tv Alex Wagner Tonight MSNBC February 3, 2023 1:00am-2:00am PST
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wrong with this, world and i'll tell you -- tallahassee coats, is working on. >> i think you made news, there because i think it's been reported. but i agree. >> one really good thing for us all to hang on to this week. it's always good to see, you my friend. thanks to you at home for being here. there has been a ton of movement in the two sprawling criminale two sprawlin criminal ones that are being conducted by special counsel jack smith those two investigations are, of course, trump's squirrelling away of classified documents at his mar-a-lago beach club and his attempt to subvert democracy and overturn results
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fitton is part equal watch we do not know which grand jury tom fitton who's a close trump ally appeared in today that's because tom fitton has interests with both specia tom fitton drafted a statement for president trump declaring how he won the election though he hadn't won the election yet. >> the draft statement which was sent on october 31st declares we had an election today and i won. and the fitton memo specifically
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indicates a plan that only the votes counted by the election dayhe deadline and there is no election day deadline would matter. an election day just after 5:00 p.m. mr. fitton indicated he spoke with the president about the statement. >> tom fitton actually suggested trump could claim victory by saying he won all the votes counted by a made up election day deadline and ignore all the other ballots, which is -- on the mar-a-lago front cnn reported it was tom fitton in trump's ear saying you can keep all the documents, they're yours, you own them. which turns out is completely wrong. last week ken cuccinelli, he apparently testified before the grand jury to investigate trump's efforts subverting the
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election. trump asked to seize the voting machines in key swing states six weeks after election day. cuccinelli declined that honor but his discussions with trump are of interest to federal prosecutors. two people who searched for classified documents also testified. trump organization controller jeffrey mcconnie reportedly testified today before the grand jury investigating the stormy daniels hush money payments. just this evening "the new york times" are also warning prosecutors may file additional charges against presently jailed long time trump organization cfo allen weisselberg in an attempt to leverage more cooperation. remember weisselberg is serving a five month sentence at rikers
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after pleading guilty to tax fraud charges. and then there is the looming threat of the fulton county criminal investigation into trump's efforts to overturn the election results in that state, a probeth many experts say pose the highest threat for trump. fulton county district attorney faunae willis recently said decisions are imregarding indictments after a special grand jury submitted its recommendations s to her last month. grand juries everywhere. there's a lot of moving parts on multiple fronts. at the federal level there is more than enough for attorney general merrick garland to mull over, the a.g. will ultimately have to make a decision based on the recommendation of the special counsel as to whether charges are warranted in the two trump investigations. and now there is one more thing thatne merrick gar lnld has to think about. john durham, the special counsel appointed by trump's attorney general, bill barr, to investigate the origins of the
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trump-russia probe, well, john durham is still on the job and he now reports to merrick garland. if you remember the two cases john durham brought to trial ended in acquittals. durham has yet to find any elaborate deep state conspiracy by the intelligence community to discredit trump, but "the new york times" latest reporting on durham, which is a bombshell piece, shows just how much barr seemed to have meddled in the probe. the paper reported that three senior prosecutors of durham's team resigned over frustrations and disagreements over the handling of this inquiry. we also learned about a european trip barr and durham took where they received credible tip linking trumped to suspected financial crimes. barr assigned that criminal investigation ofba the presiden to john durham and the public
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never heard anything about it until now. bill barr spoke to the l.a. times last night to defend his handseling of john durham's investigation into an attempt to pre-spin the ventual report's findings. and regarding that previously undisclosed criminal investigation involving trump, barr said, quote, it turned out toit be a complete nonissue. really? what happened there? already members of congress are demanding c answers. will merrick garland tell the american public? will he release the durham report in full or in part? joining us now is charlie savidge, washington correspondent for "the new york times" and the lead byline on this incredible piece of reporting. what is your initial reaction to his effective rebuttals, his
