Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: June 22, 2016 Guest: Chris Van Hollen, Elizabeth Esty, Tammy Baldwin, Joe Conason, Betsy Woodruff, Sabrina Siddiqui, David Fahrenthold, Josh Barro
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice-over): Tonight on ALL IN --
REP. JOHN LEWIS (D), GEORGIA: There comes a time when you have to say something, when you have to make a little noise.
HAYES: A historic protest in the House to break the NRA grip on Congress.
LEWIS: Now is the time to get in the way.
HAYES: Republicans cut the cameras, Democrats move to Periscope.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This microphone doesn`t belong to the NRA.
HAYES: Tonight, what the Democrats want and what they`re willing to do to get it.
Then --
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Americans, Americans, the people that we love. Americans. America first. Make our country great again. Americans.
HAYES: Trump`s full frontal assault on Hillary Clinton.
And the Clinton response --
HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: The Clinton Foundation helps poor people around the world get access to life saving AIDS medicine. Donald Trump uses poor people around the world to produce his line of suites and ties.
HAYES: Plus, today`s Clinton/Warren announcement fueling new veep speculation.
And promises, promises.
TRUMP: I`m a good person. I give money to charity. A lot of money to charity.
HAYES: "The Washington Post`s" David Farenthold with another incredible investigation into Donald Trump`s promises to charities, when ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HAYES: Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes.
And you are looking live via Periscope the phone app at Congressman John Lewis and some colleagues speaking on the House floor at this moment on an absolutely crazy day. We cannot show you the actual live feed from the House of Representatives because that has been cut off. There are no cameras there now. There are just cell phones.
I`m going to explain why that is the case because at this hour, Republicans are preparing to hold a vote to roll back an Obama administration rule mandating that investment advisors act in the best interests of their clients, a rule opposed by the financial industry and that, you see, is a very, very far away from the vote that Democrats like John Lewis have been demanding all day sitting down on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Since this morning, they have been holding a historic sit-in, attempting to force the House Republican leadership to hold a vote on gun safety legislation. That protest began around 11:18 Eastern Time this morning when civil rights icon John Lewis asked his Democratic colleagues to join him on the floor and then vowed to occupy the House chamber for as long as it takes.
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LEWIS: The time for silence and patience is long gone. We`re calling on the leadership of the House to bring common sense gun control legislation to the House floor. Give us a vote. Let us vote. We came here to do our job. We came here to work.
We have to occupy the floor of the House in today`s action.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Rise up, Democrats. Rise up, Americans. This cannot stand. We will occupy this floor. We will no longer be denied a right to vote.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: The Republican presiding over the House, that`s Representative Ted Poe, responded by declaring the chamber in recessing until noon. When Poe returned 40 minutes later, he banged his gavel several times and demanded order, as Democrats chanted "no bill, no break", demanding the House not go into recess until the House holds a gun safety vote. So, after, Poe again suspended the chamber.
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REP. TED POE (R), TEXAS: The chair finds that the House is currently not in a state of order due to the presence of members in the well who are not recognized. The chair would ask members to please leave the well so the House may proceed with business and decorum.
Clause 12A of Rule 1, the House stands in recess subject to the call of the chair.
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HAYES: All right. This is when things got especially interesting. With the House technically in recess, the cameras broadcasting the proceedings were cut off despite the sit-in.
So, Democrats started broadcasting the scene themselves over Periscope and other social media, even though doing so is a violation of House rules.
As Democrats made speeches on the need for gun safety laws in front of a cutoff microphone, C-Span began to carry the sit in live not from their own cameras but instead using those same social media feeds.
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REP. JOHN SARBANES (D), MARYLAND: This microphone doesn`t belong to the NRA and it doesn`t belong to the gun manufacturers. This microphone that they`ve cut off belongs to the American people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: The sit-in quickly attracted a succession of Democratic senators, including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Both of them got extremely warm welcomes. They`re on the House floor.
The president himself tweeted, "Thanks to Lewis for leading on gun violence where we need it most". And Hillary Clinton tweeted that "House Republicans may have cut the cameras but they can`t cut off our voices. We have to act on gun violence."
Republicans decried the sit-in for blocking important House work which included bills to rename at least seven post offices.
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REP. JOHN FLEMING (R), LOUISIANA: Well, I think it`s sad day when you have members of Congress blocking the important legislative work that we do here by sitting on the floor as though it`s some kind of sit-in, a peace sit-in or whatever they`re trying to do with that. I think that`s disgraceful.
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HAYES: Speaking late this afternoon, House Speaker Paul Ryan dismissed the Democrats` demands.
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REP. PAUL RYAN (R-WI), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: This is nothing more than a publicity stunt. That`s point number one. Point number two, is this bill was already defeated in the United States Senate. Number three, we are not going to take away a citizen`s due process rights. We`re not going to take away a citizen`s constitutional rights without due process. That was already defeated in the Senate, and this is not a way to try to bring up legislation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Joining me by phone from the House floor, Congressman Chris Van Hollen, Democrat from Maryland.
