hi there, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. all signs point to the january 6th select committee landing one final blow against the man at the heart of the plot to overturn the 2020 election. whose lies continue to poison our democracy to this very day. the disgraced ex-president himself. brand new reporting in politico pulls the curtain back on what will be the final act of the january 6th select committee's sprawling investigation. a final report detailing trump's culpability. from that politico reporting, quote, the january 6th select committee's final report will begin with an executive summary describing former president trump's culpability for his extensive and baseless effort to subvert the 2020 election. that is according to people briefed on its contents. the final report, according to those briefed on it, will have eight chapters that align closely with the evidence the panel unveiled during its public

hearing in june and july. the report itself is expected to add texture to an extraordinary case already laid out by the committee about a defeated president's effort to thwart the peaceful transfer of power, and when all else failed, including an effort to pressure his vp to subvert the process, trump whipped up a mob and pointed it to the capitol. it will be the story of the january 6th insurrection put on the record. not just for merrick garland and special counsel jack smith and prosecutors at the justice department, who are already looking into the ex-president and his alies, but also for us, the american people, because even though election deniers lost key races across the country in november, the man who sent the mob to the capitol after multiple attempts to overturn the election, donald trump, is once again running to be president of these united states. here's what january 6th committee member adam king

kinzinger had to say about this final report. >> all of this, it's not, we're putting anybody in jail. this is all about telling the american people about what happened and leaving with them the opportunity to say, democracies can have bad days, but how we come back from those bad days is how we'll be defined and let's define ourselves very well here. >> that push for accountability for the insurrection, how we come back from january 6th, as congressman kinzinger put it there. does that include legal consequences for donald trump and his allies? we know the committee expects to make its views clear with one or more criminal referrals to the justice department direct lip. politico reports this, quote, the panel is unlikely to formally vote on criminal referrals until its december 21st meeting. however, a trump referral for attempting to disrupt the transfer of power is seen as likely. members of the committee believe that a criminal referral from congress would at the very least

drive home to doj and to the american people the seriousness of the potential crimes that the committee has uncovered. once again, here's congressman adam kinzinger. >> i don't think criminal referrals are pointless. i think the point on that is that it's very clear that doj has decided to take this effort up. i mean, there's no doubt. i don't know anything that you don't not on that, doj doesn't necessarily tell us what their activities are, but you just have to look out and say, they're very interested in what happened on january 6th. the criminal referrals aren't necessarily something that's going to wake doj up to something they didn't know before. but i do think it will be an important symbolic thing that the committee can do, even more than symbolic, that congress thinks that a crime has been committed heard or doj should invest gait it. >> the january 6th committee's final report laying out a potential criminal case against donald trump and his allies is where we begin today with some of our faorite reporters and

friends. kyle cheney is here. his body of reporting is something we've talked about a whole lot here, we're so glad he's here today. carol leonnig is here with us from "the washington post." plus msnbc legal analyst barbara mcquade is here, arm fond remember u.s. attorney, now a law professor. and claire mccaskill is here, as well. kyle, take me through your reporting. >> sure, so, as you pointed out, the report is going to essentially track what we heard, you know, in the public hearings, it was a sort of seven-part plan the committee described led by donald trump in every way, in every aspect to both sow distrust in the results of the election, create this whole false claim that the election was fraudulent, as the sort of baseline, and to take actions from there, to pressure state governments, to pressure the justice department, to

pressure his own haven't to try to get involved, to intervene, try to overturn the election on his behalf, based on that false claim of fraud. and so, i think the report will be somewhat familiar in that, if you watched the public hearings, but i think will add new details. they have 1,000 witness transcripts, people they've interviewed since the hearings took place. a lot of that will be new, that will add to our understanding of both trump' role and just how deep it went, how much trump was directing every piece of this effort. >> kyle, do you have any sense of how the criminal referrals, which according to your reporting, they'll vote on on the 21st, will be represented in the report? i guess that's to ask, will they be imbedded in the section where the evidence pertains to that referral or will they be separate? >> my understanding is they will be reflected in their report, however, they haven't been decided upon by the committee itself to be appended to what

the eight chapters are, but that will ultimately happen. that's something they are holding on as a separate and particularly important decision of the committee. they have discussed it privately, but i don't think they've come to any firm conclusions yet on who and how many referrals will come from them. >> kyle, it seems like their language on referrals has gone from, doesn't matter, we're not a prosecutorial body, to it does matter, doj is now looking at the same crimes, the same conduct that we spent many months and interviews many witnesses to examine thoroughly. what is your sense of what they hope to achieve, or what they are viewing as the stakes of any criminal referrals? >> i mean, it's been a real evolution for them. i think for awhile, they said criminal referrals don't matter. the justice department doesn't need us to hold their hand and especially now, as you heard adam kinzinger say, they're on top of this, the justice department investigation is moving at an extraordinary speed and reaching things that even

the committee couldn't reach, in terms of witnesses who are claiming privilege. doj's gotten beyond that for some of them. so, i don't think referrals will help doj decide what to investigate or whether they should investigate. now they're talking about, those referrals will really just sharpen for the public what the evidence -- they think the evidence shows and what they expect doj will ultimately agree with as their investigation matures. >> carol, let me pull back a little bit and sort of deal with the twin objectives, as i understand, from that interview with congressman kinzinger and we're going to speak with congressman raskin in a couple of minutes. they don't want to lose the thing they have been so good at doing which is telling the story of how january 6th came to be. and it started with a lie repeated over and over again by donald trump. a lie that they presented evidence to us as the public, trump knew was a lie. we know that because his campaign manager, and the campaign data guy and the

campaign lawyer and the white house -- everyone went and told him they lost and they presented a mountain of evidence showing he knew the fake electors plot was illegal. and the final pile of evidence went to his knowledge and enthusiasm for the violence on that day. what do you make of their twin objectives in this final moment for the committee's existence -- they won't exist anymore in the new year. finishing telling this story they've done better than anyone to date, as well as having some inpact of their criminal referrals. >> i think it's pretty important to focus on exactly how well this committee has both honed the story, you know, it had a goal, they wanted to explain it in a way that was very, very visceral and visual for the american public. the central character in this drama for them over and over again and especially for liz cheney, was donald trump. what did donald trump do, what did he say, what did he direct, what did he know?

i would give the committee a little extra credit, as well, they haven't just been good at telling the story, they've been ahead of the justice department on someements of this investigation. they were the first to put together the coordination in terms of the pressure campaign that donald trump was imposing on his own department of justice to intervene in the election in a way to say, hey, guys, just tell people it's fraudulent. we'll take it from there. that's what he wanted, you know, this objective blind law enforcement -- justice is blind law enforcement agency to do, and the committee really brought that to bear. their fact-finding shook things up a good bit for the justice department, which was slower to dig into that material. and so, they have a legacy, in essence, even though their clock is ticking down, the legacy is to sound out that story one more time, to hit all the high notes of what they've uncovered and to

remind people, who is pulling the strings in this pretty dramatic event of coordination to, for the first time in our history, block the peaceful transfer of power, something that's never happened before. >> carol, i want to follow up, it's such an interesting point how far ahead they have been of doj, now, if doj wants to dispute that, our lines are open, but it's pretty clear that cassidy hutchinson hadn't been into doj or in front of a grand jury for any of the federal investigations ahead of her blockbuster testimony before congress. and your point about congress getting its hands on really the tick tock, the whole timeline of the effort to replace rosen with clark, but certainly was led by congress, but it's also true, carol, that they -- the investigation was populated by former doj officials. former u.s. attorney, there were other former u.s. attorneys. how does that play out, when the

evidence being presented, is from their peers? >> so important, nicolle. i'll tell you, part of the reason that this investigation is one of the most impressive that i've witnessed as a reporter at "the washington post" is no doubt because the investigators cut their teeth at the department of justice. so many of these individuals have national security, line prosecutor, indict them on monday morning, grand jury experience. they've got the chops to figure out, what are the questions i want answered and why is it important to know that? you know, think about the presentation that this committee made. it went so often to the state of mind of donald trump. who cares about state of mind in the public, but when you're a criminal prosecutor, you care a great deal about why somebody's taking the actions they're taking. why they are coordinating with particular people. why was it important for the

