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tv   The Rachel Maddow Show  MSNBC  February 6, 2023 6:00pm-7:00pm PST

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capitol? >> well, we hope that our security systems, our police, and fbi are used in the best sense possible. we've seen where police are going awry, unfortunately. but we have law enforcement for a reason, and this is one of them, protect the people of the united states from this very kind of action. >> we will have to leave it there. david remnick, thank so much. and you can listen to david remnick's conversation with salman rushdie on the new yorker radio hour on npr, or whatever you get your podcast. david, thanks again for joining us tonight. >> always a pleasure. >> that is all in on this monday night. the rachel maddow show starts right now. good evening, rachel. start right now. good evening, rachel right now. developments in turkey and syria tonight, the death toll there is just astonishingly high right now.
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from an absolutely huge earthquake and almost equally large aftershock that hit today. the initial quake was centered in south central turkey. that initial jolt hit between 4:00 and 4:30 in the morning so people were home in their beds that initial quake was 7.8 and it was followed hours later by an aftershock that was 7.5 now, having such a huge quake like that followed in such quick succession but almost equally large quake, anything significantly damaged but still standing after the first shock, it came down in the aftershock in turkey alone they're saying ther more than 5,000 buildings that collapsed across across the southern border into northern rdsyria, there are aga thousands of, buildings collapd there as well between turkey and syria, we are talking about a death toll alreadyou approachin
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4,000 people killed with many, many, many more thousands of peoplend injured. tonight, of course, is the twin horror of trying to rescue people trapped in the rubble and under collapsed buildings while fullyil expecting more damaged buildings will continue to collapse while rescue efforts are under way but the survivors and the rescuers are in grave peril now. and it is cold tonight. in this part of turkey and syria. the national security council announced tonight that the united states isl immediately deploying two experienced urban search and rescue team, each of those is a team of 79 people, presumably they are shipping out immediately, it can't be soon enough. out you may be old enough to remember that there was a devastating, devastating earthquake in turkey in 1999. this was one of the biggest natural disasters of my lifetime. that 1999 quake in turkey killed between 15,000 and 20,000
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people. it was seen as a global level catastrophe. i have to tell you in magnitude that earthquake in 1999 was smaller than the one that hit today. part of the problem with responding to this one today is that it was such a big quake, it has flattened buildings in such a large area. ten different turkish provinces are in emergency response and in syria it's almost an equally large affected area but the response is complicated by the ongoing civil war there and the refugee crisis that it has created. the international rescue committee is calling the situation inli syria in particur an emergency within an emergency. again, the death toll already is almost unbelievably high. it is nearly 4,000 as of right now but there is reason to worry that that number is going to rise substantially. it is potentially going to be rising by a multiple. this is a big enough disaster that it is going to change this part of the world.
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and countries all over the world from us to iran from switzerland to hungary, everyone all over the world that has rescue teams to send they are sending them. as i said we are watching this develop tonight. we will let you know more as we learn more. i should tell you we'll be joined by kathleen belou. we've had her here as a guest on the show in the past. tonight she's going to be here because the department of justice held a dramatic surprise press conference about a plot they believe they disrupted by a neo-nazi group leader and one other person to launch an attack on the electrical power grid in maryland. in just the last three months we have seen at least nine different attacks in three differentck states targeting electrical power substations to deliberately cause power outages and damage electrical infrastructure so power can't be returned easily.
