hi there, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. before the january 6th select committee ever got off the ground, before it existed, and well before the first signs ever emerged that the justice department was investigating the trump part of the trump coup plot, before even donald trump's second impeachment trial wrapped up. one local prosecutor in georgia decided she would take on donald trump and the unprecedented assault on our democracy in the wake of the 2020 election and she launched a criminal probe into the conduct of the ex-president and his allies in her state. today, about two years and one week to the day that that investigation was launched, we finally got our first real glimpse into her work. the work of fulton county district attorney fannie willis. portions of her report compiled by a special grand jury were

released this morning. the report gives us a sense of the depth of her investigation. 75 witnesses, a mountain of documents and data. along with testimony from investigators, and there are two major findings with what was released from the special grand jury. they were inside the excerpts of the report released this morning. one of which could lead to major legal consequences for one or more of those 75 witnesses. we'll read from the report. quote, a majority of the grand jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it. the grand jury recommending that the district attorney seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling. whether to bring indictments for perjury is one of the many important questions facing the d.a., who has, in her hand, the full report, with the recommendations for who should be indicted for their role in trying to overturn the 2020 election result in georgia, based on baseless claims of voter fraud from trump.

here's what the report had to say about those. quote, the grand jury heard extensive testimony on the subject of alleged election fraud from poll workers, investigators, technical experts, and state of georgia employees and officials, as well as from persons still claiming that such fraud took place. we find by unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election. potential criminal culpability for the ex-president and his allies in the wake of the partial release of the fulton county grand jury report is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. patricia murphy is here, neal katyal is with us, and the u.s. special correspondent for vbc studios. patricia, take me through how this landed today in georgia.

>> well, we had all been told to expect that a piece of this report, actually, three pieces of this report, the introduction, the conclusion, and this note about potential perjury charges, we knew it would come this week. we were told to lower our expectations about what we would learn today. we knew there would be no names, we knew there would be no specific charges, but i think by saying how much of this has been redacted and it's almost all of the report that's been redacted, it let us know that something that fannie willis said was crucially important when she asked that this report be kept mostly pry vault for now. she said she wanted to protect the due process rights of potential future defendants. and that was above and beyond any kind of perjury conversation that we were already having. so, that let us know that fannie willis is more than likely seeing this report to be bringing indictments. there are potential future defendant defendants. of the 75 witnesses that came

before this grand jury, we don't know who that is going to be, but we do know that this is a process that will continue, that is ongoing, and that she's more than likely going to be bringing criminal charges we lated to the 2020 election here in georgia, which is just totally unprecedented. >> so, neal, here's a partial -- i know -- this is a list of who was subpoenaed. lindsey graham, rudy, mark meadows, mike flynn, john eastman, cassidy hutchinson, former congressman jody heist, pat cipollone, the governor, brian kemp, newt gingrich. tell me what you make of this, the real bombshell from today is, as patricia's talking about, that this grand jury, a majority found that someone had purgered him or herself in front of them, as well as the fact that they interviewed, it sounds like, an

extensive list of experts and officials and found no evidence of fraud. >> yeah, nicolle, so, i think the report today, at least the redacted part we've seen, tells us two things. one, some people committed perjury, and two, there's no evidence that trump won the 2020 election in georgia. so, bill barr would summarize this report as no crimes and trump won, but in the reality-based community in which we live, what this report is saying is that there is a finding by this grand jury of perjury, and the people who testified before this georgia grand jury are a kind of rogue list of folks, people you mentioned, you know, sidney powell, john eastman, mike flynn, people like that. and the trump world is not known for. >> bob: being a bastion of truth, but potential perjury charges are really serious, with much jail time.

and so any witness that wasn't 100% honest in their testimony ought to be very nervous right now. >> katty, we went back and looked at, you know, the georgia -- the plot to overturn the results in georgia, perhaps had the most public-facing evidence both of trump as a -- the coordinator, the quarterback, if you will, jeffrey clark as one of his key lieutenants at doj, and mark meadows, who traveled into the state during these incredibly fraught weeks between trump's defeat and january 6th. let me show you some of what john eastman said in december, in georgia, at a georgia state legislative hearing. >> your argument is that essentially we have a failed election that would require the legislature to step in and assign electors, am i correct? >> yes. >> i don't know where the evidence is. what do you say to that?

>> well, there are two issues here. there's one, this extent of the fraud in the casting of ballots, and the other, which is undisputed, the failure to comply with the staff sure scheme that this legislature sent out. >> katty, mr. eastman is known to be under pretty intense scrutiny by doj, and it sounds like he's been scrutinized here, as well. >> yeah. what we don't know is who is being committed perjury, who are the people that we think lied about something, we don't know what it is they lied about. as you suggested earlier, there's plenty of evidence over history that there are people close to donald trump who haven't told the truth over the years, and on this issue of fraud, despite all of the

evidence that we've seen from the january 6th investigation, and all of the evidence that courts found or rather the lack of evidence that courts found, there are still people around donald trump that are -- mr. eastman saying there was fraud committed. i think we haven't actually learned a ton more from what was revealed today in fulton county, but that, i don't think, make it any of the less important, because of the consequences that the people down in georgia suffered. mr. brad raffensperger's testimony about how even his daughter-in-law, who had recently lost her husband, people were trying to get into her house. i spoke to election workers down in georgia who had bomb tlements against them. people suffered real consequences, because of this kind of allegation of fraud, and because of allegations that the election was stolen and there were dead people casting ballots or the machines were rigged or the election poll workers themselves were fraudulent. and that's really important. that's -- i think as much as

anything why the findings of this is so important, because to clarify that the process itself was not fraudulent and to give, you know, justification to all of those people who have suffered because of the things that mr. eastman was saying. >> and again, there was never any evidence of fraud. we know that bill barr benlt every norm that exists at the justice department, ahead of the election to preinvestigate alleged allegations of fraud, he didn't find any. we know rudy and 60 lawsuits failed to find any. we know, i believe the georgia result was counted three times, they didn't find any. but here's more of what katty's talking about, the human toll of john eastman and rudy giuliani and donald trump's lies. this is ruby freeman and shaye moss. >> i've lost my name and i've lost my reputation. i've lost my sense of security, all because a group of people,

starting with number 45 and his ally rudy giuliani decided to scapegoat me and my daughter, shaye, to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen. >> it's turned my life upside down. i no longer give out my business card. i don't transfer calls. i don't want anyone knowing my name. i don't want to go anywhere with my mom, because she might yell my name out over the grocery aisle or something. i don't go to the grocery store at all. i haven't been anywhere at all. >> patricia, how central were the victims? i mean, i think at a national level, we focus so much on harry dunn and michael fanone and the officers who engaged in what they described as medieval combat with trump supporters,

but i think in georgia, that moment where ruby freeman and shaye moss testify about how their life is still, today, destroyed, unrecognizable from before the lies told by trump and rudy and john eastman and others. how much do you think that weighed on willis, the victims of these lies in her state? >> oh, i think those statements were hugely important, because it goes to the fact that this was not -- if it was a crime, it certainly wasn't a victimless crime. it wasn't just statements that came and went. in addition to shaye moss and her mother, hundreds and hundreds of georgia election workers were under very similar kinds of scrutiny, allegations, many of them had death threats coming in, many of them had to leave their homes, all because of these lies that were spinning out so constantly from the trump campaign. and then above and beyond the human toll, you have to really look at the really significant

changes that republican lawmakers made to the laws in the state of georgia, the voting laws, following those allegations from donald trump. republican lawmakers passed a sweeping overhaul of our election laws with senate bill 202. that was just happening in the shadow of all of this controversy, when republican voters were calling their own state senators and state lawmakers and saying, we don't believe that this election was fair and square, you have to go in and make sure that these laws are changed. and so, we are now living with an entirely new set of election laws because of those allegations, which were never, never proven true, in fact, they were repeatedly proven untrue. but we still have these consequences that the state of georgia is going to live with in perpetuity. >> well, the hypocrisy of gabe sterling and brad raffensperger, who came out on the nonparatis pa toir side of overturning the results and have been rightly celebrated for that, they backed

