that's the phrase that we're in now, right? there's 67 counties in pennsylvania, in 50 of those 67 counties, the elections chiefs have left office since the last election, because of threats and intimidation. 50 out of the 67 counties in the state. how smoothly do you think elections are going to go in that state this year? in nevada, there's 17 counties. elections supervisors in ten of the 17 counties in the state have left already or announced they're leaving, again, ahead of threats and intimidation from the political right.

you may have seen the news over the weekend about this republican controlled county in nevada that is breaking its elections system so profoundly they are swearing in dozens of citizens to be citizen hand counters of their ballots, and that's the only way they want to count. this is a system they are newly inventing that last week took 60 people one full day to count 900 votes poorly. 60 people counting, a full day's work, less than 1,000 votes counted. here's the associated press, quote, two groups of five counters that the a.p. observed spent about three hours each counting 50 ballots. mismatched tallies led to recounts and occasionally to more recounts. several of the counters noted how arduous the process was with one volunteer lamenting, i can't believe it's two hours to get through 25 votes. yeah. if this is how you're going to count them. this is a county with 33,000

registered votes. took 60 people a full day to get through less than 1,000 votes. they have got 33,000 registered voters in that county. they're getting rid of the election system there effectively. they're having randoes just personally rifle through the ballots and see what they might come up with to get through 33,000 votes on actual election day, where there's a tight senate race and other stuff that's really important on the ballot, yeah, it might take them a few months, maybe a year to get some kind of tally. nobody will have much faith in it when they do. it's a system, right? say the elections are messed up. on the basis of that, mess them up. then when the elections are messed up, claim vindication. and show everyone, hey, look, this election thing we used to do, it's just too broken to try to use it anymore. what a mess. why would anyone believe those results? let's throw the results out. this is under way, this is a

linear plan. but if elections aren't real, if election results shouldn't be used, if we shouldn't trust election results anymore anywhere, if elections shouldn't be what we do anymore, what is it that we should do instead? if it's not going to be elections, if it's not democracy, then what do we do instead? jair bolsonaro in brazil has been preparing his supporters there that he may be rallying them for war. he has been working to get the military on his side in that war. it's not clear if the military will do that. it's also not clear if bolsonaro will actually pull the trigger and try to set it off. but that's the question. that's a live question tonight. here's the headline tonight in "the new york times." after defeat, bolsonaro is silent and brazil braces for turmoil. they're bracing for turmoil. we are bracing for our own kind of turmoil here too. because if one of our two major

parties doesn't believe in elections anymore, if they don't want elections to be the way we decide things, what do they want instead? how will that work here? this was the district attorney tonight in san francisco, california. >> i am here today to formally announce charges against mr. david depape in connection with the violent attack on mr. pelosi. the charges that we are filing today include attempted murder, residential burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, false imprisonment of an elder, as well as threats to a public official and their family. mr. depape specifically targeted the pelosi home to confront speaker pelosi. he forced his way into the home through a rear glass door by breaking that glass. the defendant made his way

upstairs to the second floor of the home, locating mr. pelosi in his bed sleeping. he woke him up, confronting him about the whereabouts of speaker pelosi. the defendant realizing that mr. pelosi had called 911, took mr. pelosi downstairs near the front door of the residence. two police officers arrived at the front door two minutes after that 911 call. when that door was opened, the defendant was holding his hammer, which mr. pelosi appeared to be attempting to control by holding a portion of that hammer. the defendant then pulled the hammer away from mr. pelosi and violently struck him in the top of his head. the police then immediately apprehended the defendant. what we also have learned is that the defendant brought to the location of the pelosi

residence a second hammer, as well as zip ties, rope, and a roll of tape. what is clear based on the evidence that we have thus far is that this house and the speaker herself were specifically targets of the defendant. >> can you definitively say this was politically motivated? >> yes, it appears this was based on his statements and comments that were made in that house during his encounter with mr. pelosi, that this was politically motivated. >> suggesting to go as far as to say it was an assassination attempt? >> what i will say is he was looking for the speaker at the time he entered the home. the federal affidavit contains a bit more information about other motivations he expressed but he certainly did enact what we believe is an attempt to murder her husband. >> certainly did enact what we believe is an attempt to murder her husband. san francisco district attorney speaking tonight about a california state charges filed

