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tv   The 11th Hour With Stephanie Ruhle  MSNBC  March 22, 2024 11:00pm-12:00am PDT

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than anyone else. get started for $49.99 a month plus ask how to get up to an $800 prepaid card. don't wait- call today. tonight's words are taxable income. the 11th hour with stephanie ruhle starts now. >> good evening. i'm stephanie ruhle. it's midnight on the east coast, 9:00 p.m. in the west and we are following break on capitol hill. there is finally a deal in the senate to fund the government. friday morning the house pass odds a $1.2 trillion funding
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bill which then went to the senate for a vote of the senate is still in session tonight, more on that in a moment. there was also no surprise drama in the house today when far right republican congresswoman marjorie taylor greene filed a motion to remove republican speaker mike johnson. she made that move even as the house was voting on the spending bill which she then voted against. >> i am saying the clock has started. it's time for our conference to choose a new speaker. mike johnson, the republican speaker of the house, handed over every ounce of negotiating power to chuck schumer and the democrats and went ahead and funded the government when this was our point of leverage. >> also the republican majority in the house becoming even narrower today. congressman mike gallagher of wisconsin who already announced he was resigning is heading to the exits april 19th. that will bring the house gop majority down to just one single vote and that seat will
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be empty until november. with that let's get smarter with the help of our leadoff panel, nbc senior national reporter sahil kapoor, conor lamb and charlie dent both from the state of pennsylvania. set the stage for us. what is happening in the senate as we speak? >> stephanie, the senate just began voting on this unanimous consent agreement locked in moments ago. we're expecting six roll call votes on republican amendments, chuck schumer wants them limited to ten minutes. we'll see if that happens. it's very difficult to get senators to move that quickly on anything and then after those are done there are three voice votes on amendments as well which are expected to wrap up instantly and then final passage of the bill. sometime in the next hour to two hours probably we should get this bill passed. it has passed the house already. then it heads to president biden's desk who said he will sign it. there will be a brief temporary
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technical shutdown. it won't have meaningful impact. for all intents and purposes, they have figured this out and ended this appropriations process six months after the fiscal year began. i've never seen anything quite like this. it took four stopgap bills and months and months of negotiating after the fiscal year had begun and they've got the next fiscal year coming up in just six months. they have barely even begun that process. stay tuned. >> when does this all wrap up? when will we have the vote complete? >> sometime in the next hour to two. it depends how quickly senators are able to vote and to move through these amendments. sometime my guess is in the next hour or so, hour to two they'll vote on final passage of the bill. then it goes to president biden's desk who said he'll sign it. he called on congress to pass this quickly. remember they just released this bill yesterday. it's more than 1,000 pages. it spends more than $1 trillion. you can understand why a lot of lawmakers had complaints about the process of how this came together. this is what happens when you
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save things until the 11th hour to do your job. >> charlie, this whole thing is ridiculous, disappointing, pathetic. how is it that we are still doing this when it comes to keeping government running? i have said this a thousand times. if this were any private business on planet earth, the ceo would be ousted. they would be bankrupt, over and done with, but this is theoretically the most important business in america, our government. >> this could have all been wrapped up in december and i mean that. they kicked this off into the new year because the speaker was worried about a rear guard action if he cut a deal with the democrats which he knew he would have to do to pass the appropriations bill. that's why this thing had been kicked out. it is not the way to run the railroad. i was on the appropriations committee many years. i helped negotiate one of the spending bills. these things were ready, but
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again, it's all because of division within the house republican conference. they didn't want to face the reality of this inevitable bipartisan compromise with over 100 republicans voting for it and democrats in the house. same thing will happen in the senate. it's because of fear. too many members don't want to govern. they don't think it's their responsibility. so many of them vote yes and hope no. they don't want the government to shut down most of them, but they can't vote for a bill because they're afraid of some kind of primary against them over just doing their jobs. >> if doing your job and reaching across the aisle and working with someone from an opposing party is something that you're going to get in trouble for, are we going to get to a point where they can't pass anything? >> well, i just think we'll get to the point where the republicans won't be in the majority anymore. they're just discrediting themselves. >> we're getting there. >> at every turn, yeah. they might do it to themselves,
