more money flows into it both from the investment and consumer and, the better the prices upscale again, the cheaper it gets and on, and on. we've seen that already happen insular and so, the hope is that we see that when it all kinds of places. the story solar story so far on that is really encouraging. >> yeah and it's the same thing with electric vehicles. it's kind of surprising because even senator graham has said for, example, that he wants his backyard to be really a leader in batteries. so, really starting to see a big change happen. >> dr. liu stokes, thank you so much for your time. that's all in on this thursday night. alex wagner tonight starts now. nicole wallace in for alex, good evening, nicole. nicolle wallace in for alex. >> thanks to all of you for joining us at home this hour i'm nicolle wallace in for ale

two days after election day in 2020 before the results of the presidential election have even beenio called. president donald trump's chief of staff received a text message laying out a veryte detailed scheme. for keeping donald trump in power. the text was from donald trump's son, don jr. and described in detail the plot to use republican legislatures to keep trump in office regardless of the actual vote count. if that failed, republicans in congress could keep dump in -- keep trump in power. it matches up with the scheme that trump and his allies tried to carry out by replacing biden electors with fake trump electors in states that joe biden won. today the committee investigating the deadly january 6th attack released the transcriptsse of the interview with donald trump jr. and he told the committee he doesn't remember where the idea came from. quote, question. is that something you wrote, or did you cut and paste that from

somebody else? junior,me i imagine i cut and paste it from somewhere. question, who wrote this? don jr., i don't know. question, do you at least have a sense of who it could be within the universe of people. don jr., i don't know. there was a lot of, a lot, a lot that the former president's son claimeden he did not know durin his interview. same forng trump adviser stephe miller, transcript of his interview with the january 6th committeery was released today,e refused to discuss any conversations with donald trumpu but he did say to this very day, heis believes that donald trump won the 2020 election. also released today, the transcript of the committee's interview with doug mastriano, the failed republican candidate fored governor in pennsylvania. that transcript is short. doug mastriano never actually spoke. the lawyer berated the committee as illegitimate and then he and

doug mastriano left. there is also this. melania trump's former chief of staffp' describing what she hea from people in the white house about donald trump on january 6th. quote, that he was sitting in the diningqu room, and he was jt watching it all unfold, and that a couple of his comments, some of his comments were that these people looked very trashy, but also look at what fighters they were. i don't know if he expected them todo be wearing full suits of le roman armor and that would have made them not trashy. but t he did feel that they lood trashy but he looked how they weretr fighting for him. in the batch of 20 transcript, the latest release from the january 6th committee as it winds downmm its work. innd another sign that the committee's work is coming to a close today the committee formally withdrew the subpoena to former president trump, acknowledging that it would bee

moot once the committee ceases to exist next month. so we really are in the final days of the january 6th congressional investigation. the new republican-led congress will be sworn in next week. so whatever material the committee still wants to get out into the public record, they have a very limited and this rinking window in which to do it. "politico's" kyle cheney says the 119 transcripts are released,an totaling 12,898 pag and adds this. only more transcripts to go. joining us is joyce vance, former u.s. attorney and msnbc legal analyst. thank you all for joining us. luke and kyle, i know you have stories out on the latest transcript dump, we pulled out some things that are shocking but we will need a new word for shocking but luke, take me through what you pulled out as

highlights in your story. >> there's lots of things. i think you can start with ms. grisham if you wanted to. the comments you just highlighted were quite interesting about donald trump's demeanor, of course. but i also thought it was interesting that she said that melania trump had grown very distrustful of mark meadows, and of the lawyers who were surrounding donald trump, particularly rudy giuliani, sidney powell, and ellis, and she names them all and the first lady expressed to her she did not trust these people and did not want them around the president. clearly mr. trump had other ideas and he kept these people around him and in fact, they encouraged him a great deal as he was fighting the election results. you know, a number of the transcripts that stick out how pugnacious the interviews were, stephen miller, he sort of spars with the committee for some 200 pages. i mean he's criticizing every question that is asked of him. he's fighting with the

