Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: June 5, 2017 Guest: Ben Cardin, Naveed Jamali, Cecillia Wang, Stephen Vladeck, Nayyera Huq, Ali Watkins, Laurence Tribe
CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC HARDBALL HOST: Wonder when the weird is going to come and actually become dangerous. And that`s HARDBALL for now. Thanks for being with us. "ALL IN" with Chris Hayes starts right now.
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CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC ALL IN HOST: Tonight, on ALL IN.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why is the President picking a fight with the Mayor of London right after his city was hit by a terror attack?
HAYES: Attack mode.
BILL DE BLASIO, NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: I don`t understand why Donald Trump is trying to undermine a man who`s trying to protect the people of London. It makes no sense.
HAYES: Tonight as London moves forward, why the President of the United States is lashing out at the city`s mayor, at the courts, at Democrats, and at his own executive branch.
Plus, new reporting alleges Russian hacking days before the election at the Department of Justice announces an arrest. Then, Comey day is coming.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: That dinner was arranged. I think he asked for the dinner.
HAYES: Why the White House is backing off claims of executive privilege and what that means for Thursday`s hearing. And about those taxes -
TRUMP: You know, the only one that cares about my tax returns are the reporters, OK? They`re the only ones.
HAYES: We have an answer from the White House on the President`s tax returns when ALL IN starts right now.
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HAYES: Good evening from New York, I`m Chris Hayes. As London stood defiant today in the face of a ghastly terrorist attack, President Trump renewed his attack on London`s mayor Sadiq Khan who responded he has far more important things to worry about.
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SADIQ KHAN, LONDON MAYOR: My focus since Saturday has been dealing with the horrific attack on our city, on Londoners and on visitors. I`ve really don`t have time to respond to Trump - tweets from Donald Trump. We`ve got to recognize -
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But it is a free world so -
KHAN: We`ve got to recognize some people want to divide our communities. Some people thrive on feud and division. That`s not me, that`s not the London that I know. We aren`t going to allow anybody, whether it is Donald Trump or anybody else, to divide our communities.
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HAYES: Seven people were killed, dozens injured in the terror attack. England`s third in just three months. Authorities today identifying two of the three alleged attackers, all of whom were killed by police. As the story was breaking, before the streets were even secure, President Trump retweeted an unconfirmed claim about the attack from the drudge report, prompting NBC News to declare, quote, "President Trump has used Twitter to share news report on London incident. We aren`t relaying President`s retweet as the info is unconfirmed. It wasn`t just NBC.
Last Thursday in the Rose Garden, the President attributed to terrorism an attack that left 37 dead at a casino in Manila. Police later said the motive had been robbery, not terrorism. That Associated Press pointed to that claim along with the President`s comments on the London attack and others to declare today that President Trump can`t be counted on to give accurate information to Americans when violent attacks are unfolding abroad. The President used the London attack to criticize gun control efforts and push his travel ban. He also cedes on this statement from Mayor Khan.
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KHAN: Londoners will see an increased police presence today and over the course of the next few days. No reason to be alarmed.
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HAYES: The Mayor was clearly telling Londoners not to be alarmed over the increased police presence, but President Trump blatantly took his words out of context tweeting, "at least seven dead, 48 wounded in terror attack and the Mayor of London said there`s no reason to be alarmed?" He then followed up today with this, "Pathetic excuse by London Mayor Sadiq Khan who had to think fast on his no reason to be alarmed statement. MSM is working hard to sell it." The President`s comments left New York Mayor Bill De Blasio incredulous.
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DE BLASIO: We`ve been through attacks, we know what it feels like and Mayor Khan is doing exactly the right thing. Maybe Donald Trump doesn`t have a lot of experience handling security situations, but it just makes no sense. It`s not fair to the Mayor Khan, it`s not fair to the people of London.
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HAYES: In England, as NBC`s Bill Neal reported today, the response was much the same.
BILL NEELY, NBC NEWS CHIEF GLOBAL CORRESPONDENT: Part of the spirit of defiance on the streets of London is not just defiance of the bombers who did what they did on Saturday night, but now defiance of President Trump because his tweets have been condemned by politicians from all parties.
