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>> good to be with you, i'm katy tur, it appears the house ethics committee which is meeting right now to figure out what to do with the matt gaetz ethics report isn't actually finished with the report. here is the committee chairman earlier this afternoon admitting there is still work to do.>> there was some sort of statement by members, about staff following the rules, i'm assuming some time during. the report is not actually done. so how could you possibly release it if it is not done? that is something we will be talking about today, and i have some reservations about the

unvarnished work report. >> i'm sorry, what? that audio was kind of bad, but that is a curveball, well it is a good thing we have a member of the committee joining us in a moment to help us understand exactly what is going on behind the scenes and to tell us whether he feels the speaker of the house, mike johnson has been pressuring the committee not to release it. if it does not get released, there is talk that the report might be leaked and now preemptive criticism from republicans who say would politicize the confirmation process, you heard that right, politicize matt gaetz, the former rep that is the very embodiment of political partisanship, the guy steve bannon called trump's blowtorch to the doj and elon musk just called trump's judge dread with an axe to grind, amid all this,

the process is still moving forward as republican senators are meeting with gaetz today including john kennedy, lindsey graham, and marsha blackburn who said she had a great meeting and looks forward to a speedy confirmation for our next attorney general. joining us from west palm beach near the florida home, nbc news correspondent, vaughn hilliard, congressional correspondent, julie is also with us, nbc news chief political analyst, chuck todd and msnbc political contributor, jake sherman. julie, your next -- you are in the mix of things. what is happening?>> reporter: behind me is about 100 reporters, behind them is the room where the panel is currently meeting behind closed doors to figure out whether they are going to release this report to the public sphere or

not, the chairman said it is not ready, that echoes what we heard from speaker johnson over the weekend who said the report is in draft form. as we have been talking about, johnson tried to put his finger on the scale and get the committee to hold the report in private hands, not release it publicly displayed on the other side of the capital complex, where i spent several hours today, you have matt gaetz and jd vance meeting with senators, many of whom say they want to see this report. the question is, does the committee released the report publicly, do they let it leak to republicans or as we are just finding out, does a democrat beat them to the punch by coming to the floor and forcing their hand? a democrat from illinois said he intends to do just that, there's precedent for this, it happened in the 90s where democrats try to force the release of report from members of congress after they had already left, it wasn't successful but they have to

make all of that happened to see if they can release this report if the members in that committee will ultimately decide not to while the top democrat on the panel says she believes this report should be made public. just one republican has to join all five democrats on the panel to get this report out no matter what.>> what are the pressure points here?>> number one, if they hold this note, that is obvious, and as julie noted, this privileged resolution that they are putting force will force the boat, it'll be subject to a motion on the table so they can do away with the vote, but i want to clarify what this means that the report is not done, there are different versions of done, he said it hasn't gone through the review process, that doesn't seem like it is very far from done. nothing is done until he says it is done, so i wouldn't put -- i think a lot of pretty -- people are putting the word

done into the stock, members of the ethics committee taken oath that they will keep their deliberations and the work product secret, the question is, does that extend the house floor where a member of the ethics committee could go to the house floor and read the report and get some sort of protection for doing that? i'm of the theory, to be honest with you, that gaetz's nomination is cooked either way, they are going to be at least for senate republicans who vote against him and to be honest based on my report, this report is going to get out somehow whether it is through a vote, whether it is leaked, whether it is forced by this privileged resolution, i don't think this report has much of a chance of staying private.>> how much do senate republicans actually want to see this, and the meeting by the way is opening up and we have members of the ethics committee coming out, one of them is going to be joining the show, probably walking from this room to our camera so we will be able to ask him.

but, jake, how many republican senators do actually want to see this? >> most probably, but i think there are a lot of republican senators who would like a reason to vote against gaetz to be honest with you and like some cover for voting against gaetz, the republican senator leaning, the instinct is going to be to vote with trump on most nominations, remember, gaetz spent the majority of his career dumping all over senate republicans and calling them weak and all those sorts of things, so i think there are a lot of people that wouldn't mind voting against gaetz and having this report ahead to do so.>> we will see if any of them stop on the way to our camera. i hear donald trump has also been working the phones to try to convince republican senators to say yes to gaetz.

