the last thing before we go tonight, giving tuesday starts right now. after days of shopping deals, tomorrow is all about helping

others. giving tuesday is a global day of generosity in action, the perfect opportunity to give your time or money to a worthy cause. for inspiration check out givingtuesday.org where they list organizations that can use your help and remember, if you need help, ask for it, but if you can give help, please give it. on that note i wish you a very good night. from all of our colleagues across the networks of nbc news, thanks for staying up late. great to be back with you. i'll see you again tomorrow. ♪♪ really happy to have you here. hope you had a great holiday. in the 1950s a whole squad of officers was assigned to police bathrooms and public

parks and other places where they thought men might secretly be meeting up to have sex. they had officers who were trained to come onto people, to make passes at them basically and lead them on to see if they could get the other guy to initiate some kind of a sexual encounter. and then they would slap the confidents on them and arrest them, haul them downtown. they called this the perversion elimination program. you will not be shocked to learn that what they called perversion was not eliminated by this police program, but this program in 1950s did arrest a lot of people. it did ruin a lot of people's lives. t that said, if they picked up someone who was a first time offender, in no other trouble with the law, not employed in

some sensitive position where the person could conceivably be blackmailed, they tended in those instances to give a warning. maybe they would make the poor guy spend a night in jail to scare him, but in those kind of circumstances generally they let the guy go. that is what happened when a young seminary student was arrested in washington, d.c. in lafayette park in 1953. he was a very bright young man. he had a seemingly very bright future ahead of him. he was a seminary student, after all. he had no offenses on his record, no involvement with the law, but he was picked up in one of these sting operations. they gave him a warning and let him go, pretty much standard operating procedure for how you'd handle that kind of a sting, that kind of an alleged offense, and that kind of a defendant, but then with this particular young man it turned into something else because this young man's father was a united states senator, a

democratic u.s. senator from wyoming, and as a senator, he had made some very powerful enemies on the other side of the aisle. specifically he had squared off and stood up against one particular republican senator named joe mccarthy and when joe mccarthy and his friends in the senate learned that wyoming senator lester hunt's son buddy -- his name was buddy hunt -- when they learned lester hunt's son had been arrested for a so- called morals offense, they learned he was let off with a warning, the way most first time offenders are, and then they decided that they had a better idea for how this particular arrest should be handled. they summoned a police supervisor to their offices on capitol hill, brought him up to the united states senate from the police and they demanded that this particular young man should have his case reopened, that buddy hunt should not be

let off with a warning, that he should definitely be charged criminally and put on trial. after intimidating the police into agreeing to do that, they then went to the kid's dad. they went to lester hunt, the senator, and said hey, shame about what's happening to your son. we could make this all go away if you'd just resign from the senate and give up your seat. senator lester hunt told them to pound sand and so buddy hunt went to trial and he was convicted, whereupon joe mccarthy's allies in the u.s. senate came back to lester hunt said wouldn't be it a shame if we put a flyer in every mailbox in the state of wyoming explaining just exactly what buddy was arrested for and what he did and that he's your son and it's on your family and are you sure you don't want to

resign from the senate? senator lester hunt worried so much about his son buddy. he worried about his wife as well, buddy's mom. the trial itself had already almost killed her. senator lester hunt's friends in the senate said he was basically reduced to a shell of himself by the worry. he had been really gregarious and outgoing and friendly by some contemporaneous press accounts kind of the most personally popular member of the senate among other senators, just a great guy, very outgoing, but when all this started happening, he retreated into himself, stopped talking to people. he used to eat alone in his office. he was profoundly worried and upset by what was happening to his son and it was happening to his son because of politics, because these republican senators wanted to wage political war against him, the father, and they knew that the son was the way to get at the