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one of the unsettling emerging themes in these attacks is the frequent involvement of white supremacists and neo-nazi groups. this is emerging as their current terroristic tactic of choice. it's not always them but appears to be often them as they plan the power grid attacks to set off civil unrest and what they hope will be a race war but, again, this waswa a surprise announcement by the fbi and justice department in maryland. kathleen is a researcher, leading researcher on these kind ofse threats on the united stat. she's going o to join us here le tonight. but we start tonight with a story and with a guest who has everybody tying themselves number knots rightty now. he isno a big deal, veteran new york lawyer. his name is mark pomerantz. as a federal prosecutor in the southern district of new york mark pomerantz led bothof the appellate unit at sdny and the criminal division at a sdny. that is not a normal prosecutor
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biography. that is a big deal. in private practice he litigated everything from mob cases to the most complex financial cases you can imagine. he was involved in cases involving everyone from steve jobs to osama bin laden to citigroup and lehman brothers. he is a big deal lawyer. that was national tv leading news in february of 2021 when it became known this man, mark pomerantz, had come out of retirement and been sworn in as a special assistant d.a. at the new york district attorney's office, specifically to work on that new york prosecutor's investigation of former president donald trump. mark pomerantz's tenure in that office, that t unusual tenure o his at the d.a.'s office specifically for the trump investigation, it lasted about a year, and by the end of that year, in february of 2022 he had
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been sworn in february '21, left in february '22. by the time he left, there had been no criminal charges brought against donald trump by that office. and mr. pomerantz once again made national headline news when he quit because he quit in loud protest of the fact that trump had not yet been charged. his resignation letter appeared in "the new york times." in it he said he and his investigative team determined there was no doubt that trump was guilty of numerous felony violations. he described it as a grave failure of justice. that there hadn't been charged levied against trump and he left. like i said, the man is a bit of a backfiring motorcycle. whether he intends it or not loudt noises follow him closel wherever he goes. but now to carry the metaphor forward it is starting to feel like the full on fourth of july because now mr. pomerantz is out
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asme of midnight tonight with ts new book called "people vs. donald trump," an inside account and in this slim book, he starts off with a bombshell revelation, he explains early on in the book that it wasn't just that he wanted to bring charges against former president donald trump, he says the district attorney, the new york d.a. who brought him into the office and hired him to work on the case, he wanted charges too. mark pomerantz says that in december 2021 just over a year after trump lost re-election, on december 13th, 2021 he says the then serving prosecutor in the manhattan r d.a.'s office cy vae authorized criminal charges againstth former president trum related to alleged financial crimes, allegedly submitting fake valuations of his properties and his assets in order to get banks to loan him money. december 13th, 2021, mark pomerantz says the d.a. in new york gave the okay to pursue criminal charges along those lines against trump.
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however, no such charges were filed. no such indictment was sought from a grand jury and as mark pomerantz explains in his book he saysai that is because, 2 1/ 3 weeks after that green light from cy vance, the new york d.a., a new new york d.a. was sworn in, cy vance left office without running for re-election. the newly elected d.a. alvin bragg was sworn in on new year's day, 2022 and for something as big a deal as the first time a president or former president has f ever been charged with a crime in the whole history of the country the new d.a. would have to be okay with that plan if something that dramatic and that historic was going to happen under his watch. as mark pomerantz tells the story ink his new book, alvin bragg, theoo new d.a. was not oy with that happening on his watch.pp at least not then. a new york d.a., a new one, alvin bragg says he just didn't think the case was ready to go ahead.
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mark pomerantz says he disagreed strongly with that assessment, he pled his proverbial case, he got very frustrated, i think it's fair to say, and he left the d.a.'s office, again to much fanfare. but now as we sit here tonight, two things have happened.re number one, the new york d.a. alvin bragg has gone ahead with what appears to be a criminal grand jury presentation about donald trump. themp grand jury is hearing witnesses and the presentation of evidence presumably toward a potential indictment of trump that started last week and, second thing, mark pomerantz just tonight is publishing this book about his experience investigating trump, his understanding ofp, the evidence against trump and his account of the wrangling among prosecutors and investigators about what they should do about trump's alleged criminal behavior. and i am not exaggerating to say