what is his argument?>> donald trump did it take mac to gates because he wasn't uncontroversial, he is willingly standing behind individuals with credible allegations of sexual misconduct, we go back to alabama and there were multiple women who came forward alleging that roy moore, the senate candidate at the time had engaged in sexual misconduct toward them when they were teenagers and donald trump went down and campaigned on his behalf, of course he more recently, it was the likes of charles running for the governor of nebraska back in 2022, seven different women came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against him. donald trump went to campaign for him nonetheless and that same man was at mar-a-lago last week on the grounds of donald

trump's estate, we have seen him time and again be willing to push back and stand beside others who have been credibly accused of sexual misconduct or abuse. and donald trump himself has found to have been defamed and sexually abuse e. jean carroll, so we have seen the history of him, and in the case of matt gaetz, he is putting phone calls through to senators, and in large part of not only the department of justice that had their investigation by donald trump new largely because his former speaker of the house, kevin mccarthy who was audibly on the front lines of telling them that matt gaetz had ultimately at one point been in jail, let alone being out of congress. >> chuck, you are arguing that donald trump is losing his political capital fast, how much more capital does he stand to lose? voters did put him in the

office, knowing full well that he was going to do this sort of thing. >> it's that last part that i take issue with, when you win an election, it isn't because of your base, it is because that last slice of voters, when you went into an election that is that narrow, this is where i think the trump folks are always committing the same stand the biden folks had when they came in, the runoff victory in georgia solidified this idea that oh, look, it is a democrat mandate, but it was a massive mystery and he won by a larger margin, but they had very narrow majorities and he acted like he was fdr, when that is not what the public was voting for, and i think this is what trump is not realizing here, that yes, to the maga

base, he has to fight hard for matt gaetz because he is so popular with the space, i think pete hegseth is more likely to get dumped because gaetz is a mar-a-lago staple, gaetz is the guy who was with them second then giving him the rationale about january 6, i think gaetz is somebody that, while i don't think trump cares about any individual, certainly he is going to be higher on the pecking order than pete hegseth and look, we know trump will sacrifice anybody in a circle if he thinks it benefits him short-term, but i do think he knows the fight he will be seen as weak if he backs away from gaetz too soon so i do think it is a tricky situation he has put himself in. this is the point, he didn't win a mandate but he's acting like he did and it's putting

the republican party in quite the box and when this goes, joe biden thought he had a mandate and in the public, the minute he made his first mistake, they left him and never came back. i don't think trump realizes, this is exactly what will happen to him.>> i want to keep an eye on the cameras because we could get a statement from any of those lawmakers walking out, i would be curious to watch out for the chair congressman to see if he does address reporters. so if you get something, please flag us quickly. chuck, i want to follow up on that, the totality of the nominees so far from gaetz , tulsi gabbard, pete hegseth , now you've got dr. oz included in this, rfk junior, they are unqualified for the positions that they are holding, unqualified to do it, what is donald trump hoping to get from them in these positions?

is it better run government, slicing off whole portions of the american bureaucracy because he truly thinks it just doesn't work?>> this is the question i have, i have been trying to play both roles, does he really believe there is a deep state that came out to get him and these are all revenge pix, particularly pentagon, justice, intel, think about those three, and even hhs. if he really believes there's this giant deep state conspiracy to shut down his first presidency, the four corners he would pick our folks at defense, the infamous ukraine phone call, obviously how he feels about the justice department, and bob mueller, the intel community that had intelligence that suggested there were issues with some of trump's appointees and of course hhs, which was the home of covid and nih and all of this. my point is, if he succeeds, either he is right and there is a deep state and he exposes it, which we know is unlikely to be