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overall sense that there's no there there enterms of some of the very pressing questions that you raised in the piece? >> well, my first reaction was, oh, wow, he confirmed there was an investigation involving trump that durham handled, so that's interesting. we didn't have knanyone on the record confirming that before so that was nice of him. maybe he's right it went nowhere. we don't know. we just don't know what that thing was. we don't know what steps durham took. we don't know s what he found o. we don't know why he chose to bring more charges. perhaps it was as bill barr said there was no there there. nevertheless it's extraordinary it happened at all and no one knew about ittr and when it lead durham's administrative review had evolved into encompassing a criminal investigation. everyone thought that meant he'd found evidence ofha a crime by people who had investigated
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trump and russia and the justice department let that misimpression linger when it was this different thing.li at a minimum it's extraordinary barr confirmed that did indeed happen. >> the fact of the matter is exactly as you point out the justice department led the impression this is about intelligence agencies and not president trump, they let that linger. no one had any suspicion this was investigation into the former president. >> or at least involving him in some ways. we don't know if it was him or approximate to him. >> somehow in the sphere of trump, nonetheless not about the folks that launched the trump investigation. >> exactly. >> one of the sort of questionable acts you highlighted is the appointment of john durham to investigate this tip, right, into potential financial fraud, fraudulent criminal activities regarding finances. and bill barr defends his choice of john durham investigating this saying the idea there was a
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thin basis for appointing durham doesn't hold water. can you explain how and why "the times" and your reporting suggestsre that it was actually thin basis to appoint durham? >> well, the reason that barr put durham into motion in the first instance was that barr while a private citizen before trump hires him to be attorney general, watching fox news, had come to the conclusion, the hunch, the suspicion, there was some kind of intelligence abuse at the heart of the russia investigation, lurking in the origins of the russia investigation. the cia had done something or mi5 had done something, the italian intelligence service had done something. he just knew that was the case. he came in as he was confirmed telling his aides he knew this was the case and he was going to get to the bottom of it. when he got a briefing about the actual origin of the russia
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investigationhe he said he didn buy it, and that is what set durham into motion. now, i think what he was saying was a technical matter to the l.a. times, which was at first that was an administrative review. it was not a criminal investigation, so when you're just sending someone to look ato things, which is sort of an odd thing for the justice department to do, but it happens sometimes, you don't need, you know, a reasonable factual basis to suspect a crime. you don't need a predicate. that's what he set durham into motion on just on his hunch. durham does eventually open not just the size of the criminal investigation that involves trump somehowat but an actual criminal investigation as his hunt for intelligence abuses that barr thought was there hits a dead end and there just aren't any he can find. he doesn't close up shop. he says he and barr decide they're going to sort of morph this investigation into a
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different rationale, which is a hunt for a basis to accuse the hillary clinton campaign of mp defrauding the government by essentially framing donald trump for collusion. it was hillary's fault that people, you know, suspected trump and russia and wanted to knowte more about those connections and was the theory, right, they were pursuing. and that was a criminal investigation. they were going to a judge unsuccessfully trying to get something called a d-order to get into private e-mails and eventually using grand jury powers to get into private e-mails of a george soros aid. you can't do that unless it's a criminal investigation. ultimaty they do bring two narrow indictments which durham uses to insiniate this conspiracy he was unable to prove aun charge and bothf thos cases ended in very swift acquittals and collapsed in court. to his point as well when this thing started it wasn't a criminal investigation so didn't need a solid basis, i could just
