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. good evening, rachel. , rachel we are continuing tonight to watch the developments in turkey, and in syria. the death toll there is just astonishingly high. right now. from an absolutely huge earthquake and an almost equally large after shock that hit today. the initial quake was centered in south central turkey. the initial jolt hit between 4:00 and 4:30 in the morning, so people were home in their beds. that initial quake was a 7.8

magnitude, which is just enormous, and it wasst followed hours later by an after shock that was 7.5. now, having such a huge quake like thatno followed in such quk secession by such an almost equally large quake which means anything significant damagely after the first shock, it came down in the after shock. in turkey alone they're saying there are more than 5,000 buildingsha collapsed across 14 different turkish cities. across the southern border of turkey into northern syria, thousands of n buildings collapsed there again as well. between turkey and syria, we are talking about a death toll alreadyt approaching 4,000 peoe killed with many, many more thousands people, injured. tonight, of course, is the horror of trying to rescue people trapped in the rubble and under collapsed buildings while also fully expecting that more damaged buildingse will contin

to collapse while rescue efforts are under c way. both the survivors and rescuers are in grave peril now, and it is cold tonight in this part of turkey and, soaria. the national security counsel announced tonighty that the united states is immediateliy deploying two experienced urban search and rescue teams.cu each of those is a team of 79 people. some they are shipping out immediately. itdi can't be soon enough. 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 er lifetime. that 1999 quake in turkey killed between 15 and 20,000 people. it was seen as a global level catastrophe. i have to tell you in magnitude that earthquake in i 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 ipsuch a large area. ten different turkish provinces arece in emergency response rig now, and in syria it's almost an equally large affected area, but syria the response is complicated by the ongoing civil war there and the refugee crisis it has created. the situation in syria is beinged an emergency within an emergency. again, the death toll already is almost unbelievably high. it is nearing 4,000 right now, but there's reason4, to believe that number is going to rise substantially. it is potentially going to be rising by multiples. this a big disaster it's going to change parts of the world. countries all over the world to us to iran, switzerland, hungary, they're sending the rescue teams right now. as i said we're watching this story develop tonight. we'll let you know more as we

learn more. i should also tell you we're going to be joined tonight by one of the nation's leading researchers on far right extremism and white power movements. tonight she's going to be here because the department of justice today 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 different states targeting electrical power substations to deliberately caught cause power outages and damage infrastructure so power can't be returned easily. one of the sunsetling emerging themes in these attacks is the frequency of white supremacist and neo-nazi groups, this is emerges as their terror tactic

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 was a surprise announcement by the fbi and justice department in maryland.a kathleen belew is a researcher,e leading researcher on these kinw of threats on the united statese she's going to join us here live tonight. but we start tonight with a story and with a guest who has everybody tying themselves number knots right now.ts he is 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 both the appellate unit at sdny and the criminal division at sdny. that is not a normal prosecutor biography. that is a big deal. in private practice he litigated everything from mob cases to the most complex financial cases you can imagine. f he was involved in cases e. involving everyone from steve ol jobs to osama bin laden to citigroup and lehman brothers.

he is a big deal lawyer.d that's why it was big deal piece of tv, that's why it 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 tr investigation of former ew president donald trump.io mark pomerantz's tenure in that office, that unusual tenure of 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 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. i that there hadn't been charged levied against trump and he left. like i said, the man is a bit of a backfiring motorcycle.ng whether he intends it or not loud noises follow him closely wherever he goes. but now to carry the metaphor forward it is starting to feel like the full on fourth of julyi because now mr. pomerantz is out as of midnight tonight with this 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 d.a.'s office cy vance authorized criminal charges against former president trump related to alleged financial crimes, allegedly submitting fake valuations of his properties and his assets in order to get banks to loan him money.et december 13th, 2021, mark pomerantz says the d.a. in new york gave the okay to pursue criminal charges along those lines against trump. however, no such charges were filed. no such indictment was sought from a grand jury and as mark pomerantz explains in his book he says that is because, 2 1/2, 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 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 in his new book, alvin me bragg, the new d.a. was not okay with that happening on his watch. 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.se mark pomerantz says he disagreez 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 muco fanfare. but now as we sit here tonight, two things have happened.

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. the 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 of the evidence g against trump and his account of the wrangling among prosecutors and investigators about what they should do about trump's alleged criminal behavior.im and i am not exaggerating to say this book is making everybody lose their minds. it's making everybody very ev angry. people really are losing their l damn mines over this book, and it is full of red hot ve o allegations and information. i mean, mr. pomerantz is criticizing the 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 c 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 founo and what they argued about behind the scenes and because o that very unusual circumstance from a -- somebody working in a prosecutor's office, there is so right now sort of a furious counterargument against so mr. pomerantz and how he wanted 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 free-floating lawyer fury out there over his decision to publish anything about the case at all.