true, i think this doesn't exist, but hey, i will keep an open mind if he proves it, god love him. or worse, he creates his own deep state, he owns the bureaucracy now and his success is making the entire country no longer trust any part of government. and that's why i'm just sitting here, why does he want the justice department less leaved by the public? why does he want the pentagon to be more polarized, not less polarized? why does he want the intel community to have more questions about his handling intelligence? why is he intentionally wanting this disruption? again, maybe he really believes all this deep state exists but guess what he's doing, he is creating his own culture, there's no more excuses, he isn't jammed by mitch mcconnell anymore, so he now owns every

problem government has, when fema doesn't show up, it is on trump, when the justice department fails to prosecute a sexual predator, it is on trump, and i don't think they fully appreciate it, it is the great line, i promise you mr. president, there's somebody right now in the government f- ing up and it is going to end up on your watch, and he is controlling it all, he didn't win the mandate. >> he is very in-depth in claiming he is not at fault for things, that is a good point. the other nominee that we are waiting for, the choice we are waiting for is who might head the fbi, and there's a lot of talk right now that one of the people in contention, jake sherman, is kash patel, i've had conversations with folks from the last administration,

who said that they were going to walk if kash patel got anywhere close to the levers of power , that he was dangerous, he was only loyal to one person and that was donald trump. i mean, the matt gaetz attempted confirmation is one thing, pretty extreme, but kash patel would be right next to it. >> absolutely, and the real sin here for trump is that nominations take a lot of time and a lot of energy. this building could only take on so much at once, trump has a lot on his plate, he has government funding, which comes up in march, and these might seem like small things, but they are not, he has to do government funding by march or the government shuts down because that is what speaker johnson wants, short-term funding bill. he then has a massive agenda

that he has been promising for two years on the campaign trail, tax cuts for individuals and businesses, energy policy, immigration policy, issues that are difficult in and of themselves, more difficult under a time crunch and much more difficult now that he has taken three republican members to the house of representatives out of their seats and has left himself with the bare-bones majority. is he going to be wanting to fight these battles over nominees like matt gaetz and kash patel, unless i'm just completely misreading our reporting on this, meaning i'm talking to people and not reading the reporting, i'm talking to this people. there are people that are conservatives who share his worldview, who could get confirmed, he has talked about senate candidate of michigan, mike rogers as an fbi director, some people in trump world have

talked about it. mike rogers would be confirmed in a heartbeat, no questions asked. with 53 seats, you can do a lot. i do know why he is taking this path, but it just seems so illogical to me to waste so much energy on picks that have no chance of hitting through. >> may be one consideration is what is hanging over the heads of senators if they defy donald trump, donald trump is proven to be a survivor, the scandal he has faced, the convictions or the very serious allegations, it has happened over and over again, not only can he use the threat of primary and someone, elon musk can fund a bottomless primary against these republicans and i'm not so sure that i think donald trump is for looking toward the republican party to care if the republican party

maintains its majority once donald trump is gone. >> i think that is right, i do think that is the political calculus that people have to make but he's not perfect, john thune, the incoming senate majority leader dumped all over donald trump for two years, occasionally, was critical of donald trump, endorsed him in the primary. his allies, elon musk, various people in his orbit said they should vote for rick scott in the senate majority leader race. >> but that was a private ballot, nobody knew who voted for him. >> i agree with you, i get that, and the point you are making is valid, but at the end of the day, susan collins, lisa murkowski, mitch mcconnell, there are a lot of people you

could vote against, those three that i mentioned would really suffer much from voting against trump on a whole range of issues, mitch mcconnell is probably not running again, lisa murkowski has already survived the trump primary, susan collins is going to have a tough general if she chooses to run again, so there is room for opposition without the threat of political downside. >> it also can depend on who wins that pennsylvania senate seat which is currently in a recount. chuck todd, i know you were trying to get in on this, what do you got? >> i don't think donald trump appreciates how quickly he's going to be a lame duck president and i don't think he fully appreciates the fact that members of congress, they may feel very low to him right now but as soon as the voters leave, they will leave ask joe biden. once it goes down, it goes down and this is so head scratching