investigators to bring out that donald trump knew on january 6th on the morning of that rally before he went to speak that many of the people who came to support him and to rally and eventually march on the capitol, were carrying weapons of all, you know, of mortal combat it was important, because donald trump knew when he urged them to go that there was a huge likelihood for violence, because of that weaponry. kind of like a "game of thrones" event, but it happened here in washington, d.c. i think also, a criminal referral, nicolle, is going to be a complicating factor, rather than a solidifying factor for the department of justice, which wants to cast off any impression of politics, however, because it comes from the people that you spelled out, because it comes from their own sort of tried and true doj alums, it's far more difficult to discount as just another congressional circus, another investigation for the

cameras. this investigation, no doubt, was for the cameras, but the material raised, the material investigated and uncovered, was really serious and right down -- right down the alleyway and the wheelhouse of what the department of justice does every day. >> i want to play for you, barbara, just sort of -- this is liz cheney and cassidy hutchinson and some of the evidence martials that points towards the case they've built toward criminality on trump's part. >> every one of these elements of the planning for january 6th is an independently serious matter. they were all ultimately focused on overturning the election and they all have one other thing in common. donald trump participated in each substantially and personally. he oversaw or directed the activity of those involved. donald trump cannot escape

responsibility by being willfully blind. nor can any argument of any kind excuse president trump's behavior during the violent attack on january 6th. so, miss hutchinson, is it your understanding that mr. ornato told mr. trump about weapons at the rally on january 6th? >> that's what he relayed to me. >> he would not. >> we literally left right after that come out. you know, to me, if he would have done that earlier in the day, 1:30, i -- you know, we wouldn't be -- maybe we wouldn't be in this bad of a situation or something. >> barbara mcquade, the committee established a chain of command, not donald trump, atop the u.s. military working to protect the homeland that day, but atop the insurrectionists

with mr. ayers. i thought when i witnessed this, it seems clear now when they get to the end, that they're trying to present evidence, perhaps, more likely to tie him to the crime of obstructing an official proceeding. do you believe the evidence that closes that circuit has been made public and do you believe he should be charged with obstruction of an official proceeding? >> yes and yes, nicolle. i think the evidence that we saw on display in the january 6th hearing absolutely demonstrates that. you know, all you need to show, really, for that is his efforts to pressure mike pence. that alone is enough to show obstruction of an official proceeding, as well as conspiracy to defraud the united states. he applied pressure to him, he knew he lost the election, and he did it for the purpose of thwarting the congressional certification and the peaceful transfer of presidential power. but what you saw there with liz cheney was very lawyerly.

i am sure the team were the ones who were scripting those questions, because you heard things about, willful blindness. that is to establish the mental intent. can you say, i had no idea this was going to happen -- you might, but there is a legal instruction that says, you cannot pretend to deliberately ignore the obvious. that's called willful blindness and a jury may use that evidence to draw an inference that the personly did know. we also heard evidence of causation. it was he, donald trump, whose actions and inactions, set this chain of events into action, that caused this delay at the capitol. so, i think they are doing a very lawyerly job of setting the elements of both of these offenses into motion. >> claire, let me show you what adam schiff had to say about this final moment, the stakes of their final decisions and moves.

>> what i can tell you about the process is, we're looking at, what is the quantum of evidence that we have against individuals? what is the impact of making a referral? are we going to create some suggest by referring some that others, there wasn't seventy evidence when we don't know, for example, what evidence is in the possession of the justice department, so, if we do make referrals, we want to be careful about how we do them. but i think we are all certainly in agreement that there is evidence of criminality here and we want to make sure that the justice department is aware of that. i think it makes an important statement, not a political one, but a statement about the evidence of an attack on the institutions for our democracy and the peaceful transfer of power, that congress examining an attack on itself is willing to report criminality. so, i think it's an important decision in its own right, if we go forward with it. and one that the department not to give due consideration to.

>> so, i've listened to that a couple times, what i hear him saying is, we're going to refer the cases where we think we have all the evidence to assert that there's a solid case for prosecution. and i think where he sort of seems to say, you know, for others, there wasn't sufficient evidence, we don't know what evidence is in the possession of the justice department, seemed to be saying that the things where we've drilled down on, where we spent a whole lot of time, the hours and hours that we've seen of cassidy hutchinson, for example, and others speaking to trump's state of mind and all the evidence that he knew that he'd lost, that he knew that the eastman plot was illegal, that he knew there was violence that day, seems to be their most solid ground. what would surprise you, and what are you expecting in terms of this committee's final act? >> well, there's a lot of things that have surprised med about this entire endeavor. first, i think, it was done with an eye towards, as barb said, a

lawyerly effort. and also, an effort to make it very clear and plain to the american people to tell -- to put it out there in a way that everyone can understand what happened. you teach young prosecutors this -- it's the quality of the evidence, it's the quantity of the evidence, and most importantly, it's the admissibility of the evidence. so, i am assuming, adam schiff is a former prosecutor, also, i'm assuming they will make referrals where they have all three of those aligned. and they know that some of the evidence they have is not admissible. it is hearsay, now, maybe doj can get evidence that's admissible by giving immunity or subpoenas, because that process was unwieldy and took so much time. but i think if they're smart, they're going to make referrals just where those three tests are met, because then, they've really put pressure on doj.

lawyer to lawyer, the lawyers at doj know, if they just refer on those issues, then what is their excuse to not prosecute? the other thing that's so unusual about this case, nicolle, usually doj is leading the parade. >> yeah. >> they're following the parade. in this case. they got started late, i have probably gotten myself in some trouble at doj, i'm glad i live a clean life, because i have railed about how slowly they were going in an instance where speed was of the essence. i know they had a lot to do and i know they wanted to do it thoroughly, but it appears to me with the appointment of the special counsel, they are finally off to the races. >> yeah, kyle, i don't want to skip over that. i -- all evidence suggests that claire is absolutely right, as is usually the case. is there any defensiveness that you've picked up in your reporting about how far ahead the congressional committee has been in terms of having these witnesses under oath for taped

depositions and live interviews, and any sense that there are certain transcripts or chunks of evidence that doj is more eager for than others? >> absolutely. i mean, i think, you know, look, doj has been asking for evidence since april and that's been known for months now and the select committee has been protective of its own work product, for many reasons, and that's to safeguard the effectiveness of the presentation and presumably all that will become public within the next ten days and doj will have the same access that the rest of us do to the full body of evidence. i think there have been some frustration there about, you know, they've had to now have a massive, major trial for the leaders of the oath keepers, they are about to put on a trial for the proud boys without the supporting evidence that the select committee may have gathered in their investigation of those two groups and their role in the january 6th attack. i think they don't know what they don't know at doj, that the committee may have that could speak to some of these groups

culpability, their contacts within trump world, et cetera, so, i think we may hear more frustration after the committee's evidence comes out, based on what doj might have known sooner, had they been more willing to share it early on. >> that's fascinating there are two sides to that story. we'll try to probe that when we come back. and we'll try to learn as much as we can about what's going to happen next. next week's expected final report and possible presentation, popup presentation. january 6th select committee congressman jamie raskin will be our guest. plus, jack smith plows ahead in his twin criminal investigations into the twice impeached ex-president. including late this afternoon news of another subpoena for an election official involved in trump's quest to overturn his election defeat. this latest one is in georgia. and later in the program, today's gop -- events of january 6th. proving they are now willing to be seen as the party of extremists. we'll tell you what the white house has to say about all of it.

