one of the names on your list was bill barr. chairman grassley has called him one of the most capable cabinet officials i have ever been able to vote for. senator graham has said i have nothing but total respect and admiration for the job done by william barr as attorney general of the united states. is bill barr on your list or whatever you want to call them, what has been referred to as an enemies list? you have called them deep state after serving his country as attorney general of the united states. is he on your list because of a personal vendetta? mr. patel: it is not whatever we want to call it. it is not an enemies list. that is a mischaracterization. sen. klobuchar: i used the word you used for the list, which was deep state. that is what you put. against the attorney general of the united states. is it because of a personal vendetta that he is on the list? you are under oath. mr. patel: i have no personal vendetta about bill barr. sen. klobuchar: he said you would never be able to command the respect necessary to run t

bill war, they -- bill barr, they tried to force him. he said kash patel has virtually no experience that would qualify him to be lead of the fbi. these are the recommendations of his own colleagues that show his unfitness. over at the cia they tried to stuff him in someplace, and the director of the cia, gina said that she would resign before allowing patel to assume a position as her deputy. this is a gay who has -- this is a guy who has a record of trump appointees that shows he is not qualified, capable and would resign before letting them work for him. and now he's supposed to work for the american people, it's ridiculous. he testified once in state court on a trump-related case. and his testimony was to put it, mildly, not convincing. here's what the judge said. the court finds that mr. patel was not a credible witness. his testimony is not only illogical but completely devoid of any evidence in the record. okay, people come into court, they lie. the court doesn't believe their nonsense, and statements like this happen all the time

those were bill barr's words.there is, number one, a lot of concern among conservatives about kash patel. number two, he is on a revenge agenda, not a safety agenda. and number three, this should be about the truth. the fbi, fidelity, bravery, integrity, fbi, these agents, 38,000 people who work there deserve someone better than kash patel. so that is what i am telling my colleagues and on the judiciary committee. i don't know if they're going to budge, but once we get out on the senate floor, i hope they're going to look at this very carefully and join us, because they need to stop acquiescing in everything. donald trump asked them to do. our job is advice and consent. we're supposed to look at these nominees and make a decision if they're qualified, and if they will fulfill the mission of the department they're asked to lead. and if they're going to tell the truth, kash patel does not meet those requirements. and i am going to push my republican colleagues despite them acquiescing to every other one of these nom

i mean, it's one thing for bill barr to be investigated. it's like, okay, you know, have at it. but for these career people, there's a lot of embarrassment and attempt to shame them here. and it's really extraordinary. if you look at the tenor, the tone of beauvais's response to her. i mean, it's just unbelievable that the deputy attorney general would get into like, questioning whether she understood her mentor scalia's views on things, saying, your behavior shouldn't be romanticized by people. i mean, it's obviously a performative thing for trump, but it's really just having worked for an attorney general, dealt with deputy attorney generals, i can't tell you how out of the ordinary that kind of response is. >> it truly is. i mean, they were sending a message on the most personal level possible that they wanted to resonate throughout the justice department and, frankly, throughout the administration. the interesting thing about all of this also is, to some extent, it's a self-inflicted error because trump always had the opportunity, the option to pardon adams if he wanted. in

patel named former attorneys general bill barr and merrick garland, former fbi directors robert mueller and chris wray, as the so-called members of the deep state, whatever that may be. and he's even produced and sold recordings of a song. understand this for a moment -- 1,600 people prosecuted for assaulting law enforcement officials here in this capitol building who were working, as they are at this very moment to keep us safe and our visitors safe, what did patel decide to do? he decided to assemble a choir of the january 6 individuals who were prosecuted. then he was involved in making a recording of a patriotic song that these prisoners were singing. and then he was selling this recording and playing it at the rallies for president trump. i'm not making this up, ladies and gentlemen. this is exactly what this man who wants to head the federal bureau of investigation was doing and which he denied before our hearing under oath. he's even produced these recordings and called the choir the january 6 prisoners, political prisoners. let me take one example of a so-called political prison