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do it, you know, is technically true insofar as it goes, but it doesn't explain the entirety of what happened here. >> dare i say it doesn't hold water, paraphrasing the former attorney general himself. charlie savidge, washington correspondent for "the new york times," thank you for the incredible reporting. have a thousand questions to ask you. please come back soon. i want to turn now to barb mcquade, the attorney for eastern district of michigan. i want to continue the conversation we're having about the onus on merrick garland and his shoulders. i hope they're strong enough. do you think merrick garland is going to release the findings from the durham probe as much of a nothing berger it might end up being? >> we don't know what's
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contained in then' final report. i think merrick garland has to be careful here. i can imagine his instincts especially given his desire to restore integrity and independence to the justice department might be to simply disclose those. in the interest of transparency here's what john durham found and here you go, it's out there. i think he has to be careful in ensuring he's not assisting and enabling disinformation from coming into the ecosystem of -- under the guise of this official justice department report, and i think there's a worry about that. so of course it depends on what's in it, but to the extent it does what john durham has already done in indictments of throwing in a lot of extra verbiage to dirty up people he wants to dirty up, i think merrick garland needs to be careful on whether he wants that to be released. >> especially given the way
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garland has behaved in different weeks regarding the document sagas president bidens and former president trump's respectively, p appointing specl counsels in a bid to show equanimity in the justice department one wonders what he does with a durham probe.ro you have like layers here, right? do you release the findings of the durham investigation and also launch an investigation into the investigation into the investigation into the investigation? like what options does he have here? i mean does he have to do both and how convoluted would that be? >> i think that merrick garland actually has a responsibility to see what it is that john durham wants to release and ask him to support those conclusions verbally so that he feels satisfied that he can release this out into the world. so i don't think merrick garland
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has to make a decision of an either/or release or not and to disclose only that which he thinks o will be helpful in sor of setting the record straight. but theec origins of this, the durham investigation, are really concerning because we already inspector general report that found the russia investigation was improperly opened. and then we have william barr asking john durham to complete the workdu clearly with an agen in search of a conclusion, in search of a factual basis. so that alone i think makes me very skeptical about what john durham might ultimately report here. in the same way we saw william barr distort the findings of robert mueller and his report, distortion and misleading in the words of a federal judge who read william barr's statements about that -- i'm concerned tha'
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is what will be contained in john durham's report as well. so i think merrick garland has some responsibility here to make the hard decision, and maybe that decision is to not let this be released into the public domain. maybe that decision is to investigate further and make sure there'sin a factual basis r what he has to say. >> what a tough decision to make at such a fraught time for the doj, barb. i mean we have talked at the beginning of the show about the unbelievable number of investigative walls that seem to be closing in around trump world, and i just want to go to sort of the breaking news we have this evening that the attorney general's office, manhattan prosecutors are trying to basically ratchet up the pressure on a man who's already in jail who has very important information regarding trump organization finances and of course speaking about allen weisselberg. there's long been talk about whether prosecutor might try to, you know, pressure him with
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further jail time to get him to further flip on trump. appears to be happening now, if we believe the reporting from "the new york times," which i have no reason not to. what's your assessment of that, and is itr the right time to really be going for broke on the stormy daniels hush money given everything else that's happening in the world of investigation pertaining to donald trump? >> yeah, if you're stormy daniels i think that was the trump show season 1. aren't we on season 5 now? that's really going way back in time. it does seem that investigation has been resuscitated. and ifbe you think about what that -- that hush money payment was and the timing of it, it was right on the eve of the 2016 election at a time when the "access hollywood" tape came out and that could have been devastating to donald trump's campaign. to fail tog to disclose he madet expenditure on behalf of the campaign is a crime. if they can put together a case