investigators verbally. and you can see just how much trouble the investigators had trying to elicit information from some of these individuals. but there is a lot of, there are a lot of new details and more color and more revelations in these transcripts. >> kyle, one of those new pieces, and it may be more than coloray by the time fulton coun investigation winds down, but lindsey graham was trolling about basically looking for material about those in georgia to use. his word was to champion. >> you know, this has come up sporadically throughout the investigation, they really hammer it home here in the transcripts how ubiquitous lindsey graham was in sort of the background of a lot of these conversations.nd heof seems to have been someone saying, almost begging, give me any concrete evidence that there was,re you know, real legitimat hard fraud that occurred, that is determinative fraud and all

relevant, but they never produced it for him so he is someone at the end of the day saying i'm not going to support these challenges because you neverth turned over any evidenc to me. but he's there in the background saying he is there, can i have it, can you show it to me and then fact is that they did nev manage to produce anything that showed anything close to the level of fraude that trump had been claiming. >> joyce, from here, read that part about the transcript that came out tonight. this is from christina bob, who has become infamous for her role in the mar-a-lago investigation. question, dole you remember senator lindsey graham reaching out to the legal team for information about dead voters in georgia. christina bobb, yeah, i did. we were in meadows' office and graham was like oh, i'd love to support the cause,ik i think it would bee, great to, you know, really show all the fraud. send me a memo and show me, you know, what information you have got. i'llor champion it. senator graham was saying get your information.

justyo give me five dead voters. givead me, you know, an examplef illegals voting. just give me a very small snapshot that i can take and champion. i thought of ruby freeman when i saw that and all of the extraordinary effort, the highest levels of the republican party, to manufacture fraud thac wasy, never there, joyce. >> and so this doesn't happen in a vacuum, for anyone who has worked particularly in the deep south, doing election law, for a period of decades, these are the same sorts of allegations that are made in every election, dead people are voting, people who are detitled to vote are voting and that's why democrats are winning, you hear those claims of fraud persistently, and very often republican legislatures, republican legislative majorities would use these very much unfounded claims of fraud

to justify very restrictive measures that suppress voting. what happens here with lindsey graham and donald trump is a new evolution of course, of that fraud that is used in a much broader sense to perpetrate the big lie but lindsey graham is in many ways treated as roots and using this tired old bogeyman of voter fraud which people in the south do know that it doesn't taint our election and drill that down in georgia and the impact in many way is the people who were working in the election, and there is a moment in, donald trump jr.'s transcrt where he istr asked, do you realize that these sorts of claims that you're izmaking, the false claims, that they're inflicting a lot of pain on election workers? and he gives the response of course, that you talk about, no, i'm notab familiar with that. so it comes full circle there. >> one of the other jaw-dropping revelations in these transcripts

is the plan to fire gina haskill. i want to read that. alyssa farah says that kash patel is the cia director for about 14 minutes, and it doesn't echo at d.o.j., mr. clark, the attorney general, for a little longerey than that. this is the transcript. from alyssa farah, quote. i will share one thing that i cannot f myself but it is worth looking into. i have beenrt told that they trd to fire gina haspel, the cia director and install kash patel. but gina, who is a very savvy operator and an incredible public servant, already had what i call a suicide pact in place. where basically the entire intelligence community would walk with her, if that happened. officially. like, or essentially, like decapitating the entire intelligencede community. so they were able to stop it. but allegedly, for about 14 minutes, kash was actually the cia director. and i don't need to tell this to

congressman schiff but that man has no business being anywhere near intelligence or anything else.or so all that is to say it was a scary period, and i'm glad i wasn'tri there for a lot of it, but i think you guys have a lot of threads you should pull. so luke, correct me if i'm wrong, but i believe kash patel is now an immunized, limited immunity, as a witness, in the investigation into the mishandling of classified documentsmi at mar-a-lago. he was, for 14 minutes, the country's ciath director. >> right, you're correct about his role, also in the mar-a-lago case, and i think there are a lot of echoes here of what happened at the justice department, where there was another plan in place to install jeffrey clark, the justice department, another trump loyalist,rt but again, there waa threat of a mass resignation within the justice department, and terrible headlines and

embarrassment forte the trump administration, that donald trump at the end did not go along with this, and apparently are, he did not go along with this plan with kash patel either and i think if you combine in this from the transcript of johnny mcletee earlier in the ee week, there was a loyalty test about whoek would go along with trump to the farthest, as to who could stay in office because there were several people who were referenced as having been dismissed when they wereen seens disloyal. and in fact, it was almost like ain loyalty test, where each individual was proving how loyal they were h to mr. trump. >> kyle, what is it that you want to do if you want jeff i can clark, atop d.o.j. and kash patel atop the cia, what is it that hewh wasn't able to do tha he would have d realized with t two of them? do we know the answer to that question? >> ins think you're talking abo two different strands of the sort of conspiracy theory, or