and supported a law predicated on the lie of fraud, which they risked their lives to assure the country and every georgian didn't exist in georgia. there was no fraud, they said. how do you square those two things in the state? >> what we're hearing from republican lawmakers is that they felt like they had to take something back to their voters, that their own voters had so completely lost faith in elections from then and into the future, unless something changed. they would never believe another election again if they didn't go in and start making significant changes to the laws. obviously democrats in the state said, well, that is ridiculous, because joe biden won, but all of you guys won your elections. that really was not important in the conversation. what was important was this intense pressure on lawmakers from their own gop voters who believed donald trump, believed all of these people who came in on behalf of donald trump and said, that election was stolen,

and it can't be trusted, and no elections can be trusted in the future, unless everything changes. >> i mean, the cognitive dissonance of kemp, raffensperger, steriling, saying the election was free from fraud and then every official in the state backing a law to make it more difficult to vote because the trump base was so squawky and age stated is just -- it's stunning. it should never be overlooked as one of the prices of donald trump's lies. ruby freeman and shaye moss lost their name and as pa trish is that rightly points out, so did hundreds of other election officials, because of the lies told, not just nationally, but in their state. here's rudy giuliani testifying before the georgia state legislature. >> whether you're a republican or democrat, this is not a machine you want counting your votes. second, on the -- so, i don't consider that a partisan issue at all. but it does cast doubt on the entire legitimacy of the vote.

and the fact that you have the power to do this, state law doesn't in any way prevent you, the legislature, from immediately taking this over and deciding this. that -- that power, right, obligation, is given to you by the founding fathers, deliberately. >> so, those were lies told about dominion and smartmatic, neal, the subject of a multibillion dollar lawsuit against fox news and other outlets and rudy giuliani is having to defend telling those lies. we focus a lot on that lawsuit, but the laws were peddled in georgia, as well. do you think that he or anyone will face consequences for them? >> 100%, i do. so, i think the clip you just showed is paired so nicely against the prior clips you showed from the election workers and katty's really excellent point about the victims, because there's a way of thinking about

all this georgia stuff that is technical, it's about vote counting and people's eyes glaze over and so on, but what katty has done and those clips do, they remind us of the deep, human consequences. and why is that important? because as a prosecutor, i've had the privilege of teaching criminal law for 20 years at georgetown, the ultimate job of a prosecutor is to enforce the law and protect the weak. and here, you've really got a circumstance in which these really powerful people from new york and washington, all the way up to the president of the united states, are going and telling these lies, and while the lies may sound technical, they have the deepest of consequences to human beings. and when fannie wallis, the d.a., is thinking about what to do, her core mission is to enforce the rule of law even handedly, to protect those without power. and the story told here is one in which some people lied before

the grand jury, to try to keep this lie going about the election fraud and the like. the grand jury listened to all that evidence and they said, there's nothing to it, there was no election fraud, and they found, indeed, that people lied. that is the essence of a prosecution. there's no doubt in my mind that she's going to conclude that people are going to be prosecuted for this. the big, million dollar question is, will she conclude that about donald trump himself or will she do it with respect to rudy and the others in the rogue gallery? >> so, rudy giuliani and john eastman weren't the only people to travel to georgia to peddle donald trump's lie of fraud, which he was assured in the moment wasn't true by his own surrogates in the state, a republican governor, the republican secretary of state and his lieutenants. here's what the january 6th committee found and reported on about mark meadows' visit to georgia. when meadows made a visit on short notice to examine the audit of absentee ballots in

cobb county, georgia, he spoke to deputy second of state jordan fuchs. ultimately, meadows connected watson with the president, the president, who claimed that he had won the election and pressed her to say that he had won, just say it. the select committee obtained a copy of their recorded phone call, which is detailed below. the president told watson that he had, quote, won georgia by a lot. you have the most important job in the country right now, he told her, and suggested, when the right answer comes out, you'll be praised. four days later, meadows texted fuchs, in which he asked, is there a way to speed up fulton county signature verification in order to have results before january 6th, if the trump campaign assists financially? fuchs wrote in response that she will answer asap. katy, i'm confronted with the reality that i'm not a lawyer,

but this sounds to me like donald trump got on the phone and directed state officials to, quote, find enough votes to make him win a state that he knew he lost, and then meadows offered to pay for it? >> yeah, i mean, you can see echoes in other areas, right? you can see a little bit of echoes and cassidy hutchinson, who had a lawyer who was paid for by supporters of donald trump, and then when she switched her lawyer, she started saying a very different thing to january 6th, also that tone of, we know you're going to do the right thing that we know that people around donald trump have used who were witnesses in potential charges against the former president or investigations into the former president, so, there is -- and that, what you just read out now, is very similar lawyer to what donald trump was saying to raffensperger. i know that i won by a lot, without producing the evidence for it, and then meadows involvement, too. but i think it is, you know, all of this is not -- the human

consequences of what these people were doing, and the pressure that we know raffensperger himself was under and fuchs was under, too, but there's the undermining of the system itself. that is the other consequence of this, the individuals who are there to try to protect the system, but what they really worry about is people stop believing about the next election, and the election after that. and i guess that's perhaps, you know, their argument for why they had to have some kind of legal changes if the state, even though there's a dissonance, if there wasn't a problem, why do you have the legal changes? but it damages individuals and it undermines the system, makes it harder to find election workers. they don't think the job is safe. and that's not good for american democracy, and behind it are these people, you know, in positions of power who aren't from the state, pulling strings to get what they want. >> perfectly put. patricia murphy, thank you for starting us off. so grateful to have your contributions and thank you for bringing it back to that law that was so objectionable that

major league baseball moved the all-star game out of georgia. neal and katty, stick around. when we come back, it wasn't just officials in the state of georgia that faced pressure from the ex-president and his merry band of loyalists. how officials in other states pushed back against the big lie and similar dark ops and are still asking for accountability today. michigan's secretary of state will join us. plus, the justice department's special counsel jack smith is pushing things along. reportedly issuing a subpoena for someone we've been talking about, trump's white house chief of staff, a man involved in all things that took place in the oval office that day. we'll look at that. later in the program, on the ground in east palestine, ohio, at the sight of the train derailment, which has filled hazardous chemicals into that town. the head of the epa and the state's two senators visiting with residents, wanting answers, and today. all those stories and more when

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♪♪ mr. secretary, why didn't you just quit and walk away? >> because i knew that we had followed the law, we had followed the constitution. i think sometimes moments require you to stand up and just take the shots when you're doing your job. and that's all we did. you know, we just followed the law and we followed the constitution. and at the end of the day, president trump came up short. >> that was georgia's secretary of state brad raffensperger on

why he resisted the intense pressure that he felt and was applied by the ex-president and his allies to manufacture evidence of election fraud, of which, of course, there was never any. he was one of many state-level officials, most of them republicans, many of them republicans, in georgia, and across the battleground states who faced the wrath of donald trump and his allies as they sought to overturn the election through the courts, through state legislatures, and when all else failed, through the violent insurrection at the state capitol. with us now, michigan's secretary of state. i want to show you something that you said what this was like for you, because we are focusing on raffensperger, but from the trump side, this was a national effort. >> even the president himself had called on me to be arrested and tried for treason,

potentially executed. >> to hear that the president of the united states, when he loses the election in michigan, decides that the way to deal with that is to accuse you of treason, to ask -- isn't there some way to arrest her? >> we should stop expecting that there is a bottom to the lengths that people will go to overturn legitimate election results and seize power in our country. >> so, you endured a particularly brutal pressure campaign and threats outside your home and to your young family. but it also was directed by trump. and i'm not ever clear on why he wasn't investigated aggressively after all this became known, he was tweeting his attacks against you, accusing you of treason, for not overturning the results in michigan. he was caught on tape threatening raffensperger if he didn't find 11,740 or whatever it was votes in georgia. what do you make of the fact that we're back at the sort of