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this book is making everybody lose their minds. it's making everybody very angry. people really are losing their damnlo mines over this book, an it is full of red hot allegations and information. i mean, mr. pomerantz is criticizing thera d.a. for a decision not to go ahead a year ago with potential charges against trump, but the d.a. does now appear to be pursuing something along those lines, and we're going to talk about that in detail, the difference between what the d.a. is pursuing versus what mr. pomerantz wanted to charge trump with a couple of years ago, but people are also mad because here's mark pomerantz who was involved in this investigation now talking and writing about how the investigation worked and what they thought and what they found and what they argued about behind the scenes and because of that very unusual circumstance from a -- somebody working in a prosecutor's office, there is right now sort of a furious counterargument against mr. pomerantz and how he wanted
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to approach this case and what charges he wanted to bring so there is an argument against him on the substance but also just this utfree-floating lawyer fur out there f over his decision t publish anything about the case at all. and i can tell you that is gladitorial combat that i am interested in watching but not interested in joining that. i'm not oneed of those gladiato. i'm not even a lawyer. what i'm interested in, we the public and wed the press for better or worse, we do now get the benefit of what mark pomerantz can describe to us as the strength of the evidence against trump, its potential weaknesses, potential charges against trump and the wherewithal of the prosecutors who in new york at least appear to have trump in their sights. from mr. pomerantz's book, for example, we learn that there were at least nine -- he lists nine different areas of criminal
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inquiry intocr trump by the d.as office when mr. pomerantz came on board in late 2020, nine. he tells us that serious consideration was u given in 20 to charging trump with money laundering in m conjunction wit his hush money payments to a porn star in 2016. he tells us that serious consideration was given in 2021 to charging trump with enterprise corruption, meaning they considered a state rico indictment against him as if he were a mob boss. and mr. pomerantz tells us that in conjunction with the d.a. telling prosecutors in his office that they could go ahead with theirld plans to charge trump, mark pomerantz says they did, in k fact, draw up draft charging languages -- excuse me, draft charging language for potential charges against trump. so that's all new. we didn't know any of that. and, again, there is wild free-flowing lawyer rage, rage in lawyer circles about mark
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pomerantz having let us know that information at all. but, of course, i'm greedy. it just all makes me want to know more. here is mark pomerantz. veteran new york lawyer, former federal prosecutor, formerly a special assistant district attorney in thely new york d.'s officene working there specifically on the investigation ofhe former president donald j. trump. thankt you for being here. >> thank youk for inviting me, and i appreciate it. i appreciate the opportunity to talk to you. >> i t don't think that i am creating more free-flowing rage about you by letting the audience know that there is a lot of it, but i have to ask is there anything you want to take issue with. >> no, the only thing i might take issue with is describing me as such a big deal and my family. it doesn't feely that way to m. i'm writing the book as a 70 -- almost 72-year-old not quite
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retired lawyer, but thank you for having me. >> well, i'm happy to have you. you are a man who knows of what you speak and who has been there and done that in terms of the law both asms a federal prosecur and somebody in private practice involved in a lot of complex cases. let me ask you first of all about something i alluded to in the introduction which is that since thetr book was completed, know from sort of a close reading to the use of tense and the way you were describing it, since the book was completed we have seen these moves by the new york d.a. to make a presentment of evidence of some kind to a grand jury in new york athat would lead to asking that grand jury to indict mr. trump. from what we know before the grand jury right now, describing it as hearing witness testimony and reviewing other evidence about those hush money payments, how does that differ from what you thought that the d.a. should charge? >> well, when we were looking at
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charging donald trump, we were looking at a whole range of falsified business records and the bulk of the case had to do with his personal financial statements which we believed overstated the value of his assets and his net worth by billions of dollars a year for many years running and enabled him to get bank financing and other business advantages. at the same time, we had looked at the h hush money payments an by the end of 2021, the charges that we had in mind to bring would have included the hush money payment. it's the falsified business records relating to the reimbursement that was paid to michael cohen for the hush money that was paid to stormy daniels. >> cohen paid out the hush money. it was -- he was paid back by the trump organization and they came up with all sorts of false ways to describe what that payment -- to describe an account for that payment in their book. >> that's right.