to backup what jake was saying, which is simply, he had acumen the political capital arguably for the first time beyond just his maga base, and to burn it all on revenge plot fantasies and you are trying to do all of this, i will tell you, the most important thing that jake brought up, donald trump is still the only leader of a political party that figured out how to shut down the government while his own party was in charge. just wait until march. i think this is an absolute nightmare scenario that trump and mike johnson have cooked up for themselves. >> okay, but let me also float this, say the people aren't plugged in the way they used to be, we have evidence of that, we are on a cable network, people are cutting the cord, people aren't as plugged into traditional news sources as they used to be, they are reading newspapers but not at the same levels, they are getting information from their phone or some person who has no

reporting, just somebody who is talking, a lot of the time. are they getting this? are the sliver of people who are voting to decide these elections, are they hearing any of this? are they seeing donald trump lose political capital and if he does put these people that he wants in place, can they do damage in a short enough period of time to get to the voter, to say this is what you've done to the federal bureaucracy, these agencies, they have been gutted and broken and they just don't function any longer because donald trump put these hatchets in place of these agencies, or are the effects of all that going to come out much farther down the line when another administration is in charge and faces a crisis? >> i'm going to be quick on this, i just think this is the worst, this is going to sound weird, this is the worst part of republicans holding the

house, because i understand what you are saying and i think now that he has full control of government, full control of the party, that voter you are talking about he doesn't tune in is going to tune in enough to know, so if government does not run well, it is all in trump now. there's nobody else to blame. the first time he could blame, you know, i just don't think there's anybody to blame. good luck at hhs with secretary kennedy. it doesn't take much, i looked at the afghanistan withdrawal, katie and i have been obsessed with it because biden lost all of his political standing and he never got it back after that moment. i was like, why did the voters punish him so quickly, it's because they never voted for him in the first place, i don't think these first-time trump voters were necessarily voting

for trump, they were voting like biden and harris don't understand me, i'm going to try trump. what he doesn't understand, these people are simply temporary, so i think this is the real risk he is running.>> also there were fewer voters who came out for this election. vaughn, add to the conversation. >> one of the questions i have going forward here is the extent, we may not know what is happening in some in these departments going forward, we don't know exactly what investigations they may never try to gather a grand jury, just for instance, vince mcmahon , the husband who is up to be the secretary department of education is in the middle of the department of justice investigation as we speak and if matt gaetz were to be confirmed or todd blanche,

inside the payment of justice, donald trump's orders were to order that investigation quashed, to what extent did the american public know of those publications inside, including at health and human agencies, if there's an exodus of these career or civil workers or a purge of them because we have heard what they suggested openly as well as robert f kennedy junior that they tend to do away with departments and they seek to replace through the classification of the schedule to switch out several workers with additional thousands of political appointees, to what extent is the american public dark to what may be happening over the course of the next four years in these agencies? we know there has been so often within trump's world and in his first administration a lack of light that was shed and it ultimately so often came down to the department secretaries of state, james mattis, bill barr, it took them leaving and

speaking openly and publicly about what was happening within the trump white house for the american public to become familiar with what was taking place and if donald trump is able to install these loyalists, there is little threat to donald trump that with these individuals were to even leave at any point, they would speak openly and publicly and as a journalist, that is where my questions are going at this time, as to what extent will we as journalists but even more so the american public be dark to what may be happening within the executive branch of the united states.>> we are also waiting to see if chair guests of the ethics committee has anything to say, we are going to watch julie's camera closely, we are going to take a short break, don't go anywhere. e saved hundreds. with the money i saved i thought i'd get a wax figure of myself. cool right?