eve of another prosecutor who looked into the conduct and we don't know whether it will go all the way up to trump? >> well, look, i think the truth is the truth and the facts are the facts, and what you're seeing now is the more people look as this grand jury has at actually the truth and the evidence, they'll find first and foremost that the election was fair, legitimate, and results an accurate reflection of the will of the people. and now moving forward, we need consequences for everyone. i mean, yes, there was one former president involved, but there were a lot of people involved in this effort that aided and abetted the cause, and so, what i'm looking for are consequences up and down, from people who have lied in court, to people whose lies and misrepresentations of what happened in 2020 have led to real threats and consequences in our lives, as your last segment detailed for election workers all around the country. we need to ensure there are consequences at the state and federal and local level for

these challenges and attempts to overturn democracy and know that if there are not, it will not end. and as we look into the barrel of 2024 election cycle, now is the time, where those consequences must be pursued. the law is clear, the constitution is clear, as my colleague in georgia said. and now we need to see the law enforced and consequences realized or else we're going to keep facing these challenges again and again and people are going to get hurt. >> madam secretary, what is the consequence of the republicans' ability to memory hole the fact that the very same election they agree with trump was rigged and stolen from him was the very same ballot that sent them back to congress? >> yeah, it's quite a -- quite an irony and really speaks to the reality of these, you know, falsehoods, that there actually -- even if you just unpack a little bit of them, as you just did, they really don't hold up. you can't challenge an entire

election for, you know, allegedly being somehow wrong or having problems, but only really have problems with one particular candidate on the ballot. so, there -- it varies -- no matter how you look at it there's no legitimacy to the arguments that the 2020 election results from members of congress to the senate to the presidency, were anything other than an accurate reflection of the will of the people. and it's time for people to start acknowledging that, and it's time for the courts to start holding accountable those who have not only not acknowledged that, but have not acknowledged it to dire consequences for the people of our elections. >> one of the things that we know was scrutinized was the fake electors plot. that happened in michigan, as well. we don't talk about that a lot, because it's opaque where it stands. but just remind us what that looked like in michigan. >> yeah, i think it's important to see that there were, you know, people lined up to serve as what we call fake electors,

to then be presented to congress to be accepted as the representatives of the electoral vote of those states, that actually don't represent the electoral voter, the vote that happened in michigan and many other states. but it was the action, it was sort of the tail end of a multi-face setted effort to overturn the election results, particularly in battleground states, that the former president lost. and so, it began with blocking the certification of our elections at the local of state level. those attempts were then intended to lead for the ability of a false slate of electors to be presented or adopted and then presented to congress and potentially accepted into the record by then vice president mike pence. so, it was a clear strategy that frankly we saw as it unfolded, and we knew was the plan, and that's why, for us, at the local level, ensuring that our elections were certified first and foremost, then ensuring that our state legislature certified or protected or didn't overturn those election results, then

ensuring that the actual slate of electors made its way to washington, all of that was our effort to defend against these nefarious efforts at every step of the way, to enable congress to potentially overturn the election, which the false electors were trying to enable. >> so, neal, that scheme couldn't exist without pence doing what trump told us at speeches in georgia ahead of the special election there, what he told us on twitter and what we know through testimony he described even more colorfully with one of his favorite swear worlds on the phone with mike pence. trump sits atop the fake elector plot, because he was the one screaming from the rooftops at people to do it. he was calling people at the state level. i think it was the peak of covid, he was inviting them to the white house, if i remember some of the reporting. i know jack smith is humming along now, but do you think we'll ever understand the delay

in examiing trump's role as the architect of the fake electors plot? >> if you mean the delay by the justice department, no, i think it's incomprehensible to me that it's taken so long. ill know we'll talk about this soon, but like subpoenaing mark meadows, it's taken more than two years for the justice department to do that. and i understand there's a congressional investigation going on and the like and you don't want wires to be crossed, but we've lost a lot of valuable time on something that's so central to our democracy and, you know, thank heavens for people like the secretary who, you know, bravely stood up and did the right thing. the secretary of state of georgia did the right thick when it really mattered. it's one of the interesting things about trump world is that people would just laugh off trump, he'd be like, oh, yeah, he's denigrating muslims or blowing up climate, something like that, but nobody felt

response to stop that, and when it came time for raffensperger to make the call, he made the right call. when it came time -- amazing to me, mike pence, to make the right call on january 6th, thanks to the advice of judge michael ludig, you know, pence did the right thing. for once in his life, he was that broken clock that was actually right. and he stood up and did the right thing. otherwise, democracy would have gone entirely off the rails. and that, to me, is kind of why the justice department should have been investigating this full throttle from the first minute that this happened, you know, why this was still the trump administration, back january 6th and 7th, because, you know, this is, like, you know, can't just be that because of a couple of brave individuals, you know, crisis was averted. we can't have this happen again and rely on officials to all do the right thing, you know, and so the prosecution and, you know, getting to the bottom of what happened, is so, so incredibly important.

>> jocelyn benson, thank you for being part of our coverage today. neal and katty, stick around a little bit longer. up next for us, more on jack smith and the subpoena for the man who had his fingerprintsover every aspect of the trump coup plot.

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more, they're literally calling for the vice president to be effing hung. and mark had responded something to the effect of, you heard him, pat, he thinks mike deserves it. >> he thinks mike deserves it. the it was to be hung. that bit of testimony from the incredibly brave central witness in the january 6th hearings cassidy hutchinson is just a snip pet, a little reminder of all she has shared and disclosed about how central her boss, former white house chief of staff mark meadows, is to the doctor every facet of the trump coup plot. the planning, the knowledge of its illegality, the knowledge that it wouldn't work, but did it anyway. brand new reporting that meadows was subpoenaed by special counsel jake smith. that is according to reporting in "the wall street journal" and cnn.

it's not been verified by nbc news. it's how close jack smith could be to the end in doj's probe in the ex-president's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. most definitely it is now coming to the ex-president himself. but we can safely expect doj's subpoena will very likely set the stage for more court battles over executive privilege. in line with trump's attempts to delay and delay and delay and obstruct any potentially incriminating testimony about him from his top lieutenants. let's bring in glen thrush. neal and kat ty are back with us. so, glen, when reporters preview something and then the following five days have a bombshell a day, they look really, really, really smart, so, you and your colleagues look really smart for your weekend story about jake smith ramping up. what do you make of this sort of drip, drip of disclosures this week, including this subpoena for mark meadows?