father. lester hunt had previously told those republican senators when they threatened him, he had previously told them to shove it, but in the end they did get him out of the senate. there had been a one-seat democratic majority while democrat lester hunt was in the united states senate, but when he vacated his seat in the u.s. senate, that flipped senate control to the republicans. they got their way when lester hunt indeed vacated that seat. lester hunt vacated that seat in the senate by killing himself in his senate office in june 1954. those republican senators, those allies of joe mccarthy, they used their political power for political reasons to abuse and pervert the legal system into pursuing a young man for, yes, something that he did, but something for which anyone other than him would never have

faced serious legal consequences and they did it because of who his dad was and they did it because they knew this young man's dad loved him. they decided that that father's love for his son would be their best and most effective weapon against the father. get him right in the heart. one of the most despicable episodes i know of in the entire modern history of american politics, just a shakespearean crash of evil against love. the result being a good man shooting himself at his desk in the united states senate. that was 70 years ago, 1954. last night president biden put out a statement explaining his

pardon of his son hunter. the statement said, "from the day i took office i said i would not interfere with the justice department's decision making and i county my word even as i have watched my son being selectively and unfairly prosecuted. without aggravating factors like use in a crime or multiple purchases or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form. those who were late paying taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, those people are typically given noncriminal resolutions. the president says, "it is clear that hunter was treated differently. the charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election. then a carefully negotiated plea deal agreed to by the department of justice unraveled in the courtroom with a number

of my political opponents in congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process." no reasonable person who looks at the facts of hunter's cases can reach any other conclusion than hunter was singled out only because he is my son and that is wrong." he says, "there has been an effort to break hunter who has been 5 1/2 years sober. even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution, in trying to break hunter, they have tried to break me and there's no reason to believe it will stop here. enough is enough." he says, "for my entire career i followed a simple principle. just tell the american people the truth. they'll be fair-minded. here's the truth. i believe in the justice system, but as i have wrestled with this, i also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice. i hope americans will understand why a father and a

president would come to this decision." father and a president. he says there's no reason to believe it will stop here. enough is enough. it is true that president biden had said he wouldn't pardon his son and it may or may not be related, but would it change your mind at all if after you made a pledge like that, the incoming next president then announced that he planned to remove the director of the fbi and install in his place someone who has literally published a hit list of people he wants to go after once trump is back in power? there are 60 names on this list. this guy published it as appendix b to one of his recent books, not his series of books that describe trump as king donald. no, those are his three books for kids. the one with the 60 names on the list of who he's going to go get in trump's name once trump is back in power, that's a book he wrote presumably for

adults. so what would you do? what would you do if after you made that pledge to not pardon your son, that's what the next president said he was going to do to u.s. law enforcement? what would you do? what is reasonable to demand of a man after what's been done to your son already, right? you ready to put him back in the barrel? honestly, maybe what president biden should have done is not just pardon his son, hunter, but name him ambassador to france, right? maybe then the response, the criticism of the decision would be a little more muted. consider it, right? donald trump, the president- elect, used his pardon power to give pardons to his longest serving political adviser, campaign chairman, national security adviser. he gave pardons to seven different republican

congressmen convicted of dozens of felonies. he pardoned the father of his son-in-law. his daughter is married to jared kushner. he pardoned jared kushner's father. this man tried to blackmail and intimidate a witness in a federal case against him by hiring a prostitute to seduce the witness and lure him back to a hotel room where the guy had staged a hidden camera. he filmed the sexual encounter and sent the tape to the wife of the witness to intimidate both the witness and the wife into not testifying against him and that is an astonishing thing to do to commit the crime of witness intimidation. it is a whole other level of insanity when you consider the woman this guy sent the tape to was his own sister because it was his brother-in-law, his sister's husband, who was going to be the witness against him in this criminal investigation along with potentially his sister herself. so this is what he did to his own sister to try to shut down the case, in order to try to