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the repayment to cohen was disguised as the payment for legal services rendered on a monthly basis pursuant to a retainer agreement. except there was no retainer agreement and no services rendered andd was just being repaid for the money paid on donald trump's behalf to stormy daniels, and some other money as well. so in order to disguise the manner, the mechanism for the repayment, false business records were created and that was the crime that we were looking at. >> now, in technical terps you described there's a problem with that because unless those false business records were created to conceal another crime, that would justan be a misdemeanor, sort of wouldn't be worth bringing against trump. in order for it to be a felony there had to be some effort to conceal some other crime. is that right? did i understand that correctly? >> it certainly -- you need the
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intent to n commit or conceal another crime to raise the offense of a falsified business record to a felony from a misdemeanor. now, you say a misdemeanor would not be worth bringing against trump. reasonable people could take issue with that. when we first looked at the falsified business records and saw the legal problem and there was a legal problem, because it's not clear whether the other crime that a defendant has to intend to conceal or commit, whether federal crimes count. michael cohen pled guilty to a federal tocrime, a federal election law a violation but it not clear from the language of thefr statute that this -- anotr crime that raises the misdemeanor to aat felony can ba federal offense. it may be that that works. it may not be that that works. it's an undecided issue under new york law sode when we first looked at it, we saw, gee, there's a real risk here, a
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legal risk if we bring felony charges they'llri be reduced to misdemeanors and we're investigating a whole slew, as you mentioned, of other felony charges, so the first time in my tenure when this came up, we took the decision let's table the hush money situation. we referred to it in the office internally as the zombie case because it arose from the dead, went back into slumber, rose from the dead and happened a number of times so decided to keep the zombie case in the grave for the moment until we got further down the road of investigation then toward the end of the investigation as i've said, we intended to join those charges with the more consequential charges that we hoped to bring regarding the years of false financial statements. >> ial mentioned in the introduction that there were at least nine different sort of
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criminal areas of inquiry about potential criminality that the d.a.'s office was looking into at the time you joined. you say one of them was the hush money payment to stormy daniels. another one was taxes, potential improper business expense deductions, deductions of consulting feesio in his relationship with deutsche bank could he have defrauded deutsche bank by getting financing through overstated financial statements, whether he had engaged in money laundering using overseas bank accounts. the accuracy of materials he provided to the gsa about the old post office and a host of other things including insurance fraud, the restructuring of his loan on his chicago skyscraper. you go on and on and on. when you describe that litany of areas of potential criminal inquiry for trump and when you describe your reasoning and the debates between you and your team about the hush money thing, are you giving a potential life line to donald trump's defense lawyers that if they do end up
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getting charged with anything related to any of those items including the hush money matter, that your book could be used as evidence to question the charges in court to say, look, prosecutors have been looking at this for a long time, responsible prosecutors looked at this, decided nothing is there and decided not to charge in the past. this is an overreach. have you given the defense a leg up here? >> look, i don't think we've given the defense any kind of leg up. when you look at the public reporting about the grand jury presentation that may now be under way, obviously i don't knowy, what's going on behind closed doors in the d.a.'s office, and i don't know what evidence isow being presented. i don't know whether charges will be brought. but as it relates to the hush money h circumstances, those fas had been known literally for years. michael cohen wrote about them in his book. he testified about them, stormy daniels wrote a book. stormy daniels appeared on
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michael acohen's podcast to ta about it and the federal prosecutors brought their own prosecution based on those facts, so i'm not letting any cats out of the bag, if you will. those cats have been running all over h the place literally for years. >> but the reasoning about whether or not to bring charges based on those facts, is that potentially helpful to any defense counsel? >> i don't think so. the legal issue that i've noted in the book is an issue that appears on the facen of the st tut. it's already been written about, wasab britain about before my bk has come out. on the financial statement side of the coin, we don't know -- i certainly don't know what investigation is taking place, if any. i don't know whether charges will w ultimately be brought. what i do know is that the evidence underlying the charges we intended to bring is all out thereto in the public record in the civil case that the attorney
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general in the state of new york letitia james brought. she filed a civil complaint of well over 200 pages, which lays out in abundant detail the assets that were misvalued, the basis for the overvaluation of the assets, that is how she concluded and whyho she conclud that the assets were overvalued and the evidence that we were looking ater in connection with potential criminal case has been laid out in chapter and verse in that complaint and, again, there is nothing in my book about the financial statement investigation that -- the that we investigation were doing. there are no new facts that don't appear in the attorney general's complaint so i was pretty well satisfied when i wrote the book that i wasn't going tot interfere with any potential prosecution and, look, i wrote the book in part to say there should have been a
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criminal prosecution, there needs to be a criminal prosecution. the last thing i would have done is to do something that would get in the way of a criminal prosecution that i thought and still think should be brought. >> and now there might yet be one, i have much more to ask you. please stay right there. mark pomerantz who until last year led an investigation into former president donald trump at the new york d.a.'s office. his new book about his time there is called "people vs. donald trump." it's out tonight at midnight. we'll be right back. stay with us. as someone living with type 2 diabetes, i want to keep it real and talk about some risks. with type 2 diabetes you have up to 4 times greater risk of stroke, heart attack, or death. even at your a1c goal, you're still at risk