the conspiracy, the multistep plan to kind of subvert the election, and one of those involved foreign intelligence and the questions, the moment extreme versions and foreign adversaries changing votes, and allies changing votes, and scott perry, the congressman was texting to mark meadows about these ideas that the italians,g or the brits were involved, and trying to change votes, with gina haspel as their ally. and totally crazy theories that were being thrown around. and i think, you know, you see how those played out, trump was exposed to a lot of those and may have taken action to pursue those questions and it may be why he looked at changes in the intelligence world andd lookedt other changes at d.o.j. but what we saw really is this resistance by the people who are running those agencies that prevented it from happening. >> joyce, we also learn that chris crabs was indeed fired

because he did his job too well and he declared publicly that theec election was most secure america's history. >> going back to johnny's transcript, there is this entirt theme of loyalty test, of chris krebs getting fired because he stood up for elections, of people at d.o.d. who had to go because they didn't believe that trump was entitled to vote in the insurrection act, and at this point it feels so much less like telling the story of a presidential administration than it feels like when i used to prosecute organized crime cases. the mafia cases. where so much effort was expendede on trying to keep th truth from coming to light. so much energy was expended on getting people to obscure the truth when they testified, so that no one could be held accountable. and now, we're beginning to see some real holes in that armor. and some of the truth shining

through. and it echoes back to jim comey and his earliest comments where he had dinner with trump and trump asked him for his loyalty. not loyalty to the constitution, but personal loyalty. and here at the very end, we see people like gina haspel at risk of losing her job, because she was loyal to the country and the constitution, not the president. for anyone who is not getting this point, it's not very subtle at this point in time, trump was about trump. trump was never about america and democracy. heard adam schiff tonight say that he felt like the committee had reached everyone in the american public who was reachable. everyone who could list tonightl truth, and hopefully that message continues a little bit further as this evidences continues to come to light. >> joyce, let me just follow up with you, because the act of firing jim comey was ultimately investigated by the mueller probe as one of the acts of obstruction ofpr justice.

and i wonder one of the crimes tond which trump was referred criminally by the committee was obstruction of an officialwa proceeding. are thesest acts also part of wt will be scrutinized by d.o.j. as that obstruction? >> so i suspect that d.o.j., for whatever reason, has moved past the recommendations in the mueller report. many of them will be out of the statute ofil limitations by now. there's a iofive-year statute o limitations on prosecuting federal crimes. and perhaps hindsight will view that as a mistake. we know that merrick garland is very much an institutionalist, that he wanted to strengthen the justice department, that heen didn't want to tear the country apart with ideas that the d.o.j. is political. at the end of the day, when we evaluate what the former president did, it cries out for legal accountability. and at every step along the way, we see how he starts, sometimes very narrowly, legal

accountability, for his misconduct, and that is really in many ways what led us to january 6t th, that it is past time for trump to face justice. >> it is so interesting, every time he gets a i way with something, if you will, he escalates, the day after mueller, he talks about the perfect call with zelenskyy, and the riggedpe election and the election ends and the january 6th coup. it is just extraordinary and it wonderful to talk to all three of you. thank you so much for starting usth off tonight. we have much more to get to tonight. a veritable news tsunami, for instance, with the reveal coming, what donald trump never, ever, ever, wanted the public to see, it is about to come out for all of us to see. but before we get to that, the more reporters dig into the background of republican congressman-elect george santos, the more apparent lies they turn up. and now federal investigators are on the case. that story is next. e on the cas.

that story is next

my grandfather was born in cuba and late '20s where he met my grandmother and started a family. but very nag and faint. we don't carry the eye cranian last name, for a lot of people who are descendants of world war ii refugees or survivors of the holocaust. a lot of names and people were changed and the names of survivals so i don't carry the family last name that would have been that. my mother's maiden name was the dutch side of the family. but there's not many. >> it's from republican congressman-elect george santos, the lies just keep on coming. that interview took place in february.