shut down those witnesses. his name is charles kushner. his son jared is married to ivanka trump. so he got a pardon. charles kushner served two years in federal prison, but i'm sure just on the merits of the case he got a full pardon from donald trump in trump's first term and now this weekend trump just named him, that same guy, that ex-con, he just announced he will name him ambassador to france and he did that announcement right after he announced that the father of the guy married to his other daughter, tiffany, he will be trump's senior adviser on the middle east. so yeah, cue all the hand wringing and gnashing of teeth today about a president using his pardon power, his powers as president, to do something for a family member. i mean trump pardoned a family member and then named him ambassador to france, a man who has no qualifications

whatsoever to be america's ambassador to france. trump pardoned the owner of the 49ers football team and has now nominated his son-in-law to be the head of the dea. the guy is a local sheriff. he has no apparent qualifications to lead the drug enforcement administration other than being a local sheriff and being related to a rich guy who trump pardoned. the surgeon general trump just announced. she is a random doctor from the fox news channel who has her own celebrity line of vitamins. she has no apparent qualifications for being surgeon general at all other than the fact she's a doctor and the sister-in-law of the guy he just named national security adviser. so sure, obviously why not? the guy he's just named to lead the navy has zero experience with the u.s. navy or with literally anything having to do with any part of the united states military, but the guy did hold a $12 million fundraiser for trump at his multimillion dollar home which famously features a mirrored floor. so ha, ha, you can see up

people's skirts while they're standing in the living room at the fundraiser. you think i'm kidding. trump named someone the u.s. government once felt the need to put on a terrorism watch list to be the new director of national intelligence. he named an accused child sex trafficker to be attorney general. he named an hhs secretary who says heroin, heroin, helps him read better and wi-fi gives you leaky brain. i'm just going to mention this one more time. he named his convicted felon relative to be our nation's ambassador in paris. maybe his french is excellent. i don't know. but yes, tell me more about how outraged we all are about president biden's pardon for his son because that, somehow that is the thing that looks bad. trump himself responded to the pardon news by asking sarcastically whether the

pardon includes all the convicted defendants from the violent attack on congress waged by his supporters january 6th, 2021. if nothing else, that reaction from trump serves to confirm and remind us all that trump plans to use his pardon power to pardon all of those january 6th convicts apparently as soon as he's sworn in. so if this is our national moment to be talking about pardons, to be saying the use of the pardon power might be a problem, it might deserve like -- i don't know -- four different simultaneous headlines on the front page of "the new york times" right now tonight, then let's talk about this other one. let's talk about the 33-year- old man who lives in henry county, georgia, just southeast of atlanta, used to live there. now he lives in prison where he is serving four years and nine months in prison and this is why.

>> fight for trump! fight for trump! fight for trump! fight for trump! fight for trump! fight for trump! usa! usa! usa! usa! usa! usa! >> so trump is indicating that that guy's going to get a pardon. trump is indicating he's going to pardon all the patriots who were convicted for what they did for him on january 6th which presumably includes this guy wailing away on police officers using a crutch to try to smash their faces in. i mean this was trump's sarcastic response to biden's

pardon announcement today. does the pardon given by joe include the j6 hostages? this isn't what hostages look like. this is what january 6th looked like from police officers' perspectives and that is the behavior on january 6th. you see them here dragging a police officer down the steps of the capitol. that's the behavior on january 6th that trump is praising and promising to use his pardon power for. so yeah, tell me all about the scandal of the use of the pardon power. pardon power. trump's announced nominee to lead the fbi has made the january 6th defendants his main cause since leaving office at the end of trump's first term, celebrating the january 6th attack as the work of patriots who all need to be freed, who need to be celebrated, supported. we will see what happens with the kash patel nomination to lead the fbi given the explicit in writing hit list that he has

published, given his celebration of the violence on january 6th. that fbi nomination is arguably a more extreme nomination than the accused child sex trafficker guy trump wanted to make attorney general and that would be nomination already failed, but you know what? if kash patel with all the rest of them, it's up to republican senators. god help us. so we shall see. it was only after trump publicly named his choice for defense secretary, pete hegseth, that trump's transition team reportedly learned mr. hegseth had been the subject of a police investigation for an alleged rape. this is the police report from that alleged incident. you can see the alleged offense listed there, rape, victim unconscious of the nature of the act. it was also reportedly a surprise to the trump transition team that after this allegation was made against hegseth he paid off the woman who made the allegation to keep