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when you can use 1 fire extinguisher. and to fight heartburn, why take 10 antacids throughout the day when you can take 1 prilosec. >> we are back, the ethics chair congressman guest has left the room, he is somewhere

amid this scrum of reporting, julie standing outside, are we going to hear from them? is julia there?>> reporter: yes, so the chairman just walked by and walked t,he did not make any on camera statement, i was too far away to hear if he said anything but i wanted to let you know he did make any kind of official statement.>> okay, thank you. jake sherman, what are we expecting from the chairman? >> well, some sort of signal about how he's going to handle the situation, his options are relatively limited and i will just add that mike johnson's involvement is in this so directly and so openly and publicly, it is a bit unusual, the speaker for a very good

reason, both politically and practically, stays out of these things, meaning they don't comment about any mechanics of the ethics committee who may or may not be under investigation and there's good reason so they can have their hands clean. they might know privately to have liaisons to the ethics committee on their staff vocationally, frequently so they do have situational awareness if they want to know what is going on in the panel but mike johnson's involvement is unusual and i don't want to say i will say anything that is nefarious but it is so unusual to have such direct statements. >> gives a history about the ethics committee and why it is unusual for the speaker of the party to be talking about a report or work they are doing? >> well, how much time do we have? the ethics committee polices members of congress, the members of which you see are generally seen as serious

lawmakers who are taking what is known on capitol hill as a hardship assignment, this is not an assignment that a lot of people are seeking, they are usually people who are close to the speaker who the speaker trusts and the ethics committee can also take complaints from members of congress about behavior from members of congress. the ethics committee usually does step off of the case if the justice department is investigating and that is what happened in this case with matt gaetz, they were investing in, the doj asked them to step off, then they reinitiated the investigation when the of justice is decided not to prosecute. they have under come some criticism over its long history because this is members of congress and it does get political. let's be clear, matt gaetz is not well-liked on capitol hill, that is probably driving some of the desire, at least politically, some of the desire to have this report released.

you can't divorce that one dynamic from the other, but the reason the speaker stays away from this is for all of those reasons, that this should be independent, it should be an entity that can conduct investigations away from the daily management of congress or else the ethics committee could just turn into a tool of the speaker of the house to investigate his or her political enemies and by the way, that is what matt gaetz was accusing speaker kevin mccarthy of using the house ethics committee for, as a tool to investigate gaetz who was a big critic of the speaker. >> let's talk to one of those very serious lawmakers who has taken a hardship position, joining us now, democratic congressman representing california, thank you for joining us, we got word there was no agreement made on the ethics report, is that what

happened?>> first of all, thank you for having me on, the bad news, i cannot talk about anything that happened in the room, that is up to the chairman and the ranking member to do that in working with each other.>> okay, if you were not a member, would you want to see this report?>> i have been checking with ethics and personally i believe in transparency, i have faith in the process when we are transparent.>> you believe in transparency, i take that to say this should be released, people should see it. >> you are very astute.>> the chairman said earlier that the report wasn't finished, is that your understanding of the report?>> again, i'm not going to talk about that, the committee will follow up in the process and we will get to the right results, i believe.>> are you meeting again? >> i can't talk about that either, i'm sorry.>> and you

say you will get to the right results, which i'm assuming is the release of this report, can you give me any indication as to where this could be heading next, whether this happens before matt gaetz has a confirmation hearing in january, anything at all?>> i apologize, i'm trying to follow the rules, the rules are such that we are not supposed to talk about things that happened in that room but i do have faith that at the end of the day, we will work in a bipartisan manner, and this is not a reflection of what happened today. >> why are you so sure that you guys are going to be able to work together to come up with a bipartisan and fair and the right result as you put it?>> it is not perfect, this is a human institution and it is not perfect but it is what we have

and there are lots of times, in the next 10 years, where members of both parties will work together on these big controversial things and yes, they also don't, more frequently than not, but i do have faith in this instance, only because it is my belief and my faith in the institution as a former republican, many years ago, who disagrees with my current colleagues most of the time, i still have faith in matters such as this that we will get to the best solution which is being open and honest with the public and following the process as outlined. >> from your work on this particular investigation, do you think it is fair for a speaker of the house to get involved, make phone calls and even say publicly what they believe about whether a report should be released? >> i think it is better that they don't, the ethics committee is set up to be separate from that kind of political pressure, the leaders of both parties select the members, five democrats, and