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HAYES: At the White House today, Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders attempted to argue that President Trump did not take Khan`s words out of context.
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SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: The point is, is there is a reason to be alarmed. We have constant attacks going on, not just there, but across the globe, and we have to start putting national security and global security at an all-time high.
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HAYES: As the Trump administration was urging people to be alarmed, the people of England were unbowed. A huge, enormous crowd came out yesterday for a benefit concert led by singer Ariana Grande to help the victims of that suicide bombing two weeks ago that took place at Grande`s concert in Manchester.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Instead of you know, scared to come here, like people not coming, we need to sit together and actually not be scared about things. Because I feel like whoever`s doing this wants us to be scared.
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HAYES: Joining me now, Democratic Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, Ranking Member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. First, I guess I`d like to get your reaction to the President`s words spread over a number of tweets today in reaction both to what happened in London and generally what`s happening here at home.
SEN. BEN CARDIN (D-MD), RANKING MEMBER SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE: Well, first, his comment about the Mayor of London was just outrageous. This is a day in which we should be showing our solidarity with our close partner, the U.K. but instead, the President calls into question the Mayor`s comment which was taken totally out of context by the President. So it was not a good moment and certainly causes a strain between the relationship between the U.K. and the United States.
HAYES: Have you ever seen anything like that?
CARDIN: No, not particularly right after a major tragedy. We all come together. That`s what happens. Whether it`s something that happens in our family or something that happens in our nation, we come together, and we support each other. That`s not what the President showed from - as the President of the United States to the people of U.K. and it was disappointing.
HAYES: Do you wonder, or worry, or think about how this President would react or will have to react when there is some kind of acute crisis here in this country?
CARDIN: Well, first, I would hope the President would reflect before he sends out a tweet which is totally inaccurate. And then secondly, when the President says something that`s just not right, he`s got to correct himself. He`s got to come down and say, gee, I misunderstood what he said, or make it clear. But when you listen to what the Mayor of London said, there is no misunderstanding here of what he was talking about when he told the people that there would be extra police presence, and that shouldn`t alarm them. And then the President says something different. When he listens to what the Mayor said, he needed to correct himself. So yes, I am concerned that the way the President conducts policy is reckless and dangerous to the U.S. interests.
HAYES: The President blamed Democrats in the Senate for blocking his nominees. What`s your response to that?
CARDIN: Well, it`s totally fake news. The President hasn`t submitted his nominees to the Senate yet. He has to nominate. He hasn`t nominated. He has the slowest pace we`ve ever seen. There`s been absolutely no delay in the United States Senate in considerating -- in consideration of his nominees. So once again, he`s just making this up. If anything, we have a problem with the President not sending in nominations to the Senate.
HAYES: There`s two ways, I think, to interpret these massive vacancies in the Federal Government is that it makes it hard for the government to function. There`s huge amounts of positions in management that are vacant. The other is that it`s better functionally for the actual career people to (INAUDIBLE) to be filling those roles than the people that the President might nominate. Which of those are you disposed to think?
CARDIN: Clearly, you need to confirm the people in place in order to carry out policies from the Trump administration. The career people do not want to be - they cannot speak as to the policies of the administration. So, therefore, they`re really at a disadvantage if they don`t have the principal person confirmed in the area in which they`re working. So no, it works as a disadvantage to the career people.
HAYES: Given the vacancy of the FBI which created by the President himself, given the vacancies if these senior positions up and down the entirety of the federal government, is the U.S. prepared for a crisis? Is the U.S. prepared for what may be around the corner, whether that should be something like an attack, or international crisis, or even a natural disaster? Do you feel confident the federal government is prepared?
CARDIN: We`re really a real resilient country. We have a strong system. We have strong people in place that will carry out and do their work but we could be stronger if we had the people in place that should be there. So I think the President is not doing a service to the American people, or to our - the missions of our different agencies when he doesn`t make the necessary appointments. But we will respond as we need to, because we have the experts in place in order to carry out the policies of America.
HAYES: All right. Senator Ben Cardin, thanks for your time tonight.
CARDIN: Thank you.