against the man who police say tried to murder the husband of the speaker of the house, nancy pelosi. the man who fractured paul pelosi's skull with a hammer. now, you heard the d.a. there reference the federal affidavit. that concerns the federal charges that are also being filed against the same suspect today. the criminal complaint related to those charges includes an aft from an fbi agent which does have more detail on the alleged attempted murder. fairly blood curdling detail. from that affidavit, i submit there's cause to believe he violated law by assaulting the family member of a u.s. official, nancy pelosi of the house of representatives with attempt to retaliate against such official on the account of professional duties. there's also probable cause to believe he violated federal law by attempting to seize or kidnap an united states official, to wit, nancy pelosi, the speaker of the house. the facts of the investigation

to date reveal depape was prepared to detain and injure speaker pelosi when he entered the pelosi residence in the early morning of october 28. depape had zip ties, tape, rope, and at least one hammer with him. in a mirandized and recorded interview of depape by san francisco police officers, he stated he was going to hold nancy hostage and talk to were truth, he would let her go. and if she lied, he was going to break her knee caps. he said he was certain that nancy would not have told the truth, in the course of the interview, he articulateded that he viewed nancy as the leader of the pack of lies told by the democratic party. he also later explained that by breaking nancy's knee caps, she would then have to be wheeled into congress, which would show other members of congress there were consequences to their actions. then he stated that he broke into the house through a glass door which was a difficult task that required the use of a

hammer. he stated paul pelosi was in bed and appeared surprised by him. he told paul pelosi to wake up. he told paul pelosi he was looking for nancy. pelosi responded that nancy was not present. paul pelosi asked how they could resolve the situation and what depape wanted him to do. depape stated he wanted to tie paul pelosi up. around this time, according to depape, he started taking out twist ties from his pocket so he could restrain paul pelosi. paul pelosi moved toward around part of the house, but depape stopped him, and it goes on from there. into paul pelosi managing somehow to call 911 and the police coming, and the police seeing the suspect hitting paul pelosi in the skull with a hammer. and knocking him to the ground where he lay apparently unconscious. nbc news reports that paul pelosi is still in the icu tonight after the attack surrounded by family members. he's 82 years old. he reportedly has extensive injuries to multiple body parts including a fractured skull.

donald trump jr. responded to the attack by saying he was working on his paul pelosi halloween costume. and he posted a picker of a hammer and pair of underwear. then he posted another picture of a hammer saying it was for open carry in san francisco. that's the son of former president trump. charlie kirk, who is the head of a big pro-trump conservative pac, he said today that some amazing patriot, that was his phrase, amazing patriot, should post bail for the attacker and that person would be a midterm hero if they did it. kari lake is the republican candidate for governor in arizona. she got a big laugh, big round of applause on this subject this weekend. >> nancy pelosi, well, she's got protection when she's in d.c. apparently her house doesn't have a lot of protection.

>> big laugh line for her. play that tape again. you can see the moderator of the event on the left side of your screen. it looks like he's laughing so hard he might fall over. oh, just hilarious. fracturing his skull with a hammer. there's been a lot of reporting already about the assailant, his perceived beliefs, his writings online. to use a technical term, i would say he seems like a nut ball. that's how i would classify him, but his recent writings, you know, for what it's worth, they're all conspiracy theories and rantings that circulate on the far right. holocaust denial, jewish bankers, covid vaccines are a conspiracy, qanon stuff. he wrote q is trump himself. and the real racism is racism against white people. and you know, i dismiss him as a nut ball, and i speak about those things with admitted

derision because in my opinion, honestly, none of us should feel obliged to play in the sewer of that man's mind. once you hit someone in the head with a hammer, all of humanity is officially and forever excused from needing to learn about your thoughts and feelings. but if you're a person who has all your faculties, and you know that something like this has happened, if you minimize it, mock it, celebrate it, the attempted murder of the speaker of the house's husband, what is now formally charged as the attempted kidnapping of the speaker of the house, well, if that's how you react to knowing this has happened, well then, you're telling us what you want instead of politics. you're telling everybody what you want to be able to do, what you want your side to be able to do to your political opponents. what you enjoy seeing your political opponents subjected to. and that is in fact the other option, if we're not going to have elections anymore.

