folks, we have a lot coming up, this hour. before we start i want to note, please indulge me for a second, because there has been a resolution, a not-bad news resolution to something we repeatedly covered on this show you might not have seen anywhere else. so, i want to settle this matter for you and bring you up to date. a few different times we have covered what happened to this woman. she was arrested and ultimately tried and convicted and sentenced to years in prison for the crime of putting tiny little notes on supermarket shelves, putting little notes on store shelves for where the price tags usually go. it is the tiniest act of protest imaginable against russia invading one of its neighboring countries and starting a war with ukraine. she used price tag labels and

russian stores, replacing existing ones with one that look like the real ones, but they have statistics on them about what was happening in russia's war in ukraine. now, this effort, almost like an art project protest effort began outside russia, for example, in poland, people did this at a hardware store that decided to expand its operations in russia even when lots of companies were polling out during the war. some very brave people, including this woman, we covered her when she was arrested in st. petersburg. her friends turning up at the police station to bring her her things to try and support her when she was put on trial behind closed doors for this tiniest act of peaceful protest. this was her being brought out of that court hearing the day before they took her off to

jail, this young woman was ultimately given a 7-year prison sentence, again, for the grave crime of posting two-inch square peep is pieces of paper, because they protested the war until the truth. we've covered her story a few different times. we can tell you now she was among the russians when president biden made a prisoner swap, when the hostage swap happened last week there was of course a lot of attention to evan gershkovich for the wall street journal reporter, and paul whelan, former u.s. marine, who had been held for so many years in russia. you may have seen news coverage of vladimir, you may have recognized as a viewer, you may recognize him from the times he appeared here, on this show. in opposition to vladimir

putin, he survived two assassination attempts, he won a pulitzer prize for commentary, and he was at the start of what looked like was going to be decades in prison on a treason charge when president biden got him out of prison last week, got him sprung. but alexandra skochilenko, she as well is now free. thank god. and you know, and thank god there is an american administration in place who was capable of pulling this off right? the biggest and most complex hostage swap in generations, possibly ever, involving a half dozen different countries, with different interests, different stakes, the biden-harris administration was able to pull all the necessary strings in the right order at the right times, in order to get this miraculous thing done. anyway, thank you for indulging

me on that. gets freed by a fascist dictator because of the school of an american president, i feel the need to say something about it here on this show, it feels superstitious to leavitt unmarked. knock on wood, let this never happened again. they are out. they are out. you might remember one donald trump was president, he had a call with putin right after one of putin's fake dictator style elections where he received 160% of the vote or whatever it was, and trump's staff gave him a card, a note card before that call, which said on it in big, black, all capital letters, do not congratulate.

and then he got on the phone with putin and immediately said congratulations on your big election victory, immediately congratulated him. something like that happened again this weekend at trump's rally in georgia. trump brought up the biden- harris administration, pulling off this miracle getting all those americans and those russian dissidents out of putin's prisons in this big hostage negotiation, and trump's immediate comment on that was to say "congratulations to vladimir putin. on the hostage deal." not for vice president harris and president biden, but congratulations to putin. do not congratulate, my friend. but of course, he congratulated the russian dictator. on the release of evan gershkovich and paul whelan and this artist from st. petersburg , and all the rest. congratulations to putin, great job, putin.

who says this kind of thing? today marks three months exactly from the presidential election. today is august 5th. the election is on november 5th. three months from today. regardless of what happens in the presidential election, president biden will be president, vice president harris will be vice president, for the next 5 1/2 months until the next president is sworn in. today the white house released this photo of president biden and vice president harris and key cabin and security officials meeting in the situation room meeting on the crisis in the middle east. israel is warning they expect retaliation of some kind from iran after the assassination of a hamas official inside iran's capital city. today, a number of american personnel and troops were reported to be injured in a