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for almost everyone. that dereliction of duty, that desertion of duty was central to his incitement of insurrection and inextrickable from it. inextrickable. bound together. it reveals his state of mind that day, what he was thinking as he provoked the mob to violence, and further violence. it powerfully demonstrates that the ex-president knew, of course, that violence was foreseeable, that it was predictable, and predicted. that day since he was not surprised and not horrified, no,

he was delighted, and through his acts of omission and commission that day, he abused his office by siding with the insurrectioniss at almost every point, rather than with the congress of the united states. rather than with the constitution. >> so, that was democratic congressman who would go on to become a member of the january 6th select committee, but wasn't yet, congressman jamie raskin, during the closing arguments of donald trump's second impeachment trial, that's from january last year, that donald trump's refusal to stop the mob was part and parcel. joining us now is congressman jamie raskin, a member of the house select committee. congressman, we played that, because it was so clear you knew then what the committee has painstakingly proven, with evidence that perhaps the impeachment committee didn't

have the time or resources to gather. and i wonder if you can just speak to -- when we showed that, because there's so much you knew then, but just speak to how much more we know now. >> well, everything that took place during the impeachment trial was based on public statements and public records, for example, donald trump's speech inciting the crowd to go fight like hell or you won't have a country anymore. and all of that clearly added up to incitement to insurrection, as was found by majorities in both the house and in the senate. but what we've been able to do on the january 6th select committee is to interview more than 1,000 witnesses, collect more than a million pages worth of documents, and all of the details documenting that donald trump's role was far more central to these events than merely inciting them. he was really behind them and none of it would have happened without him, beginning with his

tweet that he sent out telling everybody to come on january 6th at 1:00 p.m., at the exact time that the constitution called for the house and senate to be meeting in joint session. and we have been able to show in the hearings and we're going to be able to show in a lot manufacture vivid and striking detail in our report precisely how donald trump put the whole plan together and those people who were materially assisting him along the way. >> liz cheney, i believe, first read from the criminal code last december or january in the statute of obstructing an official proceeding. the committee has more than established that that crime was committed by donald trump. is that the most likely criminal referral the committee will make? >> well, i don't want to enter

into specifics about what particular offenses and particular defendants we may be referring on, but the statutory section that you cite there has been the basis of hundreds of criminal prosecutions here. what was the whole plan? the whole plan was to send people into the capitol, beating up our police officers along the way, but to send them in and to go and stop the steal, by which they meant, to interfere with a federal proceeding, and not just any federal proceeding, but this one called for by the constitution, which essentially defines the peaceful transfer of power in the united states of america, when the house and the senate act simply as vote tellers and count up the electoral college votes sent in by the governors from the states and the whole point was to shut down those house and senate sessions, drive vice president

pence off of the los trum, if he was unwilling to declare lawless unilateral powers to vaporize the election. so, yes, this was clearly an attempt to interfere with a federal proceeding, but it was a lot of other things, too, i mean, it was an attempt to overthrow an election, to defraud the public, it was -- you know, it was an effort to shut down the u.s. government and people are going to jail for seditious conspiracy. seditious conspiracy means a con conspire si to overthrow or put down the government of the united states or to interfere with the operation of its laws and there are numerous people now who have been convicted of that and who have pleaded guilty to that, so -- there are no shortage of crimes that took

place, and essentially displace our proper constitutional order. >> you are one of four members on the select committee and the subcommittee of the select committee helping the whole committee make decisions about who will be criminally referred to doj and for what crimes. i know you won't get ahead of your entire committee, but can you share what the raskin principle is on criminal referrals? >> well, the way that i'm thinking of it is, we need to have clearly abundant evidence, even more than sufficient evidence, to belief that this crime was committed. we want to be identifying key players in the operation, we want to make sure nobody falls through the cracks. and we want to make sure that the crime that we're addressing

have sufficient magnitude and gravity that the congress of the united states needs to pronounce upon them. obviously, congress is the legislative branch, we don't prosecute crimes, we can't prosecute crimes, but just like everybody else in the country, when question come into possession of evidence that crimes have been committed, and if those crimes go right to the heart of our constitutional order and its survive b89, then we believe we have an obligation to turn it over to the department of justice and the proper executive branch authorities. >> do you have any sense of what pieces of your investigation -- and we've been talking about mr. haffe and other u.s. attorneys who are veterans of doj, not necessarily spent their whole career in congress, and so, the caliber and the quality of all of the work and all of the interviews that you have done and the other members have done and that the investigators on the committee have done is

completely on par with any concurrent investigations or prosecutions. do you have any sense of what doj is most eager to get their hands on, what they've been asking for the longest? >> ah, well, i've not spoken to anybody from the department of justice and i have to assume that they're in possession of a lot of evidence that we never got to see. they have a prosecutorial and investigative arsenal that's much larger than ours is, but of course, we got an earlier held start on this, and so, we may, indeed, have information that they don't have. so -- i'm not sure that i can -- i'm not sure that i can answer your question, but i have faith in the department of justice and i think that the attorney general engaged in a wise decision in appointing a special counsel, who is absolutely

beyond reproach, who has an extraordinary record of investigative and prosecutorial experience. and so, i think that we can feel comfortable leaving it in their hands. >> this may be a weird question to ask, you may feel like you're running a marathon and you're at mile 25 1/2 and can't answer this get, either, but i wonder -- we went back and watched some of your arguments as an impeachment manager, and just the journey you've helped take the country on of really understanding what happened that day. and then getting under it with your work on the select committee, it's been so extraordinary. and i wonder if you've had any time to reflect on that body of work from impeachment manager to key member of the select committee. >> well, we were very much still in a state of shock, i think, when the team of nine impeachment managers began to meet, began to research, investigate and try to put all the materials together.

we were aided by an extraordinary staff. but again, everything that we did was based essentially on public record, things that were available to everybody and we put them together in such a way so that people could understand the story. along with never before seen video footage of what really took place, the real attack on the capitol. in fact, most members of congress were unaware of the breathtaking scope of the violence and the danger that we were all in, because people were inside. and, of course, the officers who were outside, who saved our lives and in many ways saved the congress and the democracy, they were the ones who took the brunt of the hit on that day and, so, you know, we owe it all to officers fanone and sergeant

gonnell and the officers still being treated for the physical injuries and the trauma they've suffered in these events. so, yes, it's been quite a journey, but hey, this is what democracy is all about, because in a democracy, the people have the right to know the truth about what's taking place with our own government, and everybody needs to understand these things, think about these things, in order for us to fortify ourselves and the future against coups, insurrections, political violence, and electoral san toj. >> my next question, i know the press is hung up, we're all hung up on the criminal referrals. it seems to a person, your perhaps greatest commitment is to the story and there's an impact on what the committee did. we went to school learning about how endangered our democracy really was. we heard from life-long republicans testifying that

story. to you, what is the most important thing that people take from the body of the committee's work? >> well, i think that's a nice way of looking at it. we can get up and we can, you know, read people the constitution, we can talk about the principles of the constitution and democracy and the rule of law. but america itself is the story of people struggling for a more perfect union. and every generation has had to struggle to improve the country, and we began, everybody knows, as a slave republic, but today, here we are, still, even with donald trump at large, the greatest multi-racial, multi-ethnic, constitutional democracy on earth. still, the wonder of the world to people all over the place. but we have got to keep struggling to make ourselves a more perfect union, if we're going to keep moving things in the right direction, because donald trump has unleashed a lot of the monsters of the last century against us. the racism, the

authoritarianism, all of those things are out there, so, americans have got to hang tough in order to defend our democracy and to keep it growing, because democracy is always a thing that's in motion, getting better all the time. >> you are almost too elegant for cable news, congressman rasz kin, thank you so much for that last answer. thank you for answering and thank you for spending time with us. up next for us, on a path to charge. those are the worlds of one former u.s. attorney who believes doj has enough to move forward with its investigation into the twice-impeached ex-president. and it could happen soon. very soon. that story's next. choose 4 of 10, like new cheddar bay shrimp. welcome to fun dining.