her from talking about it in public. surprise. hegseth obviously knew all of that about himself, but he didn't tell the trump team. it turns out they didn't figure it out on their own. wow, turns out vetting and background checks might be a nice thing sometimes. hegseth denies the allegation here, but the woman went to the hospital and submitted herself to a rape kit examination and that resulted in a report to local authorities for potential prosecution of hegseth. hegseth himself apparently received a copy of the police report of the investigation in 2021 after local authorities in california decided that he would not be charged in the matter. but none of this was partner known to the trump transition team which again appears to have not done any formal vetting or background check of hegseth at all other than turning him on on the weekends to watch him on "fox & friends." tonight we'll be joined by

legendary new yorker reporter jane mayer who has just broken new news about pete hegseth that again might have been turned up by any professional and thorough effort to vet the guy before naming him as the choice to be defense secretary, but this is all news to trump and his transition as of today. jane mayer joins us with that new reporting here next.

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there's new reporting today from legendary reporter jane mayer and the new yorker about the man announced as choice for defense secretary in the incoming administration. the new reporting before pete hegseth was hired to be a tv host at the fox news channel in 2017, he had been forced out of two small right wing veterans advocacy organizations that he had been involved in. the first one was a group called veterans for freedom. they hired him on to lead that

organization in 2007 according to mayer's reporting. by 2008 the group's finances had collapsed amid concerns about wild spending and "sexually inappropriate behavior in the workplace." the group's donors soon folded the organization into a different veterans group basically according to mayer's reporting in order to get hegseth's hands off the checkbook. that was veterans for freedom. then it was concerned veterans for america where hegseth was in charge 2013 to 2016 before he was forced out of that organization, too. from mayer's reporting, "a previously undisclosed whistleblower report on hegseth's tenure as the president of concerned veterans for america describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization's events. the detailed report which was

compiled by mull per former employees and said at one point he had to be pulled from the stage of the louisiana strip club where he had brought his team of the organization. it was also reported there were two groups, the party girls and not party girls. in a separate letter of complaint sent to the organization, a different former employee described hegseth being at a bar in the early morning hours of may 29th, 2015, while on an official tour through cuyahoga falls, ohio. he was drunkenly chanting at the bar, "kill all muslims. kill all muslims." mayer says, "i spoke at length with two people who identified themselves as having contributed to the whistleblower report. one of them said of hegseth,"

i've seen him drunk so many times and dragged away multiple times. to have him at the pentagon would be scary. when those of us who worked at concerned veterans for america heard he was being considered for secretary of defense, it wasn't no. it was hell, no." according to the complaint, at one such cva event in it virginia beach on memorial day day weekend in 2015, hegseth was "totally sloshed and needed to be carried to his room because he was so intoxicated." the following month during an event in cleveland, hegseth who had gone with his team to a bar around the corner from their hotel was described as "completely drunk in a public place." according to the report, "several high profile people who attended the organization's event were very disappointed to see this kind of public behavior. the report does not identify them. nevertheless, in october 2014 the group instituted a no- alcohol policy at its events. the following month, however,

hegseth and another manager lifted the policy, lifted the no-alcohol policy, while overseeing a get out the vote feld operation to boost republican candidates in north carolina. according to the report the evening before the election, hegseth who had been out with three young female staff members was so inebriated by 1:00 a.m., a staff member asked for assistance to get hegseth to his room. "pete was completely passed out in the middle seat slumped over a young female staff member. it took two male staff members to get hegseth into the hotel after one young woman vomited in some bushes. another helped him to bed." in the morning a team member had to wake hegseth so he didn't miss his flight. according to the report, "all this happened in public. while concerned veterans for america was embedded in the republican get out the vote effort." the following month in december 2014 the group held an office