that is santos claiming to be a descendant of world war ii ukrainian holocaust survivors. cnn today reports that santos appears to have made up his family's historical jewish name, genealogists can find no evidence of either jewish or ukrainian heritage on santos' family tree. santos has of course said that he never claimed to be jewish. he says because his mother was jewish and that his grandparents escaped the nazis during world war ii, that makes him you, hyphen,ish. but with this new reporting from cnn today that santos appears to have faked his mother's heritage, it seems like we can add that to the long and growing list of george santos' lies. the ceo of the antidefamation league is calling santos's fabrication about list heritage shameful today, accusing him of using the holocaust as a political prop. he says that congressman-elect

santos ose everything, including the jewish community, an apology. new revelation today about congressman-elect santos is just the latest on an ever-growing and truly mind-bending list of things he lied about. cnn today also reports that santos appears to have lied about attending the prestigious new york prep school, and claims his mother fled her home country of belgium with problems, and that being that she is actually from brazil. the newest falsehoods, lies, adds new flavor to the list of lies he has already admitted to. about his education. and about his work history. and his pile-up of lies is beginning to catch the attention of law enforcement. the nassau county d.a. and santos's district says she has opened an investigation into the congressman-elect's fabrications and inconsistencies, which have now also caused the attention of federal investigators. nbc can confirm this evening that federal prosecutors, out of

the eastern district of new york, have opened an investigation into congress-elect santos. and are looking at his finances and irregularities with his financial disclosures and loans he made to his campaign. potentially a huge problem for the incoming congressman. as well as for the other republicans in congress, who were about to welcome him into their ranks. joining us now, "new york times" reporter michael gold, who broke this story. and "politico" reporter olivia fevers also on this for us. michael, tell me, let me deal with the human aspect of it. what is your reporting revealing to be the human flaw in him fabricating absolutely everything. i think we like to make a list of the things that have held up. because it is a much shorter one than the things that have turned out to be lies. >> i have not had the opportunity to speak with congressman-elect, so i wouldn't want to think about what is in his heart or what he is thinking, i have no idea, we tried many times to get an

interview from him or someone in his team and all we have gotten is the statement he first put out and the various interviews he has done with other publications. there are things that we have been able to verify about the congressman-elect's background. we know he works at this company called met global which he mentioned in his bio. we know he worked at late bridge investors which he mentioned in his bio. we know he was at a company called harbor city which appeared in his bio at some point. i want to be clear there are things he has said which have checked out there. are also things that have not. >> michael, do you think that, i mean every day, since the 19th when you first broke this story, there's been another shoe to drop or pillar to fall from the resume. he was on fox news with tulsi gab ert, guest-hosting for tucker carlson and he seemed to blame his constituents for why he wouldn't explain saying they wouldn't understand. is there any change in the containment strategy that you've

detected? >> not so far as i can tell. i mean he spent the first week after the story being fairly silent, the initial statement that his lawyer put out accused a series of attacks that were defamatory, and a week later he gave a series of interviews that where he acknowledged that some of the things that we had reported were in fact true. that interview that he did on tuesday night, i think, with fox was certainly a part of that strategy. he has not done a ton of press since. he spoke before, about his business. he spoke to "the daily beast," a little bit his finances and his campaign finances so he is still doing interviews and still goating out there, but he has been committed to some of the outlets and has not addressed the discrepancy between the new york post statement and denied of a criminal case of any kind against him in brazil and at this point we reported that in the original story and brazilian media has been following the

story and corroborated our reporting on that as well. >> owe liva, you're reporting that one of his crisis management strategies is to say that he won't seek re-election. muddled through these two years. that seems like a political ticking time bomb. >> right, and you know, when i reported that, i have republicans who are reaching out to me saying how do we believe him? the thing is -- he's losing support by some key figures in new york. and right now, he's sort of like this pariah who is coming in, with his colleagues, i was getting texts all day today, with santos being the butt of the joke, and you know, people, members saying, you know, he would take out congressman, and they wrote, they are upset that someone is basically coming in with this new class, that they will take the majority, and basically draining the swamp

that they wanted to fight against and now the headline heading into the new majority. they are pretty upset about it. we will see if he will be on committees. kevin mccarthy has not spoken about. it we will see if he is speaker soon enough. this is playing in all together, the scandal, the speakership vote, all at once. >> olivia, you know you have all of the goods and all of the reporting on the sources but they haven't been particularly vocal about their upset. who is upset and how upset are they? >> members, you know, you're hearing a little bit more from republican-elects from work who are saying, you know, this guy should be investigated by the house. by the house ethics committee, by law enforcement, the incoming freshman, other new york republicans have been a little bit more hard and you haven't heard a ton from leadership and that is because they want him to be seated, they want his vote, but probably after the speakership vote, we're probably going to be hearing a lot more