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prosecution, as things keep getting worse. today, the ex-president's one glimmer of hope in the documents case, his lawsuit asking for a special master, was formally dismissed and disbanded after a scathing ruling and opinion from an appeals court this month. and another sign that special counsel jeff smith is moving along. just this afternoon, we learned that he subpoenaed georgia's secretary of state brad raffensperger. the fifth state where the special counsel has sought information about trump's failed plot to stay in office after the 2020 election. we're back with kyle cheney, carol leonnig, barbara mcquade and claire mccaskill. this special counsel seems deadly serious, and you see a lot less of it than the congressional investigation, whose purpose is to sort of try to come down on the side of our better angels. the special counsel is the

opposite mission, right? it's whose purpose is to carry out investigative work without any of us seeing. but what is publicly facing looks very daunting for mr. trump. how do you read it? >> i think it's pretty important that the attorney general merrick garland, when announcing jack smith as his special counsel, sort of laid down on the table, look, these are the two big elements of an investigation that he will be responsible for and within four days, my colleagues at "the washington post" reported he had already sent out from the netherlands, where he is currently based, signed subpoenas for a lot of information about the alleged fake elector scheme. largely orchestrated by donald trump and his allies. so, it's a pretty fast-moving special counsel, who must have known a few days, at least, before he was announced, what his job was going to be. and that he was going to be doing it from remove.

now, we know that quite a number of staff have been added to his team and it's not being decided where he's going to be based, where that special task force is going to be located. they're not letting any moths grow under them, that's for sure. >> barbara mcquade, what is your sense of the subpoena for brad raffensperger? >> well, like the subpoenas that we saw in the last week, nicolle, they strike me as kind of two things. one is, this is an important step, it shows that the special counsel wants to get communications, that those offices had with donald trump and his campaign, which can be critically important, if they had any email conversations, even memos documenting telephone calls, critically important. so, good for jack smith for getting those things. the other thing i'm struck with, how on earth can it be, they are just now asking for these things? i think that goes back to the point you were making earlier with the slow start to this. so, i can imagine jack smith

saying, okay, so, what kind of evidence do you guys have about the coms, what do you have in the offices? oh, we haven't asked for those yet. you what? let's get on those right away, shall we? so, it seems like it both appears he is moving forward effectively, aggressively, but it raises some questions about, why wasn't this done before? >> and claire, this is the point that you've made, as well, over and over. especially raffensperger, that was the effort to overturn the election that happened on tape and we know that because it was released at the time. what's your sense of the subpoena for raffensperger, claire? >> well, i think it shows that the first fence that the special prosecutor was going to just -- the special counsel was just going to be looking at the classified documents at mar-a-lago is wrong. i think he's going to look at the whole thick. >> yeah. >> and i think he's going to go where the evidence leads. you know, i'm just waiting, nicolle. has donald trump ever won a

lawsuit? in his life? i mean, this is a guy who has the worst lawyers on the planet, because good lawyers will not represent him, because he wants them to do things that are unethical. >> yeah. >> so, it is just interesting to me that every time he tries to use the courts, he fails, because he doesn't understand, you have to have evidence. you just can't go in there and bluster and lie, like he always does. and i think the thing we're going to see now with the new congress, with the new republicans in charge of the house, they won't defend trump on the facts of what the special counsel is uncovering. it is now time to investigation the investigators, because they have no defense of him on the facts. >> that's what we're all bracing for. a super panel if there ever was one, thank you so much for spending time with us today. up next for us, the

suspected bomb maker in the now 34-year-old terrorist attack on a u.s. airplane which killed hundreds of people flying over locker bea, scotland, just wrapped up his first appearance in an american courtroom. we'll tell you how the fbi made that happen, next. n, next. i have moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. now, there's skyrizi. ♪things are getting clearer♪ ♪i feel free to bare my skin♪ ♪yeah, that's all me♪ ♪nothing and me go hand in hand♪ ♪nothing on my skin♪

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for more than 30 years the justice department -- after more than 30 years the justice department has now made an arrest on one of the most deadly terror aattacks in american

history. a former libyan intelligence officer who's accused of engineering the bomb that destroyed an american passenger plane flying over lockerbie, scotland in 1988 appeared in a washington, d.c. courtroom today where he was officially charged in a three-count indictment which carried potential sentences of up to life in prison. doj initially charged abu agila masud in 2020 under then attorney general bill barr for his role in the attack. it killed 270 people. 190 of them were americans. it included 35 syracuse university students who were returning home from study abroad. let's bring in frank figliuzzi, former fbi assistant director for counterintelligence and msnbc national security analyst. frank, this is a tragedy that i think anyone that was around at the time is shaped by. just horrific, horrific tragedy of the randomness of the passenger plane being targeted for a terrorist attack. talk about what goes into getting to this point where

you're sure enough to make an arrest. >> yeah, this was a shocking case. i was a brand spanking new fbi agent when pan-am 103 exploded over lockerbie, scotland, and it occupied much of the fbi's time and attention for years. and i'll never forget a presentation i got about the painstaking evidence recovery. imagine miles and miles of crime scene as bits and fragments of this plane hit the ground over scotland. the fbi put it all back together. it was actually astounding. and were able to locate where the bombs went off inside the plane, in what kind of devices, in what kind of luggage. but fast forward now, 34 years later, and lo and behold the bomb maker presents himself in court in the united states. so what happened? someday, nicolle, there will be a movie made out of the drama of how this occurred. but what we do know is this individual was charged and imprisoned in libya.

he was interrogated. we find out actually very recently, within the last couple years, he was interrogated and he confessed. eventually the fbi caught up with the interrogator, who said you know, i'll tell you what he told me if my libyan government aapproves it. it looks like maybe the libyan government did approve that cooperation. the fbi has the confession. they've got a whole lot more if they went ahead and charged him. what we don't know would be dramatic, is to know how he got from libya to here. he was released from prison by the libyans. but then it looks like according to some reports he was kidnapped by a group of libyans. don't know what went on behind the scenes. don't know who was responsible. we do know he's going to face justice in the united states 34 years later for the death of 259 people. >> and for those families it's a long time to wait. but i'm sure it's still very, have welcome news. frank sticks around much longer into the next hour.

a quick break for us. when we come back, we'll turn to extremists thriving and rising and ascendant in the republican party. it's where we start the next hour. don't go anywhere. don't go anywhere. is freedom, equality, but right now, those pillars of our democracy are fragile and our rights are under attack. reproductive rights, voting rights, the right to make your own choices and to have your voice heard. we must act now to restore and protect these freedoms for us and for the future, and we can't do it without you. we are the american civil liberties union. will you join us? call or go online to my aclu.org to become a guardian of liberty today. your gift of just $19 a month, only $0.63 a day, will help ensure that together we can continue to fight for free speech,

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just finished with our meetings here at the white house this afternoon. we had a great planning session for our january 6th objection. we aren't going to let this election be stolen by joe biden and the democrats. president trump won by a landslide. call your house reps. call your senators from your states. we've got to make sure they're on board and we already have a lot of people engaged.