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which i don't think anyone really anticipated, but charlie's right. the writing was on the wall for this thing for months. everybody knew this was how it was going to end. it's amazing that marjorie taylor greene is the one now calling for mike johnson's head because she used to be for kevin mccarthy, who was the one that did all these same spending bills to begin with which got him fired. now she's against the guy who was supposed to take a harder line on spending bills. it's really just mind blowing. i don't have an answer for you because they don't have an answer for themselves. there's just no leadership there. there's a vacuum. >> john, marjorie taylor greene is potentially looking to push out mike johnson and democrats like tom suozzi are saying no, we want to make sure we protect him. what's going on and specifically what's marjorie taylor greene up to? she doesn't have any independent thoughts. she does whatever donald trump tells her to do. >> she's certainly not going to do anything at odds with what
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donald trump wants. she's had some interest in the vice presidency or a cabinet spot and presents herself as close to president trump. this is what she's up to i surmise as the congressman pointed out a moment ago. she helped kevin mccarthy. she got on the wrong side of the anti-government base of the republican party and now she's doing some makeup. she wants to get rid of mike johnson. i think it's possible there's a bit of payback for him given that she was so closely supportive of kevin mccarthy, but at the end of the day what you've got here, stephanie, is a significant number of republicans who aren't just in what congressman dent said about the hope he has to vote no caucus. there are members of congress sent here to oppose the government continuing to operate, right? there is no appropriations bill that they will ever vote for. there is no amount of clipping back spending they can say hey,
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that's acceptable because of this primary challenge, because of this fear. it used to be they were all hope yes. some voted no. now there's a whole bunch of them, not the majority, but certainly enough with such thin majorities as you're talking about before with mike gallagher, enough of them to throw sand in the gears every time legislation comes to the floor and certainly every time it's about the government spending any money to continue functioning. >> charlie, do you agree with that, that chaos in the house on the republican side is no accident. it's by design? >> yeah. there is an element, as john pointed out. there is an element within the house republican conference that is what i would term as the rejectionist wing, these real hardliners who don't want to govern who will never vote for an appropriations bill, who are never going to vote for this deal, did everything they could to drag this thing out as far as they can. they make demands all the time, i want this, i want that, but at the end of the day, though,
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the way it works in washington is those who are voting for the bills get to determine the content, but what's so screwed up in washington is that there are these members out there who are making these ridiculous demands and leadership listens to them and lets them help drive this process even though they know they will not be part of the inevitable solution. those types of people need to be marginalized and ignored, frankly, but they keep bringing them in. it didn't start with mike johnson. this has been going on many years now in the house republican conference. it's really got to end. those who vote for the bills determine the content, not those who are voting against the bills, very simple. >> what report doing you have about what's going on in the house? >> it's been a very bad day for house republicans. let's start with that. first off you have the majority -- >> hold on, tell me when's the
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last time you said it was a very good day for house republicans? >> i can't remember the last time it's been this bad of day. it's been a very, very tumultuous majority, but today was unusual in the sense it distilled all the fractures and governing struggles and in- fighting and disenchantment among institutionalists like mike gallagher who decided at age 40, a rising star in the party, he's done with this, he's going to walk away. the fact ken buck is leaving is indicative of the fact he's been pushed out because he demanded that party leaders stand up and emphatically reject the so-called big lie, the idea the 2020 election was stolen. he wanted the next speaker after mccarthy was evicted to stand up and make clear the 2020 election was legitimate. that didn't sit well with his party. from there it became a downward spiral for him. again, that's part of what happened. on the governing front, a majority of republicans voted against this funding deal which as connor correctly pointed out was very much an extension of