Congressman, what is the plan now? You guys have been there for almost nine hours. What happens now?
REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D), MARYLAND (via telephone): Well, Chris, the plan is to sit on the floor of the House, stand on the floor of the House, as you can see Leader Pelosi is speaking just after John Lewis and we have the same demand now as we`ve had all day, which is do the will of the American people, at least have a vote on the no fly/no buy provision, as well as universal criminal background checks, and end the practice of following each massacre only by a moment of silence.
It`s time to take action and that`s what we`re going to be here and be here overnight it looks like in order to continue to put pressure on the Republicans to have those votes.
HAYES: Now, Republicans are saying they`re going to call votes I think shortly. I mean, it could be happening very shortly, including on a provision of a regulation of hedge fund advisors, that Democrats support, the administration supports, and the financial industry opposes.
Is that going to force your hand to essentially break the sit-in?
VAN HOLLEN: Well, Chris, my guess is that there could be a vote on that but that doesn`t end the sit-in. In other words, you`re right, in the middle of all this the Republicans instead of trying to deal with the carnage that`s going on around the country have decided to try to reverse an Obama administration rule to protect investors to make sure the people who are advising them on the investments have the best interests of the client in mind, something really radical.
But we`re going to continue with what we`re doing through the night and keep going until we get some kind of resolution. Whether or not this breaks the vote on the veto override and continues after remains to be seen this.
HAYES: So, what you`re telling me is they can try to essentially lull you back into some version of regular by forcing you to vote to uphold this important piece of financial regulation at least from your and the president`s perspective but they`re going back to it?
VAN HOLLEN: That`s exactly right. This will continue until we get some kind of commitment to hold a vote on these really important measures for the American public.
As I said and my colleagues have been saying all day and the American public has been saying they are absolutely fed up with Congress doing nothing and it was absolutely disrespectful of Speaker Ryan to the American public and to the families who have lost so many loved ones in the carnage to dismiss this when in fact their failure to hold a vote year after year has been dismissive to the American public.
So, it`s time for them to take a stand. Let`s have a vote in the light of day or at night, but with the mikes on.
HAYES: Are you able to leave?
VAN HOLLEN: Are we able to leave? Look, we`re not going to vacate the floor of the House. There will be people on the floor of the House throughout the night. We have to decide whether to do it in shifts but this is -- this was a bit of a spontaneous effort that has grown over the day and as you saw John Lewis has been helping lead the charge and this is unfortunately what has been necessary to get the attention of the Republican leadership. And now the ball is in their court.
HAYES: All right. Congressman Chris Van Hollen, I`m going to let you return to the floor. I don`t think I`ve ever conducted an interview on the floor of the House but thank you for making the time.
VAN HOLLEN: Thank you. Thanks, Chris.
HAYES: Regularly.
Joining me now, Congresswoman Elizabeth Esty. She`s a Democrat from Connecticut whose district, of course, includes Newtown.
And, Congresswoman, two bills that Democrats are calling a vote for and I want to focus on the so-called no fly, no buy. You just saw House Speaker Paul Ryan say this is a fundamental issue of due process. My understanding is about 650,000 Americans on some form of no fly Lewis including Congressman John Lewis himself who told reporters several years ago, 35 and 40 times he had been stopped by TSA when trying to board airplanes.
How is it OK to use this dubious list to deny their purchase of a weapon?
REP. ELIZABETH ESTY (D), CONNECTICUT: Well, Chris, this is an incredibly important and historic day. If we have a lousy watch list, if the FBI isn`t keeping a good terrorist watch list, we should address that issue, but right now the thought that we are going to such great lengths to protect the American people from the risk of home grown terrorism right here and someone who is on the terrorist watch list because of their violent tendencies and because of the videos they watch and perhaps travel to Syria or Iraq that that person can go legally can go into any gun store in America, go online and buy whatever weapons he or she wants, that makes no sense. That`s not upholding our duty to protect the American people.
So, if that watch list is no good, then we fix the list, but the thought that we would not try to keep those guns out of the hands of dangerous people, including would be terrorists, makes absolutely no sense.
HAYES: What about passports? There have been talk about including passports in that legislation if someone was a would-be terrorist, it would be dangerous for them to have access to their passports, so they could travel to a place like Syria.
ESTY: Well, I think there are a whole host of issues that we could look at. But let`s be clear, Chris, I was elected 3 1/2 years ago and in that time, representing Newton where those murders happened a few weeks after my election, we have not been allowed one single hearing, much less a vote -- nothing in the House of Representatives in any way, shape or form to address this gun violence epidemic in America.
So, here we have last week another 49 Americans gunned down in a matter of hours in a nightclub. It has just got to stop and we need to have actual discussion, debate and votes on the floor of the House of Representatives. That`s what we`re engaged in today. The civil disobedience of members of Congress whose entire electorates are being denied the opportunity to vote on legislation, which is what we were elected to come here to do.