rocket attack in iraq, northwest of baghdad, about halfway between baghdad and the syrian border. we don't know more about that attack on the airbase, if it was a lucky shot, if it was a skilled attack, if it was iranian-backed militia, we don't know the extent of any injuries on the american side. president biden, from the situation room said, we've received updates on threats posed by iran and its proxies, diplomatic efforts to de- escalate tensions and to support israel should be attacked again, we also discussed the steps we are taking to defend our forces and respond to any attack against our personnel in a manner and place of our choosing. there appears to have been some attack on american personnel today. we have yet to understand the

full scale and import of that attack, let alone, the exact amount of injuries among americans supposedly involved in that attack. we don't know if there will be a response to that attack and when it will happen, but we'll let you know more tonight as we learn more. so, one side of the presidential election, is sort of free to campaign and do that, the other side has to attend to the business of government. while kamala harris is attending briefings in the situation room like this today vice president harris is also preparing to announce her running mate for the presidential election, this running mate announcement we are told will happen definitely by tomorrow, by tuesday, we are guessing probably sometime early in the day, but who knows, and we think we know who the shortlist is, but who knows , you know, she and her who running mate, whoever that person may be, are due to appear together at a relic, in

philadelphia. she is due to hit seven different swing states in five days. in preparation for the running mate announcement and frankly making the most of the fact it hasn't happened yet, and there is tons of anticipation as to who she might pick the harris campaign today told their supporters that for a $20 donation you can now buy an official kamala harris and running mate yard sign, a look at the picture, they have the name of the running mate covered up with tape and question marks. there will be harris and the running mate's name, but they are asking you to buy it sight unseen. and the message making the most of the anticipation, it's is "hi, it's kamala harris. i know many of you are eager to find out who i will be selecting to join me on the campaign trail, and hopefully in the white house as my vice

president. though i have not yet made my decision it is important to make grassroots supporters like you have direct updates about the state of the race. that's why i want you to be the first to know who i am selecting to serve alongside me as my vice president, add your name to those exclusive list of supporters, who will be notified immediately, when the news breaks. since , there have been legitimately no leaks and only more or less will inform speculation as to what the choice may be telling people they will be the first to know if they sign up on this list to receive the information by text direct from the campaign, there's a lot of anticipation, and people want to know, and it's a pretty good way to build a contact list of potential supporters. here at msnbc i have to tell you we have precisely zero information about who she is going to pick. many have been contacting me, begging me to tell them vice president is going to pick as

her running mate. i don't know, i have no more idea than you do, but we are sure we will find out tomorrow in advance of tomorrow might night's rally. i will be helping incur our special coverage of the running mate announcement, tomorrow, tuesday night, starting at 6:00 p.m. eastern. but, again, that does not mean that i have any kind of a heads up on who she is going to pick, or how she is making her choice, or when she's going to announce it, or how any of us are going to hear about it. it's going to be a sleepless night tonight for all of us worrying about it. but while we are on the subject of worrying here's the thing i think needs to be on the national radar, no matter how you are feeling about the news or politics, the stock market, the prospects of vice president harris and her campaign, there is something i feel needs to be on everybody's radar, and it's just barely starting to be.

but, we are just getting more and more increasingly strong signals that this is where this whole thing is heading, so we talked about this a little bit last week, got lots of feedback, that i upset you, got you worried about something you are otherwise feeling good about, i'm sorry to say there is more reason to focus on this , now even more than there was last week. and for this we need to go back to that georgia rally this weekend, where trump congratulated vladimir putin for president biden getting the hostages released from russian prisons. there were a lot of funny things about that relic, trump complained repeatedly at that rally, the fact he was addressing empty seats in the arena, this was a particularly sore subject apparently for