HAYES: Joining me now MSNBC Political Analyst Josh Earnest who served as the White House Press Secretary under President Obama from 2014 to 2017. And Josh, I was thinking about President Obama`s reaction to these sorts of things because often he would get criticism for being too calm. There was this sense in the midst of crisis, chaos, attacks, Ebola I remember that he was being too calm. He wasn`t showing this sense of urgency. This President takes it seems to me a 180-degree different approach. What are the risks of that?
JOSH EARNEST, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, Chris, the risks are significant. There was a - there was a process that was in place when I worked in the White House to make sure that the President was getting good information from his top National Security Advisers when there`s a terror incident somewhere around the world. The President`s top counterterrorism adviser would come in and brief him on the details. We would make public that the President had been briefed on particular incident and then we would go to work doing two things. One is making - figuring out what we could convey to the American public and the world about what exactly the United States government was doing to respond to this particular incident. Oftentimes that would be immediate phone calls between law enforcement officials, intelligence officials and other senior officials in the U.S. government who were responsible for national security. The second thing that we would do is then determine the appropriate venue for the President to comment on what had happened.
HAYES: Right.
EARNEST: In some cases it meant, well, let`s wait a day so we can figure out what exactly what has transpired so we can make sure that whatever the President says is accurate, and if the information that can inspire confidence in people that the U.S. government and our allies are up to the task of responding to the particular incident.
HAYES: There strikes me as a really enormous credibility problem in this White House, and everyone - people have talked about this across the political spectrum, but it seems particularly important and acute during these moments. And you can imagine in a moment when there was something that happened here at home that people just at a basic level trust that the information that comes from the President and the White House has been vetted and is accurate.
EARNEST: That is absolutely correct, Chris. And if you imagine a scenario inside the United States where there is a terrorist incident, we want to make sure that the President of the United States says something like the suspect is in custody or the individual responsible has been apprehended by law enforcement. We want to make sure that that`s accurate information.
HAYES: Right.
EARNEST: We want to make sure that that`s information we can be confident in. The problem, Chris, is I think that you and I and so many different Americans are used to a situation which our government reassures us, hearkening all the way back to President Roosevelt, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Even Republicans like President George W. Bush and Rudy Giuliani, two men who I don`t agree with much politically, are two individuals who earned widespread praise in the aftermath of 9/11. Not because they were panicked and telling people they needed to be scared, but because they demonstrated confidence and resolve and they inspired a sense of courage in the American public, even in the face of a terrible disaster. President Trump`s approach is completely the opposite to that. He`s intentionally sowing fear and chaos, and this lurking sense that the information, or that the situation is out of control. And that may benefit him politically, but it`s cynical and it`s dangerous.
HAYES: All right. John Earnest, thank for being here tonight.
EARNEST: Thank you, Chris.
HAYES: Joining me now are former CIA Analyst Ned Price, who also served as Special Assistant to President Obama and Spokesperson and Senior Director of National Security Council, and MSNBC Contributor, former FBI Double Agent Naveed Jamali, Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Ned, I want to start with you because you were - you were a spokesperson in the White House and to me, one of the most astounding things that`s happened in the last 24 hours is a staffer of the President picking a fight with a London Mayor.
As the bodies have not been identified, counted, I mean, we`re talking in the midst of this horror, a staffer is picking a fight. This is Dan Scavino referring back to a tweet from the Mayor of London who is - who is responding to the then candidate Trump`s Muslim Ban talking at the matter being ignorant view of Islam. And here`s Scavino saying you know, refer to below tweet 13 months ago after you criticize now President Donald Trump and wake up. This is a like point scoring dunking on someone from a Twitter staffer to an actual head of the city of London. I`ve never seen anything, anything remotely like this.
NED PRICE, SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO PRESIDENT OBAMA: It`s - Chris, very difficult to imagine this is the reality we are living in, just four months into the Trump administration. Look, one of the most powerful weapons in our National Security and Foreign Policy arsenal is the Presidential bully pulpit. It is the voice of the Commander in Chief. Going back through history, it`s not only the FDR quote that Josh mentioned, but it`s President Kennedy telling Khrushchev that we would not submit to nuclear weapons in Cuba. It`s President Reagan telling Gorbachev to tear down that wall. It`s President George H.W. Bush telling Iraq that aggression against Kuwait would not stand.