okay. stay tuned. >> stay tuned. hi again, everybody. it's 5:00 in new york. so that's from before she was even ever sworn in as a congresswoman. that was marjorie taylor greene. she was attending meetings about objecting to the certification of the electoral college on january 6th. following the capitol attack he she sympathized with the insurrectionists calling them political prisoners. now she took that support to a whole new next level with some extremely alarming comments. at a gala for the new york young republicans club this weekend as first reported by the southern poverty law center she said this -- "then january 6 happened and next thing you know i organized the whole thing, along with steve bannon." that's referring to allegations she had led reconnaissance tours of the capitol for soon to be insurrectionists in the days prior to that violence. greene continued, "i will tell you something. if steve bannon and i organized that, we would have won," she said, as attendees erupted in cheers and aapplause. "not to mention it would have

been armed." greene confirmed those comments to nbc news but said they were a, quote, joke. the white house, who is not laughing, put out a strong condemnation of her remarks saying this -- "it goes against our fundamental values as a country for a member of congress to wish that the carnage of january 6th had been even worse and to boast that she would have succeeded in an armed insurrection against the united states government. this violent rhetoric is a slap in the face to the capitol police, the d.c. metropolitan police, the national guard, and the families who lost loved ones as a result of the attack on the capitol." in yet another stunning moment from saturday's event gavin wax, the president of the new york young republicans club, spoke to how the extremism and the violence is the strategy now. "we want to cross the rubicon. we want to do war. we must be prepared to battle in every arena, in the media, in the courtroom, at the ballot box and in the streets. this is the only language the left understands, the language

of pure and unadulterated power." extremism and violence finding a home in the gop is where we begin the hour with some of our favorite reporters and friends. here with me at the table also joining us, an iraq war veteran as well as analyst on extremism and disinformation. and former fbi assistant director for counterintelligence frank figure loozi is here. first let me tell you why this matters to us. marjorie taylor greene holds all the cards as kevin mccarthy grovels for votes. and this, this is who has the power right now in the republican party. philip bump, take us through -- she's sort of the kingmaker in the gop. if kevin mccarthy doesn't get her vote he likely won't be speaker. >> it was news when -- she's only been in congress since 2021. this is like her second -- >> it feels like forever. i confess in the break i was like she's only been there two years? i feel like i've been covering her for a century. >> absolutely. and she has this power -- in part because the republican

majority is so narrow, which gives pretty much anyone who wants to be a stick in the mud space to do so. but then she came out early and supported mccarthy was both a function of his very carefully managing her, pothsing her in the broujd of shots, important press conferences, things along those lines, but also just shows the fact that he understands he needs to appeal to this segment of the republican party. and that to your potent is exactly the challenge. there is a segment of the republican party that is this proximate to power and also feels as though it's totally cool to make jokes about how maybe people on january 6th should have had guns. >> that's aassuming we accept her -- i don't accept she was joking. >> i honestly do but i think that's telling in its own sense. because if she thinks it's cool to just make a casual joke it shows that she doesn't treat this thing seriously. >> i think she thinks if she and steve bannon -- they would have won. >> oh, absolutely. >> she's egomaniacal enough to believe that. >> yeah. i think she intended it as a joke but the fact she intended it as a joke and knew the reception to it would be ha ha

that's great i think that by itself is telling about the spread of this idea. >> so when we talk about the supreme court i think one of the benchmarks that's important to understand in the extremism of the supreme court is to understand that casey and roe were decided by justices aappointed by republican and democratic presidents. when you're talking about the extremism in the republican party it's important to talk about stephen king and what happened to him. the republicans may have always stood for the wrong ideas and the wrong things but they didn't always tolerate extremists in their own ranks, did they? >> no, that's exactly right. there was a concerted effort to try to expunge those extremists from the rafrpgz. and it was successful. you had this -- the john birch movement that sort of evolved. you had folks -- goldwater, right? who was an extremist in his own right. he's the one that inspired the famous essay about extremism in american politics. you had these elements -- >> pat buchanan. >> yes. pat buchanan, who helped inspire donald trump, right? you had all these people who over the history of the republican party had been identified as problematic and

had been managed to push to the fringe. part of the challenge now -- >> by republicans. >> by republicans. part of the challenge now is that the voice of the base is so loud that it's deafening to folks and they feel as though they have to listen to it and then you get things like from tea party on through donald trump to the current moment you have it being driven by these extremist voices in the base as opposed to by leadership coming in and saying hey, we need to be very careful about what this party's about. >> and so frank, what does that mean? terms of extremism in our politics leading into extremism that law enforcement has to contend with and navigate? >> well, let's pick apart this event held on park avenue in manhattan. you've got the head of the young republicans calling for, quote, total warfare including war in the streets. so what does that mean? well, the young republicans, they are essentially setting up the next generation of extremists that are headed toward violence. so you know, any notion within

the law enforcement community or writ large society that hey, don't worry, this is going to go away, it's a passing phase, they are setting up the next generation for violence. and with regard to marjorie greene, as you just laid out, someone who's become a power player on the hill who apparently no one feels that they can go and challenge her, confront her, not even kevin mckarthy, that seems to ensure that she's going to have this voice. and the problem i see from the law enforcement perspective, and again society writ large is the very same people waving the freedom of speech flag, one of our most cherished rights in this country, are the ones who will say something that will instigate support, defend violence like marjorie taylor greene did, saying you know, if pull back and say it was a joke, it's sarcasm, you guys don't get sarcasm. this is a textbook case.

we've seen trump do this repeatedly and others in his orbit, oh, just kidding, bannon, don't take me seriously. the freedom of speech thing is going to become so seriously eroded that the value we cherish that someday if we get it curtailed we're going to look back at this time period, nicolle, and we're going to say it was people like marjorie taylor greene that screwed this up. you know, this is why we can't have nice things, because people instigate violence and get somebody killed. and so yes, it's a law enforcement problem but so much bigger than law enforcement is this use of freedom of speech, freedom of speech, i can say whatever i want, and then claim it's a joke. that doesn't cut it. the freedom of speech comes with tremendous responsibility. and none of these people seem to be held accountable for what they're doing. >> and frank, i guess what i want to follow up with and ask you is what do you -- what do you make of an elected official who's using the language of war and insurrection and blood and arms? what do you do with a leader that talks like that?

>> so first we have to examine why it is people like this continue to get elected. what is it -- and hopefully, you know -- they get re-elected but hopefully not. we've got to examine that and that power structure that keeps them going. but it's the accountability i just coop coming back to. when all is said and done and the january 6th investigation is over, if some of these people who clearly were part of instigating, fomenting violence, inciting the riot, supporting it, if they are not held accountable legally then we have failed and our criminal justice system has failed. so if it's found that they're criminally responsible, they better be held criminally accountable or we're going to continue to experience this and it will simply devolve into absolute chaos. >> and i think the place where it has probably already devolved, not to suggest it had much to go, is on the internet.

i mean, chris, it will me what the communities online look like around figures like marjorie taylor greene. >> thanks for having me on, nicolle. so marjorie taylor greene is a superstar in the worst places of the internet but she's also really popular on musk's twitter. right? i mean, over the last few months since elon has sealed this deal and taken over twitter we've seen a lot of the cesspool of 4chan and 8kun and a lot of these alternative social media websites bleed into twitter because elon is very deliberately trying to welcome those far right extremists into the fold and to coddle them. we've seen far right politicians interacting with elon musk on a regular basis. now, as far as law enforcement goes, 13 months ago i was on your show and i talked about how

i had infiltrated for the 3 percenters, or a group of 3 percenters and how i had recorded them interviewing myself and interviewing other veterans specifically asking if we were joining and willing and able to kill members of so-called antifa or black lives matter. right? i gave those recordings to the fbi immediately. to my knowledge nothing's been done about that, right? because freedom of speech. until you start making an exact plan, according to most of the law enforcement that i've interacted with, to commit violence, you haven't crossed the line. right? so since that happened, right? that story went souper viral. the jan 6 committee asked for the evidence. i gave it all to them. hopefully they'll give it out soon or it will be included in the report. i've created a non-profit called task force butler institute. and taskforcebutler.org, we are getting veterans, we are training them to do open source intelligence research so that we

can safely go into the dark places on the internet, infiltrate safe spaces for neo-nazis and document and record everything that we can. because even if law enforcement is going to fail to prevent violence we will be there to record evidence that is courtroom ready so we can present it for civil proceedings. >> you know, frank, i just spock to jamie raskin in the last hour and i went back and watched some of his arguments as an impeachment manager before the january 6 select committee investigation ever commenced. and his points was sort of along the lines of what kris is saying, everything was out in the open, donald trump tweeted his invitation in december to his supporters to come to washington, it will, quote, be wild. and then he gave a speech on the ellipse telling them to march down there, i'll be with you. he tweeted his attack on mike pence at the very same time that the insurrectionists were chanting "hang mike pence" and beating law enforcement officials with flagpoles and spraying them and threatening