him, because days earlier vice president harris held a rally at the exact same venue. she had the place filled to the rafters while trump was addressing an arena, that there was a crowd there, but there were tons of empty seats, and increasing numbers of empty seats as people filed out while he was still speaking. an unkempt. kept bothering him there were so many empty seats, he suggested there were thousands of people outside the arena desperately trying to get in, and there was some conspiracy that seats were being held open. there were not thousands tried outside trying to get in, he couldn't keep butts in seats in the venue. apparently he took multiple nasty shots against the republican governor of georgia, brian kemp. in very vicious terms at that

rally multiple times, criticizing brian kemp, again, the republican governor of that state, criticizing kemp for having not helped him overthrow the election results in 2020 when trump lost that state to biden. that is a weird way to try and lock up the republican vote in georgia ahead of a highly contested reelection. year, that they made a terrible choice when they picked that governor. georgia voters after all elected that governor at the same time they didn't elect donald trump, but he is there telling them that their governor is terrible, and that he is disloyal him and that he was an awful choice for georgia. what a great way to lock up the republican vote in that state, right? in addition to all that though there was one thing that was not only stranger than that, but i think more broadly worrying, i will play you a little bit of sound from that rally, it's a short piece, i promise.

but, you are going to hear him say a few names that you have never heard before. and that's actually what is important about this. so, please watch, again, it's a short clip. this was that same rally in georgia. >> i don't know if you've heard, but the georgia state election board is in a very positive way. this is a very positive thing, marjorie. they are on fire, they are doing a great job. three members. janice johnson. rick jeffries. and jenelle king. three people. are all peoples fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory could they are fighting. are they here? where are they? where are they where are they? thank you. what a job! thank you. thank you. wow. >> thank you, are you here?

wow, thank you. these people trump is shouting out by name, we've never heard these names before it? these people he's shouting out by name, at least one of them is barely there at the rally waving back at him, and he's acknowledging her. the reason you've never heard of these people is because they have a job that is supposed to be an obscure technocratic job, members of the georgia state elections board, he describes them as pit bulls fighting for victory and calls them out by name and thanks them and praises them, and he points out one at his rally. he says they are doing a great job, they are "fighting for victory." georgia state elections board is not supposed to be the entity that has members shouted

out at a candidate's rally for all they are doing to assure the victory of that candidate. right? the state elections board is responsible for administering elections, for in the words of georgia state statutes, they are responsible for conducting fair, legal, and orderly elections for the state of georgia, and here's trump shouting them out by name for all the great work they are doing for him. since the 2020 election in which trump tried and failed to overturn the results of the election in georgia, since a grand jury indicted him and multiple codefendants on multiple felonies including charges for trying to overturn the election, in contravention of law. georgia republicans have , since, replaced the membership of the georgia state board of elections so that it's now stocked with election deniers and trump super fans, who trump is now shouting out by name at his rallies while they sit in

the front row and wave back at him. they have also stocked election deniers and trump super fans on county election boards throughout the state of georgia, and in other swing states as well. but, why is that important? these elections officials doing the kinds of jobs that shouldn't make them famous, why is it important they are election deniers and trump super fans that have been installed since trump tried and failed to overturn the results of the last election? the county elections officials and multiple counties in multiple swing states, since 2020, they have refused to certify local election results dozens of times. the state election board members who trump shouted out at his rally this weekend are now pushing through a new rule in the state of georgia that will give any county official at the county elections board level, give them the leeway to refused to certify or delay

certification of election results in that county. why does that matter? because, no matter how people vote, in a particular state, right? no matter who gets the most votes in a particular state, election results get tallied locally, and certified by each county, and they get certified at the state level, that's how we get official election results from each state. if individual counties, whether they are big, small, trump counties with almost no people, if counties refused to certify county level results the idea is that will stop the state from being able to certify its results, because they won't have official results from every county. it will stop them from being