five republicans, confirming the leadership of both caucuses, but that is where it should stop in my belief. anything more than that is in my belief, exerting pressure that shouldn't be on the ethics committee once you have constituted it and once the rules have been approved.>> what sort of allegations come up in front of the ethics committee and would you categorize this investigation, without getting into it, is it serious?>> asked somebody that likes to read american history, i'm not telling your viewers anything different, these are no ordinary times we are in right now, so it is difficult.>> have you been in this sort of experience before, this sort of situation before, dealing with behavior from a lawmaker like this?>> the only time, when i was in the state

senate, that the primary was higher in the democratic caucus, it was funny in the sense that it was true, so i have been in similar situations, yes. and it is unfortunately a part of human nature to appoint, that is why you have the ethics committee to make sure that point is limited as possible and the most important thing, americans have faith in this institution and that is a challenge right now as you know.>> on that, there are questions about what might happen in the confirmation process, there are republicans including high profile republicans in the senate and also the speaker who said recess appointments should be on the table, if donald trump can't get his choices through the senate, that he should appoint them during recess. if the ethics committee report doesn't come out and there's an attempt to recess appointment for matt gaetz, what do you think should happen? >> i think that would be bad,

as the justice said in his opinion on the first amendment, the best disaffected is always fun trying, right now that is congress in this country, my hope is that republicans and democrats will always vote for sunshine, let the public decide and let the process play out.>> this not a situation where the members of congress are resigning and going off and doing their own thing, this is a member of congress who has resigned and is nominated to be the top cop in this country, to lead the department of justice, given that, do you feel more pressure? >> absolutely, the scope and the scale and the danger is higher than anything i have ever worked through, so it is very important that congress, both houses are open and transparent and it is my hope and my belief that republicans and democrats will vote on their conscious and be as public and open as possible.

the institution really needs that right now.>> thank you very much for joining us, no agreement has been made on the release of this report, we will wait to see when you meet next and what you do. thank you again for joining us. jake sherman and folks that are still with us, he didn't say a lot, but at the same time, he said quite a bit.>> yeah, he said people should vote their conscious, there's two votes he could be talking about, the ethics committee vote and the privileged resolution, by sean of illinois, that we just talked about, these are privileged in the sense that any member can bring them up at basically any point in time. they go to the floor, the leadership could take good

delay of vote on it for a certain period of time but eventually if it meets the privilege of the house, it will be brought up for a vote, it could be tabled. but again, if you have every democrat not voting at the table with a handful of republicans who don't like matt gaetz, that is going to be a difficult vote for house republican leadership to control, i will be honest with you. they will need a dozen or so, maybe a little bit more, you could add that a bunch of ethics committee members refuse themselves, so the numbers might be funky a little bit, but you could see that coming to a vote and being a very interesting breakdown. >> julie, do you have a little bit more information from us on when they might meet next? >> just a little bit, because in that scrum that i'm sure you and the viewers saw of the chair and others walking out of the building, we were able to catch up with him and he did say no agreement, if one

republican voted with all democrats to release the report, it would be made public so perhaps the disagreement has something to do with that. people aren't on the same page. he also said the committee will meet for their regularly scheduled meetings this year, so he's not closing the door on this matter, he's not throwing this out entirely, he's just saying they did not come to an agreement, they will be meeting again sometime into the rest of the year, and these will be the regularly scheduled meetings, so this matter is not going away, we will be spending a lot more time in this hallway in the coming weeks because again, on the other side of the capital, you still have pressure on republicans, democrats, maybe not all of them publicly but certainly privately want to see this report in some capacity whether that happens publicly or they are able to see a behind closed doors perhaps remains to be seen but this matter is not going away.>> this is, the question is, how much pain is donald trump willing to put

them through? look, i think the gaetz thing is quite personal for many house republicans , jake and julie can speak better to this than myself, but this is why i think, you know, i don't know if the public ethics report would 100% derail gaetz in the senate, i really don't believe it is 100% derail me, i think it is likely. i enjoy sports gambling, i certainly would make the no vote as the favorite right now, but i don't think you can rule out just some personal animosity to gaetz that brings republicans to say you know what, i can't do it. i think i can separately focus on matt gaetz and not worry