>> i like to call them bombshell incrementals. >> i like that. >> so, i mean, what it clearly shows, i think you hit the nail right on the head. i mean, meadows is at the center of everything. to add to sort of the complexity of his situation, he was also a designee by the national archives for donald trump's returning of the documents. so, meadows actually straddles both elements of the jack smith investigation, so, you know, one would suspect that if he ever appears before a grand jury, it might be a fairly lengthy appearance, right? but more so than even mike pence, i think, if this is proven to be correct, and we know this is -- even if we don't know the specifics and we haven't been able to verify it, either, but even if we don't know the specifics, the investigation is very clearly moving in that direction anyway. it would be highly unusual if it

didn't come down to this eventually. he is, in many ways, a more substantive witness than mike pence is, simply because mike pence wasn't hanging around talking to donald trump in the last days of the administration. donald trump was suggesting a very different outcome for mike pence. and meadows was. so, if you want to know where donald trump's head was at, where his -- and where his culpability and motives were from a legal perspective, mark meadows is your guy. >> well, and interestingly, there's some analysis that -- i mean, i know it's been an unknown, right, whether or not he was talking to the georgia investigators, whether or not he was secretly talking to doj, and there's some conventional wisdom, because he was subpoenaed, that means he wasn't. i remember john bolton's five dimensional chess during impeachment one, if he'd be subpoenaed, if he would have gone, but they're so afraid of trump, they don't go voluntarily. what do you make of sort of the

over/under of how important a subpoena is for mark meadows? >> well, i think like the pence subpoena, it's a step in a process. because what we're seeing going on with jack smith is this -- and we should say, for the uninitiated and by now, everyone seems to be pretty initiated, all this stuff is taking place under the cloak of a sealed procedure. so, it is actually illegal for justice department officials, technically, to comment on these proceedings, i should say. witnesses before grand jury and people who get subpoenas are free to talk about it. but what it seems to be is a kind of -- this almost first round of a prize fight or second round of a prize fight kind of dynamic, where both sides are sort of feeling one another out. meadows will eventually have to speak, the question is, under what terms and what jack smith is clearly trying to do, in a number of different venues with a bunch of different witnesses, is to puncture this argument,

which a lot of legal experts say is dubious to begin with, that all of these players enjoy the cloak of executive privilege and therefore don't have to testify. so, i think this is enormously important. will this particular subpoena be the catalyst for something big, i don't know. but clearly, things are moving in this direction. >> neal, what do you make of the latest reporting and the subpoena for mark meadows? >> well, nicolle, i'm glad you started with this point about delay. delay is what trump and his minions always do, because that really does raise the question, why did it take merrick garland so long to do this? i mean, this is a criminal investigation, as glenn says, in which mark meadows is a central character. he's literally in the room where it happens. and you can't in this investigation go straight to the ultimate potential defendant, donald trump, you know he's not going to tell the truth, he's going to on his kate, he's going

to assert privileges and so on. so, the meadows thing is really important, to try to get this information, learn about what he was hearing about the election and who won, what did trump know, what was trump's state of mind, all of that's really important. and glenn is also right to say that meadows is going to fight this and assert executive privilege and it's going to go nowhere. trump's lost the same executive privilege claims before the united states supreme court just last year 8-1 only winning justice thomas' vote. and just last week, there was a similar subpoena for marc short, who was the vice president's chief of staff and he asserted executive privilege, lost it again in the nation's second-highest court unanimously last week. and what i mean of it is trump's strategy, is to hide behind privilege and secrecy, never tell the truth about what happened, but then go out to the cameras, into the public and write books and say all this stuff about how, you know, nothing bad ever happened, no

crimes were committed, and, you know, we just in the last few minutes, nicolle, had a really great illustration of this once again, because trump went on his social media site, trump social, and he just, said, quote, thank you to the special grand jury in the great state of georgia for your patriotism. total exoneration. usa is very proud of you. now, you and i, we just read that report -- total exoneration is nowhere in that document, no -- heavens no. and, you know, trump's going to probably live to eat his words, but this is the kind of spin, the shamelessness about lying, lying to the public, and then, having the gall to be too afraid to testify under oath. it's this two-step that they're engaged in. >> neal, the vice president is represented by a very able attorney, former white house counsel emmitt flood and a high little regarded conservative lawyer represents mark meadows.

does a lawyer ever have any pause in this delay, delay, delay, a criminal investigation into a coup? >> well, i think, you know, your job as a lawyer is to advocate for your client. i have no problem asserting these privileges. i don't think it's done in some sort of bad faith. i do think that pence's claim to have speech or debate immunity is to use the technical legal term preposture, both because the text of the constitution, which pence claims to care about in his whole mantra about strict construction and so on, the text says that privilege only applies to, quote, senators and representatives, and last i checked, pence was neither. and the text also says that there's an exception for speech or debate immunity for, quote, treason, felony, or breach of the peace. and january 6th is actually not just one of those, which would be sufficient or two of them, it's not just a two-fer, it's a three-fer. it's all three of those. i don't think this privilege claim is going anywhere

whatsoever, except to serve what you would identify so aptly, nicolle, at the beginning of the segment, it's part of trump and his minions' strategy of delay. >> and why wouldn't they, right? it's worked pretty well for him. neal, thank you very much for being part of our coverage. i know you have to go. glenn and katty are sticking around. we'll turn to the vice president's latest response to why he won't respond to a subpoena investigating an attempt on his own life. that's next. there's a story in every piece of land.

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why is your testimony not compelling to the department of justice but also to this country's justice system? >> well, i think the issue here is whether or not a vice president who served as president of the senate should be subject to a subpoena to appear in court. >> would you be open to voluntarily -- >> as i said i've written extensively about this. i've spoken extensively. >> a different matter -- >> well, no. >> it's like dial-up platitude from former vice president mike pence. he was fielding important and good questions from my colleague vaughn hilliard on his plan to site the january 6th subpoena from special counsel jack smith. as others have been describing he's hanging this on a technical aspect maintaining that a clause

meant for members of congress makes him immune because of his role as president of the senate. it's excruciating to watch mike pence want to be president so badly he doesn't help investigate an attempt on his own life. >> you can go around the country today to trump memorabilia stores as i have done, nicolle, and find t-shirts, one of the best selling t-shirts i'm told is a picture of mike pence behind bars with a sign, lock him up. it's not just this happened on january 6th. he is still reviled by many in the trump base. he's still seen as a traitor to the cause, and yet he's having to walk this extraordinary kind of fine line between his own ambition one presumes to run for president and not wanting to alienate those very people calling him a traitor and want to lock him up or at least have that on their t-shirts, and

having on that day being -- having his life threatened. i don't think it's a winnable situation for him. he's never going to win over those millions of people who feel he did exactly the wrong thing on january 6th. he's never going to persuade them to vote for him because they'll vote for donald trump. they won't for him. he doesn't seem to be a bit like nikki haley i guess to be in a comfortable enough position to say this is wrong, i'm going to cooperate and the justice department deserves to know exactly what will happen on that day. >> it's remarkable that someone who had their run alongside their spouse and family members for safety, someone who refused to get in a car because he didn't know where the car would take him, refuses to participate in understanding who threatened his life and made him run downstairs. glenn, explain. >> i'm not sure i can explain but i'll tell you what this does

really remind me of is that mr. pence's wife was not necessarily onboard with him joining the ticket in 2016. those would be very interesting conversations now i presume. but, look, i think pence's folks and i think pence feels -- i think they feel -- and they're not going to get a lot of sympathy on this -- under-appreciated. i think they had a sense that the justice department shouldn't be putting them through this wringer after what they believe was the action on january 6th that helped stabilize the situation. so in addition to being sort of precarious political position because you know from being around politicians so much of this has to do with sort of the mind-set of these folks and how they feel emotionally about the situations that they're in. my sense is that just as much of this has to do with the way pence feels personally about having been turned on by

institutions that he fought to preserve. so the question is where does he stand politically in 2024 as a result of all this? we've seen this movie before. there's not a lot of room in the trump republican party for people who occupy any other kind of a space other than trump space. there just aren't the numbers, and he's not going to over the democratic party. i think one of the interesting things to put on my old political hat to watch is pence trying to triangulate between trump and joe biden because he's being perceived i think by a lot of people on the right as somebody whose position aligns on the right with biden's. >> it's just amazing and amazing none of them recognize the politics suck. you can say of this merrick garland, too, just do the right thing. maybe we'll all live long enough to see that happen. thank you for spending the hour with us. >> up next around here michael

cohen who today had his 16th meeting with the manhattan district attorney's office for yet another investigation into the ex-president. he joins us right here at the table in a few minutes. don't go anywhere. at the table in a few minutes don't go anywhere. and score deals on major appliances up to 30% off. shop wayfair's president's day clearance and get it fast before it's gone. ♪ wayfair you've got just what i need ♪ your heart is the beat of life. if you have heart failure, entrust your heart to entresto, a medicine specifically made for heart failure. entresto is the #1 heart failure brand prescribed by cardiologists. it was proven superior at helping people stay alive and out of the hospital. heart failure can change the structure of your heart, so it may not work as well. entresto helps improve your heart's ability to pump blood to the body. and just imagine where a healthier heart could take you. don't take entresto if pregnant;