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maybe they do. i just don't know allen weisselberg is the guy who's going to finally flip on donald trump. he already had an opportunity to do it and he refused to do it. maybe he knows more about this and didn't know other things about the tax case, but seems like he has remained loyal to donald trump and is even willing to go to prison for him. and so i don't know that he's going to budge, but i suppose it's worth a try. and it seems they already have other witnesses in the form of michael cohen, the controller of the trump organization. maybe they cane do it without him, but i suppose it's worth exploegserring to determine whether allen weisselberg has information that could be valuable in that investigation. >> allen weisselberg 74 years old on rikers island as we speak. thanks for your time tonight. we have lots to get to this evening including the truly unbelievable first days of the republican led 118th congress
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and how democrats should conduct themselves for the next two years at least. speaking of which house republicans voted today to strip congresswoman ilhan omar of a house committee seat decrying anti-semitism while totally ignoring the same problematic language and behavior from members of their own party. that is next. their own party that is next
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it was 2019 and newly elected minnesota congresswoman ilhan omar responded to a tweet about the role of israel in american politics in six words. it's all about the benjamins, baby. it was a reference to a 1997 puff ddy song it's all about the benjamins and the subtext was that donor money was responsible for the outsized role that supporting israel plays in u.s. politics. the tweet played into age-old anti-celtic stereotypes about jewish people using money to control political leaders. now four years later kevin mccarthy and the republican house are using that tweet as justification for their latest act of retribution. today house republicans voted along party lines to strip congresswoman omar of her committee assignment on the house foreign affairs committee. the resolution specifically cited that 4-year-old tweet as a
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central example of why the action was justified. if you'd just fallen from the sky you might think that meant the republican party had zero-tolerance policy for anti-semitic trumps like the ones for jewish people controlling politicians with their money. but anyone who's spent the last several years on this planet and not just fallen from the sky knows that is not the case. take for instance this tweet sent by speaker of the house kevin mccarthy during the 2018 election. we cannot allow sorros, steyer and bloomberg to vote this election. all jewish billionaires who are regularly the subject of that same anti-semitic trope about jews controlling politicians. >> i'm in a different position than the other candidates because i'm the one candidate i don't want any of your money.
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therefore you're probably not going to support me. that's okay you want to control your own politician. that's fine. >> donald trump told a room full of jewish republicans he thought they were using their money to control politicians. throughout his presidency trump regularly amplified anti-semites on social media. he called nazis who chanted jews will not replace us, he called them very fine people. remember a few months ago when trump invited hip hop artist yay and a why supremacist holocaust denier home. they are last we checked republicans and leaders of the party in fact. and then there is congresswoman marjorie taylor greene now an ally of speaker mccarthy who famously promoted an anti-conspiracy theory that blamed jewish space lasers for wildfires in california. both congresswoman green and republican congresswoman paul gosar attended events hosted by the very same holocaust denying
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white supremacist that trump had over for dinner. but instead of punishing them as he did ilhan omar, speaker mccarthy rewarded both gosar and green in this congress by giving them back committee assignments that had been previously taken away. it is clear, then that today's vote on congresswoman ilhan omar was not about condemning anti-semitism. she seems to have been sought out for different reasons and today congresswoman omar made clear that despite the efforts to boot her out of power, she was not going anywhere. >> is anyone supposed that i'm being targeted? is anyone surprised that i am somehow deemed unworthy to speak about american foreign policy or that they see me as a powerful voice that needs to be silenced? my leadership and voice will not be diminished if i am not on this committee for one term.