i mean, bill barr and mark esper on that list. trump when they were investigating his campaign's ties to russia. all of them named public stated targets of kash patel. >> yeah. >> and i. >> think you. >> have to come back. to understand. >> why it is. >> that people that. >> run agencies like. >> the fbi. >> shouldn't say. >> things like that. >> or. >> shouldn't have said them. >> in the past. and that's because. >> when the. >> fbi takes. >> action. >> the. public has to look. >> at it. >> and think. >> okay. >> do we trust that. >> they're doing. >> this based on. >> the. >> law and the. fact or is it being done. for political purposes? and because of kash patel's. history and what he. said now. everything that the fbi does will be seen through that prism. you just heard all. >> those. >> democratic lawmakers, what. >> they. >> said, chris murphy. >> said, you. >> will regret this. >> vote until. >> your grave. >> so what. >> does that mean about at a. very basic level, how will the public see. fbi action when someone like that

he his bill barr.ink of bill barr, i'm pretty sure wouldn't have gone down this path. or if he did went down this path, he wouldn't have gone certainly as quickly and would have taken a slower route that gave him more cover. this is this is justice is not supposed to be fast. it's like the justice department is the slowest institution that i've ever covered on the face of the earth. they investigate for years. they take forever to make a decision. it just goes on and on. we write endlessly about these investigations. this happened in three weeks. >> it's insane. we're going to try to push ahead to the to the next person that will lead this office. we just sneak in a break first. we also want to remind you democratic leader hakeem jeffries will be at the table in a few minutes. don't go anywhere. >> the first 100 days. it's a critical time for our country. and rachel maddow is on five nights a week. >> now is. >> the time. so we're going to do it. >> settle in. >> the rachel maddow show >> the rachel ma

. >> bill. >> barr, you saw resignations that were front page news, and now you're seeing it within the first few weeks of trump 2.0. it is extraordinary. the only other time i can think of in history that you have seen this is during the saturday night massacre, when nixon ordered the firing of the special counsel looking into his and his coconspirators conduct, and people pushed back and refused. the other thing i think it's important to do is this is not a story about danielle sassoon. i completely agree with mimi that this takes an iron backbone. >> and. >> a real commitment to the rule of law, and she has shown that. but as you said, nicole, it is true of her, her deputies, of the people in the public integrity section at main justice. and then let's not forget that all of this started with the fbi pushing back on an equally bogus memo and directive from emil bove, asking to round up thousands of people at the fbi who emil bove said were appropriately characterized as participating in a grave national injustice. and what was that grave national injustice? it was investigating the j

after clashing with bill barr, had people resisting him at every level of the justice department. it is a whole new sort of floodgate to entertaining, and maybe not until you get to the point brennan is talking about where you're looking at the evidence. well, it's eight hours and a bunch of texts from the insurrectionists saying trump just tweeted bad things about pence. let's go beat up some cops. i mean, it is interesting how much further trump's ambition of using doj and the fbi to prosecute his enemies will go this time. >> bill barr will hate this, but you know, he's looking pretty good to democrats right now. no one will hate that more than. >> i don't know how good he looks, but he he looked. like he had a line that they don't pretend to have. right? yeah. >> no, there was there was a general sense of mlc. you know, bondi is what, 24 hours on this job. so we'll see how she comports herself. but to the point that was made earlier. there are a lot of people, republicans up on the hill who don't want trump to push too hard on this. even on the jack smith stuff. i think one of

he was closely aligned with bill barr when he was.n, the idea that what has been trafficked in right wing media that emanates from donald trump's lies about the bureau that has gone on for nine years, we don't sit around here three people sort of bemoaning the state of the fbi as distracted in light of a domestic terrorism threat. we sit here as citizens of this country and taxpayers with a weakened fbi because of donald trump. is it honorable for merrick garland and chris wray to say and do nothing today? >> yeah. >> i certainly hope that the people in the center of power. >> in the. >> last administration, or at any point speak out here. >> you know. >> one thing that i think is pretty obvious to people in government, but may not be to folks outside of government, is that the less. popular a policy is, the. >> harder. >> it is for that policy. >> to happen. >> and i think, i mean, i think that's the more popular the fbi is, the harder it is to hurt them for political purposes. i mean, i wonder, i want to i want to show you, i need t