christmas party at the grand hyatt in washington. according to the report, "his behavior was embarrassing in front of the team but not surprising. people had come to expect pete to get drunk at social events." the 2014 tax filing by veterans for america has an unusual note saying, "major programs developed in the last fiscal year were paused." and describes pete hegseth as president outgoing. by the start of 2016 hegseth was out of his job. i should tell you nbc news has not independently confirmed the reporting in the new yorker. pete hegseth would not comment for the piece, though someone described as his adviser told the magazine that the claims were "outlandish." outlandish or not, what jane

mayer's reporting is describing how things went with the last organizations he ran that had a handful of staff. now trump wants him in charge of the largest department in the u.s. government with an $800 billion budget and 3 million people to be in charge of. in 1989 george h.w. bush, newly elected president, nominated this man, john tower, to be his secretary of defense. john tower was then accused of womanizing and drunkenness on a scale significantly smaller than this. john tower then made history by becoming the first cabinet nominee the senate had ever rejected from a newly elected president. when pete hegseth was announced as trump's choice for defense secretary, the trump transition team was apparently completely unaware of the rape allegations that had been leveled against

him in california. they apparently were unaware of all this stuff as well. you know, that's why vetting is a good idea i got to say. that's why journalism is, too. joining us now is jane mayer, chief washington correspondent at the new yorker magazine. ms. mayer, really nice to see you, thank you for making time to be here tonight. >> so glad to be with you. >> did i get any of that the wrong way around or is there anything else from your reporting you want to highlight for our audience to understand in terms of what you learned about mr. hegseth? >> well, thanks so much. you did a great summary and the one thing i would say that is also clear from this report is that we gave a spokesman a lawyer for pete hegseth two days basically to respond and they have not denied a single thing in this report. they just said no comment after

being given sort of very careful questions. the other thing i'd like to say is just it's been almost a day since this story came out and my phone has been ringing off the hook. i have been hearing from many more people who worked with pete hegseth who have come out of the woodwork to say they, too, have stories along the same lines, stories of just drinking himself into sort of oblivion, all of which i think is -- you know, i've got nothing against people having a good time in life, but it's when you combine it with running the defense department that it really does get to be an alarming picture. >> i wanted to ask you about the first veterans group, chronologically the first veterans group that hegseth was involved with, veterans for freedom. you say under his leadership veterans for freedom soon ran up enormous debt and financial records indicate by the end of

2008, the year after he became the group leader, it was unable to pay its creditors. the group's primary donors became concerned their money was wasted on inappropriate expenses. there were rumors of parties that "could politely be called trysts. a former associate of the group put it, one early hegseth sympathizer said, i wasn't the first to hear there was money sloshing around and sexually inappropriate behavior in the workplace." i don't mean to be like dense here, but can you explain or just put in sort of different terms what exactly that allegation means about the sort of combination of a fiscal problem at the organization, a financial problem at the organization under his leadership, but also something about what was going on in the workplace and with these parties? >> well, i mean it's no secret to anyone who knows pete hegseth that he's gone through at least two marriages and

there are many, many, many allegations of infidelity which are the reason that his marriages ended and that there's been a long pattern here that we've seen of sexually inappropriate behavior by him in the workplace and overspending as well. so that is what people saw even in the beginning way back. that was back 2007 and as you said, by 2008, i mean that organization was on the brink of bankruptcy and the thing is if you think about it as a test of whether this person might be a manager of the largest federal department in america, it was an organization that had between five and ten employees and a budget between 5 to $10 million. i mean it's miniscule really. there's just no history that he has that shows he's capable of

managing a large organization. >> senator richard blumenthal told you much as we might be sympathetic to people with continuing alcohol problems, they shouldn't be at the top of our national security structure. it's dangerous. the secretary of defense is involved in every issue of national security. he's involved in the use of nuclear weapons. entrusting these kinds of issues to someone who might be incapacitated for any reason is a risk we cannot take. jane, last question for you, as you were reporting this trying to get comment from hegseth, did you come across any indication that the trump transition or that former president trump himself was aware of these problems in hegseth's past when he was announced, when trump announced him to be the choice for defense secretary? >> i mean it's actually not clear. the lawyer for pete hegseth said that he was consulting with the transition team when we asked all these questions,