HAYES: All right. Congresswoman Elizabeth Esty, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it.
ESTY: Thanks, Chris.
HAYES: All right. I`m joined now by Senator Tammy Baldwin, Democrat from Wisconsin. She was over there in the House earlier today.
Senator, you`re in the same state of Wisconsin as Speaker Paul Ryan. What do you say to I would imagine if he were here or other colleagues, look, this is the way it works, go win enough House seats to control the House of Representatives and you guys can call whatever votes you want to call whenever you want to call them.
SEN. TAMMY BALDWIN (D), WISCONSIN: I would call on my friend and my former colleague in the House, Paul Ryan as speaker, to hold a vote on this incredibly important issue. Too often in Washington we just agree to disagree and walk away. Agreeing to disagree in this circumstance is a failure of leadership when the American people, including the people of Wisconsin, overwhelmingly want action.
Moments of silence, thoughts and prayers are not enough. It is time to act and after a filibuster in the Senate last week led to votes and now active work on a bipartisan compromise in the Senate on a "no fly, no buy" that I hope will get a vote later this week, we need the same to happen in the House.
And the one thing I wanted to comment on having heard Paul Ryan`s quote earlier is that we all regard the Second Amendment as a constitutional right that we embrace, but it`s not inconsistent with background checks and as long as you have due process and Second Amendment supporters, all -- a vast majority believe that we still need to move forward and make sure that we have universal background checks and close that terror gap.
HAYES: To your mind, is the refusal to hold a vote on this political fear on the part of the Republican leadership, meaning, do they think they will take heat for voting down these pieces of legislation?
BALDWIN: Well, the NRA is extremely powerful.
I`m just watching what`s been happening in the United States Senate over the past several days as we finally have Republicans and Democrats working together led by Republican Susan Collins from Maine. Now, this doesn`t go as far as the Murphy and Feinstein measure that we voted on Monday night that went down, but it is still a strong desire to make progress in the wake of these horrendous, horrendous massacres in the United States.
So, we have this bipartisan effort and the NRA and other groups are just creating all sorts of pressure and we have to listen to the American people. That`s who we have to listen to. That`s who sent us here to do their work.
And again, if we just reach the point where we agree to disagree, we have failed the American people and failed to deliver on our commitment to make this country a safer place.
HAYES: All right. Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin -- thank you for your time tonight. Appreciate it.
BALDWIN: Thank you, Chris.
HAYES: Still to come, considering now -- before I get to that tease -- we will of course be monitoring this as it unfolds on the House floor. We have access to what`s happening via Periscope right now. Democratic House members are continuing to talk. They will be doing that. We are going to keep an eye on this situation because we are hearing some word Republicans are going to try to come in and essentially call the order for a vote which will be a fairly interesting and dramatic moment in terms of how that plays out. We`re going to keep our eyes on that. So, don`t go anywhere.
Meanwhile, still to come considering how often Donald Trump brings up his charitable donations it`s proving hard to track those down. I`ll talk with a reporter who tried that and you will learn what he found which may -- well, or may be not surprise you.
But, first, how Trump transforms fiction into fact in a space of sentence, all while displaying his more, quote, "presidential side". That speech and Clinton`s response right after this two minute break. Don`t go anywhere.
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HAYES: Two days after firing his campaign manager and vowing to get his flailing campaign back on track, Donald Trump tried to show a more presidential side for the umpteen time in his campaign, with a speech this morning attacking Hillary Clinton.
The evidence for Trump`s transformation, he didn`t mention crooked Hillary, not once, and he acknowledged peaceful Muslims threatened by violence, instead of pushing his usual canard that Muslim-Americans, unspecified quantity of them, are harboring terrorists actively.
Besides those small merits, the speech was a tirade of inaccuracies, willful distortions and outright lies about Clinton and her records, starting with the charge she used the State Department to line her own pockets.
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TRUMP: She`s been taking plenty of money out for herself. Hillary Clinton has perfected the politics of personal profit and even theft. She ran the State Department like her own personal hedge fund doing favors for oppressive regimes and many others and really many, many others in exchange for cash.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: All right. Just to be clear, there`s no evidence Clinton ever engaged in the kind of quid quo pro that he is saying theft for cash or exchange for cash when she was secretary of state. Much less that she stole or embezzled money.
Then, there was Trump`s yarn about deleted e-mails from Clinton`s private server.
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TRUMP: While we may not know what`s in those deleted e-mails, our enemies probably know every single one of them. So, they probably now have a blackmail file over someone who wants to be the president of the United States. This fact alone disqualifies her from the presidency.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: You see what happened there. You notice what starts out as a likelihood, our enemies probably have a blackmail file on Clinton, something that Trump has just sort of the moment, then turns into an unqualified stated fact by the next sentence. This fact alone.