attorney general bill barr once so desperate for a job in thes trump administration, that he wrote a lengthy job application cat city debating an investigation he knew little about found ultimately that there were lines even he could not corroboration like lying about the election. others still like kash patel seemed never to find demand by the president too taxing of their own motherly code to raise an objection but, rather, viewed any questionable order as a means of advancement. the question we face with the nomination of pam bondi is what will she do when inevitably she is pout the test by a president who feels unbound by law or provide pry. her testimony before the senate judiciary committee tells us that she will not pass the test. when asked about whether the president lost the 20 election, she could not answer. when asked whether she would preserve evidence gathered in the january 6 investigation, she could not agree to do so. when asked about potential pardons of violent criminals who attacked police on january 6, she indignantly assured us that she would review all pardon c

ag bill barr, former director gina haspel, john bolton, others in national security kind of waved red flags. these are people who witnessed patel in action behind the scenes. are you surprised? republican senators seem to be just ignoring those warnings? >> sadly, it's no longer surprising that we've got the senate gop contingent just falling right into line with everything we know about kash patel his history, his own prior statements. i can tell you that he is the most dangerous nominee to head the fbi in the bureau's history. he has the potential to make j. edgar hoover look like a boy scout in terms of the abuses that may be coming at us. and when you combine attorney general bondi and then kash patel across the street at fbi headquarters, you have the potential for tremendous abuse of power with regard to targeting political enemies, opening and closing cases at the whim of the president, which should not be happening, but is already happening. by the way, the dismissal of cases from eric adams to former governor blagojevich in illinois. we're going to see the targeting of people

who had lines that they would not cross for donald trump, like bill barr, refused to go along with trump's lie that the 2020 election was stolen. right? jeff sessions appropriately recused himself from the doj investigation. >> original sin. the rest of the administration. >> exactly right. and they never recovered from that in donald trump's eyes. and so this time, donald trump is determined to have an attorney general that will, number one, give him total control of the department and who will be absolutely loyal to him and loyalty here is not loyalty in the traditional sense, like a loyalty that a spouse has to another spouse. loyalty here is absolute obedience and zero dissent. that's what he gets with pam bondi. >> well, because one of the initial actions that she took was ordering a review of cases against president trump, right? what does that even look like? >> so again, if there are allegations of wrongdoing anywhere, there are existing mechanisms within the justice department to investigate those called the office of professional responsibility. and if you want to look at it more

i mean, i remember bill barr telling me he was worried that ruling would limit executive power, and instead we saw just how much it expanded it. so what does that look like? if we get to that point where the president, who was cloaked in that immunity, says, yeah, we're not going to listen to that order. >> well, the supreme court has already gone extremely far in the direction of saying that the president is above the law to the extent of being immune from criminal punishment in almost all cases. but that's not the issue here. the issue here is not whether donald trump is going to go to jail, whether anybody else is going to go to jail. the issue is, will the courts simply be advisory bodies expressing opinions with no force? it's one thing to say that the president has great latitude, that he doesn't risk imprisonment when he's acting within the sphere of his powers. it's another thing to say that when the courts determine that the president or some guy named elon musk, who's never been elected to anything but who's very rich, when the courts say that those people, are free to do whatever

attorney general bill barr, national security advisor john bolton, white house counsel pat cipollone, secretary of defense mark esper, white house communications director alyssa farah griffin, fbi director chris wray. uh, i mean, you have no issue with an fbi director that has an enemies list made up of basically critics. i wouldn't call that an enemies list. that's what that's what the media likes to call it. what he was doing is exposing what he felt like was truth. and i don't think he was far off base. he's also the one that exposed hypocrisy coming out of the out of the fbi and exposed what director wray was doing. and by weaponizing the fbi to go after political. >> enemies. >> you got to remember this is the same fbi that was going after catholic churches saying that they could be a domestic terrorist organization. they're the same people that went after parents for going to school board meetings during covid. this is an organization that should be mission focused on keeping all americans safe, not weaponize themselves after political foes by treating president trump's classifi

he put people on the list like bill barr, the republican attorney general, presumably because he said that he didn't think kash patel could get a job, in his words, over his dead body should not work at the fbi, presumably because because barr would not admit that, in fact, the election was rigged and said he found no evidence of that. kash patel has a revenge agenda when he gets to the fbi, and you're already seeing it right now in real time. as we go into his vote in the committee. >> even before he gets there. i mean, we also know this week that about two people installed in the fbi director's office, one is a former aide to jim jordan, another with ties to elon musk. this is an agency where there's only one political appointee. typically explain to our viewers why that is alarming. >> because in the past, while the fbi director, who usually serves ten terms right and i supported fbi directors nominated by republican presidents like christopher wray because i believe so strongly that you have to have someone with the experience to run this kind of an agency and someone that has the