but it's unclear whether pete hegseth came clean on this extraordinary back history in his professional life. you know, i mean he certainly did not disclose that there had been a rape allegation against him and that he had paid off a woman and signed an nda, nondisclosure agreement, with her in order to keep it secret. i mean that was definitely not disclosed to the transition team. as you've been saying, i think if nothing else, this shows you what a tremendous mistake it is not to do background checks. the press, we're doing the best that we can, but, you know, we're not the fbi and it was jaw dropping what i learned about pete hegseth. >> yeah. and the fact that your phone has been ringing off the hook all day since this has been out there with more people calling to corroborate these kinds of

allegations, we will expect your continued reporting on this, jane. thank for helping us understand it. i appreciate it. >> thanks for having me. >> jane mayer, chief washington correspondent at the new yorker magazine. we'll be right back. stay with us.

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i am forever ditching regular coffee. with reliable medicare coverage the tattoo artist drank a little too much coffee, and then he crashed, hard. so now maybe i do have some regrets. do not get a tattoo if your tattoo guy does not drink everyday dose. everyday dose coffee, functional coffee for all the energy without the jitters or crash. it's kind of the same right, do you notice it? you do? okay. at the time it was the most destructive wildfire season california had ever had. dozens of people died. thousands of buildings burned.

then came the political fallout. conspiracy websites started falsely blaming the fires on an undocumented immigrant saying it was all arson and that's who started it. the sheriff of sonoma county, california, issued a statement debunking that false claim. of course, this happened in 2017, the first year of the first trump administration, and any story that blamed an undocumented immigrant for a blue state tragedy was just too good for trump officials to pass up no matter how unfounded it was. so trump's acting director of i.c.e., immigration and customs enforcement, tom homan, jumped on it. he criticized the sonoma county sheriff who had debunked the conspiracy theory, said the sheriff had left the community vulnerable to dangerous individuals. the sheriff responded then to tom homan with clarity with a pledge to take care of the people that he served.

he said, "i.c.e.'s misleading statement stirs fear in some of our community members who are already exhausted and scared. despite i.c.e.'s misleading statement we'll continue to protect and serve our community members." now that same i.c.e. official, tom homan, will be back. one of the first decisions trump made after his reelection was to announce he was bringing back tom homan, this time to be his border czar, whatever that means, but the resolve of california officials to stand up to donald trump is back in a big way. according to "the washington post," by the end of trump's first term in office, california had filed more than 120 lawsuits against the trump administration. california in trump's first term sued trump over everything from immigration policy to healthcare to gun safety. now with trump set to return to the white house, california lawmakers today opened an emergency special session of the state legislature specifically for the purpose of funding a new legal fight,

starting a new legal fund to fight the incoming trump administration in court. california governor gavin newsom asked the state legislature to set aside $25 million for potential california state lawsuits against trump's federal government. california's top lawyer, state attorney general rob bonta, says he's ready to do that work. >> would have been here before. we lived through trump 1.0 which means we won't be flat- footed come january. you can be sure that as california attorney general, if trump attacks your rights, i'll be there. >> joining us now is rob bonta, attorney general for the great state of california. thank you very much for being here tonight. >> honored to be with you, rachel. >> what should our viewers

understand about how you're sort of strategizing for the days ahead? the end of next month trump will be taking power in washington. he's talked a lot of big talk about what he wants to do on day one and right out of the gate. how are you thinking strategically about what california can do to protect californians' rights and to defend some of the state's policy interests against what you're expecting from trump? >> my plan for my california department of justice is to hold mr. trump and his administration accountable if and when they violate the law. they did it repeatedly consistently during trump 1.0. my office took him to court over 120 times. we won and prevailed a vast majority of the times because he was violating the constitution, in particular the 10th amendment and separation of powers. he was violating the federal law, including the administrative procedures act. he was misusing money that was budgeted for other purposes than the purpose he was seeking