it's either violence and force or it's voting. and if it is not voting, then it is going to be violence and force. we're eight days out from the first national election since the last republican president, the leader of their party, tried to stay in power by force. and you know, on friday, a man pled guilty in federal court to threatening to kill congressman eric swalwell and his staff. also last week, three people were found guilty of their part in a militia kidnapping plot targeting the governor of michigan. today, harry dunn testified in the seditious conspiracy trial of the oath keepers for their role in trump's effort to have a violent mob of his supporters overthrow the government and keep him in power by force. in power by force, despite the election results. in power despite the election results and therefore by force.

those are the choices. right? it's either elections or it's force and violence. we are eight days out in this election, a clear majority of republican candidates for congressional and state-wide offices say election results should no longer count. they do not believe in election results. even below that level, in state legislative races, look, clear majorities of republican candidates in those races in the swing states, they say election results shouldn't count. they don't believe them, we shouldn't use elections anymore. if they do not want us to have elections anymore, don't kid yourself there is another good option. it's democracy or it's not. and if it's not, it's violence and force. this is the year, this is the election when your vote up and down to the very bottom of the ballot is an answer to this one question.

is the democracy or is it force and violence? our vote this year is about whether we ever get to vote again. this is not the year to sit out. even walking was tough. i had to do something. i started cosentyx®. cosentyx can help you move, look, and feel better... by treating the multiple symptoms of psoriatic arthritis. don't use if you're allergic to cosentyx. before starting...get checked for tuberculosis. an increased risk of infections some serious... and the lowered ability to fight them may occur. tell your doctor about an infection or symptoms... or if you've had a vaccine or plan to. tell your doctor if your crohn's disease symptoms... develop or worsen. serious allergic reactions may occur. watch me. ask your rheumatologist about cosentyx.

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so we just received a new statement from house speaker nancy pelosi about the assault and what police say was an attempted murder, an attempted murder attempt against her husband at their san francisco home on friday. a new statement just out from

nancy pelosi. it says, quote, since the horrific attack on paul early friday, we have been deluged with thousands of messages conveying concern, prayers, and warm wishes. we are most grateful. thanks to the excellent trauma care medical team at san francisco general hospital, paul is making steady progress on what will be a long recovery process. our family thanks everyone for their kindness. >> paul pelosi's alleged attacker now faces both state and federal charges, pursuant to the attack, and announcing the multiple state and federal felony charges connected to this case, law enforcement officials today released a lot of new information about that attack and what led this alleged assailant to the pelosis' door. joining us is ben collins, senior reporter covering disinformation, extremism, and the internet for nbc news. ben has to work in a very dark place in order to help us understand this stuff better. for that, we're always grateful. nice to see you. >> good to see you, rachel. >> i want to ask you first sort of a meta question.

not specifically about the beliefs or the sort of radicalization if wi can call it that of the man who is the alleged assailant here. i want to ask you about how the country is discussing this matter in the wake of it. and whether we are essentially jumping into another disinformation spiral on this story, or whether there is some links to the fact-based world. >> i would hope there are some links but there was a perfect storm of lies over the weekend. this is something you used to see with disinformation operations from foreign governments back four, five years ago when there were basically no rules prohibiting them from doing this. you know, on friday, while real reporters were out there trying to figure out what went on here, and hit this blog that was very explicitly a qanon cabal blog. this guy was posting on, trying to figure out if that was real. lies spread incredibly quickly all over the internet. the lies that were concocted were this building sort of, this

myth making, this world building on the right, on 4chan and eventually on to twitter and out of the mouths like marjorie taylor greene and elon musk. that's what happened, on saturday and sunday while the news was trying to get to 110% certainly this blog was his, they created a world in which paul pelosi was part of some sort of sex plot with this man, and it was completely invented, but it was tweeted out by the richest man in the world, who happens to own the largest news social media platform in the world now, and that created this other reality. and by the time monday morning happened, by the time we got to work on monday morning, the water cooler kind of conversation wasn't, isn't it crazy that a political assassination attempt pretty much almost happened this weekend? it was the opposite, it was debating whether or not a political assassination attempt even happened.