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my voice will get louder and stronger, and my leadership will be celebrated around the world as it has been. so take your vote or not, i am here to stay, and i am here to be a voice against harms around the world and advocate for a better world. i yield back. >> we'll be right back. i yield back >> we'll be right back
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so breaking right now house republicans investigating president biden's climate czar, john kerry, saying his talks with the chinese communist party may be undermining our economy and threatening our u.s. foreign policy. that's a real thing that happened today. republicans on the house oversight committee announced an investigation into john kerry on the premise that his international climate negotiations were somehow nefarious because they involved china, the country that's the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. yes, really, that happen. this week, the week after multiple mass shootings, some republicans in the house have started wearing little assault rifle pins on their lapels as if they're american flags. yesterday a house natural resources committee meeting for that committee got heated not because of a policy disagreement but because multiple republican members insisted they should be able to bring loaded guns into
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committee hearings with them. yesterday was also ohio congressman jim jordan's first hearing as the chair of the house judiciary committee. the hearing was literally titled the biden border crisis part 1, implying there'll be more parts to come like fast and the furious or fletch. that hearing started with the fight over how many times a day congress people need to say the pledge of allegiance to show how patriotic they are. again, yes, really this is how business is being conducted in the house of representatives. today jim jordan also announced that next week he'll hold his first hearing as chair of the so-called house subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government. so get ready, there is a lot more of this coming. it is all nonsense. it is all trolling. there is no real policy there but it is messaging, lots and lots of very loud messaging. how should democrats respond? joining us now is the man who
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has all the answers, robert gibbs, former house press secretary for president obama. what is the careful act democrats do? because on the one hand they have to show they're serious about governing, they have to stay above the fray, but on the other hand republicans are going to try to bait them. like today they had a vote to condemn the horrors of socialism for real and 109 democrats voted for it, right, this is messaging and it's empty but still messaging. so what's the right call here from a strategy perspective? >> well, look, i think we saw the beginnings of this at the very beginning of the congress getting organized. we realize there's some enormous personalities now in the republican caucus. the speaker not really in control of those personalities, and a lot of different peoples agendas are going to get forced through, and you're going to see a lot of hearings like this. we know from the last election,
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too, that republicans fell outside of the mainstream to a lot of swing voters. and we know from the early polling, the nbc poll just this past weekend, the american people already think that the republicans are going to overreach on investigations. so if you're a democrat, let them overreach on investigations, right? be focused on your messaging around i think the issues most important to people, good jobs, affordable health care, affordable medicine, affordable education, making sure the legislation the democrats passed during the first two years of the biden administration is implemented well. but i would say focus on -- focus on the issues that we know the american people care about the most. try to highlight the chicanery and the insanity, you know, because this is -- this is the group that is going to represent the republican party and demonstrate to the republican -- to the american people, excuse me, really for the next 15 months what the republican
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vision is like. and it's worked out well for the last two democratic presidents that have played off of new republican congresses. they both went onto be re-elected. >> well, it sounds like you think the chicanery such that it is, it is so well-articulated shall we say the republicans can only muddy the water so much. but i wonder if you think that extends to the debt ceiling, right? here is an example of republicans trying to lead the country off a cliff into financial catastrophe, but you can already hear even from moderate senate democrats that there needs to be some sort of negotiation, that biden can't be seen as just having a hard line and not communicating with the people who are basically a suicide caucus. even today joe biden -- i want to play this sound. this is joe biden talking about thenential talks he had with kevin mccarthy. let's hear what the president had to say about this. >> let's just sort of kind of