them. i mean, how much of what is in the public is only of use once that line has been crossed and you're looking at a prosecution for a crime that's already happened? >> so it's true that you've got to be well on your way to preparing and planning and take substantial steps toward violence in order to really get a prosecutor involved and successfully have charges filed. now, where we wrestle with this in the intel and law enforcement community is the preboom, left of boom they call it, before the violence occurs and getting in early from an intelligence-gathering standpoint. the undercover technique. the wiretaps. the informant development that has so successfully blocked and pre-empted major terrorist attacks since 9/11. right? it's worked successfully. we've talked about the recent german takedown. the germans were able to get in

early left of boom and take a coup attempt down from a conglomeration of domestic terror groups in germany. how did they do that? they've got tools and a toolbox that they can use and open much earlier than we have in the united states. they actually designate terror groups. they actually have a list of people who are part of terror groups. they actually have a data base of people who get license -- imagine this, they have to get a license for a gun in germany. and they can come take your weapon if you're part of a domestic terror organization. so we don't do that. we don't do that. and so we haven't figured out yet how to maintain the cherished value of freedom of speech while we protect the civil liberties and the security of the nation at the same time. and while we are trying to figure that out the bad guys are way ahead of everybody and they've played it out on january 6th. they're playing it out now with regard to power outages and attacks on substations throughout the united states. i imagine -- i might say. and so until we can figure that

out with new sets of investigative guidelines from the department of justice and perhaps new legislation from congress we're behind the curve. >> let me show you what congressman jamie raskin had to say about donald trump sort of unleashing some of this monstrosity. >> we have got to keep struggling to make ourselves a more perfect union if we're going to keep moving things in the right direction because donald trump has unleashed a lot of the monsters of the last century against us. the racism, the authoritarianism, the anti-semitism. neo-fascism. all of those things are out there. and so americans have got to hang tough in order to defend our democracy and then to keep it growing because democracy is always a thing that's in motion, getting better all the time. >> is this an optimistic take on this? and of course these things existed pretrump. but this idea that he unleashed a lot of the monsters of the last century. he certainly gave them safe harbor in the political speech context. and the distinction i'm trying

to draw is that for all of its ills the republican party never had a space for marjorie taylor greene before. it never had nick fuentes speak at the republican national convention before. this is a new bottom. i don't even know if it's the bottom yet. i mean, every week there's a new bottom. take that on as well as kris's point about the new twitter. >> yeah, no, i think it is exactly right that donald trump didn't unleash -- he did unleash these forces but he did not originate these forces, to your point. >> correct. >> and i think what people really don't understand about donald trump is that he is a creature of conservative media. he was a consumer of conservative media prior to 2016. he appeared on fox news regularly every single week until he made his announcement. he was a person who read breitbart and believed breitbart. and the reason he was popular in 2016 is because he went out on the stump and he talked to people and he said these are the things that i believe and they were the things written on briel b.a.r.t. and they said this guy tells the truth because he was encased in the same cocoon of nonsense they were. so he built a big base of support among people who believed the things they saw on

fox news and believed the things they read on breitbart because he was reading them too. and those things included a backlash against immigration in 2014 under barack obama. they included all these things about crime. included backlash against black lives matter in that same time period. >> and the decade of hate against the clintons. >> oh, absolutely. 100%. donald trump was that voice of it. am i optimistic that when donald trump goes away should that happen at some point in the near future it will go away? no, i'm not confident of that. and i think it really speaks to a generational shift in what's actually happening in the united states where there's this group of people that feel embattled and donald trump has been their representative and i feel confident that someone else will emerge as a representative should he fade from the scene. >> kris, say a little bit more, if you will, about how this looks different under elon musk. >> so i'm at a point where i'm like ready to defend people on twitter's old trust and safety team. i mean, they've for years ignored all sorts of threats

that i was highlighting for them, but at least they did something sometimes. right now elon musk is very deliberately cultivating an extreme far right audience. and very specifically an anti-trans audience. an audience that has been whipped up by this trans panic, by twitter accounts like libs of tiktok run by chaya rachik. and they use these slurs to try to demonize trans americans and trans individuals abroad and say they're predatory toward children. and what they're doing is they're taking this like qanon myth but like pizzagate pedophile conspiracy theory that guys like jack sobiak were promoting, again, someone who has at the young republicans club in new york. and they're mainstreaming it. all through what has become one

of the most, whether we like it or not, important social media platforms in existence. i mean, it is the platform that politicians use, that journalists use, that researchers like i use to interact with -- i mean, i met you on twitter, nicolle, right? this platform is being deliberately destroyed and turned into a raging cesspool because elon thinks he has something to gain from the chaos. and that is why he is promoting not just stochastic terrorism on his own but he's interacting with others like libs of tiktok and gays against groomers. and these broader communities who single out people in the lgbtq plus community with acts of violence and threats of violence. it has been very, very difficult for me as an analyst to count

which drag events have been specifically targeted by, you know, proud boys showing up because so many of them just get canceled because they're receiving a deluge of threats, you know, online, in person, in the mail. they're getting gunshots through their front windows. and this is something that our congress hasn't been -- law en, enforcement hasn't figured out a way to prevent. this is why i created my non-profit task force butler, so i can train veterans who want to serve their country in a meaningful way. we're not going to put on body armor, camouflage and carry guns like a bunch of 3 percenter or proud boy idiots. most of this is done online, and we just document what they do, wait for them to cross a line. once they've committed a crime or they've violated someone's civil rights, we pass that on to the appropriate authorities or

to a potential -- >> three of the best people to have this really provocative but disturbing conversation with. philip bump, kris goldsmith, frank figliuzzi, thank you so much for starting us off this hour. when we come back, what we are learning about two new york investigations into the twice impeached ex-president. a sprawling lawsuit by state attorney general tish sxwramz a criminal investigation by manhattan d.a. alvin bragg. our next guest has a unique perspective shall we say on both. michael cohen will be our guest after the break. plus welcoming sports reporter grant wahl. he died suddenly and tragically on friday while covering the world cup in qatar. what the state department is saying today about the circumstances surrounding his death. and later, more troubling news out of iran where a second man has been executed after being detained and convicted in connection with the nationwide protests there. demonstrations, the islamic regime is struggling to contain. "deadline: white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. continues after a quick break. don'got anywhere. i brought in ensure max protein with 30 grams of protein. those who tried me

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don't burn the whole country down because the country elected not to reinstate him as president of the united states and so his ego, that fragile ego of his, is so hurt that he's trying now to make up all sorts of -- let's tear up the constitution. let's go ahead and let's just reinsert me as president -- >> he said that, by the way. >> yeah. >> the always candid michael cohen yesterday on the ex-president's mishandling of classified documents and really the country and our democracy as a whole, how he will burn it all down. cohen is back with us today to talk about trump's pending legal

peril in the other investigations beyond the two being led by doj that he says will put an end to the trump org. cohen says the company's tax fraud conviction last week on all 17 charges from the manhattan d.a. and a potential fine of up to $1.6 million will also help the new york a.g. make her case. a.g. tish james is seeking at least $250 million in damages for alleged widespread fraud, and she actually names the company and trump himself and his three adult children as defendants. joining us now, michael cohen, host of the mea culpa podcast and author of the fantastic new book "revenge: how donald trump weaponized the u.s. department of justice against his critics." hello there. >> how are you, nicolle? >> all right. isn't there a statute of limitations issue for alvin bragg if he wanted to go back and charge the campaign finance case? >> you know, i've spoken to a lot of people about that issue and nobody can given gif me a definitive -- i probably should call alvin himself. >> do it. >> do you have his number? >> i don't, but you do. >> i do.