Again, something Trump appears to have made up out of whole cloth, about as accurate about his view of the role and the role Hillary Clinton played in it as secretary of state.
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TRUMP: Her decision spread death, destruction and terrorism everywhere she touched. In just four years, Secretary Clinton managed to almost single handedly destabilize the entire Middle East.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Singlehandedly.
Trump`s foreign policy argument was undercut somewhat today when Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to two Republican presidents, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, and crucially a man who was correct about the Iraq war in opposing it publicly, endorsed Hillary Clinton.
For her part, Clinton hit back at Trump today in an energized speech focused on the economy, defending her family`s work at the Clinton Foundation against Trump`s charges of corruption.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: The Clinton Foundation helps poor people around the world get access to life saving AIDS medicine. Donald Trump uses poor people around the world to produce his line of suits and ties.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: I`m joined by Joe Conason, editor-in-chief of "The National Memo", co-author of the e-book, "The Hunting of Hillary", and Betsy Woodruff, politics reporter for "The Daily Beast".
Betsy, I`ll start with you. We`ve now seen the scene probably a dozen to two dozen times in which the Republicans, Donald Trump does something like remotely not incredibly offensive or wild card-ish like he did the speech and he read off a prompter and he didn`t say anything like extremely offensive and everyone`s like here it is, here is presidential Donald Trump, we`ve been through this like 20 times.
There`s something almost sad about willing him to change when you know he won`t change.
BETSY WOODRUFF, THE DAILY BEAST: Yes, I feel like rumors of Donald Trump`s professionalism had been greatly exaggerated. You know, we`ve seen this movie before.
The reality is that you can`t take the Trump out of Trump. I mean, it`s possible some of these shakeups will make a shift, but, look, this was a major address. The fact that he read it off a teleprompter, the fact that he didn`t throw in the kind of, I don`t know, curious nonsense is not anything new. He`s given, as you said, speeches like this before where he reads carefully.
He gave a speech like this at an evangelical conference a week or two back when it was clear he was being steadied and very deliberate about how he spoke. Look, the minute he gets in front of a rally crowd, the minute the teleprompter gets pulled away, we`re likely to see the same Donald that we`ve been seeing for the past year and change, and I imagine Democrats are probably pretty excited about when that happens.
HAYES: Well, and not only that, right? But in this case, Joe, you`ve got stuff that was written down and was feed to prompter, and look, we encounter this all the time, all right? There are things that you want to say but then you have to check to see if they`re true before you can say them and you whittle back claims. You want to say, like, you know, he`s a liar and a cheat and then you have to say well actually what he said was untrue and this money was never accounted for.
Now, Donald Trump could do that, right? He could present a speech that is essentially passes fact check on Hillary Clinton that`s a negative speech, he chose not to do that.
JOE CONASON, THE NATIONAL MEMO: You know, Chris, he can`t resist the line. And he loves the idea -- well, she treated it like her own personal hedge fund. He loves that line.
(CROSSTALK)
CONASON: Right, taking cash like she was walking out of the State Department with suitcases full of cash. And there`s just -- like that`s so far from the truth. It`s absurd.
But, you know, he can`t help himself. He has to say these things.
Meanwhile, you know, the real record of the Clinton Foundation is very different, as Secretary Clinton pointed out today. You know, Chris, I`ve traveled around the world with President Clinton because I`ve been working on a book about his post-presidency. They have provided AIDS medication as she mentioned to probably almost 12 million people now, which has helped to stop the spread of the AIDS virus which we feared at one time would effect 100 million people and completely devastate the continent of Africa.
So, if you go to Africa and you ask people about the Clinton Foundation, and they`ll tell you, they`ve helped them access drugs and medication. They`ve almost wiped out malaria medication and bed nets. You know, they`ve almost wiped out malaria in part of Tanzania.
They`ve helped farmers get, you know, fertilizer and raise their incomes. They`ve done a lot of good, especially in Africa, but all over the world. And, you know, so, the stuff that Trump is saying is just absurd.
When he talks about foreign donations, the great bulk of the foreign donations, started right after President Clinton began his AIDS initiative in 2002 and 2003 and they came from allied governments of ours. This is long before she entered the State Department, Norway, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, because they knew President Clinton, the leaders of those countries and they thought, OK, we will invest in this.
We will help to buy AIDS medication because the pandemic is such a threat to the future of the world. It would be great if people started to pay attention to what actually happened here rather than the stuff that Trump is pulling out of somewhere.
HAYES: Betsy, let me ask you this, it strikes me that there`s two things happening here that makes sense politically for Donald Trump, all right?
First of all, you could tell Republicans want him to shut up about the judge and his fraud lawsuit and, you know, which religions are to be banned from being able to enter the country and just attack Hillary Clinton every day. All you have do to unite the Republican Party is just attack Hillary Clinton, talk about Hillary Clinton every day. He seems so obsessed with himself that he`s unable to do that but this seems to me like the thing that`s the smartest thing for him do politically between now and Cleveland.