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what kevin mccarthy was doing. this was that top line spending deal kevin mccarthy struck back then. there were four stopgap bills in the meantime. he lost his job. mike johnson did three more and didn't lose his job. there's real reluctance despite recent activities of marjorie taylor greene to remove the speaker because of what happened last time. what do they get out of it? you'd be hard pressed to ask any of those eight republicans who evicted kevin mccarthy to explain what they have gotten out of it. most of them will tell you like chip roy, for instance, when didn't vote to remove mccarthy, but he'll tell you they've gotten nothing out of it and nothing has really changed. >> connor, is there a way for democrats -- i can't even believe i'm asking this -- to take advantage of the gop's in fighting? >> yeah. if by take advantage, you mean sort of do the job they were elected to and get a few members to come to their side to support some legislation, absolutely. i think that was 'closer last
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time than anyone realizes. i know some democrats personally that were in very close and involved talks over funding for ukraine and a couple other big priorities if they were willing to, you know, sort of cooperate on the leadership fight last time. it was extremely close, didn't quite get there. i think now that the republicans have lost a couple additional members and it's even closer and they're even more disgusted with their own side, absolutely, but i wouldn't call that taking advantage. i honestly think there's just a lot of people in the democratic caulk us caucus that would like to do what they were sent there to do, which is pass the bills. >> i don't know the average machinery understands that it's republicans holding things up. they just say man, government gets nothing do. i pay a zillion dollars in taxes and this government doesn't work for me. i'm disenchanted with the government. i don't trust it anymore. is there a way for democrats to educate their
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constituents around what's actually happening on the hill? >> i think so. when i was in office, when things like this happened and i went back to my district, it did not matter which party was causing the shutdown or controversy. i bore the brunt of it. there is a way. i think what they would have to do is not make a deal with mike johnson behind closed doors to save his speakership, but make it out in public. tell the american people what the democrats are asking in order for mike johnson to have their votes. make it not just money for ukraine, which is not universally popular everywhere, but make it the defense of social security, make one or two other just important economic priorities knowing the economy is our biggest challenge right now and let the american people see us demand something for them in order for mike johnson to stay in power. i don't think it should happen in a back room. >> charlie, do you agree with that? >> well, i would say we've
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moved into a system of parliamentary voting patterns, negative partisanship that what we've just witnessed with all this dysfunction in passing appropriations bills is probably not going to matter that much at the end of the day in the fall election. i think house republicans do have a real problem in that their dysfunction has been on display for a lot of time over this session. so some people are going to remember. on the margins i think it really does hurt republicans with enough voters, not the vast majority. people vote red team, blue team now and the democrats are smart. they try to educate the american people about who is responsible for the dysfunction, but if you're explaining, you're losing. i don't think it's going to be a very effective strategy. >> right now that person largely responsible for some of the chaos is named marjorie taylor green. help us understand what happens next with her motion to remove
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johnson. when she was speaking today, she said, "no, i'm not trying to fire him. he's just getting his pink slip." what does that even mean? >> it's a warning shot, she's not triggered it and that means there has to be a vote within two legislative days to remove the speaker of the house or at least whether to remove the speaker and that requires a simple house majority in favor of that. she has not done that. she is threatening it. this is her way of saying, speaker johnson, you better not fall out of line with the things that i want you to do or i will pull the trigger on this and she knows. everyone knows what she wants and doesn't want. everyone knows she doesn't want any ukraine funding, which is a big part of what is coming next when the house returns from a two-week recess. mike johnson indicated he's open to some form or fashion of putting a ukraine funding bill on the floor. he's not committed to anything, but now he's got a new toward
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hanging over his head knowing if he moves forward with that, marjorie taylor greene will pull the trigger. the thing i wanted to point out is this is asymmetric chaos. this majority is identically sized the way it came in to the one that nancy pelosi had for two years, the one that conor served in and we didn't see any of these things. we didn't see her face motion to vacate threats or have a rule go down on the floor. she passed a bunch of major bills with the democrats because they were willing to accept half a loaf, willing to compromise. there is a difference in mentality for democrats who were mostly ascending into power at the time with pelosi. >> asymmetric chaos, you know it's a friday night at 12:15 a.m. on msnbc when sahil kapur is
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talking asymmetric chaos. i think he was saying nancy pelosi got the job done. thank you, gentlemen. that wraps up our very special breaking coverage on capitol hill. alex wagner tonight with my dear friend and work partner ali velshi continues right after the break.