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this is from page 113 of mark pomerantz's new book, which is called "people vs. donald trump." it comes out tonight at midnight. we were looking at instance after instance of suspected illegal conduct. of course, they had to be provable, but if they were proved their collective weight left no doubt in my mind that trump deserved to be prosecuted. measures short of criminal prosecution had been used against trump, and he had dismissed them as trivial. looking at the totality of trump's conduct over the years i thought it was crystal clear that measures short of criminal prosecution meant nothing to him and would not deter him in the slightest from engaging in other anti-social behavior. indeed, the more successful he became, the more brazen was his behavior, he'd stiffed many contractors and small business owners who decided to advance services or products to the trump organization because, after all, donald trump was so
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wealthy. michael cohen had told us that a big part of his job was telling small credit tors who did business with trump that they weren't going to get paid and forcing them to accept whatever modest sups trump would give them. the enterprise corruption statute targeted just this kind of behavior using a pattern of criminal activity to increase an entity's economic power enabling it to inflict greater social harm. mr. pomerantz, you describe that consideration of using state rico charges essentially against trump but then you say, quote, the task of building out the proof on the whole pattern of enterprise corruption was simply too ambitious for the human and investigative bandwidth we had. in other words, you think you have the substance of a case there but it was basically too hard to do given the resources of the d.a.'s office, is that fair? >> it is fair. one of the things that people need to remember is that the district attorney for new york county is a local prosecutor's office. this is not the kind of special
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counsel operation housed in the department of justice which hires and has a staff of dozens of lawyers and investigators working on a single mission. we had a small staff of lawyers, many of them with other responsibilities, we had to work within the jurisdictional and procedural limitations imposed by new york law, which are substantial as a for instance, if we want to speak as we did to a witness who lives in ohio, in a federal case fbi agents go serve a subpoena and there's nationwide service of process. if we want to speak to a witness who lives in ohio we have to go through an elaborate legal procedure involving the ohio authorities to see if that person can be compelled to speak to us. so for a whole variety of reasons have to go do with the substantive law of new york and the procedural law of new york and the resources we had, it became clear over time that an
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enterprise corruption case was simply biting off more than we could chew. there came a point when both car. carey dunne spoke about it but we were coming up on the end of vance's term and wanted to hire people with experience and didn't think it was fair to the incoming district attorney to start hiring senior people at the very end of cy vance's term and in any event, we ultimately decided that largely for practical reasons an enterprise corruption case was simply more than we could accomplish within a reasonable time. bearing in mind that we were trying to work quickly and bringing a racketeering case
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particularly one that incorporates other stuff, trump foundation, trump university, the hush money, the financial statements, it's such a big ball of wax that ultimately we decided, you know what, let's focus on a smaller more contained set of charges and that's when we started to focus on the financial statements. >> in doing some additional reporting preparing to talk to you tonight, we were able to learn from sources that the team working right now at the new york d.a.'s office is about 20, about 20 lawyers and investigators at the d.a.'s office and we don't know again what they are bringing before the grand jury and we don't know if any charges will arise or what they will be, but i'm also struck by your complimentary words about the new york attorney general's office and the investigation that was led by tish james there and that quarter billion dollar civil suit on the basis of trump's financial statements that you
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described earlier. now, one thing that happened when tish james revealed the factual basis for thaticism suit is she referred it to sdny suggesting that there's federal prosecution to be done there given that fact pattern. we have seen through public reporting and public revelations how much pressure main justice put on sdny to let trump off the hook particularly on the hush money issue. >> sure. >> while trump was president. now he's no longer president. do you believe that sdny will ever do anything with this? >> i haven't seen any reporting to indicate that there's an active investigation. and as i mentioned in the book, this was a case that cried out for federal investigation. for all the reasons i talk about there and have alluded to here. i don't know why there was never an intensive federal investigation of donald trump's finances. when "the new york times" did their big expose in october of
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2020 of trump's tax returns, i recall reading that and thinking to myself, well, this is going to start the feds on a substantial investigation, maybe it did and we never found out about it, but as i say, there's nothing to indicate that that investigation happened and one of the enduring mysteries which i can't answer is why it didn't happen. with respect to the ag, i was a little bit surprised but gratified about the extent of cooperation we got. the lawyers there had done a lot of work on the financial statements and it's reflected in the complaint that they filed and they were often ahead of us in terms of their fact finding and they were willing to share what they could legally without any jealousy or turf battles, and it actually was virtually unique in my experience to see
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one law enforcement agency cooperate as well with another as happened between the ag's office and the d.a.'s office. i thought they deserve add i lot of credit for that. >> that civil case due to be in trial by october of this year and as to whether or not there will be a criminal trial along those -- that fact pattern outlined in that civil trial or any other remains to be seen but we know more about this investigation than we've ever known before thanks to have very, very controversial book. mark pomerantz 5 is the author. "people vs. donald trump," an inside account. good luck. >> thank you so much. much more to get to tonight. stay with us. she's my sister and, we depend on each other a lot. she's the rock of the family. she's the person who holds everything together. ♪♪ it's a battle, you know i'm going to be there. keytruda and chemotherapy meant treating my cancer
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in 2017, may 2017 an 18-year-old neo-nazi in tampa, florida, shot and killed two of his three roommates. when the police searched the apartment after that double homicide, they ended up also arresting in addition to the shooter they ended up arresting a third roommate, one who was not shot, turns out that third roommate had been stockpiling a huge amount of homemade explosives in their shared garage. in a separate incident a little more than a year earlier march 2016, a 28-year-old woman was arrested for robbing four different convenience stores in maryland while armed with a machete. now, get this.