WOODRUFF: Without a doubt. Look, he met with evangelical leaders yesterday in New York. Very important summit for him, a chance to reach out to them and the host of leading evangelicals I`ve been talking to over the course of this entire campaign, one thing I hear over and over is, "We don`t really like Trump that much, we`re worried about him, we don`t know him, however, we loathe Hillary Clinton" with an energizing passion.
And the fact that Trump is finally going after Clinton, I can tell you fills these evangelical Christians with joy. It`s exactly what they want to hear.
Look, he shaped the narrative a bit. Americanism versus globalism and it`s going to be tough for Clinton to push back for that because the work that the Clinton Global Foundation did wasn`t in the United States. Trump could just point to that and say, look, Hillary was more worried about malaria in Tanzania than she was about factories in Wisconsin. It`s hard for Hillary, it could be hard for her to change that topic. It`s a challenge for her.
CONASON: Well, first of all, it was her husband`s foundation and during all those years, he was running the foundation, not Hillary. So, secondly, they have done a lot of work in this country. They`ve cut, you know, carbon emissions in this country by 33,000 tons a year, the work that they`ve done. They`ve done a lot of work on jobs in this country. They have a separate CGI America that meets now in Chicago every year and that`s focused on American jobs and American innovation.
So, you know, I guess he can do that. But I don`t know that Americans -- you know, evangelicals, by the way, were among the driving forces behind doing something about AIDS in Africa when George Bush was president.
HAYES: That`s true.
CONASON: They pushed George Bush to start PEPFAR which has spent more taxpayers money than the Clinton Foundation on that problem.
(CROSSTALK)
HAYES: And the best legacy of the Bush administration.
CONASON: That`s correct. It was a very important thing. President Bush and President Clinton worked on it closely together when Bush was president. Evangelicals to their great credit at that point believed that was an important thing to work on.
So, if they`re going to say now that we shouldn`t have done anything about that, I that would be hypocritical. That`s word heresy (ph) territory there.
HAYES: Joe Conason, Betsy Woodruff, thank you both. Appreciate it.
Coming up, we`ll go back to the House floor where Democrats are continuing their sit in. Senator Elizabeth Warren just brought Dunkin Donuts. And this in from NBC`s Peter Alexander, "Dem House member tells me congressional just made a target run to buy sleeping bags for possible gun sit-in all nighter," meaning a sit in all nighter about gun legislation, not with guns.
More from the House floor just after the break.
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REP. JOHN LEWIS, (D) GEORGIA: We`re one family. I said to some of you earlier today maybe our foremothers and forefathers all came to this great land in different ships.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
LEWIS: We`re all in the same boat now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: That was Congressman John Lewis speaking moments ago on the house floor. He, of course, the one who called together this sit in on the House floor unprecedented essentially. And the last time something like this happened was back in 2008 when Republicans refused to leave the chamber demanding a vote on opening up areas to drilling.
Let`s listen in as congressman Elijah Cummings, also a member of the House Democratic leadership from Baltimore addresses his colleagues.
REP. ELIJAH CUMMINGS, (D) MARYLAND: Ladies and gentlemen, enough is enough. Enough is enough. You know, it -- when I thought about what was happening here today, I said this is a significant moment, but we cannot let this moment just go by.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.
CUMMINGS: Ryan is sitting in his office right now depending on us to leave this floor.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
CUMMINGS: I`m telling you, he is. He`s just going to wait us out. But John is right, we have got to say. This is not about us.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.
CUMMINGS: This is bigger than us. This is about generations...
(APPLAUSE)
CUMMINGS: And when we think about what happened in Orlando, ladies and gentlemen, the question is whether we are accepting a new sense of normal.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, no.
CUMMINGS: That should not be normal for people to be enjoying their lives on a Sunday morning and the next thing they know they`re blown away. That can never be normal. And we should not allow it to be normal.
(APPLAUSE)
CUMMINGS: And so for generations yet unborn. Somebody said a little bit earlier, you know, every two years we come here and we swear that we are going to uphold the constitution of the United States of America. We throw our hands up and we also say we`re going to protect the citizens of this great country.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
CUMMINGS: Ladies and gentlemen, it would be legislative malpractice for us not to deal with these issues.
(APPLAUSE)
CUMMINGS: No fly...
CROWD: No buy.
CUMMINGS: No fly...
CROWD: No buy.
HAYES: All right, that was Elijah Cummings, an impassioned speech to fellow members of the House caucus who are sitting on the floor demanding a vote on gun legislation. And Congressman Cummings himself he has lost family members to gun violence, represents a district that has seen extremely high rates of gun violence so he knows the issue inside and out and personally.
House members continue to sit-in. We are hearing reports they are bringing in sleeping bags. They are not going anywhere. House Republican leadership, meanwhile, plotting how they are going to break this up. I think they don`t want to call in the sergeant at arms and arrest the members from the other party. So, what happens next? We`re hearing they may try to call a vote.