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giving millions of fans, like my dad and me, new ways of catching up on their favorite sport. a claim of responsibility for a major terror attack in moscow tonight has partner come from a branch of isis. at least 60 people have been killed and 145 reportedly
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including children have been wounded at a concert hall on the outskirts of moscow. those casualty figures come from the russian investigative committee which means they're tough for us to verify. isis has provided no proof of its involvement in the attack or for its claim the attackers escaped safely. the claim of responsibility was posted on a social media site by the isis affiliated news agency. what we do know from verified videos from the scene is what the gunmen in camouflage started doing. they started firing on the crowd for a friday night concert by a popular rock band and witnesses say they threw incendiary devices around. fire broke out involving the building and a partial roof collapse. a massive security breach comes just days after vladimir putin cemented his rule over russia for another six years after a tightly orchestrated presidential election in which he faced no legitimate
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opposition. joining me now is the nbc news reporter matthew bodner who has covered russia for quite some time. there's a whole lot of confusion who is behind it. a group claimed responsibility, but that's not completely verified just yet. >> correct. i think this is really going to be moving into tomorrow and through the weekend kind of the core issue of the story moving forward is who actually did this and more importantly, who is the kremlin saying did this? i think that's the crux of this. we have that claim from an isis media outlet that isis did it and also claiming at least some of the attackers seemed to have made it back to their bases, wherever they were operating from. so it does seem this may be ongoing a little bit, but i think this question of who did it will be important because
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basically already from the kremlin, from russian sources we're hearing all kinds of things, but one that really stands out to me is from the editor and chief of "russia today," one of i would say the two main chief propagandas for lack of a better word in russia seeming to cast doubt on the isis claim calling it fake news. i think the fact that the united states is coming out saying that we were warning about a potential isis event. we shared this information with the russians. we don't know how specific that information was, but the fact this is coming from the u.s., you already have people close to the kremlin appearing to reject that explanation and continued silence from the kremlin, for that matter, i think really kind of highlights this is the key question because as we've seen in the past, russia, this regime, this government, is no stranger to large scale terror events early on in putin's presidency. this was something we saw a number of times.
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each time it was used to justify for lack of a better word a slide towards it authoritarianism, harsher security measures, wars in chechnya, so much of what putin's government has become today, major steps taken in the wake of events just like this one. this all goes to say this question of who did it, what happened here will be a little bit of a political football potentially, but it's huge implications for where this goes from here. >> you'll continue to check on it. we will as well. good to see you. matthew bodner for us in london. still ahead, we'll bring you new information about a number of stories we're covering tonight. you're watching alex wagner tonight. we'll be right back.
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being a journalist is about asking important questions and i'm about to ask the question that i never anticipated asking in my career. what do you imagine donald trump smells like? you don't actually have to guess because the former president is now selling victory 47 perfume for both men and women. according to the product description, each $99 bottle which i tried very hard to get my hands on tonight contains the "signature scent of strength and success," a crisp
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opening of citrus blend into a cedar heart underpinned by a rich base of leather and amber creating a commanding presence." with a discerning enough nose, you might also detect top notes of a cash grab by a man whose bill for half a billion dollars has come due. monday's trump's deadline to post bond needed to delay enforcement of the $464 million fine from his new york several fraud trial. if he doesn't find that money somewhere, the new york attorney general can begin seizing trump's assets, including his seven springs golf course. as the deadline approaches, the former president selling perfume and stocks, meme stocks almost. today trump's media company approved a merger to take truth social public and the attention has caused the valuation to balloon. the merger's expected to close as early as next week and trump's 60% stake in the company could be worth $3 billion. if those inflated share prices
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hold a while, could trump use them to post his bond? i know just the person to ask. joining me now is neil peterson, owner of the new york- based peterson and sons surety bond agency. thank you for being with us. >> thank you for having me. >> we have been asking people who know about these things these questions all week because most of us have no idea how this world of bonds and surety works. let's start with the basics. donald trump's got to do something on monday and he doesn't appear to be able to have done it. he doesn't appear to have gotten the bonds he needs. what do you think is happening now and what happens monday? >> i think he's working diligently to obtain the bonds. if he doesn't post it by monday, i still think there's an uphill battle for letitia james to execute on the judgment and seize his assets. i don't think it's going to be as simple as going to 40 wall street and auctioning off as