look, what ended up happening is you remember cuomo put a toll on all of the litigation that was going on as a result of covid. so i donate know how that would play. but the answer would be yes. it's generally a five-year statute of limitations. and that would probably expire by the end of this month. but i do believe it's tolled. >> so he can have beyond this month. but you're saying that perhaps this new prosecutor came up from washington to look at some of these issues around reopening some of bragg's cases? >> for sure he should be looking at the criminality of donald trump. i mean, the campaign finance violation was done not just under his watch but signed off by him, and it was done at his direction and of course for his benefit. i mean, i certainly got no benefit out of it. i ended up losing my law license, my family's happiness, money, my freedom. so the answer is yeah. matt colangelo was brought in and the hope is he actually does something -- alvin has been out there, we have a term amongst

ourselves on my little chat group. he's alvin bragging about what, $1.6 million? donald could raise that in five minutes of grifting off these unsuspecting maggots that are -- >> followers. >> yeah. >> let me just go back, though. this is the campaign finance violations. aren't these checks that he signed in the oval office? wasn't that check published in the "new york times"? >> yeah. there were two checks. it was the one in february and another one in march. donald signed them personally. then thereafter was signed by allen weiss'll brg with i believe it was either eric or don jr. on most of the other checks if not all of them. >> is some of the thinking -- i don't know who's on your chat group but i know there are a couple of other prosecutors who looked at these criticism specifically and not the 17 he was convicted for last week. is it your sense that this new doj official coming in was looking specifically at the campaign finance cases? >> i do. and i think that would be the right thing for him to look at. amongst others. that's just one that of course

would involve me. and look, i've given over 700 hours of testimony, 10,000 documents, to nine different congressional committees and the attorney general and the d.a. and whoever else came asking. and i didn't necessarily do it because i just wanted to. at first i got subpoenaed. and so once i was in the system i was already there and i was going to continue because as i had said to george stephanopoulos many years ago now, i can't believe it seems, you know, like it was yesterday, i will not allow history to remember me as the villain of donald trump's story. and that's what really scares me the most, that there are still a swath of this country that is following him right down into the dumpster fire of the loss of democracy and it makes no sense to me at all. >> congressman raskin said on this show -- i've already played it twice but i'll play it one more time, that he unleashed some of these monsters, these forces of authoritarianism that may have always been there but

he's certainly given them voice given them a place in our political discourse. why do you think that is? >> because there is still a significant number of racists in this country and they were hiding because their view is clearly unpopular. but what do you do when the president of the united states is speaking the same way that you're thinking? now all of a sudden it opens up the door. it's the pandora's box, so to speak, of racism. and we're seeing it on the rise. whether it's anti-asian, anti-semitic, anti-black, we're seeing this. so like your previous guests, like phil and others had been saying, donald didn't create this. what he he just did is he unleashed it and we all need to put it back in the box. >> what do you think the sort of -- you know donald trump. you know where he hid stuff. he's not a sophisticated criminal. i mean, how long do you think it's going to take, this new special counsel, to get to the bottom of the stolen documents

case? >> it's going to take a while because donald traveled extensively post the leaving of the office. whether it's his 725 fifth avenue apartment, whether it's trump national in d.c., eric's house, don's house, ivanka and jared's house. it doesn't matter. wherever he went -- you and i talked about this. we should make a map. >> where's waldo. >> where's waldo. and start putting little pins up. it's not just who -- it's not just where he went, it's who he met with when he was there. we've seen now in the "new york times" they just made a -- there was an article about jared kushner, the kushner companies being investigated for relationships with middle east, and something doesn't seem right as far as -- >> they're huge investors. >> huge. and in brookfield properties and the whole bit. and i think that's going to be an interesting investigation. i don't know. who knows that jared was meeting with them? well, we know. and there's more information that's going to come out. so the real question is who did

donald trump meet with? what did he give? and i think it was the house oversight committee was contemplating getting donald to sign a document stating he has returned every single document and that he has not provided any of those documents to anybody. that way he would be doing it under oath and pursuant to the penalties of perjury. so if they find another two, three, ten, 50 documents that are top secret he would then be in violation and that would be another criminal referral. but another quick criminal referral. >> i remember rudy giuliani and his legal team and mueller would never let him attest to anything because they were afraid he'd perjure himself before he even opened his mouth. do you think that will ever happen? >> he'll never sign something like that. the old joke is how do you know donald's lying? his lips are moving. right? he will never sign this document. he will never sign any document. he'd rather throw the lawyers under the bus, like he did this

christina bobb. he threw her under the bus and he had her sign a document he knew was legitimately false. on this show i had said to you i think it was in early september, we need to look because i guarantee you that there are documents out there that has not been returned to nara. >> lo and behold. >> lo and behold. and i don't want to be right about this stuff. people attack me on twitter -- >> get off twitter. >> well, i can't because it's a good forum to continue to express, you know, our side. >> the truth. >> yeah, the truth. >> michael cohen, what do you think happens at the end of the year for donald trump? >> i don't think anything's going to happen through the end of the year. but he knows it's coming. and sometimes the anticipation is worse, you know, than the actual event. waiting for it to happen, waiting for the next raid, waiting for the guys to come knocking on the door with the handcuffs and the charges coming through, he knows it's coming. which is why he's in the panic mode that he's in right now.

>> dining with the likes of nick fuentes. >> unbelievable. >> unbelievable. it's great to have you here. thank you very much. and you're right, you've been correct about an alarming amount of things when it comes to trump. we will shift gears on the other side of the break to the tragic death of american sports journalist grant wahl who collapsed and died friday at the world cup. what we have learned and the questions that remain. after a quick break. i stand : i promise to be a careful steward of the things that matter to you most. i promise to bring you advice that fits your values. i promise our relationship will be one of trust and transparency. as a fiduciary, i promise to put your interests first, always. charles schwab is proud to support the independent financial advisors who are passionately dedicated to helping people achieve their financial goals. visit findyourindependentadvisor.com

we're going to be very careful to separate what we know

about this next story at the moment and what we don't. what we do know is this. grant wahl, a beloved and highly regarded american sports journalist said to possess abundant kindness, generosity, humility and midwestern charm, tragically collapsed and died in a press box at the world cup in qatar on friday. we know he had visited a local medical clinic recently there, that he was told he might have bronchitis and that his body arrived back here in the united states this morning. on saturday fifa honored his death with white lilies at the work station to which he was assigned and a tribute on the stadium's big screen. here's where this tragic news of the loss of this brilliant young star reporter combines with questions about just what happened to him. because some, including his brother, had raised questions about the circumstances of grant's death. he was only 49. he was in great shape. in response to those questions the state department late today

suggested that they've seen no indication of foul play or anything nefarious at this point. those questions were grounded in two areas. first, wahl was admirably outspoken on human rights issues and was openly critical of fifa and qatar on the topic of migrant worker deaths. plus he was initially refused entry to the usa-wales match and subsequently detained for declining to remove a rainbow t-shirt he was wearing in support of lgbtq rights. whatever the medical expectation and autopsy reveal, whatever the cause of death was, we will always remember that his loving family will be dealing with unimaginable loss this holiday season and well beyond. our thoughts are with them, particularly with his geffect shouz disease specialist who was part of joe biden's transition team providing advice on the pandemic. she has also appeared on this

show as an expert. joining me now, chris whittingham, co-host of the football podcast with grant wahl. i am so sorry for your loss. >> thank you, nicolle. >> first let's talk about grant wahl first and then we'll talk about what we know. i read every tribute i could find online. i thought this was the most sort of cruel and vicious kind of tragedy, someone at the height of their profession, of their expertise, and giving back to everybody coming up behind him. just tell me what it was like to work with him. >> yeah. i started working with him about 2 1/2 years ago and it was at a time where i'd just recently been let go from a job. i had known grant a little bit from having had him as a guest on a few podcasts i worked on. and he -- i reached out to him saying hey, if you ever need any production help i'd be happy to help. and he took me up on that. despite the fact that he barely knew me at all. i guess he researched me somewhat. and we forged a relationship that initially started as