able to certify statewide results or delay the certification of statewide results, and that will have two effects. number one, it will serve as propaganda, it will serve as smoke to tell the public there must be something wrong in the election, so the election results may be suspect and maybe emergency measures are going to be necessary, but secondly, it prevents the normal counting of votes. which prevents the normal allocation of electors in the electoral college, which is how we get a president. it stops that process. which, then does what to the process? it throws it into the courts maybe? throws it into congress to decide? maybe. republicans may like both their chances in both those laces better than their chances with voters. >> where are they? thank you what a job, thank you. thank you. wow. >> wow, what a job, shouting out the state elections board. before the 2020 election and

trump trying to overturn the results of that election it just didn't happen that local election officials would refused to certify election results, it didn't happen, it was unheard of. since the 2020 election it's become a thing in republican politics since trump lost that election and then said it was all fraudulent and tried to have it overturned on the basis of bogus fraud claims republican officials are often refusing to certify or delaying the certification of election results. they've done it more than 25 times, in nevada, and in pennsylvania, and in new mexico, michigan, north galena, georgia, the list goes on and on, and it's not that there's something wrong they know of, they are doing it to show they are not going to certify election results anymore. because they as election deniers and trump super fans

have gotten a hold of this part of the technocratic process of conducting elections in our country, and they have done that, and they have no intention of certifying election results, not because they think there's anything wrong with the way the election was conducted, but because they don't think elections are good way to do things. they don't think elections are good way to do things. today, we just posted the last episode, episode 8, finale episode of this podcast i've been working on for a long time called ultra. today was the finale of the second season. second season of ultra is about

americans in the late '40s and '50s involved in really really radical antidemocratic organizations and movements, including some of whom tied up with the nazis in germany, and those americans were tapped, brought into american electoral politics, and the result was explosive, and terrible, and very dangerous for our democracy, and among other things it led to a plot very much like what trump and his supporters tried to pull on january 6 that led to a similar plot to dispute the election results in multiple states, to stop the normal tallying of the votes, to stop the tallying of the electoral vote, because republicans thought they could seize control of the government, even without winning the election. it has happened before, which is why i wanted to do this podcast, because it's helpful to me to get my head around the fact americans have had to contend with things like this, before. so, you know, if you've been waiting until all eight episodes of ultra were out, because you don't want to wait between episodes, you want to binge them all, you can do that. ultra season two, posted today, but for me, the reason i wanted to do this project in the first

place is because i think it helps us get our heads around it's happening today. the american system of government is not perfect, but it was a hard system to get, and it's been repeatedly hard to hold onto when americans who don't want this as our system of government have repeatedly tilted against it, they've made clear they would prefer the kind of system they have say, in russia, or in germany in the '30s, or they had somewhere else where there is authoritarian leaders. they have overtime had a subset of americans who would prefer that they just have their preferred leader in control, who could run things the way he wants. our country. and usually they are on the fringe, and nobody pays attention to them, but occasionally they ascend from time to time they get closer to achieving that kind of goal

when they have a political leader or political faction inside real electoral politics, and they attach themselves to that figure, right? they are sure to undo this dumb , weak american system that relies on elections so much in the first place, you have someone with real power inside that system, it's a very powerful place from which to attack the system. these are the forces that today it look at viktor orban, in hungary. and in russia. they are cute elections that are ceremonial. why would you let anyone other than vladimir putin and viktor orban decide anything? there are americans who feel we should technically have them, but there should not be doubt as to the outcome. and you know, even that fetish for foreign dictatorships is not that unusual in history. when there was the america first movement before world war ii that movement was lousy with elected politicians and u.s.