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she has said to the press. i think accounts will be restrained, maybe some cash seized, some bank account levied and a further proceeding to have them turned over to her which will take some time. >> what do you think can happen? he says, "i can't raise the bond needed." she says, "actually you can because you don't have to have it done as one bond." tell me what that means. >> in theory you could post bonds from a couple different surety companies to add up to the full value. that becomes a little messy because on the back end you would need -- let's say if you used ten companies, there would have to be some sort of agreement to -- >> who gets what or what order they get it in. >> yes. getting ten companies to agree to anything is very difficult. even four or five it's going to be complicated. no one wants to agree to be the first person to pay. >> the issue is if you have to pay, meaning if the judgment goes against donald trump, his appeal goes against him and the bond company now has to pay the
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money, in exchange for that in theory you'd have taken assets worth more than what you have to pay out. what's the problem? what's the risk to the bond company? >> so the real risk is that judgments, once they're affirmed on appeal, have to be paid within five to ten days. real estate is not liquid. that can take months to a year to do. a company doesn't want to lay out $500 million recouping about the same in interest and penalties once the real estate is sold. the other aspect is that most real estate has a first or second position. so no one wants to come in as a second or third creditor, right, on the property and then lastly, if the former president gets elected, a bond done by certification agreement, a surety company has never had to execute on indemnity against a
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sitting president that. will have challenges in itself. >> bottom line is these surety companies are like we got enough business. this is too complicated for us. >> correct. they're not very forward thinking companies, one of the oldest industries in the country. they're not reinventing their underwriting cycle or process. they're taking select risks. they're intelligent. supposed to be a zero loss game. >> if you were good at this, if you knew how to handle big real estate in manhattan and said all right, you're probably going to lose your appeal. i'm probably going to be caused as the bond issuer to pay up in short order, but i've got this building or these assets. would you do that for the discount that you could get? in other words, it's a zero loss game. could there be a way you can say all right, donald trump, you got to put out $1 billion worth of property to get a half billion dollars bond? >> it's unlikely. i haven't seen the former
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president's financial statement, but we're also not able to secure minority interest in properties. so if he's the 15% owner, 30% owner, how do you secure that? >> right. because now you're negotiating with other people who make decisions about whether that property will be liquidated. >> correct. we also have a very difficult commercial real estate market. office spaces empty. finding a value for those properties, whether or not the debt is refinanced are all major questions that go into the underwriting equation. >> let me ask you about this company, this truth social merger he's going into. in theory that will net him some money. i have no idea how that works. in theory he can't get that money for six months. does that come into the negotiation that maybe the guy will come into a whole lot of money real soon? >> so it's definitely going to be a factor, but at the end of the day again if you can't pledge or secure an asset, a surety company is not going to take it. i've dealt with a couple different special purpose acquisition companies and if they can't pledge their stock
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or they have a very small float, it's not really an attractive proposition because let's say you take $1 billion in that stock and have to sell $1 billion, but the volume's 10 million. you'll completely crash the stock. the value of your asset that you used to secure the bond has diminished. >> so it's possible donald trump might be trying to use that against getting the money, but it's not from a surety company. it might have to be with other business partners or something. >> correct. probably either other business partners or some sort of specialty lender. >> so there's been talk that as of monday letitia james in theory can do something. she can go into a bank where he's got money and can she actually get her hands on the money? >> so i'm not an expert in post judgment execution, but i believe she's going to levy the bank accounts and eventually that's going to be turned over to the they serve or marshal and eventually turned over to the state of new york to
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satisfy a portion of the judgment. it's probably also going to be some further court proceedings to do so. so it won't be immediate on monday, maybe two or three weeks. >> how do you see this playing out? you seem to think donald trump's got a plan. he's just trying to not execute on whatever plan it is because he'd like to just basically use someone else's money for this, if possible. >> so i think he has a plan. i think at the end of the day when he's backed into a corn corner and has to post the bond, i'm confident he'll find a way. >> neil peterson is the owner of the new york-based peterson and sons surety bond agency. coming up, the doj's investigation of january 6th under attorney general merrick garland and how it all unfolded. to what degree did choices made early on play right into the hands of donald trump and his propensity for delay tactics? that's next.