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district attorney's office. when, i'm not going to tell you. but at the end of the day to me it's an indication and a clear indication just how serious that he's taking this investigation. >> hi again, everyone. it's 5:00 in new york. now we know he couldn't tell us when he was here last week but it was today.

michael cohen met again with manhattan district attorney allen bragg's office into the multiple threads into the twice impeached ex-president including the hush money payment made to stormy daniels. today's meeting marks the 16th time, the third meeting in one month. it is a sign as you heard him say a clear indication of just how seriously bragg is now taking this probe. it's one of it many, many investigations right now bearing down on the ex-president and what clues we can gather from what is public faying, it looks like many of them is picking up speed. we spoke in the last hour about the probe coming out of fulton county, georgia, that is likely nearing its conclusion. today a portion of the special grand jury report was released. now we're waiting for district attorney faunae willis' decision on whether or not to bring charges against the ex-president or his allies. there's also special counsel jack smith's investigation into

trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. it all together amounts to a crushing volume of criminal legal examinations into the ex-president's conduct with one question, will he ever face any charges in any of them? when it comes to bragg's work michael cohen says the d.a.'s team is moving in the right direction. cohen told us last week the case is on the tarmac imminently ready for take off. this is what he said today after leaving the d.a.'s office three hours after going inside. >> once again i continue to remain impressed with the depth of knowledge and the way that they're setting up their information for the future. let me say that i expect to be back here again. >> how soon? >> relatively soon. >> i do want to add that today we think they're getting much

closer to finishing their investigation, so we are looking at a lot of progress made today. >> the facts don't look good for the former guy. >> how many times do you expect to come back? >> well, i know i'll be back again next week. so that will be 17. >> 16 prior. >> yes. and my hope is that that will be the last time. i can't go into, unfortunately, the specifics of the conversation. but, again, my opinion is based on the significant questioning by the prosecutors. >> cohen's 16th visit to the manhattan d.a.'s office is where we begin the hour with michael cohen. michael is the host of the podcast mea culpa and also the author of the book "revenge."

also joining us is investigative report, msnbc contributor. she's covered the finance and tax patterns of trump for many years. barbara mcquade is also here, an msnbc legal analyst who we also always turn to understand this. tell me what happened today. >> oh, i arrived first thing in the morning again requested by the district attorney -- >> and this is a meeting set after your last visit. >> that's correct. and i will sort of do the same thing again this time. i will be going back again for the 17th time next week. >> when you come out and talk, if you're the public facing piece of the iceberg, where do you draw the line in terms of what we don't know underneath? >> well, i think there's a lot that you don't know. a lot of the information you've read about, you've heard about over the course of how many years that donald has been

entangled in all of these various investigations. but what the d.a. is currently doing is they are -- they're really honing in on micro parts of various documents and e-mails, text messages, et cetera, and into different aspects of where they're setting up the case. i've used so many different examples, if you think about it, they are now into the minutia, the real minutia before we started let's say with a book, and then the next meeting was about the chapter and then about the paragraph. my next meeting i would say is probably going to be about a specific line. that's how close that they are to finishing their investigation as it relates to me. >> last time you were here we talked about mark pomeranz's book and he wrote about the need

to kwaubt with what you're talking about, documents, and e-mails and a star witness like yourself testimony. >> they're really honing into the minutia and setting things up for their determination of whether they will or they will not take this case forward. >> what do you think? >> well, look, i'm not a prognosticator, though every time i have been on this show and done so i've been right. i don't think it looks good for the former guy at all. >> can you confirm it is broader than the hush money case? >> i really don't -- you know that i would love to sit here with you for an hour and go through every single aspect and let your viewers ipon what's going on behind the doors because i'm a true believer in transparency. and like i said out of respect for the district attorney's office, their investigation, and ultimately holding this man accountable, it's not just him, it's multiple people accountable for their dirty deeds, their

improper actions. i'm going to refrain from doing what i normally would like to do, and that's just to release it all. >> you choose your words carefully. are his children among the other people potentially being held accountable? >> right, so if i can once again deflect from your question -- >> well, you deliberate didn't just say him. >> listen, there are a lot of people in donald's orbit that every person that has been in that orbit has unfortunately seen similar times of repercussions, not as bad as what happened to me, but they're all seeing similar types of repercussions where their life gets turned upside-down for his benefit. >> one of the public facing data points we had was this articulation from mark's book how much faster tish james' was

able it consume and analyze and metabolize all the evidence. two, do you feel like bragg's office is now on par with tish james' office? >> to be fair to alvin bragg, he's the new d.a. tish james has been at the beginning of the investigation and there's no interruption. like the all the viewers and everyone else, we really would like to see the indictment out all ready or the termination of it. one way or the other we would like to have seen some closure. alvin bragg is operating at alvin bragg's pace, and while we may not agree with it, we may not appreciate it, it's his office, his pace. and at the end of the day he's either going to get the accolades or the jeers from people. >> do you have any insight whether you can share it or not i guess would be the second part of the question, but do you now understand why he dismissed the people working on this case when

he first arrived? >> i prefer not to, again, comment on that. one thing i can say is that the team that's currently there that i'm meeting with they're really -- and i've said this before -- they're really knowledgeable and they have a great grasp on all of the facts surrounding this case. >> allen weisselberg is sort of this white whale, right? is there any indication there's been any movement on what allen weisselberg is willing to talk about? >> that again i don't know. we don't know talk about other aspects -- >> so you don't know when you're helping them where different pieces come from necessarily? >> of course i have an idea based upon questions being posed to me. but, again, out of really respect for the prosecution, plus i'm sure donald's watching this right now or at least his team is. right, he loves you -- i don't

know why. >> i don't actually care about donald trump. i care about anyone who damages democracy and keeps doing it and never held accountable. >> i feel exactly the same. >> an autocrat is hell bebt on destroying our democracy -- >> and how many times have i said on this show that i don't want to see donald indicted, prosecuted, convict because i fundamentally disagree or i have anmous to him as an individual. i want to see him indicted, prosecuted and incarcerated simply for the illegal, immoral, unethical, unconstitutional actions that he has committed. >> are you confident as you sit here today that the liep of questioning, and you describe documents and e-mails that have been gathered, point toward an imminent indictment of donald trump. >> yeah, you're asking the same

question as your lawyer in the same way just using, of course, different verbiage. again, i don't want to go -- let me say once again that based upon my now 16th meeting things do not look good for him and others. >> barbara mcquade, have you ever called a witness in 16 times for any investigation you were ever a part of? >> nope, not even close. >> what might it mean? >> well, i think it means they are very, very seriously considering criminal charges and very seriously considered making michael cohen not only a witness but a key witness in this case. and i think that because when you have a witness who has been convicted of crimes including crimes that involve false statements a jury is naturally going to be skeptical of that witness's testimony, and so you need to corroborate that witness even more than you might other witnesses, so that's why it makes sense to me that they're showing every document they can find, testing his testimony

against the testimony of other witnesses to ensure that it's not just his word that a jury has to believe, he can serve as sort of a narrator, but every fact he's going to testify to is supported by a check, a bank record, a phone call or another witness's testimony so that a jury doesn't need to rely solely on any one witness in the case. my guess is that it's that, but 16 really is extraordinary, and it does speak to as michael has just said a level of detail that does to me point toward a serious consideration of an indictment. you know, if this case weren't going anywhere, they would have ended after one or two conversations and said we've decided we're not going forward. to go 16 times is really truly extraordinary and sounds like moving towards an indictment. >> suzan, michael was nodding while barbara was talking so i'm going to stay on this thread here. you understand the documents