host-producer but i think he eventually saw that my passion for the game could be used in an on-air capacity. and he allowed me despite the fact that for me he is america's foremost soccer journalist, personality on his podcast, and he would treat me as an equal. and that is a story that is fairly common when as you say you read all his tributes. there are so many people that say similar things, that he treated people as equals despite the fact that he had enormous standing in our game and enormous standing in journalism. >> and so many other journalists have stories like yours. others have written about him opening his rolodex and giving generously and asking nothing in return but seeming to want others to pay it forward. lebron james paid tribute to him. but i've covered issues that he elevated just in his time there. let me show you what he had to say on this network on november 22nd. >> i arrived at the stadium last night for the u.s. game wearing the shirt that you just showed

with a rainbow around a soccer ball, supporting lgbtq issues, and immediately was not allowed in by security officials who told me it was because of my shirt. they demanded i take the shirt off. i refused. they then -- right after i got a tweet off forcibly took my cell phone. i told them this was not good for them to be doing this. eventually, the security commander came and allowed me to go in. >> there's an extraordinary body of work to his name, but he was also having an extraordinary professional moment at the world cup. >> no question. and this didn't just begin at the tournament. this is something that he was working on prior to the tournament beginning. he went to qatar several months before the media descends and tried to get the stories of migrant workers there in qatar and tried to learn more about the place not with a view towards criticizing it

intentionally but a view toward let me learn about this place and what are actually the ills here and are there actually any people that would say nice things? he tried to fairly tell the story. but as you say it was a professional moment. really from the beginning he also prior to the tournament beginning took a picture of a sign in the media center and was told to delete the picture from his phone. a story that has happened to other journalists while there. tried to tell the story, obviously, of the lgbtq rights issues in the country and has been constantly talking about things that are not related to soccer. was incredible at covering the soccer but also was dedicated to telling the stories of the world cup beyond that. >> grant wahl's journalism will now live in the voices and the words and the stories that people google and read from years on. what work, what body of work, i think i can already guess where you might go with this. what was he most proud of in terms of stories that he has covered or was covering at the time of his death?

>> i think there were so many. you go back to when he first started covering soccer i think the story of the 1999 women's world cup team that won the world cup here in the u.s. he was a huge proponent of the women's game and told so many stories along the way. i actually think of someone fairly recent. giovanni reina, who is actually in the middle of a controversy, an on-field controversy that sort of pales in comparison to what's happening here with the u.s. men's team. he told the story of the fact that his younger brother had recently passed, and i hope people consider that when they talk about giovanni reina, a 20-year-old u.s. star player who's going through it a bit at the moment. but his family was incredibly proud of the story that grant wrote and grant was incredibly proud to tell their story. he told he me stories of meeting the biggest stars in the globe and south beach and interviewing people and lebron james in 2003 -- actually earlier than that.

he was drafted in 2003. it would have been 2001 or 2002 when nobody knew who lebron james was. he was the first to put him on the cover. there are so many cover stories. you can go back to the 2010 world cup moment for the u.s. when landon donovan is scored that goal. he had an incredible relationship with landon. but the s.i. vault is stacked with stories that grand wahl wrote, and i personally will be going back and reading some of them and i hope some of your viewers might as well. >> i did that. this news is so shocking and so sad, and just to admire someone at the height of their professional glory and to think that there is something to remember them with. i didn't know him personally, but i did, i went back and read a bunch of those stories. they just drip with his humanity and the human beings he saw behind the people and the stories he covered. chris, again, i am so sorry for your loss. thank you so much for spending some time with us to talk about grant. >> thank you, nicolle. >> we will be right back.

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they say he allegedly stabbed two security force members during the protests in november. this execution comes just days after news of a first execution alarmed activists around the world. the government is working to deter the protests. activists say that at least 12 demonstrators have already been given a death sentence in closed-door hearings according to human rights activists in iran. a group monitoring the protests say at least 488 people have been killed. more than 18,000 have been detained by authorities since mid september. joining us now, masia ali nejad, one of the inspirational leaders behind these protests in iran. you are now more than ever our eyes and ears. tell us it's very heartbreaking nicolle. it's beyond sad. just imagine, only 23-year-old, and his crime is peacefully

protesting over the murder of mahsa amini. she was 22 years old, got killed in the hand of hijab police because a little bit of her hair was shown. and he was protesting in the streets peacefully. when he was charged we were all shocked. he was charged war against god. can you believe that? or, like, spreading corruption in the earth. the charge belongs to "game of thrones" series. it doesn't belong to 21st century. >> why are they taking this step with the public hangings? >> first of all, the islamic republic survive killing people. right after the revolution, massive executions happened, more than 5,000 got executed, and who ordered the execution?

ibrahim racy, who is now the president of iran. i have to say, the regime is shaken. the regime is shaken, and that's why they're really scared of the mass protests which is taking place everywhere. it's a revolution. they're trying to deter the protest. they're trying to create fear within the society, and they try to send a signal to the west that we don't care what you say, we kill our innocent people. i mean, for the first protesters, he was only 20-year-old. imagine they woke him up, early morning, right when, you know, he woke up. they took him and they hanged him, and we heard around the world condemnation, but believe me, the islamic republic is not going to stop executions just for condemnation. we need -- >> what stops them? what makes them -- what do they hear? >> we have to say that the execution didn't top.

the people are still in the streets protesting, chanting against khomeini, against the whole regime, clearly saying slogan, which is very, very touching in persian is -- [ speaking non-english ] it means if one person, individual person get executed, thousands of protesters are going to be behind him. so, but what we want to see in the west, the eu should take strong action. now iranians are, you know, going in front of the embassy, the iranian embassies everywhere in europe. we need them. we need them to recall their ambassadors. i really want to -- iranian people, they see americans like hope, like the country, people who have been fighting for their rights, civil rights. now we want to u.s. government -- they took amazing step. but we want more. we want them to call their

allies and tell them that recall your ambassadors and kick out diplomats. otherwise the islamic republic is going kill more young teenagers, nicolle. >> you delivered that message directly to macmacron, right? >> i spoke with president macron and i asked him to be the first president to recognize the revolution, and today i asked him again and again, that you can be the first president to recall your ambassador, to kick out the islamic republic diplomats. you know why? because all the teenagers who are getting executed, when you go to their profile, their instagram, their social media, they're like my son. they're like every single teenagers here in america. they want to dance, they want to sing. they want to listen to music. they want to have a normal life. and the price of having normal life is just to get hanged in public? this should not be -- i mean, this should be condemned in a

very strong way, and the west should take a strong action, and that is the only way that the islamic republic can understand if there is no punishment for them, believe me, i don't know how to go to bed tonight, because at least 12 people are on the death row. >> what is the ability to find out how the 18,000 protesters who are in prison are doing? >> i have been speaking today with -- it's not easy for me to talk, because, you know -- i have been speaking to the mother of amir hussein. only 15-year-old. only 15 year old. and you know what his mother told me? she said that by hearing about the news of two executions, i cannot sleep because every day i think about my son in prison. and we feel frustrated. i always say that i don't ask

the west to save us, because iranian people are brave enough to save themselves, but i want to west to help us, because by your help, less teenagers are getting killed. i'm being in touch with people every day that i talk to them, and they're looking to the rest of the world that this is one of the most progressive revolution, and this revolution is not only going to save iranians, it is going to save the rest of the world from one of the most unjust regime which is sending drones to kill innocent ukrainians. the islamic republic is a threat for people in the region. it's not just iranians. i hope people who can hear my voice, especially women, women in america. you need to take to the streets. we need international women's march for every girl and women that's getting killed. and they are killing men now because they want them to stop supporting women's rights. >> with your help, we'll stay on this. thank you for being here.

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thank you so much for letting us into your homes during these truly extraordinary times. we're so grateful. "the beat" with ari melber start right now. hi, ari. happy monday. >> thanks, nicolle. welcome to "the beat." i'm ari melber. the top story right now is important. the mounting and potential threat to democracy. it's not about rhetoric, but tangible plots to overturn elections, incite vigilantes with conspiracy theories and try to assassinate civia