That is what the world looks to when there is a crisis when there is a challenge that we`re collectively facing. And with these antics, both President Trump and his top aides including Dan Scavino, in this case, had diluted a powerful, perhaps one of the most powerful weapons in our arsenal. By weakening this weapon, the President will have less credibility now when push comes to shove and he`s called upon to serve in that ever-important role as Commander in Chief.
HAYES: And Naveed, the subtext here which is important is it gets down to the President`s view on Islam and on Muslims and the degree to which they are implicated or suspect as a class. This is a man who called on a ban. London has a Muslim Mayor. Sadiq Khan has spoke incredibly, movingly about his connection to his faith and how he viewed these attacks through that prism. And it seems inescapable to me that that`s part of the subtext of what - of this back-and-forth.
NAVEED JAMALI, FORMER FBI DOUBLE AGENT: Absolutely, Chris. I couldn`t agree with you more there. And look, besides the sort of, you know, the Muslim component here, there`s also a practical one here. And I`m sure Ned can expound on this as well. But the idea is when you`re coming from a law enforcement perspective, you can only go so far. You can`t necessarily affect an arrest and as we look at terrorists, in many cases, they don`t actually commit anything illegal until they actually perpetrate the act.
On the intelligence side, it`s the same problem. When you`re looking outside of the content United States, you`re looking outside the U.K., what that means is that as a law enforcement or intelligence officer, you rely on the community as part of that first line of defense. And so just as a practical matter, when the President of the United States comes out and the reactions to a terrorist attack is to push a Muslim ban, it`s going to do nothing more.
And look, I`ve gotten e-mails from people that run - that are case officers that complained that their assets are very concerned about this. When you have the President of the United States coming out and saying, pushing the Muslim ban, it makes it not only harder to recruit people in that community, it makes it harder to retain them. And that`s - look, when you talk about terrorism, that is just giving up a massive line of defense that we have against this you know, this scourge.
HAYES: Ned, how do you - how do you balance - I guess the question for me is, what - how do you have the rest of the government deal with this at the center? It`s a strange question but at this point, it`s not - it is what it is. The President`s going to tweet and it seems to me that basically, we`re asking for the other institutions of governance to deal around this in the midst of it. You saw it with the Acting Ambassador who`s running the embassy in the U.K., acting like a normal gracious ally while the President is tweeting this feud.
PRICE: Yes, Chris, it makes it challenging and incredibly difficult. Look, leadership flows from the top and I think you saw that reflected in Secretary Mattis` remarks over the weekend when he told in an international gathering to quote and quote, "bear with us." We`ll, you know, essentially told them, look, we`ll get there in the end. It will be messy but just bear with us in the meantime. That is not the message that we should be sending to our allies nor is it the message that they want to hear. Our allies are partners. Even our adversaries need to know where we stand, who we are, what we`re for, what we`re against. And that is not something that we`re getting in the mess of this administration, unfortunately.
HAYES: Naveed, do you think this country`s reaction to these sorts of events as they`re happening abroad is changing over time?
JAMALI: You know, I do. I think that -- look, again, with the President coming out and saying this, and his response not being to offer support or condemnation, and just leave it at that, look, Chris, I remember, you know, I`m someone who judges history in terms of pre-9/11 andpost-9/11. That was a defining moment for many of my generation. And I think that for many of us, it was a call to support our country. And I suspect in the U.K., there`s a lot of that same feeling.
And I think that, again, when you take a tact that seeks to mark - to attack sort of marginalize communities already, it does nothing more than hurt that and it doesn`t help - it doesn`t push anything forward. It doesn`t have a real dialogue as to how we can fix what is a gap between intelligence and law enforcement which does exist. You know, that is a conversation we have to have. But when the President of the United States isn`t said going after these marginalized communities, it doesn`t further that discussion.
HAYES: All right -
PRICE: And Chris, we shouldn`t forget there`s a real practical element to this. Terrorism is a tactic designed to instill fear and terror -
JAMALI: Terror. Absolutely.