congress taking money from and working for the top propaganda agent for the nazis . around mccarthy and the red scare, ultra season two, that was a supposedly anti-communist movement around joe mccarthy, but it was very creepy and entangled with this pro-russian pro-fascist said they headed together and we ought to be like them. it's not about fighting socialism or communism, marxist whatever, it's not about america first, not about a deep state that needs to be uprooted. it's about wanting our system of government to go away. it's about creating a sense of emergency and a sense of an enemy within, so that the public at large can be pushed and persuaded into giving up this system of government and just letting their guy, their strong man take over, and when

that's what you are up against, no, do not be surprised when it turns out they are not going to respect election results, because they don't want elections to be the way we decide things anyway. trump is now telling his supporters you never have to vote again. he is also even more frequently telling his supporters that he does not need them to vote for him this time, that he doesn't need their votes, why does he not need their votes? kia things he can get back into power without them. republicans really have snapped election boards in all the swing states with dozens of officials who are bent on not allowing the certification of the vote totals in their counties and thereby hopefully messing up the certification of the vote totals in their states. it is happening. and yes, kamala harris on the democratic side, she really is running a juggernaut of a

campaign. it is going to get turbocharged all the more, when she announces her running mate, but on the republican side, they are doing something entirely different, which is not about winning the most votes, it's about stopping the votes from being counted. country's top lawyer who was working both to sound the alarm about this and to try to stop it will join us live here, next. stay with us. with us. can i make my side softer? i like my side firmer. sleep number does that. your ideal firmness and effortless comfort, all night. can it help us sleep better and better? please? sleep number does that. 9 out of 10 couples report better sleep. during our biggest sale of the year, save 50% on the sleep number® limited edition smart bed. plus 0% interest for 24 months. shop now at a sleep number store near you.

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in 2020, just as officials in wayne county, michigan, were about to certify the vote in that year's presidential election, two of the county's election officials, both republicans, got a surprise call from the president of the united states, donald trump, himself, and the then-chair of the republican party, called them, personally, according to detroit news, trump and ms. mcdaniel told county officials they needed essentially to take back their vote to certify results, and those two county officials did actually try to take back their vote to certify. when it was time to certify the elections at the state level

republicans in michigan again tried to block the vote total from being certified. it was after one brave republican election official broke with his republicans that michigan state results were finally able to be made official. republicans pioneered this in michigan in 2020, now the republicans have kept trying this kind of thing in every election, since, including an congressional elections, primary 2022 midterms multiple counties refused to certify the vote in the general elections in the midterms that your county level republicans in pennsylvania and in arizona tried to block the certification of the results. this year republican elections officials in multiple jurisdictions have refused to certify lawful elections repeatedly, and now they are laying the foundation to do it again for the next national election. over the weekend, donald trump held a rally in atlanta, where he randomly shouted out by name three members of the georgia state board of elections.

those three officials have all refused to acknowledge joe biden won the 2020 presidential election. they are now trying to push through new rules that would make it easier for county level officials to refuse to certify election results. encourage republican elections officials at every level to refused to certify the elections no matter what the results are, does not matter where or if it is a county democrats won or a county republicans won, it sticks a wrench in the works. it makes it impossible to certify if you make it impossible to certify a county, you make it effectively impossible to certify a state. and ultimately that puts the whole tallying of the presidential election into question. mark elias writes "it is worse

this election than previous ones, because this year the gop is far more organized. they might have tried to subvert the results and handful of places in 2020 and 2022, but this year he will try to separate them all. setting the stage now for what is to come in november." specializing in election litigation, founder of democracy docket, mr. elias, thank you for being here. >> thank you for having me. >> we've been talking about this on and off for months pretty intensively for the past few weeks. as an expert, if not the expert in this field, am i getting any of this wrong or seeing this the wrong way around? am i presenting this in a way that captures the fact? >> i think you capture it entirely correctly. ba fact is when we talk about won an election we are talking about the unofficial results that people get on election night which is what nbc and

msnbc used to call elections on election night, but we are really talking about the certified results, and these are results first approved that the polling place and at the county and as you point out then at the state and ultimately in presidential elections that choose the electors and from the government go to the congress, and generally sixth was the culmination of a certification dispute which began among other places in michigan at the county level. when republicans couldn't achieve what they wanted they went to the state level. they launched a scheme when they couldn't do that they launched a series of frivolous lawsuits, and finally they attempted to block the certification of the election. so this has been on their radar for quite some time, and it will be for sure in 2024.