you see people like joe biden, bill barr, for whatever reason. um, some of these are enemies that go back to 2016. and the first mueller investigation, the fbi investigation into trump and russia, his campaign ties to russia, and and, of course, now, more recently, the fbi and the justice department, investigations of trump related to january 6th and, of course, the classified documents case, which patel was one of the people who had to provide grand jury testimony. so he does have a clear record of saying what he wants to do. but during the hearings, he has more recently said, i'm not coming in with a, with a with an enemies list. i'm going to refocus the fbi on fighting crime. the agents inside that i talked to don't really believe that that is the case. >> hmm. interesting. evan perez manu raju. thank you both. and still ahead, one of the president's handpicked prosecutors threatens anyone who threatens trump allies. that comes after democratic congressman robert garcia said his party needs to, quote, bring actual weapons in the fight for demo

when he recused himself from the russia probe and appointed bob mueller the way he turned against bill barrusing to endorse his false claims about a stolen election in late 2020. there was also this exchange between senator adam schiff, a new member of this committee, and blanche. let's play it. >> will you recuse yourself. >> from overseeing the january 6th case, the mar-a-lago case and the alvin bragg case? will you recuse yourself from the working group's supervision of those investigations? >> i will follow the rules. >> as told to me by the. >> experts. >> career prosecutors. >> in the department when it comes to every recusal. >> i've heard that. i've heard that. >> but it's true that. >> well. >> it may be true in the abstract. >> no. >> it's not abstract. >> it's true. >> and beyond that, chris, mr. blanche refused to defend the assault of law enforcement officers on that day. on january 6th. he said it should never be tolerated. that, of course, is a departure from president trump, who did pardon those people, chris. >> all right. so, christie, you know, todd blanche. and he was as

then trump's doj under attorney general bill barr demanded the charges be dropped anyway after he pleaded guilty. now, the judge overseeing the case refused to dismiss it, but the whole thing eventually went away when trump stepped in and simply pardoned flynn on his way out of office. in her letter to bovey, sassoon points out that the president could just do the same thing now, noting that with flynn, the president ultimately chose to cut off the extended and embarrassing litigation over dismissal by granting a pardon. bovey responded to that with some more bluster, basically admonishing sassoon for daring to question trump's authority. don't tell the president who to pardon, but let's linger here for a second, because that example raises an important point, right? all this is happening because trump did not pardon adams. in fact, we have reporting the new york times that adams explicitly sent a letter asking for a pardon. he didn't get one. that kind of gives the game away, doesn't it? because it's not as though this president is particularly shy about wielding his pardon power, consid

really believes that there is a malignant deep state that has plotted for years, and he includes bill barrart. >> of the. >> you know, christopher wray. so it's not just the democrats who you would, you know, tend to think. right. but it's like everybody i mean, this guy is obsessed with this paranoia. mother jones, we've discovered that he got paid $25,000 from a pro kremlin propagandist to be in a film. he still hasn't explained the money he made from doing consulting work for qatar. he has over $1 million in interest in a chinese company that he didn't really fully explain. he did as you, as the intro noted, often promote qanon, which is about as wacky as one can be. >> and in that enemies. >> list. >> i mean, i. >> sat through his confirmation hearings where i, i think you can say he lied. he said it's not an enemies list, it's just an appendix. but if you read the book, which unfortunately i did. it says, these are the people who need to be investigated, investigated. so it is an enemies list. and you do see him going in and this and punishing people in the fbi who worked on the janua

after the first four years of donald trump and the terrible politicization of that department by bill barr. there was a desire to restore the independence of the department. there was a reluctance to follow the evidence where it would lead. and that reluctance, that desire to insulate the department from criticism resulted in justice being delayed and out matly justice being -- and ultimately justice being denied. now, one of the biggest culprits in that failure of the justice system was that building across the street. and indeed the entire court system because that court system and most particularly the high court understood what was happening, understood the endless delays in bringing to justice the one who incited those attacks. they understood exactly what was happening and they permitted it to happen. and more than that, the high court not only permitted it to happen but by countenancing these endless delays, by letting the president play rope-a-dope in the courts. they assured that justice would be delayed so justice might be denied and in fact it was denied. that was the mistake of