We`re keeping our eyes peeled to see how this all plays out.
Don`t go anywhere, we`re not going to anywhere. Much more to come right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Donald Trump likes to boast about his charitable giving and he has claims the proceeds from certain various business ventures going to charity. But several outlets lately have investigated these claims and they`re not finding a whole lot of supporting evidence.
For instance, when Trump launched his campaign book "Crippled America" in early November last year. In a response to a question about his book proceeds he claimed this...
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I`m giving them away. I`m giving the profits of my book I`m giving them away to a lot of different, including the vets.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: But eight months later, according to Huffington Post, it`s unclear if any of the profits have been donated. Trump has made similar claims about Trump University, that`s the defunct enterprise that`s being sued for fraud, Trump Vodka, and a Trump board game.
But according to Politico, none of Trump`s proceeds from Trump University have gone to charity, and only a few hundred dollars of charitable giving related to Trump vodka has been accounted for.
News organizations have been unable to verify his other claims. And his representatives have been unwilling to provide more information about them, or even to confirm them.
Now, false claims of that nature could actually trigger laws governing business deceptive business acts and practices, or charitable solicitation laws. And then is Trump`s broad claim in an interview with the Washington Post that he has, quote, given millions of dollars away.
David Fahrenthold of The Washington Post, that`s the same reporter who basically successfully shamed Donald Trump into making good on a promise to give $1 million to veterans groups, has now tried to find out which organizations Donald Trump might have personally given money to.
The question Fahrenthold posed, "before his $1 million gift to vets in May, when was the last time Donald Trump gave $1 bill of his own money to charity?"
Fahrenthold talked to 102 possible outlets that seemed the most likely recipients of private gifts.
And joining me now, David Fahrenthold, political reporter for The Washington Post.
All right, David, you could not -- they just set this up, I imagine you went to the Trump campaign first and said, hey, will you guys let me know where your charitable contributions have gone to, right?
DAVID FAHRENTHOLD, THE WASHINGTON POST: That`s right. Trump obviously has a charitable foundation, but he hasn`t given that foundation any of his money since 2008. He always says I give millions of dollars to charity...
HAYES: Wait a second. Wait a second. Stop right there. He has a foundation, which if you`re sitting down at the end of the year and saying where should I give my money, you`d think the number one choice would be your own foundation. He hasn`t given his own foundation since 2008 any money?
FAHRENTHOLD: As far as we can tell, yes.
HAYES: OK. So, he hasn`t given that foundation money. They won`t tell you where his charitable money flows to, correct?
FAHRENTHOLD: That`s right, gifts outside the foundation, they say he gives to them but there`s no way for us to know where he gives or how much.
HAYES: And obviously he won`t release his tax returns in which they would be itemized, presumably.
So you started to do what? How did you try to track this down?
FARENTHOLD: Well, so I made a list of all the charities I could think of that had some kind of connection to Trump, the charities that he`s given to from his foundation in the past, the foundation largely filled with other people`s money now. Charities he`s written about, but he mentions in his corporate biography.
So, if Donald Trump was going to give any of his personal money to any charity who would it be? And so now my list is up to 128 charities, have called them all to try to figure out, hey, have you ever gotten a personal donation from Donald Trump?
HAYES: And what is the answer?
FAHRENTHOLD: The only donation that I can find between 2008, when he last gave money to the foundation, and this May when he gave that $1 million donation to veterans, I can find one charitable donation from Donald Trump in that period. And I`m not sure that was true. There was a $5,000 to $10,000 donation from 2008. It may be a bookkeeping error, it may be real. That`s the only one that I found from that long period.
HAYES: What charity was this to?
FAHRENTHOLD: The Police Athletic League of New York City.
HAYES: Sure. Yeah. And why do you think it might be a bookkeeping error?
FAHRENTHOLD: Well, Trump`s Foundation also gave to the PAL in that year. And if you look at other years, they miscount foundation gifts as personal gifts from Trump. And so this may be also a case of that.
HAYES: So, I just want to be clear, this individual claims he`s worth $10 billion. He claims that he`s given millions of dollars, if I`m not mistaken, to charity. He has a foundation that he has given no personal money to. You`ve now called 128 organizations and charities and there`s only one donation from this man who is worth $10 billion, so he says, that you can account for in the amount of $5,000 a few years ago that might have been a bookkeeper error?
FAHRENTHOLD: That`s right. And so you`ve seen Trump -- he`s made all these promises to give the proceeds of this or that to charity over the years, but if you look at his foundation you can obviously see that he hasn`t given that money through the foundation. So, his out has always been well I give privately, I give off the books. That`s what I`m looking for and I haven`t found it so far.