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donald trump has literally done everything in his power to delay his january 6th criminal trial. at the moment his argue of presidential immunity has put the brakes on trump's case as the supreme court prepares to consider it and that gambit may work by pushing a possible trial date closer and closer to the election. today we're learning new
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details about how the justice department's investigation into january 6th itself unfolded and how the process may have inadvertent by played into trump's hands. "the new york times" reports at the start of the probe the attorney general, merrick garland, encouraged prosecutors to "follow the connective tissue upward" adding a directive that would eventually lead to a dead end. follow the money. with that he set the course of a determined and methodical, if at times dysfunctional and maddeningly slow investigation that would yield the indictment on four counts of election interference. prosecutors and the fbi spent months sticking to their traditional playbook. they started with smaller players and worked upward, despite the transparent well documented steps taken by mr. trump himself in public and behind the scenes to retain power after voters rejected his bid for another term.
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joining me now is the senior writer for political magazine and former department of justice federal prosecutor who specialized in financial fraud. thank you for being with us. >> thanks for having me. >> tell me what the issue is. this did unfold. the investigation sort of unfolded like a financial crime investigation would. you find people lower and lower on the totem pole and move up until you have enough evidence to convict the people on top. why was that not the right strategy in this case? >> so look, it's not necessarily how a financial fraud investigation works particularly if you have a very large organization and a managerial class at the top and you can roughly analyze that to what we saw on january 6th, all these people on the bottom and the hierarchy at the top in the trump campaign orbit that are doing things at a higher level that may also warrant scrutiny.
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these paths like pursuing the rioters and the potential trump campaign officials, people around him, rudy giuliani and the like, were not mutually exclusive. that is the big problem with the premise underlying the justice department's approach. they keep saying even in this piece we were following a traditional playbook moving ourselves from the bottom to the top. it never had to proceed like that and shouldn't have. it's important to remember that it was just a few days before january 6th we all heard the call that donald trump had with georgia secretary of state. that call alone warranted the opening of a federal criminal investigation as soon as biden took office. >> that's the question many people have and that is if there appears to be evidence out in the open with participants in matters that needed to be examined who could be subpoenaed and one would get
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information, why not move in that obvious direction? what was holding them back? were they worrying about something else? was there an investigation underway for which these added pieces of information did not sort of lend themselves? why wouldn't the obvious be the case? >> it's a very good question and this piece doesn't really answer it. even though it's remarkably good reporting. my sense having done a little reporting around this, also, is there was a real reluctance to pursue trump in a manner that made it look like it was political retaliation or a democrat pursuing a republican or some sort of partisan affair and that was something merrick garland in particular was quite concerned about. some of the arguments in the piece that we hear from some of the officials who are involved are, frankly, had me kind of pulling my hair out because the piece quotes someone saying that in 2021 it was "simply inconceivable" that trump might ever return to the political
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stage. that person is quoted anonymously and my sincere advice to them is to stay anonymous forever because that was not true. >> there was nobody who believed that was true. i want to point out what you talked about merrick garland. on the first anniversary of january 6th , merrick garland was asked by reporters about why this is taking so long. here's what he said. >> we understand that there are questions about how long the investigation will take and about what exactly we are doing. our answer is and will continue to be the same answer we would give with respect to any ongoing investigation. as long as it takes and whatever it takes for justice to be done consistent with the facts and the law. >> the problem is the as long as it takes and whatever it takes are now coming up against
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one another. >> that's exactly right. i think the easiest way to think about the path that was not taken by the justice department is to look at what the january 6th committee did because they did pretty much exactly what i'm describing, straight to the top, go to the principles, don't dilly-dally with the rioters hoping you can work yourself from them to trump years down the line, straight to the top, efficient, move aggressively, move quickly and i think the january 6th committee did a considerable service for the public just in revealing the facts, but they also demonstrated the justice department's approach was deeply flawed. >> i want to ask you about this as somebody who has dealt with financial crimes. "the times" reports garland told prosecutors to focus on the money. department leaders believed the best way to justify prosecuting mr. trump and the willard plotters was to find financial links between them and the rioters because they thought it would be more straightforward and less risky than a case
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based on untested election interference charges. look, we have the benefit of evaluating that thinking in hindsight, didn't turn out to be true, but what do you think about the fact they started by taking that approach? let's connect the money. we hear about that all the time, follow the money. >> again, these things are not mutually exclusive. that's why the premise the defenders have adopted, it's simply not true. i mean let's just remember again trump was already on a recorded call before january 6th and it was apparent even from that call that trump might have criminal exposure under title 18 section 241, which is one of the statutes he was eventually charged under. it is an election fraud statute. these were not obscure issues. these were not things that people were not thinking about in realtime, arguing about and advocating for in realtime, including quite candidly myself. i wrote a lot of pieces about this and my concerns the justice department was moving too slowly and in particular, that there would be a problem
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if trump eventually tried to return to power, that he may actually be able to outrun the case. we're seeing that. >> these cases are all important, but the january 6th case, because it's election interference and talks about the right to vote and have your vote count, it is the most important case. what's your sense of the likelihood of this going to trial before the election? >> look, i think it's unfortunately just brass tacks. i think it's fairly low. i would like to see it go to trial. i think the public's interest and public imperative here is very strong and the law is on the side having it move forward before november. however, the supreme court is moving slowly. i am concerned that they may try to send it back with instructions to conduct more legal analysis and preliminary fact finding. that could be the whole ballgame. >> ankush, thanks for joining us. we appreciate your analysis and expertise.