that at least you've had access to better than anybody. when you -- when you marry the documents with his testimony, what is the missing piece? to use the iceberg thing, what do you think that is under the surface that is invisible to us but maybe available to alvin bragg? >> i think it's important to draw on what's publicly out there, and i think mark pomrantz's book may have shed a light on this. he talks a lot about michael in the book. one prosecutor in the group didn't want to have skbg to do with calling michael because she just said he's not believable. and i think what they're doing is they're really trying to -- as barbara said they're trying to get as much corroboration as they can. that may be documents and that may be witnesses we don't yet know about they're still working on or we don't know if they've

had a change of heart. 16, 17 times back is a lot, but this is now alvin bragg's case. a lot of those interviews happened when cy vance was the manhattan d.a., and alvin bragg when he got it i think it was a huge ask to come in and expect -- it wasn't like they were starting again but i think michael had to come in and talk to investigators so they could get a feel for what michael cohen would say, did they believe him, is he credible, is he contradicting other evidence that they might have? i i think that's where we feel where are we. we've been on the tor mack for a while, feels like wave been sitting there for years and it is close, but i think that's what they're doing right now, that's sort of the feel i've got for it piecing together what's out there publicly and having done a close study of mark

pomeranz's book. >> one thing i've learned is that prosecutors are not robotic vessels that are impervious to the public conversation. and i want to show you, barb, some of what has been said in michael cohen in sort of the intervening years. let me start with tish james. >> mr. trump and his allies may say that these penalties are too harsh or that this is part of a witch hunt. i will remind everyone this investigation only started out after michael cohen, his former lawyer, testified before congress in light of his misconduct, and the remedies are consistent with what we have sought for other businesses that committed the same misconduct. >> and then, barbara, here's the testimony that she references. this is michael cohen before congress under oath. >> it was my experience that mr. trump inflated his total assets

when it served his purpose such as trying to be listed amongst the wealthiest people in forbes and deflated his assets fooreduce real estate taxes. >> but to your knowledge did the president every provide inflated assets to a bank or audit to help him obtain a loan? >> these documents and others were provided to deutsche bank, on one occasion where i was with them in our attempt to obtain money so that we can put a bid on the buffalo bills. >> so in the intervening years and, you know, at this point the supreme court is a character in this sordid tale as well. there's hush money checks being written inside the sacred space of the oval office to a porn star or whatever we -- adult film actress stormy daniels, and there's the united states supreme court weighing in on some of these documents that michael testified to. how has the sort of vetting out

of the road map presented by michael cohen impacted prosecutorial discretion perhaps in this case? >> well, i always thought if, nicolle, that the federal prosecutors did not follow through in indicting individual one. michael cohen entered a guilty plea and was held accountable for a lot of the fraud including some that was done at the direction of and for the benefit of individual one who's described as the person who won the 2016 presidential election. it doesn't take any guesswork to know that's donald trump. and so it's always struck me as rather curious the federal prosecutors did not pursue those charges. typically you want to charge the big fish and not the little fish, or if you're going to charge the little fish you'll charge the big fish, too. instead we saw michael cohen convicted without ever charging individual one. it seems that that is what alvin

bragg and his office are going after now. as you've heard there and as wave seen in the tish james complaint, it's not just hush money to stormy daniels. it is a pattern of inflating assets for one purpose and deflating assets of another. and every time those assets are misrepresented for the purpose of obtaining money or or some other benefit, it is a fraud. so it could be we see not just the hush money charge but a whole series of charges about bank frauds to which mr. cohen is a key witness. >> suzan, i heard you chime in. >> michael has weighed into these areas a little bit, and i'd just love to ask him did the questions today go beyond the hush money payment, and i know when we've had other conversations they've been framed very much arn that and we talked about that. can you give us a hint there? >> i can't, suzan. i appreciate the question. it almost sounds like, you know,

nicolle was texting you what to ask me. everything that happened with donald and the fact that i was only one that was being pressured, you know, for a sentence in order to benefit once again donald and others -- and by the way it goes right to the heart of jeffrey berman's book and my complaint and all of this is coming, it's like a leaky faucet. it's just a drip, drip, drip of information. once they start turning over some of the documents you know i'll be here front and center to put documents in front because my credibility should not be in question. >> we have to sneak in a quick break but jamie raskin has weighed in you being singled out. they're not going anywhere. they're all coming back after a quick break. also ahead unraveling the

mystery of the fbi top spy in new york. some new details emerging. we'll tell you about. later on the program the head of the epa on the ground in east palestine, ohio, where residents are terrified and demanding answers about the health and safety and health and safety of their families and their air, water and, soil. "deadline white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. a quick break. don't go anywhere. b. the house whisperer! this house says use realtor.com to see homes in your budget. you're staying in school, jacob! realtor.com. to each their home. and it's easier than ever to get your projects done right. with angi, you can connect with and see ratings and reviews. and when you book and pay throug you're covered by our happiness check out angi.com today. angi... and done.

cohen had already been home

for two weeks when this unconstitutional demand from doj appeared and when he and his attorney dared to ask questions about it, three federal marshals showed up with handcuffs and shackles and returned to the otis correctional institute. there he spent 16 days in confinement before they were able to get his case before a district judge who immediately found barr's purpose, quote, from release on furlough and home confinement that was retaliatory in response to cohen to exercise his first amendment rights to publish a book critical to the president and to discuss the book on social media. can you think of a more egregious example of weaponizing the department of justice for nakedly political purposes than imprisoning and putting in solitary confinement the president's own former lawyer simply because he wanted to exercise his first amendment

rights? >> thank god for jamie raskin. and i'll give anyone pause who nods along with the bill barr reputation rehabilitation tour. pretty extraordinary thing to hear congressman jamie raskin saying. >> god bless jamie raskin, but he's not the only one. he's definitely the most eloquent and vocal but it started with hakeem jeffries and congressman steve cohen and jamie raskin doing this. god bles them all. >> it's about the actual politicization of doj, which is what donald is deflecting and saying, hey, it's the biden administration weaponizing the justice department against him, once again playing the victim. >> to pick up on what barbara mcquade just talked about we understand when i read jeffrey berman's book there are two episodes of contacts slash interference from doj he writes about. one is the case themselves

involving trump. two is the sentencing memo and i believe those through his deputy. what is true and apparent now is that even if they were governed by the aoc memo, why hasn't the office done anything? >> jeffrey berman is one stupid human being, and i say that not respectfully either, he's really stupid. who goes ahead -- he puts it in a book. it's there, it's his words which are now being used against him. as you know i followed the barr complaint against him. what he did is not just unethical, it's potentially illegal. he was recused. >> how did he break the law? >> sure. what he did is he started taking phone calls from the doj despite the fact he recused himself and this is his own words not to mention he even says he did as

much as he needed to do so that he wouldn't be fired. what kind of southern district of new york behaves in this unethical manner and the way they handled the whole thing as many times as we tried, meaning my lawyer and i tried to get before the southern district of new york in order to engage in conversation about what they were even looking for, we're not ready, we're not ready until on a friday they gave us 48 hours to come in and plead guilty. >> let me come back to trump and your pretty harsh allegations against mr. berman. trump is an unindicted coconspirator, why hasn't the justice department picked him up and indicted him? >> merrick garland for whatever reason he just doesn't want to move, he doesn't want to handle any of these things so apparent, they're so clear to all of us

what donald did is he was weaponizing the justice department to go against his critics. i would probably be critic number one. and so he needed to put as much pain on me in order to ensure that nobody else did what i did, that nobody else comes in and speaks negatively about him or provides any testimony that's contrary to what he wants. >> i'm going to use my two lifelines. i'm going to call on you first. the financial piece is the most difficult from the wiring in my brain to comprehend. but it is true and repeated in the book the hush money crimes are federal ones. what is your understanding of why that case was never brought? >> well, i think they're potentially federal. i think the state charge was that there was -- they were filing false business documents, creating false business documents. and then that's a misdemeanor.

and then did it cover up a crime is the second charge. and then i think where it gets a bit murky is it a state crime or a federal crime it covered up? but it sounds like from what michael said that case, that's back on the table and he's talked about that before when we've been going back and forth about this every cup of weeks when he's in. i think the larger question and i want to note i had one other question for him is i know he won't necessarily go into whether or not this is broad, but he did mention other individuals and i'm wondering how he got that impression today. he raised it so i want to see if we can needle him one more time on that. >> yeah. i probably -- i probably shouldn't have. >> you don't take it back? >> i don't take it back. >> that's all we're going to get today, susanne. >> okay, fair enough.