>> we've seen them not just planning to do this in the 2024 election but trying it out in multiple jurisdictions. you among others have pointed out this is a tactic at the board level that was essentially unheard of before 2020, now it literally has happened in very off the radar municipal elections, sometimes in primaries, sometimes in general elections. there has not yet been another in which they have tried it, but what have you learned about how this process works? how these concocted controversies can be resolved when they do this stuff at the county level? >> i have done more recounts than any person ever. i represented biden and the dnc and 60+ cases we saw in michigan for various senate campaign statewide, and the idea of

tinkering with the certification at the local level was just out of bounds. it makes us great as a country, the election officials celebrate the results by certifying these results, but you know, rachel, we saw in 2022 they refused to certify the elections in several places in pennsylvania. slightly indicted for it 2024. but as donald trump proved the loyalty to his crimes and misdeeds is stronger than instinct for self-preservation. >> what can people do to try and make sure this doesn't

happen? >> we all play a role. first of all, thank you for calling this out. lawyers, we can go to court, but making this public is the big part of the battle. every person listening to this, to speak out on this, don't stay silent. you all have a town square. you may not have millions of viewers, but each of you can post on social media, you can attend these canvas board meetings, you can file comments before the state election board in your own counties, you can know who is on these boards and attend their meetings. every citizen has a role to play here. if we all do that i am confident we will defeat these efforts, and kamala harris will be sworn in as the next president of the united states. >> mark elias, founder of democracy docket, mark, i have the feeling this is the start of several conversations we will have on this. thank you for your co-operation. stay with us.

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i cannot improve on the opening lines of this.

i'll give it to you verbatim. "five days before donald trump became president in january 2017, a manager at a bank branch in cairo, egypt, received an unusual data from an organization linked to the egyptian intelligence service. the letter asked the bank to kindly withdraw nearly $10 million from the organization's account, withdraw it all in cash. as in green bills. "inside the state-run national bank of egypt, employees were soon busy placing bundles of $100 bills into two large bags, and four men arrived and carried away the bags, weighing a combined 200 pounds. they contained a then sizable share of egypt's entire reserve of american currency. when this four men carried away those hundreds of pounds of cash, bundles of hundreds of dollars of bills where did the cash go?

what could egypt's intelligence service possibly need with 200 pounds of $100 bills? well fbi agents in the united states thought that cash might have gone to donald trump explosive reporting from davis and washington post on friday revealed a years long criminal investigation into whether egypt illegally funneled $10 million in cash to donald trump for his 2016 campaign about two years into trump's presidency investigators had come to know the following things, first, classified u.s. intelligence had indicated that egypt office president, at least wanted to give trump $10 million to boost his presidential campaign, in 2016. also, in september, 2016, just before the election, candidate trump did have a very chummy meeting, calling him a great

guy. the timing on this, just before the 2016 election, trump miraculously produced $10 million of his own money to dump into his campaign, which at the time was quite strapped for cash. the $10 million infusion was not a gift from trump to his campaign, it was structured as a loan so trump would get the money back. trump just a few days later won the election, and a few days after that, before his inauguration, there was the unexplained cash withdrawal of american dollars by the egyptian intelligence service from a cairo bank, $10 million. the same amount egypt's president reportedly wanted to give trump according to u.s. intelligence, the same amount trump had miraculously found to loan to his own campaign. egypt's president than

inexplicably came one of trump's first guests at the white house, over $1 billion in aid for military for egypt. he called him my favorite dictator, and there's a lot of competition for that title, but u.s. investigators, didn't ever prove that the money from egypt, that cash from that egyptian bank went to trump to prove or disprove that they would need access to more of trump's financial records, but they would never get that access, and that is its own scandal. carol and davis appointing bill barr stepped in to make sure the fbi agents wouldn't be allowed to subpoena trump's financial records. he also then removed the u.s. attorney who was overseeing the investigation and removed her replacement until he finally got a u.s. attorney in that jurisdiction who would shut down the investigation entirely. now what investigators illegal