questions, we'll be seeing leadership take action, because it is really hard for someone with his reputation to be given really trust in the conversation. he has scandals behind him and he is not even sworn in. >> what do you put him in charge of. michael, what do we believe federal and local investigators to be probing? >> we don't know a ton about that. i would say both investigations are in the early stage. the nassau county district attorney who i should point out is a republican-elected official, much like mr. santos, has just said that if there were any crimes committed under that jurisdiction, she would like to look noom into them and prosecute them. in queens, the district attorney there has similarly said they're looking into some things, and possibly seeing what there might be to prosecute, if there is anything. and we know that federal prosecutors are looking into his finances, it's not clear what exactly that might mean, whether that's about his campaign

finances or his financial disclosures, or just the source of his personal wealth, but it seems like much of the focus that they're doing is on finance, and we'll have to see what comes out of these local investigations. i think prosecutors are in their early stages right now. >> michael gold, and olivia beavers, we should point out that we only know about these stories and these lies because of great journalism like the stories you've reported out. thank you to both of you. we will continue to follow your reporting. still ahead, for us tonight, russia's biggest assault on ukraine in weeks. dozens of rockets an drones testing ukraine's air defenses. and the country's power supply during a brutal winter. we'll bring you the latest plus, is now just a matter of hours until some of donald trump's biggest juiciest closest held secrets are revealed to the world. someone who has seen much of what he doesn't want you to see will be our guest. stick with us. t. stick with us. i'm jonathan lawson

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this was the city of kyiv at sunset earlier today. the city plunged into darkness. with 40% of its residents without power. after russia launched one of the largest missile attacks on the country since the start of the war. alarms rang out, in the city for five hours, as russia continued its assault on ukraine's energy

infrastructure. over in the western part of the country, in the city of lviv, a total blackout, with 90% of that city without power in extreme cold. the mayor of lviv warning without power, the city's water system might stop working completely. the barrage of nearly 70 missiles which hit more than 20 residential buildings targeted at kyiv, lviv and odessa in the southwest, and initial reports say that at least three people have died. and it was the tenth in a series of missile attacks by russia in the past three months. it continues the deadly pattern by russia, of attacking ukraine's power grid and forcing millions of ukrainians to survive in the winter without power. in the dead of had frigid winter, creating nothing short of a full-fledged humanitarian crisis. ukraine's military reported that it shot down 54 of the 69 missiles. ukraine's defense ministry declaring the attacks are one of

the most significant that russia has launched to date. saying in a statement, this, quote, russian terrorists have been saving one of the most massive missile attacks sin the beginning of the full-scale invasion for the last days of the year. they dream that ukrainians will celebrate the new year in darkness and cold. but they cannot defeat the ukrainian people. ukraine's foreign minister called out the attacks for what they are, quote, senseless barbarism. millions without power in the frigid cold in ukraine with this war raging on. we'll be right back. r raging on. we'll be right back. p plan? get plan b one-step. plan b helps prevent pregnancy before it starts by temporarily delaying ovulation—and you can resume your regular birth control right away. i've got this. ♪♪

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i've got this. ♪♪ on friday, september 23, 2016, in the heat of the 2016 election, "new york times" investigative reporter susanne craig got a surprise delivery that would change what we knew to be true about then presidential candidate president trump's finances. that day, in her mailbox, 30 feet from her desk at the headquarters, three pages of the donald trump tax return and three pages from 1995, but because trump was potentially about to be the first president since richard nixon to not release his taxes to the public, those three pages were the most that anyone had ever seen. she and her team worked tirelessly to authenticate the documents from everything from hiring tax experts to flying across the country for an ig

cognito meeting with one of trump's former accountants at a florida bagel shop. that investigative work is low we as the public learned that contrary to trump's public image as a successful businessman, trump had lost nearly a billion in that year alone. such a gigantic loss that the accounting software trump's accountants used wouldn't let his accountants input it all and had to print the last two digits with a typewriter after printing it out. then president trump's niece marry trump and in her book, she recalls telling craig, quote, it is so not cool that you're showing up at my house. and shoed craig away. and craig was persistent and wrote marry trump letters and over the course of many months convinced her to help "the new york times" dig up more of trump's taxes and that's we as a public learned that this fight,