someone who is trying to kidnap the speaker of the house. instead, the conversation was about a complete lie based on literal mythical world making. >> one of the things that has happened in politics over the past six or seven years is that a lot of the unreality and disinformation and just made up stuff that circulates in politics for political effect and for profit on the right, it ended up getting litigated. so weird fantasies and lies and disinformation about the election ended up bean channeled into the court sirsirs system w courts went through these things and threw those cases out. the court ended up being an important sieve in terms of what gets attributed -- what is seen as having a factual basis. with the federal affidavit we saw from the fbi agent related to the federal charges, with the

statement that we got from the san francisco d.a. explaining the state charges and what were the circumstances that led to those charges, you do have detailed factual assertions that if you read them closely, seem to be rebutting some of these rumors and lies that are out there circulating. i wonder what you think about that as a potential sort of funneling process or sieving process for making sure that the truth stays connected to these stories. >> i think at the end of the day it's the thing that's going to be on wikipedia which may help down the line. that's the thing the kidses are going to read years down the line probably instead of history books. however, in the moment, if you talk to somebody at the supermarket, you would probably hear the lie that was pushed around by elon musk this weekend. 50% of the time, i would guess. that's how pervasive this thing was over the weekend. and the other thing i want to bring up with this is this guy, david depape, was a fervent

qanon guy. a fervent pizzaigate believer. he thought he was doing something for the cause here. he thought he was taking out the lead member of the cabal, but the second somebody acts on the things these people want them to act on, the second somebody does the thing that they are agitating for, which is enemies who they believe are like eating kids in some cases, or at least doing immense corruption, the second that happens, they abandon that person. they throw him to the wolves. they created a whole world where this man was actually secretly in love with the person he went to go attack. so the problem right now in this space is that they are incredibly cowardly about this. you know, you have the tens of thousands of people saying this stuff, saying they're going to go do violence, and somebody goes and does it, and they don't even disown that person. they just say it couldn't be us. but it is them. they talk about this violence all the time.

so they try to benefit from all sides of this. they need to maintain this permanent victimhood, this permanent idea that they could never be doing anything wrong, but they are committing, you know, very frequently now, political attacks, physical violent political terror attacks. >> ben collins, senior reporter for nbc news on the disinformation, extremism beat for us for which again, we are grateful. you take these lumps so in many cases the rest of us don't have to. ben, stay safe out there. thank you. >> we'll have much more ahead tonight. stay with us. so to help you remember that liberty mutual customizes your home insurance, here's a pool party. ♪ good times. insurance! ♪ only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ my asthma felt anything but normal. ♪ ♪ it was time for a nunormal with nucala. nucala is a once-monthly add-on treatment for

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. so the criminal trial of donald trump's family business got under way today. the trial in which his namesake company is charged with engaging in a 15-year multimillion dollar tax evasion scheme. we're eight days out from the midterm elections. for the de facto leader of the republican party, their last president, their all but certain nominee for president in the next election, this is a very awkward time to be dragged into court for a criminal tax evasion trial. but i gotta tell you, that's like one egg in a whole carton for him today. also, simultaneously today, the criminal trial continues of trump's longtime friend the chair of his president inauguration committee, tom barrack. barrack is charged with acting

as a secret agent of a foreign government trying to influence the u.s. government in order to make money for himself from a foreign power. also today, jury selection began in a civil trial of trump and his company over charges that he ordered his security guards to physically attack protesters outside trump tower during trump's campaign. trump himself had to sit for a deposition in that civil case. that's not to be confused with the deposition he also had to sit for a couple weeks ago in the defamation case deriving from woman alleging he raped her in the mid-'90s. also today, trump petitioned the u.s. supreme court to step in and block the house of representatives from getting a copy of his tax returns which he's been desperately trying for years to keep anyone from seeing. also, trump is now on his knock-off social media site ranting about how he cannot believe that the mar-a-lago classified documents federal criminal case is still going on. even as one of his most loyal lieutenants just pled the fifth before a grand jury considering

that case. which by the way, if you're keeping score at home, brings the number of people in trump's orbit who pled the fifth in various recent cases to at least nine. including trump himself, who spent hours taking the fifth in yet another investigation, the new york attorney general's investigation of his financial practices. also, in the justice department's ongoing investigation into his efforts to violently overthrow the government on january 6th, the justice department is now asking a federal judge to compel trump's white house counsel and his deputy white house counsel to testify about their conversations with him before that federal grand jury. also, the seditious conspiracy trial continues of the right-wing pro trump paramilitary group, the oath keepers, who say they came to washington on january 6th to fight physically to keep trump in power. at that trial today, there was dramatic testimony from capitol police officer harry dunn, who told the jury about physically blocking a group of oath keepers from getting to nancy pelosi's

office on january 6th. as he and his colleagues raced to get her staffers to safety. i mean, that's what's going on around the leader of the republican party, just today. all in a day's work. eight days before the midterm elections, and all of this, it is not unrelated to the precarious political moment we are in. a system that operates on the rule of law and free and fair elections doesn't work all that well for a party whose leader is in personal legal jeopardy under that system in all of these different ways. whose family business is literally on trial right now as of today on criminal charges. pulitzer prize winning reporter susanne craig was in the room for the trial today. she joins us next.