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one more story for you this evening, the biden administration has a difficult new choice to make after israel's benjamin netanyahu vows to press ahead with an attack in gaza's civilian dense city of rafah, more after the break. everybody wants super straight, super white teeth. they want that hollywood white smile. new sensodyne clinical white provides 2 shades whiter teeth and 24/7 sensitivity protection. i think it's a great product. it's going to help a lot of patients.
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first and foremost, we want to see an immediate and sustained ceasefire as part of a deal that leads to the release of all hostages being held by hamas and other groups and that will allow much more life saving humanitarian aid to get into gaza. every day without a deal means
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more needless suffering. this resolution will move us closer to securing that deal and help us alleviate that suffering. >> today the united nations voted on a security council resolution that was put forward by the united states, a resolution that among other things supported an immediate and sustained ceasefire of the war in gaza. now while the vote was largely symbolic, this u.s. resolution contained some strong condemnations of israel, the strongest we have seen since the start of the war. it represents a shift in u.s. policy that has slowly bubbled the last few weeks. however, the resolution failed. russia, china, and algeria all voted against it, arguing the resolution was far too ambiguous and had no direct call for a cessation of fighting. simultaneously as this failed vote was happening, other diplomatic efforts got underway. u.s. secretary of state antony blinken was in israel to meet one on one with the israeli prime minister benjamin
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netanyahu as part of america's belated diplomatic push toward a ceasefire and to deter an israeli offensive into the southern city of rafah, which is the last corner of gaza into which over 1 million civilians are now crammed. even vice president kamala harris today told reporters that she cannot see any safe way for gazans to evacuate rafah ahead of an offensive. "there is nowhere for these people to go and be safe," she said, but after that meeting between secretary blinken and prime minister netanyahu it was clear that this push by the united states would not be enough to deter benjamin netanyahu. it appears he is dead set on invading rafah and continuing the war with or without the help of israel's biggest ally. netanyahu told reporters, "we have no way to defeat hamas without going into rafah and as i told secretary blinken that i hope we will do it with the support of the u.s., but if we must, we will do it alone." to be clear, when it comes to
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military action, israel is never alone. the u.s. supplies much of the money and material for its military. it's been such since the inception of the state of israel, which is the largest recipient of u.s. taxpayer- funded largess since its inception. hence, president biden has yet another choice to make as it relates to this conflict. will the u.s. use the tools at its disposal, control over a lot of the military aid that goes into israel to prevent what could become the bloodiest stage of the war or will it stand by as netanyahu continues to be defiant with the continual financial and military backing of the united states? as palestinians continue to die from injury and starvation by the thousands, the rhetoric from some u.s. leaders about the brutality with which israel has prosecuted this war has indeed begun to change. the question is will their actions? that's our show for tonight.
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you can catch me back here tomorrow and sunday 10:00 a.m. eastern. i will be convening a special meeting of the velshi book club tomorrow to discuss one of the most banned books of all time and one that is frighteningly relevant, george orwell's 1984. my guest, james mcallister and garrett conley, an author. tomorrow morning 10:00 a.m. eastern. of hea rt. you didn't wear a versace dress if you didn't want to be seen. gianni versace was not for the faint of heart. you do not wear a versace address if you did not want to be seen. >> gianni versace was a true original . >> life always

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