despite all of this rhetoric of a self-made billionaire, and to fire people on the show, trump had inherited hundreds of millions of dollars from his father and "the new york times" alleges that he used complex schemes to avoid paying taxes on his inheritance while doing so. since then, susanne craig and her team have gone on to win a pulitzer prize for their investigative journalism and published multiple additional trump tax exposes all as a result of investigative work and more knowledgeable than anyone else other than trump's own accountants. smack dab in the middle of the holidays, tomorrow morning, the house ways and means committee, is going to publish trump's tax returns from 2015 to 2020. two more years than even susanne craig has ever seen. so tonight, on trump taxes eve,

there is no one we would rather talk to or hear from. joining us is susanne craig, pulitzer prize winning investigator on "the new york times," one of the lead reporters on the multi-year investigation into donald trump's finances. thanks for joining us tonight. >> my life flashed before me as you did that. >> what we left out, the great theme where you're on with rachel, at the beginning of one of the show time slots, devoted specifically to this reporting. i have to ask you, what you are looking for tomorrow? what pieces are unanswered for you? >> i'd like to say i'm looking forward to being over, but i don't think it's over. >> no. >> i'm laughing. we're going to get two more years of taxes but what i actually, when i step back and think about it is, a monumentday for democracy and sunlight is one of the best donald trump disinfectants and a great moment

tomorrow that we will be seeing his tax returns in public. this is an important part. the democracy is understanding the president and his finances. he refused to do this. year after year after year. if he had only done it at the beginning, i don't think we would be here today. but it is important that the american people know what is in his tax returns, how he makes his money and the pressure on him and i think it is really, i think that is just a great day for everybody that that is happening, whether it is a democratic president or a republican president, it should be mandatory. >> so in between, reading the january 6th transcripts i looked at mitt yom ny's attacks on donald trump in 2016 and romney went after him for busting this norm of not releasing his taxes and you look at the extraordinary effort and the work and time to have to shield his taxes from the public and it sounded like there were lies told about being under audit. can you just quantify or describe the efforts that went

into keeping trump taxes from the public on trump's part? >> sure, i mean i can answer that and i want to talk about the audit. but he for years, as he was in the lead-up to running, he said he would release his taxes and then he would release them under certain circumstances, and then he just decided he wasn't going to release them. and he fought the release of them all the way up to the supreme court. if not once, twice. they were eventually handed over to cy vance and the manhattan district attorney that used them in the case, in the state court in new york, where they got a tax conviction. and then separately, he fought this request from the ways and means committee all the way to the supreme court. and eventually, they were turned over. i mean he doesn't want his taxes to be seen. actually, i think seeing 20-some years of the taxes, the real kryptonite, to not have known, that he is a bad businessman, and tax return after tax return,

after tax return, and that he is just a wildly bad businessman. and it just undercuts what he ran for president as, as a self-made billionaire. he's not. he's anything but that. >> it's extraordinary. that was a pillar of his political identity. on the audit, tell me what you think on the audits. >> yeah, the audit, it is interesting, i wanted to be kind of, there is a lot of misinformation there, but the audit, like everything with donald trump, there is more than one criminal investigation in here and my little world, we've gotten one more than one audit and in this audit, there is the mandatory presidential audit that everybody has been talking about, so that started, you know, when he became president, in 2015, '16, in that time. that time period. but there is another audit that stretches back to 2009. and that year, and this is sort of an incredible story, 2009, he asked for and got the $72.9 million refund. all of the income taxes he had

paid on that rush of money that he got from "the apprentice" from 2005 to 2008, he was able to do that because of the abandonment of his casino interests. so that allowed him to get what is known as, and this is actually a real thing, it is called a quickie refund, i want one of those, but it is where the irs just gives you the money back when you request it, under the certain program that they have, and then it triggers an automatic audit. that audit from 2009 has been going on, it could be going on today, it was going on when he entered, when he entered the white house, so he actually was under audit but it looks like now if we switch back to the mandatory audit, when they picked up the file, when the irs agent, or the agents that were doing the mandatory presidential audit that is done on every president, they saw that audit. and they said that there was just a lot of the complexity, they called it the complexity of issues surrounding it when they looked at it. it was complex.