to use it for. we will hold him accountable when he violates the law. based on what he has said he will do, his inner circle has said he will do, what project 2025 has said he will do, we have a good sense where he's headed on immigration, reproductive freedom, common sense gun safety, on environment. so we've been preparing, readying for weeks, months, in some cases years. we've written briefs that are ready to press print based on the actions he has signaled and telegraphed he will take. so we're ready. we are committed to making sure progress prevails in california, that our forward movement continues and we're not looking for a fight, but if he picks a fight with us, gets in the way of our progress here in california, we'll be ready. >> this $25 million request to the legislature is obviously a big chunk of money. it's not, however, the same amount of money that was spent in california. it doesn't actually match the

amount that was spent by the state to bring those 120 lawsuits, 120 challenges, against the trump administration when trump was first in office. can i just ask you what were the lessons learned of california's strategy along these lines in the first term, both in terms of spending the taxpayers' money wisely, but also in acting most effectively, when to act alone, when to act in concert with other states, when to get things into federal court, when to expect that maybe holding back on that might be the better part of valor given the constitution of the federal courts right now? what were the lessons learned from the first time you had to do this as a state? >> yeah. i'll first say that the $25 million litigation reserve is not the same as the 42 million that was spent over four years, but this is year one. it's a reserve to draw on as needed, as necessary, and what we do will be fully based on

and related to the actions that mr. trump and his administration takes. if he doesn't violate any laws, unlike he did in trump 1.0, if he doesn't violate the constitution or federal law or misuse budget, there will be absolutely nothing for us to do. we don't expect that based on what he's said and done in the past. there's a couple things. the return on investment of the additional funds coming to the california department of justice is huge. we were able to save california billions of dollars. for example, in striking down the citizenship question on the 2020 u.s. census, by our accounts and estimations it saved california billions of dollars in funds that we receive based on getting an accurate count that wasn't suppressed. there were federal funds that violated the 10th amendment because they were conditioned on providing assistance to federal immigration authorities on immigration enforcement and those were two grants of about $30 million. we sued in court because of

those unlawful conditions that violated the 10th amendment. we got those grants. so we have seen some of the patterns in the violations. mr. trump likes to do what he wants when he wants how he wants regardless of the constitution, regardless of federal law and regardless of the processes in place, regardless of what the budget is supposed to be used for. he wants to use it for what he wants to use it for. so he can't help himself. he will violate the law. it's our job to be there when he does. we can go further when we go together than alone. so we have been preparing with democratic attorneys general in other states across the nation, new york attorney general letitia james, others in nevada, illinois, delaware, connecticut, teaming up preparing. we all have different expertise institutional knowledge deploying our expertise and our talent as most effective is part of the game plan. there will be a lot to do and

we have a lot of members on our team. we're working with advocates in various policy spaces from immigration to reproductive freedom, common sense gun safety and working with them for best ideas, getting best thinking, best strategy, best litigation strategy. so we know what courts to file in and where it's best. so we thought it down to the t. >> california attorney general rob bonta, thank you very much for helping us understand this tonight. we look forward to having you back in days and weeks ahead, as i'm sure these battles take shape. thank you, sir. >> look forward to it, too. thanks for having me, rachel. we'll be right back. stay with us. games! ♪♪ dancing in the par... (high pitched sound) (high pitched sound) (high pitched sound)

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>> everybody have to go. >> clear the gallery. the opposition physically removed, republicans pushed through an override of the veto of the power stripping bill. it is less clear whether republicans in the state house will do the same. people are pushing back hard. it is an ongoing fight. we are watching closely. >> we felt like it was necessary. is our house and we have a responsibility to show up and educate them. can lift up. will will-c 25 1500 trucks. ram

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