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join hands a little bit. let's start treating each other with respect. that's what kevin and i are going to do. not a joke. we had a good meeting yesterday. i think we've got to deit across the board. doesn't mean we've got to agree, we'll fight like hell, but let's treat each other with respect. >> robert, i get biden's posture in this, this is his brand to stitch the country back together. at the same time saying we're going to have a respectful conversation implies the conversation itself is worthy of respect. from what i can tell what the republicans are trying to do is absolutely insane and not worthy of respect. how do you play this if you're in the white house? >> i think you do this and they're beginning to do it now. i wouldn't confuse even a cordial meeting for negotiation. i think the president is going to be very stern on making sure both republicans in the house and the american people understand the obligations
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around the debt ceiling and really what can and should happen, which is if republicans want to have a debate and discussion about spending and if we want to do that as american people there's a budget and appropriations process we can do that. we can talk about wasteful spending. we can talk about big tax cuts, but there's a process for that that's outside of the debt limit and outside of what really hangs over an improving economy. and i think, look, in some ways joe biden is -- ran on being the grownup in the room, and i think joe biden and democrats are going to have to be the grownup in the room and show the american people what they're all about. now, that may not make some people on twitter happy. it may miss the opportunity to be overly snarky or point out different things, but i think the american people particularly when it comes to something as serious as the debt ceiling want
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to see a serious group dealing with it, and i think that's the role biden and democrats should really focus. >> what does he do when he walks into congress next week for the "state of the union"? this is ground zero for a series of insane investigations aimed at nothing more than political wounds. does biden call them out for this when he's standing in front of an audience trying to take him down? it sounds like you think he plays the statesman. >> i think he plays the statesman. i wouldn't be surprised if you hear something that contrasts an agenda focused on the things i talked about, affordability, health care, education, and jobs versus investigations that are going nowhere. i think you'll see very much and the 20 years ago, 25 years ago lots of people watched it and it could move numbers for a
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president. i think there are going to be smaller audiences these days, but this is an important moment to really start to setup a governing contrast between the people that are going to occupy the majority of the seats in that room next week and a president that quite frankly is probably going to spend most of his time talking over the heads of those people to the american people at home. and i think that's what he should be doing. >> talking over their heads is, yeah, he will definitely be talking over their heads. robert gibbs, former white house press secretary for president obama, it's great to see you, robert. thanks for your time. after the police killing of george floyd in 2020 police reform almost made it through congress but could not clear one very big hurdle. today in the wake of the killing of tyre nichols president biden and congressional black caucus members put that reform right back on the table. what they're calling for and whether it might happen this time. that's next. ight happen this time that's next.
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in 2021 kyle rittenhouse s stood trial for fatally shooting two men and wounding another with a semiautomatic rifle during an august 2020 protest over police violence in kenosha, wisconsin. the victims families hoped for justice and rittenhouse was charged with multiple crime. in the end he was fully acquitted. while some on the left like faven newsom worried about the
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message it might send to vigilantes, some on the right praised him as a hero. donald trump praised him and invited him to mar-a-lago. but the families of victims were not done. don huber, the father of anthony huber who tried to disarm rittenhouse before he shot him dead he filed a lawsuit. his family alleges police officers deputized rittenhouse and conspired with him to harm protesters. they say those actions violated his civil rights and caused his death. the law enforcement officers filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit based in part on a legal doctrine that protects officers from personal liabilities and legal claims just like this one. that legal doctrine is called qualified immunity and yesterday a judge ruled against that motion, the case can proceed at least for now. the judge says the question of qualified immunity is still a
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live matter which the judge will decide at a later date. huber's parents said in a statement make no mistake our fight to hold those responsible for anthony's death accountable in full force will have their day in court. a day in court a way around qualified immunity which husband protected so many officers who have shot and killed unarmed civilians like tyre nickels and too many others. that day in court is what members of the congressional black caucus discussed with president biden and vice president biden at the white house this afternoon. they want the president's help in passing the george floyd justice and policing act. that bill passed the house in 2021, but it fell apart in the senate. and sticking point was qualified immunity. will the bill have a different fate with this congress? president biden put it this way today. >> my hope is a dark memory that we've all been fighting for.