cash payment to a presidential campaign from a foreign tater, i mean, if that were ever proven that would be one of the biggest presidential scandals in american history if not the biggest. that said it has not been proven and donald trump has denied it. nobody was allowed to look at the evidence that would prove or disprove it, thank you, bill barr. thank you, u.s. justice department for never apparently looking into any of the things bill barr did as attorney general to bring grave shame and discredit upon the u.s. justice department. that's another story for another day. i will say trump has denied the locations of this reporting in this investigation. he could easily disprove the claims here himself by simply allowing his banks to release

his financial records to show he has nothing left to hide, because he had nothing left to do with this. in the hard-fought presidential campaign you would think would become a political pressure point, telling people they need to release foreign birth certificates, seems you want to release her bank records when you are credibly accused of potentially taking a $10 million cash bribe from your favorite dictator. joining us now, investigative reporter, carol, thank you for being here. >> of course, rachel. >> that i misconstrue any of that? >> no, you got every part of it right, especially the chronology. i like the way you tell it. it's very clear. people, who had credible information from the cia, joe- dropping intelligence, the cia was warning the department of justice we have an informant corroborating intelligence streams suggesting that egypt

office president wanted to get $10 million to donald trump you doj begin investigating largely under then-special counsel independent special counsel robert moeller, and then when they actually found corroborating evidence of $10 million walking out the door of a cairo bank, just as the intelligence foretold through the account of the egyptians by agency, general intelligence agency, when they found that incredibly compelling evidence they were barred from trying to find out whether any of that money ended up in any of donald trump's personal or business accounts. >> what would the scope be, in order for investigators to get the kinds of records that would prove or disprove these implications? >> the subpoena that was drafted and proposed, in april,

2019, by the u.s. attorney's office, in dc, and again proposed, in june, 2019, and again, fall, 2019, was fairly limited. it basically asked for records around the time of this bizarre cash withdrawal, in egypt, january 15, 2017, a few weeks before and several weeks after. it was not a very broad amount of time. but they could not get the u.s. attorney's approval for that after she met with attorney general bill barr, she decided that they didn't have the factual basis, or the etiquette to seek the records of the sitting president. and just so you know, rachel, if you walked into the fbi field office today and said you believed you had information about me laundering money or taking money illegally, the fbi could get a subpoena for my bank records in about 10

minutes, it would not take very long. in this case this group was blocked for two years from gathering any evidence. >> carol, and just your reporters take on this from what you understand and the sources you spoke with. how would you describe the confidence level of the investigators who thought that this might go from egypt to donald trump? appointees from the justice department to shut this down and did not let them investigated, they sort of made it seem like folks were looking for evidence for some theory, but the people who spoke to you who were involved in the investigation, how did they characterize their level of confidence or suspicion that something was truly wrong here? >> sources we spoke to described a group of agents, fbi agents and prosecutors, who were gob smacked that they found this level of information, first,

the intelligence was pretty stunning and came from a reliable source, who had provided reliable information in the past in this field, then they had a document that improved a movement of $10 million from exactly the intelligence agency that was suspected in the intelligence to have been the source of the funds in the exact dollar figure. then they had donald trump basically flipping the switch on all this u.s. possible egypt that was extremely benefit beneficial to the president of egypt. with new u.s. president was with the egyptian president. a pretty big kiss if you will to that country that we had held at arms length. these investigators and agents were described to us as a stunned, because they had never gathered this quality of

investigation in a money laundering or financial conspiracy case before, certainly not one that had been closed down and not one in which they have been barred from investigating the leads right in front of their faces. >> stunned and gob smacked. there is an easy way to sort this out, those financial records don't have to be subpoenaed, they could simply release that information publicly, but we will await that development. national investigative court reporter, 24, thank you. we will be right back.

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