about maga coming after me, but i also don't believe a public report definitely ends his bid for ag. >> trump and the people around his -- him have insulated themselves pretty well. i'm curious, do we have any knowledge about what exactly gaetz said to the president- elect to get this role, to get this nomination? >> not exactly. but i know that the day he was traveling with him, when he was offered to him, it was not surprising to anybody to see that he was the one who was tooling around with elon musk and of course the campaign advisers around capitol hill and back to florida because he has been covering donald trump for the last three years. matt gaetz was a very frequent presence on the campaign trail,

and to the point that when matt gaetz was pushing the motion to vacate and boot kevin mccarthy out, there was one vote in which matt gaetz said he put up donald trump's name to be speaker of the house, i think at this point in time, for donald trump, clearly, when matt whitaker was up for consideration to be the attorney general, got the nato ambassador here, but there were questions around these other names, schmidt didn't want to take the job, that ultimately would be able to fail wholly and when you look at those names and you have a hard time coming up with anybody else that would be 100% that we would have confidence.>> vaughn hillyard , chuck todd, jake

sherman, thank you for sticking with us for the first 45 minutes of the show. still ahead, what the aclu is demanding as the incoming trump administration vows to deport millions of migrants, the information they say they need. d

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>> the aclu is filing a lawsuit to get more information from ice on how exactly donald trump's nasty deportations will work and the plans that are already being put in place to prepare for it.

joining us now, deputy director of the immigrants rights project, this is part of the prep to get ready for donald trump and his plans for mass deportation. >> exactly, we want to know as much information as we can get, including the logistics to see what things may go wrong, but ultimately, we need to challenge the substantive policy so we will have to wait and see what he actually does, he is threatening virtually everything so we are preparing for that, and we have actually been preparing since the winter. >> what happened in the last dress rehearsal for this? >> i think it is going to be much worse than last time and you and i spoke all the time during the first trump term and i feel like every week there was something going on and i was on a plane every week going to a different court, but i see it being much worse, we've had time to prepare it so have they, and i think they are looking to do much more ciccone and things. we will be able to stop some of

it in court but not everything and people shouldn't assume that everything can be stopped in court, so the public needs to push back.>> will you be selective in what you choose to pursue because donald trump is saying they are going to go after specific groups of people first, they are going to go after criminals, they are going to try to go after people who cannot prove they have been here for more than two years, but also saying the first priority could be chinese men of military age living here illegally, have you decided within the aclu about a priority group, or priority pushback in order to make sure that you are not fighting all of the battles that once? >> i think that is a very good question, we are always going to have to be strategic because we always have limited resources, even collectively. so we are going to pick the most draconian things. so, one thing is the military. if he is going to use the military to carry out deportations under this old

act, that is going to be a priority i think, and enforcement where they are rounding up people with kids, who don't have criminal convictions, that is going to have to be a priority. some of it is going to depend by which the means he goes about it, so again, military, family separation, picking and choosing among nationalities, we will have to push back. but everything can't be done through the courts, you and i talked so many times on family separation, back then he thought, well, i have dehumanized immigrants to such an extent, i can do whatever i want and the american public wants a re-formation. when they saw the little babies been taken away, i think the same thing will happen here if they cross that line into really inhumane policies, hopefully they pushback. >> do you think they are going to start with a high-profile thing trying to get into the city of new york and get into los angeles, places where they see the democratic resistance

to these policies, also places where they see they have gained support because of the issue of immigration?>> yeah, i think that is a real possibility, we are going to see probably some amount of lower key things they think are effective and big showy things and i think the right to focus on it might be in blue states as well as red states. right now we think every things on the table until we hear otherwise, we are going to have to prepare but to your point, we are going to have to be strategic to be effective and because these are resource constraints. >> lee gelernt, i appreciate you being here, hopefully you get some rest over the holidays, thank you very much. turning back to our top story, the house ethics committee which disbanded just a moment ago without a decision on the matt gaetz report. joining us now, republican from florida, appreciate you being on, thank you, my question is that the tables have turned,