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>> joining us now is the co-founder and ceo for the center of policing equity and chair of african american studies and professor of psychology at yale university. i feel like we're messing a word in that introduction. phil, thank you for being here tonight. this is -- rarely do i feel the need to get very specific about parts of the law in such detail, but qualified immunity is the thing here, right? this is holding police officers accountable in civil cases because for people who do not know when we're talking about criminal charges for police forces, the police are criminally charged in less than 2% of fatal shootings and convicted in less than a third of those cases, so it's vanishingly rare to have police held accountable for fatal shootings in criminal cases. civil cases are a different matter. can you explain how we came to live in a world where qualified immunity is a thing police can
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count on as a shield effectively in cases where there appears to be gross negligence? >> sure, and i'll try to do it without getting extra, extra nerdy for the audience. >> you can be as nerdy as you need to be. >> essentially what happened in 1982 the supreme court case, people are concerned that not just law enforcement but the staff of elected officials won't be able to go about doing their jobs if they're worried that every little thing they do could be litigated and could become sort of a political football, kind of like what we saw in congress today. so the supreme court expands -- expands the blueprint what qualified immunity can do and essentially says if there wasn't this explicit example of this thing before then you can't be held accountable for it going forward. and the cases where it to comes up like exactly the cases you
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led with like kyle rittenhouse are so disgusting, someone has done something so disgusting and egregious and yet there wasn't a case just like that before and we're not able to hold law enforcement accountable somehow. we throw our hands up because of the doctrine of qualified immunity that people get really outraged about it. so that's why there are folks who say we've got to get rid of it. i can't tell you quite what the argument is about why we've got to keep it. i can tell you the argument advanced is law enforcement have to do their job but no science of law enforcement supports that as a reasonable conclusion, but that's essentially what it is and that's part of what the argument has been about with regards to the justice policing. >> and basically qualified immunity -- the advent of qualified immunity though there are cases that strengthen it in the '80s, it starts in the civil rights era, hmm, which is when people start saying what police are doing to civilians is not right and the first time there's
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justice for people. and quickly between 1961 and 1967 qualified immunity crop up to basically protect people who are doing wrongs against the weakest of society or against the most marginalized if you will. that's not a consistence dns, is it? >> that's right. essentially it gets codified in 1967, expanded in 1982, and those are periods of time you have particularly aggressive forces making sure there's a carve out so law enforcement doing dirty work that really appears bad -- by the way they didn't have home video cameras in 1967 but the shock to the conscience of the nation was photographs in nuclear weapons. there was new media showing pictures of things. you guys remember them where the fire hoses are being turned against school children, the police dogs, those same kind of things where all of a sudden we're seeing as if for the first time, wow, they're really doing terrible things to black folks.
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and now there's outrage about it. but as we're moving to think about what congress can do i think it's important that though it has those terrible disgusting roots and it is absolutely ideologically on principle a thing we've got to get rid of it, it is not going to solve all these problems. it has been named as the sticking point for the justice and policing act. i don't think that's real in politics and of the cases that qualify for qualified immunity the best research we have is only about 30% of the cases evoke it a little bit. i don't want us to think even if we get it through that's solving like a huge swath of this accountability issue. it is an important piece, it's a principle piece but so disgusting to us to look at, but it is not the largest lever we can get done. i want to adjust people expectations even if it makes it through congress being a vanishingly thin margin even on its own. >> we know there's action at the
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state level of qualified immunity, but there's another part of civil cases i think bears highlighting. if, in fact, law enforcement is found guilty in a civil case, who pays -- who pays the civil payout? this is shocking to me. i did not know this. the government, the local government, not the police department, local government and in some cases taxpayers are the people that pay out -- like there is a world in which tyre nichols family sues in a civil case and the people of memphis have to foot the bill for a police department that beat to death tyre nichols. is that right? >> so let's make it even more specific. tyre nichols is killed in memphis, and tyre nichols' family pays for the misconduct. because if there are taxpayers in that city that's exactly how it works. there are so many preces against officers being held individually accountable. by the way, individual officers are not walking around with
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millions of dollars for these kind of settlements. when we have in baltimore $13 billion just for the gun trace task force, individual officers couldn't do with that kind of compensation, but, yes, it comes back to the city and god forbid the city finds a way to move around that. the union would then protect and indemnifies individual officers, right, so it is not the case the officers pay a price outside the criminal context, but the city is paying a price and at the very least the union is paying that price in insurance claims that it setup to make sure don't actually affect the budget in any way. >> just the level of insanity and wrongness in all of this. philip, you did not nerd out. it was a brilliant explanation. thank you for your insight and wisdom as always. co-founder and ceo of the center for policing equity, it's always good to see you. >> good to see you.
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that is it for us tonight. we'll see you again tomorrow. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is coming up next. she has never posted a video depicting herself decapitating and killing fellow members of congress. she doesn't question whether a plane really smashed into the pentagon on 9/11. she does not wonder if school shootings in america are staged. she has not propagate
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