>> barbara, let me pull you in on this. is the harsh assessment michael has of the office that sent him to jail, i have read everything. i've read the sentencing memo. i don't understand what the answer is to why an unindicted coconspirator in 2019 that case isn't examined anew when bill barr leaves and trump isn't the president. do you? >> i don't. as you said there is this office of legal counsel opinion that says you can't charge a sitting president, so i can understand why individual one wasn't charged during that time. i think the statute of limitations in the federal court likely ran in the fall of 2021. if this occurred in the fall of 2016. you know, in new york they've got a much cleaner statute of limitations issue because covid told the statute of limitations in new york.

he was in the office as of spring of 2021, had six or seven months to make good on charges there. it seems that if they were ready to call him individual one even if the case wasn't precisely ready to go forward, they could have done that in fairly short order, so i don't know. it is one of the eternal mysteries of this whole era why those weren't forthcoming. the only speculation there they wanted to keep their powder dry so they could charge these bigger cases in the january 6th matter. but charging one doesn't preclude them from charging another. >> and i'm not calling merrick garland partisan are, but that is a political consideration to say crimes happen. i agree with the barr justice department who named him individual one but i'm not going to do anything in case something happens over here. i want to give you the last word. >> can i ask barbara mcquade something? >> sure. >> there were a lot of reports there were a dozen sealed

indictments the southern district of new york had regarded to this, and for some reason they decided to drop those and declared the case didn't have merit, they couldn't prosecute. do you remember all that? why do you think that ended up happening? >> i suppose it's possible a new administration comes in and makes a case and makes a decision in their discretion a case is not strong or not serving some substantial federal interest, so that can happen. i don't know that it happened in this case, so i don't have an answer to your question, i'm sorry. >> let me ask you another question. are you involve in other litigations or are you just going steady with alvin bragg? >> this is a funny story if you have a minute for it. i had some people over yesterday. i get a phone call from downstairs, hey, there's someone here to see you. there's some gentleman wanting to come upstairs and give me something -- >> and you let them in.

>> he ends up taking the telephone at my request and turns out he's a private investigator, which really means that he was process server. and i said you know what, i'm not coming down, why don't you leave it and i'll get it later or tomorrow? i ultimately pick up the documents. it's about yea thick, maybe 90 pages in thickness and on it says tish james against donald trump and about 20 different entities and people and so on. and it's a subpoena. it's a subpoena to testify. and i'm saying to myself, my god, this is so weird. why would the attorney general ask for me or why would they subpoena me? all you have to do is call and ask me and i'd be happy to come in and provide any testimony that they want. well, after reading the document the first few pages i realized it's actually not from the attorney general but rather it's from trump's lawyers. it's like five or six of them are subpoenaing me to come in a

couple of weeks and provide a deposition. >> why? >> i don't know. >> who's the lawyer? >> well, there's five different law firms. why didn't she just sign some sort of court order on her own like she's done in the ast? instead it's also robert and robert and then there's a handful, i mean there's five different law firms. it's one of the dumbest moves i could possibly imagine they would want. clearly the information i'm providing is predicated on documentation, you know, on documentary evidence, and as much as they think they're going to bull me, it's not going to happen. they're not going to benefit from it, and tomorrow, unfortunately, i'm seeing another lawyer in order to determine whether or not i'm going to make a motion to request the subpoena and

basically show donald the same consideration. short of that i'm going to decide when i sit down with counsel. >> keep us posted, never boring. thank you all so much for starting us off today. when we come back we're learning more about the former top fbi spy catcher in new york. and how his alleged illegal dealings involving a russian oligarch have thrust the fbi back into some political questions and potential hot water. we'll bring you the new reporting on that after a quick break. u the new reporting on that after a quick break.

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this next story is about as close as we can get to being ripped from a spy novel. we've been reporting on this show about charles mcgonigal. he's the former fbi spy chief accused of taking massive amounts of cash on the down low from an infamous russian oligarch sanctioned by our government. according to explosive new reporting british intelligence agents were forced to raise an alarm about mcgonigal back in 2018, the year mcgonigal retired from the fbi. that is when he traveled to london for a, quote surreptitious meeting with a russian contact. those british authorities were so alarmed they alerted the fbi. the fbi then used mcgonigal's surreptitious meeting with a russian who was being surveilled by the british intelligence to open their own investigation into mcgonigal. "the washington post" reports that mcgonigal is, quote, one of the most senior fbi officials ever charged with criminal offenses and this case has

deeply concerned national security professionals given the extraordinary access he had to sensitive government secrets including investigations of foreign spies and u.s. citizens suspected on working on behalf of foreign governments. he also would have had knowledge of foreigners who the fbi and cia were recruiting to spy for us, the united states. some of them are certainly shall we say notable. frips how mcgonigal went to great lengths to hide the fact deripaska was his client by funneling money through a maze of companies in cypress, new jersey. or how he was given a corporate e-mail address and cellphone under a false name in order to conceal his work while he was still on the fbi payroll. it's an open question what about these clues tell us about the broader mcgonigal criminal cases, but as one former fbi agent told "the washington post," quote, where you see smoke you have to wonder if

there's fire. also joining us "the washington post" intelligence and national security reporter shane harris. he shares a byline on that reporting we just read. shane, take me through an understanding what we have here? >> what you laid out there is a basic understanding of the charges. the fbi had been investigating while he was being placed on the sanctions list. and after mcgonigal leaves the fbi is when the allegation and indictment says he started taking money essentially to work on behalf of deripaska to try and get him off that very sanctions list that the fbi had been investigating him for. as time goes on the allegations say also that mcgonigal is taking money to try and investigate a rival oligarch of deripaska's. we still don't know who that person is. but you really see as time goes

on thisdeyening relationship between this top fbi investigator at the nexus of intelligence of law enforcement in the united states focused onrusha going out and working for perhaps one of the most famous russian oligarchs that there is trying to advance his interests. it's a pretty shocking set of allegations. >> this is from "the washington post" piece which i think perfectly sums up the political predicament for the fbi. since mcgonigal's arrest partisans at both ends of the political spectrum have seized on their views from the fbi. for some confirms the bure so the vanguard of a corrupt deep state, a renegade agency former president trump for years has been out to get him. others see russian influence at the highest levels of u.s. government or even a possible tool used by forces inside the fbi to help elect donald trump in 2016. shane, it's like the most perfect distillation of how this

story is being sort of metabolized on both sides of the ideological spectrum. it seems irreconcilable for the fbi, especially an agent that says as opaque a government agency that exists in this country. what do you do about it? >> the fbi has no answer to this because at the heart of it is an allegedly corrupt fbi agent which is not something that they need right now. they're having a very hard time responding to it other than to come out and point out as fbi director christopher wray has said, look, it's our agents who investigated him. ultimately charles mcgonigal was brought down by our own people, and what wray is saying this demonstrates is that they will stop at nothing to investigate wrongdoing especially if it comes from one of their own and this still leaves a ton of unanswered questions about how he was able to engage in this work. we didn't talk about his travels to albania where he allegedly