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it all comes together. the machete wielder and the explosives hoarder then began a relationship. while they were each serving time in separate prisons. aww. now, today those two individuals were arrested again. federal prosecutors allege the two plotted to attack five electrical power substations around baltimore, maryland. their plan was allegedly to knock out a ring of five specific electrical substations all in one day because they thought that would cause a cascading effect to, quote, completely destroy the whole city meaning presumably they expected to knock baltimore into a pre-electric light state of being and one that couldn't easily be repaired. now, if that whole plan, if that whole idea to shoot up electrical substations to knock out the power semi permanently and cause major chaos, if that plan is giving you deja vu, you are not mistaken. there have been at least nine attacks on electric power substations, at least nine
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attacks across three different states just in the past three months. early last year, homeland security issued a bulletin warning that domestic violent extremists have, quote, developed credible specific plans to attack electricity infrastructure since at least 2020. now, in most of these attacks suspects haven't been identified and that means motives can't be identified either. but last month npr affiliates in oregon and washington obtained an fbi memo showing that neo-nazi groups were calling for attacks just like this. the neo-nazis that the fbi was tracking, quote, believed an attack on electrical infrastructure will contribute to their ideological goal of causing societal collapse and a subsequent race war in the united states. and that's part of what makes these arrests about this planned baltimore attack today significant. because the former explosives hoarder arrested today, he's the founder of a neo-nazi group
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called the atomwaffen and former machete wielding robber wrote what the fbi believed to be an ideological manifesto of sorts, which both references hitting electrical substations to knock out power and also her admiration for the unabomber and for hitler. joining us now is kathleen baloo, the author of "bring the war home." it is really the seminal text in this field. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> so i said at the top of the show tonight this is peers to be emerging as a favored tactic of the white power movement and the sort of neo-nazi affiliated white supremacist movement in the united states. is that a fair generally race? >> yes, although the electrical part may be new but infrastructure attacks by this movement are not new.
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this is a strategy pioneered by the order in 1983 moving forward. and that group is sort of the base of -- well, the tactical base for atomwaffen division which translates to the base. so infrastructure attacks are one kind of violence among several others that are all played out in a strategy in common in order to bring about what the movement sees as the overthrow of the united states, creation of a whitette know state. mass violence against communities of color and even genocide against nonwhite people so infrastructure attacks sit next to a show of force violence like the january 6th attack on the capitol and mass casualty violence like the oklahoma city bombing. all of these exist together within one broad ideology in the white power movement. >> i've heard this described as accelerationist tactics and i
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know that's an awkward word but i wonder if you can sort of explain the thinking there because i feel like there's a little bit of a leap of logic to it, which makes it not translate to nonexpert sort of news consumers about this. the idea you attack infrastructure, you'd cause people material pain. you'd cause chaos and upset and then somehow there's a slippery slope that results in race war and white people taking over and genocide against nonwhite people. why do they believe that infrastructure attacks and resulting chaos ultimately accelerate us to some race war future where they think they'll win? >> so, infrastructure attacks and mass casualty violence and show of power attacks are all meant to do the same thing in the ideology of this movement which is laid out in books like "the turner diaries" and in movement ideological writings of other kinds. they are all supposed to awaken other people to what these
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activists see as the staggering state of emergency problems that face white people. the woman arrested today in that piece of writing apparently said or said to an informant she would do anything for my people. this is the idea of white people as her race and as her nation. that white people will be extinguished if action is not taken so infrastructure attacks like taking out the power supply in baltimore, taking out heat, taking out the ability of hospitals to perform their operations, right, if you don't have hospital electricity, you can't run the basics of any of our systems, these are meant to make other white people awaken to these injustices as perceived by these activists so that everyone will rise up a little bit at a time against the broader -- what they would call the system which is the united states government.