people like bill barr who for a lesser position said over my dead body when asked about kash patel. it's a tragedy for the fbi that it comes to this. i can't imagine the demoralization at the fbi and department of justice. the damage will be long, long-standing. it seems my colleagues are determined to confirm him on the senate floor. i -- to all of those fbi agents i worked with over the years, those who are there now who i haven't had the privilege of working with, my heart breaks for what you're about to go through. with leadership that you cannot respect. who has not earned your respect. who will not earn your respect. i know you will put your head down and do your jobs, because you are professionals. i hope you stay at the fbi. i hope you don't leave, because if you are committed to the mission and you believe it will just leave behind people who are less committed to the mission. i hope you will stay. i hope you will gut it out. i hope it's true for the career professionals at the department of justice under a similar witchhunt. i spent almost six years at that department. i v

. >> bill barr, john bolton and liz cheney are also on the enemies list.ing his campaign and informed a lot of the conversation. certainly the three of us had, but some of the things that were surprising was the removal of mike pompeo security detail to protect him from a known threat from iran, threat for assassination. he also removed the security from john bolton, a loud critic of donald trump but an even louder critic of former president joe biden, as well as the campaign to strip a star from former chairman of the joint chiefs, mark milley, as as sort of a former political person. i mean, these things are not popular. mark milley is viewed by the vast majority of people who can still be reached by facts and information, which isn't all of maga, for sure, as an american hero, i mean, i wonder to the degree that politics and public outcry can slow or stop this effort, how much of the damage has already been done? mary? with the purges and the lists already underway at doj and the fbi? well, you know, mark made some great. >> points about the effort here

. >> it's been written about in a lot of books about the first trump term that bill barr spent a lotopher wray. do you think that if christopher wray had refused to walk out and tie his tenure to the end of a president, which is precisely why the ten year term exists, so that an fbi director never leaves with an outgoing president? do you think any of this could have been avoided? >> i'm not sure, because i don't know who the masterminds are behind this maga presidency. it's pretty clear they're willing to go to lengths that we've never seen. unprecedented lengths in the history of the united states, and they're doing it at the expense of our security and safety. >> i never heard you this alarmed about the inner workings of a government agency. and with your perch, i imagine you've seen a lot. what can people do? >> well, i can tell you they ought to reach out to their senators and congressmen if they feel that this is a situation that's unacceptable, and urge them to take a second look at kash patel, not to push him through automatically. in the committee on thursday or the followin

bill. nbc's alice barr has the latest now from washington. >> contessa in one example of the courts intervening in the trump agenda, there is a federal hearing today about the mass buyouts offered to federal workers. labor unions are requesting to fully block the program. >> president trump. >> returning to washington overnight after becoming the first sitting president to attend a super bowl, making news before he stepped in the stadium with a new tariff announcement on imported steel and aluminum. >> any steel coming. >> into the united. >> states is going. >> to have a 25%. >> tariff, and promising more tariffs are coming on countries that tax american exports. the growing list poised to potentially drive up costs for american consumers while in a taped super bowl pre-show interview, the president defended elon musk's cost cutting moves to slash federal agencies. >> bottom line, you. >> say you trust him. >> trust elon? >> oh. >> he's not gaining anything. >> in fact, i. >> wonder how he can devote the. >> time to it. he's so. >> into. >> it, indicating the departments of education and defen

patel named former attorneys general bill barr and merrick garland, former fbi directors robert mueller and chris wray, as the so-called members of the deep state, whatever that may be. and he's even produced and sold recordings of a song. understand this for a moment -- 1,600 people prosecuted for assaulting law enforcement officials here in this capitol building who were working, as they are at this very moment to keep us safe and our visitors safe, what did patel decide to do? he decided to assemble a choir of the january 6 individuals who were prosecuted. then he was involved in making a recording of a patriotic song that these prisoners were singing. and then he was selling this recording and playing it at the rallies for president trump. i'm not making this up, ladies and gentlemen. this is exactly what this man who wants to head the federal bureau of investigation was doing and which he denied before our hearing under oath. he's even produced these recordings and called the choir the january 6 prisoners, political prisoners. let me take one example of a so-called political prison