wouldn't you want to see this report if you were the democrat vying for the ag job? >> the thing i want to know from any of these nominees, do they have the ability to do the job and do it effectively on behalf of the american people, that matters more than anything else, there's always allegations that do come out in the nomination process, most of them, some of them do tend to not be true or an exaggeration. i think what is important, does any of the people that have been put up by president trump, do they have the ability to effectuate the job? the answer is unequivocally yes, they all have the ability to do the job, now it is going to move to the senate and considering the mandate that donald trump does have, i believe they are going to be confirmed by the u.s. senate.>> why not see the report to see what is in it? >> again, this is about his ability to do the job they were called on to dubai president

trump.>> if they are an ethical person, shouldn't that be a part of whether they have the ability to do the job, they have some serious allegations investigated including paying girls for sex, do you think that those thing, if true, would deny him being the attorney general, don't you want to see that?>> to the point about minors, the fbi did look into this, they investigated this and there were no charges in that manner, so now you are saying to go back and reach into it as a means for disqualification, that is not appropriate in my view because it was investigated by law enforcement and they did not bring any charges, now you are talking about in the instance of matt gaetz, his ability to lead the department of justice and frankly cleanup the department of justice because under

merrick garland, the department of justice was going after parents who were simply trying to raise their voices and petition their government about schools and calling them domestic terrorists. you had the department of justice that was weaponized against donald trump and many others, peter navarro, steve bannon and others as well, so what the country is looking for is an attorney general and other cabinet members who are going to uphold the law, and make sure that our institutions are doing the job that they have been enshrined to do by congress and signed into law by the president.>> the doj is continuing to investigate hunter biden, so they would argue that their prosecutions were not political or partisan, in terms of matt gaetz, let me get my question out. hold on, we've got one minute left, steve bannon has called matt gaetz a blowtorch to the doj, elon musk said he's the

judge dread for president trump, those two images applies that he was going to go after donald trump's political enemies, do donald trump spitting, does it not? >> first of all, that is not true, what needs to happen in the department of justice is a cleaning out of people who have weaponized that agency against americans for political purposes, that is a fact and if you want to talk about hunter biden, the department was shamed into the prosecution, because the first thing they tried to do under merrick garland is sweep all of the charges under some gun possession and make the gun possession a misdemeanor, they wanted to decide by some phony deal and it took a federal judge to look into the deal that the department of justice had negotiated and say this deal is garbage, we are throwing it out. we need to step away from the doj that operates like that and if you are going to clean house at the department of justice which is what needs to occur,

not to go after people but to have it uphold the law, matt gaetz is one of the few people in our country with the ability and the will to do it.>> why does matt gaetz have the ability over everybody else? >> number one, he has been a member of the judiciary committee for the last eight years, he has intimate knowledge of the entire department of justice because he had oversight responsibility for the department of justice, you talk to anybody on capitol hill, whether they like him or not, he was one of the smartest people around who takes technical knowledge to actually know what is going on, not just watching clips and commenting during the day and last but not least, he is willing to roll up his sleeves and get to work. we have seen nominees come through who put on a good show in the nomination process, in the hearing process but if you want to know what job they've done, they have done no job at all, don't believe me? ask what pete buttigieg was doing at the present of transportation over the last four years. >> they have called him vile,

they have called him a clown, they have likened him to a child running with scissors, they have said some terrible things about him, i just wonder, if this is the hill that donald trump wants to fight, if matt gaetz is the kind of person that he wants to defend to build, to the ag to the american public, but he didn't win by a giant margin and i'm sorry, i've got 20 seconds left. >> donald trump has the political mandate given to him by the american people, 312 electoral college votes and a popular vote victory, the largest victory by a president easily since reagan in 84, he is entitled to his appointees. . thank you for joining us and please come back. that will do it for me today. deadline white house starts right now.