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>> absolute insanity and holding force on a significant sliver of the white power movement you're describing for at least the last 40 years. kathleen belew, associate professor of history at northwestern author of the seminal secretary "bring the war home." professor belew, thanks for your time tonight. >> thanks for having me. >> we'll be right back. stay with us. relieve 9 of your worst cold and flu symptoms, to help take you from 9 to none. for max-strength nighttime relief, nyquil severe. she found it. the feeling of finding the psoriasis treatment she's been looking for. sotyktu is the first-of-its-kind, once-daily pill for moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis for the chance at clear or almost clear skin. it's like the feeling of finding that outfit psoriasis tried to hide from you. or finding your swimsuit is ready for primetime.
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have an update on a story we covered a couple of weeks ago about an actual member of congress who was definitely also an international man of mystery. his name is republican congressman george santos and his every utterance about his resume and record is now being scrutinized because almost everything he's ever said about himself is turning out to be a big porky pie which is rhyming slang for the man. you might remember last month we got this interview he did with a brazilian podcast. and in this podcast interview the congressman said that he had been mugged in the middle of fifth avenue in new york city in broad daylight and said the mugger ran off among other things with his shoes leaving him standing there in the middle of fifth avenue in his socks. he also said somebody had then tried to kill him because of that, he said an nypd police escort had to stand guard at his home because he had been the
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victim of attempted murder. and you know who am i to say? maybe. if you were mugged in the middle of fifth avenue, if somebody tried to kill you, you would probably call the police, right? i mean, you must have called the police if the result was that a police officer got stationed outside your home. that doesn't just happen. after we found that interview and those statements by congressman santos we checked to see if he had ever filed a police report about his alleged dramatic fifth avenue mugging or about being the victim of an attempted murder. well, now i can tell you here is what we have found out. this information was obtained by our colleagues at wnbc reported here exclusively. according to law enforcement sources there is no known record filed with the new york city police department in the last three years showing that george santos claimed to be the victim of a robberyth avenue. same goes for anthony devolder which is another name george santos has used in the past.
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no police report on file for either of those names reporting a robbery of shoes or anything else in new york city. nor is there any record of george santos alerting the nypd to an attempted murder against him. according to the same law enforcement sources, there is just one police report on record that mentions george santos. it concerns an incident in 2021 where mr. santos' allegedly threw garbage at him. while nobody likes to have garbage thrown at him mr. santos reported that his neighbor missed so one failed attempt by his neighbor to throw garbage at him once, yes, there was a police report about that, nothing about an attempted murder. nothing about a mugging specific to his shoes or not. a law enforcement source has checked their full log between january 2019 up to the end of last month, they tell us to the best of their knowledge aside from that one complaint about the neighbor lobbing trash in
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his general direction but not right at him george santos apart from that had not filed a single police report or complaint to the nypd in any of the last three years. now, we reached out to congressman santos' office to ask about all of this. his office told us that this is not a congressional issue and so we should therefore ask his lawyer. we did. his lawyer told us, no comment. and, look, who knows, maybe republican congressman george santos decided to deal with that mugging in manhattan on his own, maybe he summoned that police escort with his mind. but we checked it out and doesn't seem to have gone down the way you might have expected. we'll be right back. as you may be, by the intrusions of religion into our secular government. that's why i'm asking you to join the freedom from religion foundation, the nation's largest and most effective association of atheists and agnostics
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working to keep state and church separate, just like our founders intended. please join the freedom from religion foundation today. ron reagan, lifelong atheist, not afraid of burning in hell. alice loves the scent of gain so much, she wished there was a way to make it last longer. say hello to your fairy godmother, alice. and, long lasting gain scent beads. try gain odor defense. be gone, smelly everything! ♪3, 4♪ try gain o♪or defense. ♪hey♪ ♪ ♪are you ready for me♪ ♪are you ready♪ ♪are you ready♪ realtor.com (in a whisper) if we use kevin's college fund, we can afford this house. the house whisperer! this house says use realtor.com to find options within your budget. good luck young man. realtor.com to each their home.
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