and irs agents are just often reluctant to start a new audit when one is going on, and i think that kind of overwhelmed them, and it would be one of the issues why the audit didn't go ahead. but the question that i have, and i hope we get some answers tomorrow, i'm not so optimistic, it is going to depend, you know, the committee got its taxes and audit notes, whether these audit notes are going to be released, but why hasn't that 100 million dollars, it goes against, it was 72.9 million when it started and now it could be up to 100 million, why hasn't that been resolved and where is that at? it is big. and i hope we get some clarity on it tomorrow. that's one of the things i'm definitely going to be looking for. like i said, i'm not optimistic on it but we will be looking for bread crumbs on that tomorrow for sure. >> if anybody finds any bread crumbs, we know it will be you. thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. thank you so much. >> okay. bye. quick break for us. we'll be right back. don't go anywhere. for us we'll be right back. don't go anywhere.

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we are still five days away from republicans taking over the house of representatives. but a standoff between house republicans and president joe biden has already begun. "politico" was first to report that the biden administration has reached out to request for documents and testimony from two incoming republican committee chairmen. in letters to incoming judiciary chair, jim jordan and incoming overnight chair james comber, the white house counsel's office writes this, quote, congress has not delegated such oversight authority to individual members of congress who are not committee chairmen. should the committee issue similar or other requests in the 118th congress, we will review and respond to them in good faith. translation, you are not chairmen yet. back to us, when you have a gavel in your hand. republicans already expressed outrage that the biden administration's stern rebuke, but here's the thing. the biden administration is simply operating under precedent

set by one donald trump during his standoff with house democrats during the first two years of his administration. so we wonder if this is a preview of the kind of standoffs would he can expect to see over the next two years. to answer that question for us, joining us now is "politico" correspondent who broke the story. heidi, take us through your reporting. >> the white house is really concerned that given the volume of letters and requests that they've already gotten from expected incoming gop chairmen, that they're really setting the stage here to fire off a subpoena cannon, basically, a spray of subpoenas, early in the new year, which they told me would really break with historical precedent, had there been a process for oversight, whereby you exchange information, you talk about what you're able to share, and negotiate, really, and that hasn't taken place here. this has just been a couple of members of, who are coming in, they're going to be the

chairmen, they are not yet, and the white house said basically what they're trying to do is head off a theater here, a show, kind of kicking up a lot of smoke before they had a chance to respond and deploy. and looking at the letters shall the thing that they're concerned about, they're really broad requests, made as if these members are already chairmen, and already have all of the investigative powers of being chairman. requesting for instance, all documentation on any communication on the withdrawal from afghanistan, for instance, and then in the case of jim jordan, who is going to most likely be the chairman of the judiciary committee, there's a history there of jim jordan himself, which i'm sure is going to come up throughout this entire saga, and we're going to see over the next two years of jim jordan himself, and not responding to subpoena, fighting the subpoena, in the case of the january 6th committee.

>> what is it, other than the withdrawal of afghanistan, what are they looking for at the substantive level if f-there is one. >> i think there is going to be a delineation here for the white house, between what are legitimate oversight requests when it comes to, for instance, the withdrawal from afghanistan, the situation at the border. i know that the chairman, for instance, of the oversight committee, says they want to get back to their roots of investigating waste, fraud and abuse when it comes to the use of covid funding but then they're going to have members on the committee, like marjorie taylor greene, saying no, we're going to force mccarthy and comber to go back and relitigate and investigate the investigators, for instance, with the january 6th committee, so given all of the leadership battles that is going on right now and the demands on mccarthy, there is no guarantee that comer is going to be able to stick to what a lot of the staff is h-told me are these more

traditional priorities versus going after the bidens for instance, on hunter biden and trans action reports with the treasury department, and trying to link those to joe biden, even though there is no link there as far as we can tell at this time, so that will be where the rough is, and where this white house probably is going to determine, okay, these are the things that we will engage on but we feel very little responsibility to engage on these other issues, especially given what went down over the past four years of the trump administration, just the uniformed stonewalling of pretty much all subpoenas. >> thank you, we are grateful that you are on this story and will stay on it as well. thank you for your time tonight. that does it for us. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is coming up next. oo ear lemire is coming up next this morning, more revelations from the house select committee investigating january 6th. what we're learning