HAYES: Right. And this is key, because, you know, there`s actually some legal exposure here when you have a business, some of these -- the proceeds of this, or some proceeds will be donated to charity, that`s not just an informal pledge, there might be legal obligations actually carry through on that or you violated the law.
FAHRENTHOLD: That`s possible. I mean, it`s sometimes -- they look for very strict language. Trump, often, if you look at his promises now when he says I`m going to give to charity, like the one that you played, it`s never I`m going to give this amount to this charity or for this cause, it`s just to charity and that makes it really hard to go back check to see what did he he give and did he lived up to his promises.
HAYES: All right, David Fahrenthold who has just been doing phenomenal reporting on all of this for months now. Thank you for making the time, David.
FAHRENTHOLD: Thank you.
HAYES: Up next, House Democrats continuing at this hour to occupy the House floor. They`ve been there for nine hours.
Republicans hatching a plan to disrupt the sit-in very shortly with a vote that they think will paint Democrats into a corner. House leadership on the Democratic side saying they will not bite. And we`re going to go there live after the break.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who is doing Periscope?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have a rule in the House. Senator, please don`t sit there.
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN, (D) MASSACHUSETTS: Oh, oh, sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
I don`t understand.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Don`t get in the way there.
HAYES: All right, that was just moments ago, and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is arriving with some Dunkin Donuts for her colleagues who were holding this nine hour -- eight, nine hour plus sit-in on the House floor streaming it through Periscope. The senator unaware that she was sitting in front of the smartphone that was broadcasting as the rest of the world, because the House cameras are shut down, because the House has now gaveled to order at the moment.
Joining me now from Capitol Hill, NBC News congressional correspondent Luke Russert who has been covering the story all day. And my understanding is you have sources who told you what the Republican plan is to do with this essentially civil disobedience of a sort that`s now occupying the House chamber.
LUKE RUSSERT, NBC NEWS: Well, a high ranking Democrats told me that they have no plans to leave tonight. And there has been a lot of consternation with the House GOP conference about this is going to set a terrible precedent if the minority party is allowed to essentially hijack the House floor and do whatever they want. The business of the House must go forward.
So the plan from the House GOP leadership is to gavel in at around 9:30 p.m. of which then the lights will go up completely and the C-SPAN cameras will go back on and they plan to conduct a vote on a veto override of a fiduciary rule, which I`m sure you can explain off the top of your head for me, Chris. And then the Democrats say they`re going to stay in the well and continue their protest.
So the video is going to be extraordinary because in theory you could literally see Republican members stepping over Democrats on the floor to conduct the vote and then they`re going to gavel out.
So, this is unprecedented because this doesn`t happen in the House. The filibuster is a tool in the Senate. In the House, the majority party writes the rules, essentially does what they want. That is why the speaker is so powerful, that is why the majority leader is so powerful.
If you really want to go around them you have to file something called a discharge petition, you get 218 signatures.
The Democrats so frustrated with the inability of the House to take a vote on any type of gun control amendment, whether it`s no-fly, no buy, which happened in the Senate, or enhanced background checks bill. They felt that they needed to do this and they enlisted the help of John Lewis, the civil rights icon, who is well versed in these types of civil disobedient acts, Chris. And here they are starting at 11:25 a.m. and I can just tell you in my seven years here I`ve never seen anything like this.
I spoke to my colleagues who have been here 20, 30, 40 years. They`ve never seen anything on the House side in the way in which the public has been engaged on this with the hashtag #nobillnobreak has been remarkable.
I mean, the fact that a Periscope stream has been going and been carried by C-SPAN for the last four or five hours, and that`s historic. It really is.
HAYES: All right, Luke Russert, stay right there. I`m going to keep checking back with you. Thank you for that. That`s very useful.
It`s worthwhile explaining what the fiduciary role is for those folks watching at home. Here`s what it is, you have an investment adviser. The Department of Labor just issued a regulation saying that investment adviser has to act in your best interests in the best interests of the client, which would seem a natural thing for them to do, but until now they didn`t have to. In fact, they swindle you. They could sell you very high priced things and take a huge cut and not tell you they were taking a commission. This regulation was signed into law -- administered by the Department of Labor, and Wall Street hates it.
So, how is this going to be broken? Apparently, this sit-in over gun violence, by Paul Ryan gaveling to order a vote to overturn investor protection on behalf of the big banks who hate the rule.
No one else cares about it. No one else is up in arms about it. There`s no grass roots Republican revolution against the fiduciary rule. The banks don`t like it.
This is apparently the piece of legislation they`re going to call to a vote instead of gun safety legislation. Stick around. More to come.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If all we can do is a couple of bills that save one life, it`s worth this today.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, it is.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And it`s worth it tomorrow and it`s worth it the next day. As long as you are here, I will be here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: all right.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you for your commitment And thank you for standing by us.
HAYES: At this hour, House Democrats are nine-and-a-half hours into a pretty extraordinary action. They have essentially in a sit in. They are the minority party, of course. The House right now not in regular order. The reason that you`re watching that somewhat odd camera shot is that the House cameras are not on, because they`re not in session, which means C- SPAN doesn`t have their cameras on the House floor.