and i can tell you that is gladatorial combat among lawyers that i am interest in watching, but i am not at all interested in joining that. i'm not one of those gladiatorso i'm not even a lawyer. what i'm interested in, we the public and we 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 ca 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 inquiry into trump by the d.a.'s office when mr. pomerantz came on board in late 2020, nine. he tells us that serious

consideration was given in 2021 to charging trump with money laundering in conjunction with his hush money payments to a porn star in 2016. he tells us that serious consideration was given in 2021h 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 their plans to charge trump, mark pomerantz says they did, in fact, draw up draft charging languages -- excuse me, draft charging language for an 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 pomerantz having let us know rc that information at all. but, of course, i'm greedy.ti it just all makes me want to know more.l here is mark pomerantz. veteran new york lawyer, former federal prosecutor, formerly a o

special assistant district os attorney in the new york d.a.'s office, working there specifically on the investigation of former president donald j. trump.do thank you for being here. >> thank you for inviting me, and i appreciate it.ou i appreciate the opportunity to talk to you. >> i don't think that i am creating more free-flowing rage about you by letting the hi audience know that there is a w lot of it, but i have to ask is there anything you want to take issue with or if there's anything i described wrongly. >> no, the only thing i might ed take issue with is describing me as such a big deal and my family. it doesn't feel that way to me. i'm writing the book as a 70 -- almost 72-year-old not quite retired lawyer, but thank you wy for having me. >> well, i'm happy to have you. you are a man who knows of what you speak and who has been ther and done that in terms of the law both as a federal prosecutor and somebody in private practice involved in a lot of complex cases.

let me ask you first of all about something i alluded to inh the introduction which is that since the book was completed, i 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 grandt 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 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 hush money payments and 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 al 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. 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 and 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 e 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 just 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 intent to 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 crime, a federal election law violation but it'sm not clear from the language of the statute that this -- another crime that raises the misdemeanor to a felony can be a federal offense. it may be that that works. it may not be that that works. it's an undecided issue under new york law so when we first looked at it, we saw, gee, there's a real risk here, a legal risk if we bring felony charges they'll 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 a because it arose from the dead, went back into slumber, rose from the dead and happened a ea 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'vi said, we intended to join those charges with the more consequential charges that we hoped to bring regarding the years of false financial statements. >> i mentioned in the introduction that there were at least nine different sort of criminal areas of inquiry about potential criminality that the r 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 fees 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 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.he this is an overreach. have you given the defense a leg up here?iv >> 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 know what's going on behind closed doors in the d.a.'s office, and i don't know what d evidence is being presented. i don't know whether charges will be brought. but as it relates to the hush money circumstances, those facts had been known literally for no years. michael cohen wrote about them in his book. he testified about them, stormy daniels wrote a book. stormy daniels appeared on michael cohen's podcast to talk 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 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 notedi in the book is an issue that appears on the face of the statute. it's already been written about, was britain about before my book 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 ultimately be brought. what i do know is that the evidence underlying the charges we intended to bring is all out there in the public record in the civil case that the attorney 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 an assets that were misvalued, the basis for the overvaluation of

the assets, that is how she concluded and why she concluded that the assets were overvalued and the evidence that we were looking at in connection with a 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 criminal investigation that we 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 to interfere with any potential prosecution and, look, i wrote the book in part to say there should have been a 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 etw prosecution that i thought and still think should be brought. >> and now there might yet be one, i have much more to ask you.mu please stay right there.

our guest is 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."le it's out tonight at midnight. we'll be right back.ig stay with us. h us

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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 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 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 enterprise corruption case was simply biting off more than we could chew. there came a point when both carey dunne and i 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 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 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 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 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 this very, vore controversial book. mark pomerantz 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. stay with us life insurance on a fixed budget, remember the three ps. what are the three ps? the three ps of life insurance on a fixed budget are price, price, and price. a price you can afford, a price that can't increase, and a price that fits your budget. i'm 54, what's my price? you can get coverage for $9.95 a month. i'm 65 and take medications. what's my price? also $9.95 a month. i just turned 80, what's my price? $9.95 a month for you too.

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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. it all comes together. turns out 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 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 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 belew, the author of "bring the

war home, the white power movement in paramilitary america." 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 appears 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 generalization? >> yes. although the electrical part may be new but infrastructure attacks by this movement are not new. 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 seeks, which is the overthrow of the united states, creation of a white united states. 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 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 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. >> absolute insanity and holding force on a significant sliver of the white power movement you're describing as you said for at least the last 40 years. kathleen belew, associate professor of history at northwestern author of the seminal text "bring the war home" professor belew, thanks for your time tonight. >> thanks for having me. >> we'll be right back. stay with us. us turns out, some wishes do come true.

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you might remember last month, a couple weeks ago 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 victim of attempted murder. and you know who am i to say? maybe. but think about it. 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 robbery on fifth avenue. same goes for anthony devolder which is another name george santos has used in the past. 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' neighbor

allegedly through some 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. our law enforcement sources 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 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 isn't a congressional issue and 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.

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a quick reminder. president biden delivers his "state of the union" address tomorrow. our special coverage starts at 8:00 p.m. eastern. i'll be there as part of that along with my colleagues joy reid and nicole wallace and the great lawrence o'donnell along with many of our beloved colleagues. we'll see you here at 8:00 p.m. eastern. "way too early" to jonathan lemire is up next. new overnight, the number of people killed following a massive earthquake in turkey and syria is rising. as crews