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today, the criminal trial of the trump organization got under way. which means that the namesake family business of donald trump, the place from which or via which he inherited all his money, the de facto head of the republican party could soon be a convicted felon, well not him, but his business could be. businesses don't go to prison, but what would it mean for his namesake business to be a felon? it doesn't sound good, but i'm not sure what the implications really are. i know who to ask. susanne craig won a pulitzer prize for her "new york times" reporting on donald trump's fnls history. she was in the courtroom today. >> thanks for having me.

>> what are the potential consequences here? i understand that the dollar amount of potential fine the company could face isn't all that big. >> no. >> if the company is convicted of a felony, it seems like that would be consequential in other ways. >> the fine isn't consequential. dpl 1.7, $1.8 million. it's not tax deductible but still a small amount when you look at what he's facing potentially in the civil suit that the new york attorney general is bringing which is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. so he'll pay the fine, but there's something known as collateral consequence. i like to think of it as collateral damage of what happens when you have a criminal verdict come in that your company has done something, you know, there's fraud involved and you're found guilty of that if that in fact happens. in this case it's interesting because normally that's a huge deal for companies, especially publicly traded ones. but even privately held ones when they have loans out, for

example, it can immediately trigger a payment of the loan. in the case of the trump organization, they do have a lot of debt, but they have recently shifted their loans, a number of them, deutsche bank. they had a number of loans outstanding. they have been moved to a smaller bank. they refinanced them to a bank out in san diego. we don't know the terms of those loans with this smaller bank that seems to be fairly trump friendly. so it's just hard to say right now from a financial point of view. you know, if there is a guilty verdict, exactly what will happen, but i have a feeling they moved them when they knew this was on the horizon. we just don't know. the other thing that could happen, and it's not so much in this suit but in the civil suit coming out of new york, and i know a lot of people are talking about it, but there could be civil lawsuits that arise any time there's damages, a lot of times especially in the civil suit in particular when banks are involved, they may sue

because there's just a suit outstanding and they have a responsibility to their shareholders. but on this one, it's really we're just not quite sure in terms of their lending of how much liability they have on the other end since they moved to refinance it all in recent, not quite months, but over the last year or so. >> and in watching the prosecutors lay out their opening statement today, did you learn anything interesting about how they're laying out the case, what the major allegations are? is there anything surprising or particularly interesting about the way they're trying to prove this case to the jury? >> well, we knew, we had an idea because allen weisselberg, the chief financial officer, pled guilty to 15 counts of fraud, that he was going to be the star witness. what's interesting just coming out of today when you were hearing it, he's a cooperating witness, but it's just going to be really interesting to see how he threads the needle on that. like, it was -- the defense is

saying that it was allen weisselberg did this for his benefit. he was a lone wolf and the company didn't know. the burden on the prosecution is going to be to show that it went up to the higher ranks of the company. they're not trying to show that it's donald trump. donald trump is not on trial. but they're going to have to show that the company knew and the company endorsed it. but just to see today just how allen weisselberg was framed was fascinating, and the defense went out of their way to say the trump organization, they still get along with him, they're still paying him. he's done this horrible thing to the trump organization, so he's no longer cfo, but he's still part of the family. to hear that in the court was quite powerful. >> yeah, and when we finally see him take the stand, it's going to be absolutely fascinating. "new york times" investigative reporter susanne craig, thank you for going to the trial and helping us understand it tonight. >> great to see you. >> we'll be right back. stay with us.

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yaaarrr. happy halloween. this is a costume i stole from my dog, i confess. anyway. here's something scary though. the person you see here with the cigarette dangling from his wife is a "washington post" reporter named dillard stokes in this photo, mr. stokes is piecing together scraps of paper that he salvaged out of trash cans in an alley after somebody stuffed those trash cans full of evidence of an alleged nazi plot in congress. and then they set all the evidence in the trash cans on fire. a spoky story for ourit's a spoy season, and you can hear the whole thing for free on my new podcast, rachel maddow presents ultra, this reporter and the partially burned pieces of evidence, that he's piecing back together, while smoking