This is what it looks like. Instead we have Periscope, which is in violation of House rules, although once you start to break one rule why not break more.
The Democrats are doing all this because they say it is is outrageous and anti-democratic, essentially, for Republican leadership not to call a vote on gun legislation particularly in the wake of 49 murdered in Orlando with a gun.
Joining me now to talk about this, Sabrina Siddiqui, political reporter for The Guardian, Josh Barro, senior editor at Business Insider and MSNBC contributor.
Sabrina, what is your read on why now for this action? I mean, there are so many things that have been obstructed in the House. My first thought was immigration reform when you had a bill from the Senate, right.
What is it about this moment substantively terms of the commitment of members, their read on the politics, their frustration with their minority status. Why now?
SABRINA SIDDIQUI, THE GUARDIAN: Well, first and foremost the terrorist attack in Orlando earlier this month marked the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. And it really renewed, according to most public polling, concerns among a majority of Americans that the nation`s gun laws are not as strict or as tough as they can be.
And there is certainly vast majorities of Americans who support trying to prevent terrorists, those on the watch list, the FBI watchlist from accessing firearms.
You can talk about whether this is meaningful reform that they would achieve. I don`t think Democrats are operating under the delusion that these reforms will pass the Republican-controlled congress.
But it`s an election year, and they want this issue to be on the ballot in November. They been trying to galvinize a grass roots movement to really counter the weight of the NRA. And I think they see this is a prime opportunity to show that this is purely a politically contentious issue that Republicans do not want to take up because they are accepting donations from the NRA even though, for example, 90 percent of Americans support background checks and as many as 70 percent of Americans want to close that terror loophole.
HAYES: Yeah, I`m -- I want to talk about the substance of these bills in a second, but on the politics, to Sabrina`s point, I mean what`s striking to me here is that it really does seem like Republicans don`t want to vote about it. And what`s striking about the senate is they did that thing you do when you`re scared of a vote where you come up with your own alternative as opposed to just voting no, because they clearly -- the Republicans needed something to vote for and not just against because they were afraid of the 30 second ads. Like they feel like they`re on the wrong side of the politics on this.
JOSH BARRO, BUSINESS INSIDER: What`s going to happen if they have this vote is that then will be ads in all sorts of congressional districts about how representative Jones voted to allow terrorists to buy guns.
HAYES: Yeah, which is a tough thing to defend.
BARRO: Right. And so I thought it was interesting you had Senator Murphy`s filibuster in the Senate. And fairly quickly Mitch McConnell just decided, OK, they can have the votes if they want the votes. And actually it was a matter of hours that Republicans caved and agreed to do that.
I think it was a calculation that they could survive taking those votes. As you described, they put will say, well I voted for this very good alternative that achieves these good things without doing other bad things.
I would sort of expect them to end up in the same place in the House. I don`t think they`re going to be tenable for them to go all the way until November without taking votes on these gun issues in the House.
And they can just take the things off the shelf that they were doing in the Senate. So, I think that`s where we`re likely to land, but I think, you know, maybe House Republicans don`t want to courage Democrats to use this tactic over and over again.
HAYES: Well, that I think -- and if the shoe were on the other foot I can guaran-damn-tee you Nancy Pelosi would be having none of it.
And it sort of was in 2008 on the drilling.
BARRO: Yeah, you had House Republicans staging basically fake sessions in the House chamber trying...
HAYES: She turned the lights out on them.
BARRO: Right. You know, when the shoe is on the other foot -- the House also has a different culture than the Senate. The House is run with an iron fist by the speaker. There`s less power than there is for the minority in the Senate.
HAYES: Let me just say this sort of substantively. I mean, I think there`s two bills here. I think they should both get votes. I think one is a good bill, closing universal -- the background loophole. Universal background checks seem to me to be great piece of policy. I can see an argument for no background checks or an argument for universal background checks, there`s an argument for some gun sales fall under it is, I think, bad.
I just want to say about the watch list. I mean, look, we`re using the shorthand potential terrorist to describe people on the watch list. And I understand why you wouldn`t want a potential terrorist to buy a gun. We saw the horror that happened in Orlando.
There`s also a lot of other things if you use the shorthand potential terrorist you might not want a person doing like teaching children.
Like, you know, what about a vote that says no one on the terror watch list can have a job as a public school teacher. Do, you want a potential terrorist teaching your child? That`s a pretty good effective 30 second ad too.
It would also be garbage as policy.
I would urge the Democrats here to keep their eye on the ball and universal background checks, but whatever the politics of the particular moment are - - although I doubt they`re listening to me, because they are there on the House floor and they are fired up. They`re going to be there all night.
We`re going to see what happens next. Josh Barro, Sabrina Siddiqui, thank you so much.
That is All in.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END