met with the prime minister of albania while he was still an fbi agent and accused of taking money from the prime minister's associates and concealing that from the fbi, essentially lying about the company he was getting on the side from a very senior government official. so it remains to be seen from the bureau and they'll find out at the trial, frankly, when evidence is presented how is it mcgonigal was able to get away with this for so long. >> brandon, are we to assume it's a coincidence we have another scandal with russia as the main character? >> yes and no. yes in the sense going to one of the quotes that you read in the paper, i don't think there's a fire there or here i should say, and it -- it's i think perhaps the greatest harm that was done with respect to the alleged conduct isn't the harm to an investigation or the illegal act itself. it's the harm to the fbi. >> do you think the public deserves to know the answer to the first part you said, to see

the evidence no investigations were harmed? >> i guess there's two parts to that, which is the department of justice doesn't allege that. in the one indictment that concerns deripaska they do not allege there are any investigations. in the other indictment that concerns the albanian president they do make a subtle allegation that there was in fact a criminal investigation that was opened up that may have been tied to it. and so what we do know from some of this reporting it's alleged since 2018 this individual has been under surveillance, under investigation. and what we don't see in these documents were allegations connected to russia impacted, and you really want to be cautious about jumping to conclusions even though as you said it's easy to do so. >> take me through what we know from the mueller report and other things we can talk about about deripaska's role and the association of constantine

kilimnik and paul manafort. i don't have a dog in the fight. i think people should trust our institutions. the truth is people don't trust the fbi right now but they're in danger from the right. and the irony here is that the fbi, there's no chance they'll answer any of these questions. but what is in the public arena in the mueller report is an association. >> that's right. here's the other side of it. the reason we're talking about oleg deripaska here, the reason we're talking about russia is because in 2018 there were a number of individuals who were sanked -- >> same here and he started taking his money. >> that's right. but the point is there are a number of individuals including oleg deripaska who had significant financial incentives to hire an individual to remove an individual from the sanctions list. i think the allegation is he was paid 175 -- >> is it a kwips dns deripaska also has a relationship with kunsen teen kilimnik and paul

manafort? >> i would say the coincidence is only in the fact part of the reason he was sanctioned concerns all the ways this individual sought to influence the election and sort of other things. so like that's the connection. but, again, if you look at the allegation he charged them, and he charged them aggressively. these are two different indictments. this isn't someone pulling their punches. if you read these documents this is a department of justice that sought to identify any unlawful activity and charges. >> and he's not charged with spying. what happens on -- i said this in the last part, i've learned from six years of covering the trump story that prosecutors and investigators are not impervious to the public conversation. what is the disincentive people like robert mueller and christopher wray have for no other reason than to re-establish trust? >> i think there are two things which is there's an individual alleged to have engaged in criminal conduct.

there is a process for those. >> after do you think the fbi should come out to ensure no investigation is jeopardized? >> i think there are two pieces to that, one is that incentive change is the risk again to the individual been accused at this point. but the other thing, again, in the charging documents they do make an allegation there was a criminal investigation connected to albania. they don't make that allegation. the second thing is, again, the department of justice and the fbi appears to have four or five years to investigate this. if they had uncovered investigations, criminal prosecutions that were impacted by this, there are other -- >> what is it that the national security division if it got involved would keep secret? >> again, i suspect -- here's the delta which is investigations that were not charged. there's no allegations, there's no individuals. >> it's his right, his due process right.

>> that's right. >> what do you think the resolution of this will be? you've read the charging document. how strong is the evidence against what he's alleged to have done? >> i think both cases including especially like the false statements case, if it is -- there are documents that the fbi agents have to fill out and it appears that those were not answered truthfully, i think in that sense it's sort of a document heavy -- it would appear to be a clear case, but i actually think this goes to it broader point as well which is that the fbi, prosecutors, agents, they're held to a higher standard and they absolutely should be. the power they have is as great as anyone in the united states government. and so it goes back to the great harm here, which is it's an individual who had

but i agree, and part of this is that -- i don't know the right answer other than it would be great to have more public officials coming to the defense of the fbi. i'll just give you a single example, which is just a few weeks ago, the fbi announced the takedown of a massive ran some air group hive. it is unbelievable what the fbi did. that should be for the rest of february the only thing we're talking about, and instead we're talking about the same stuff we have been for seven years. >> in fairness, both things happen. i take your point that more attention is paid around the fbi agent that broke bad, but the truth is both things happened. >> i agree, and it goes to that is the greatest harm that was caused by the conduct. >> do you think chris wray should be more available to talk

about things like that? >> it is difficult. i think director wray and attorney general garland are in a difficult position, because someone has been charged, but overall, just in general, not with respect to this particular case -- >> beyond this case, but just the integrity piece. >> we should and celebrating as much as possible the incredible victories and work that the fbi does because i think they should be revered, not reproached. >> your point is good things get overshadowed by the bad apples. >> it is filling up the room. you say russia, you say fbi, and you reflexively think the worst as opposed to the ransom ware group that was russian. we veer one way or the other. >> hope you feel like you got make the point they would make if they got to speak publicly. i think we all got to understand education in how limited people in law enforcement are because of every's right to due process.

thank you for pulling the curtain back. thank you so much for spending time with us and really deepening our understanding of this story. when we come back, angry and frightened residents of east palestine, ohio, demanding answers about their health and safety after a train carrying toxic chemicals went off the tracks. today the epa tried to provide some answer. a report on that next. wer. a report on that next. access to. take away the roof over their head. most meals and all snacks. look at what's left. millions of children are struggling to survive due to inequality, the climate crisis, conflict and poverty. children deserve better. and luckily, save the children has a way you can help. team tomorrow is a movement that addresses urgent issues

all over the world and right here at home and you can help create positive, irreversible change for children today. to join the team, call now or go to jointeamtomorrow.org and make a $10 monthly donation. your contribution will help improve the lives of children and families around the world and you'll receive updates on how your support is tackling the issues you care about most. no child should have to suffer from the devastating impacts of hunger and poverty, but when we work together, we can make a difference. for only $10 a month, you can help bring nutritious meals to kids living in rural areas, protect children from dangerous living conditions, provide access to clean water, and much more. and thanks to generous government grants, your gift can have up to 10 times the impact. that's 10 times more positive change in children's lives worldwide. and for a limited time, when you make a $10 monthly donation, you'll also receive a free tote bag

to share your support for children in need. if you believe children deserve a better tomorrow, start here. call or go online to jointeamtomorrow.org and start changing lives today. (gentle piano music) why. >> why are people getting sick. >> can we wash our clothes? can we hang them outside? >> how should us kids feel safe with the smell on our street? >> there was reports that they -- their safety before they

got here. why can't we get answers from them? >> very good question, right? why can't we get answers from them. those were angry, justifiably angry residents of east palestine, ohio, with lots of questions after a meeting last night. it was intended to address the health and safety concerns caused after a train operated by norfolk southern in their town, filling it with with chemicals. the company announcing it would not attend the town hall because of, quote, what it called a growing physical threat to their employees. the mayor noted there were no specific threats he was aware of against the company or its employees. today an epa visitor. dead and sick animals and pets and the lingering smell of chemicals inside their homes. let's bring in nbc news correspondent george solis live from east palestine, ohio. >> good evening, nicole.

that's what the head of the epa was in town for along with loek and state lawmakers trying to build confidence to let people know their concerns are being heard, that their voices are not being silenced. they said they feel sick and they want people to know, that is okay. they are allowed to feel this way, and so they want to let them know the monitoring of the air and water is ongoing. that's not something that's going to stop. meanwhile residents want answers. they want to know when it's safe for them to return and want them to know long-term this is not going to last. they really just want some accountability, and hopefully today the epa tried to reassure people that they are looking into these longstanding issues, nicolle. >> george, we're grateful you're there as our eyes and ears. thank you for your reporting. quick break for us. we'll be right back. be right ba.

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thank you so much. sorry for my cough earlier. for letting us into your homes during these executive order fair times. we are gr.