PRICE: - in those who are watching. And President Trump actually hypes the threat. He played into this. And he gave the terrorists the victory they didn`t achieve.
HAYES: I just want to say, the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people in Manchester to me was so remarkable because that`s - you know, this has just happened and they`re out there and that -- I couldn`t think of a better response. Ned Price, Naveed Jamali, thanks to you both.
PRICE: Thank you.
JAMALI: Thank you.
HAYES: Ahead, did the President just sabotage his own case before the Supreme Court by sub-tweeting his own Department of Justice? Where the Trump Travel Ban stands after this morning`s Twitter diatribe in two minutes.
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HAYES: In a series of tweets in the wake of the attack in London, the President gutted his own lawyers` arguments in one of the most high-profile legal cases of his administration. At issue is whether the administration`s proposed ban of incoming travel from six Muslim majority countries is an attempt to put into law the kind of ban the President pledged against all Muslims back when he was a candidate on the campaign trail. Saturday night, he tweeted quote "we need the courts to give us back our rights, we need the travel ban as an extra level of safety." And this morning, President again appeared to explicitly articulate the intention of his executive order, quote, "people, the lawyers in the court can call it whatever they want, but I`m calling it what we need and what it is, a travel ban." And he went after his own DOJ, "the Justice Department, should have stayed with the original travel ban not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to the Supreme Court. The watered-down version he`s referring to is the revised version of the first executive order which was blocked in court. The second one was signed in hopes it could better withstand legal scrutiny than its predecessor. It didn`t. That version has also been blocked by lower courts and now is in the hands of the Supreme Court. George Conway, a prominent and a well- connected conservative lawyer who just turned down the nomination to lead the Justice Department Civil Division suggested the President`s tweets could significantly hurt his case quote, "these tweets may make some people feel better, but they certainly won`t help the Office of the Solicitor General get five votes in SCOTUS which is what actually matters, sad." By the way, George Conway is the husband of White House Senior Adviser Kellyanne Conway who today, the very same day, scoffed at the media for covering things the President says on Twitter.
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KELLYANN CONWAY, COUNSELOR TO THE PRESIDENT: His obsession with covering everything he says on twitter and very little of what he -
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, that`s his - that`s his preferred method of communication with the American people.
CONWAY: That`s not true.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, he hasn`t given any interview in three weeks. So lately it has been his preferred method.
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HAYES: Joining me now, Cecillia Wang, Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU which has the case challenging this. Stephen Vladeck, Professor at Law at University of Texas School of Law. Professor Vladeck, let me start with you. Before we even get to the guts of this, just the strangeness of the President referring to his Justice Department and the arguments it`s making the way a commentator or pundit might. He - am I wrong that he could - he can tell the Department of Justice to argue whatever he wants them to argue?
STEPHEN VLADECK, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS SCHOOL OF LAW: Chris, not only can he tell him to argue whatever he wants them to argue, he - not the Justice Department signed the executive order that he`s now saying the Justice Department should have changed. So there`s an interesting effort to -
HAYES: It`s his signature, like he literally made it happen, the President of the United States.
VLADECK: That`s right. The Justice Department doesn`t have the authority to issue an executive order without him. So it`s not clear to me exactly who he`s complaining about.
HAYES: Cecilia, there is a lot of talk about this being ammunition for those who are challenging the travel ban, the ACLU among them. Neil Katyal saying "it`s kind of odd to have the defendant in HawaiivTrump acting as our co-counsel. We don`t need the help, but we`ll take it. And in an op- ed that was in the New York Times which I should say for disclosure, my wife wrote, she wrote about the sort of importance of the President`s intent in his words in sort of adjudicating this. There`s an exception for Presidential speech, or whether we should consider it. If it`s supplying the evidence of intent or purpose of the established relevance, is that why this is so bad for his case?
CECILLIA WANG, ACLU DEPUTY LEGAL DIRECTOR: That`s exactly right, Chris. What the President did in just four little tweets this morning was to demolish the carefully constructed House of cards that his lawyers at the Justice Department have been building in court or at least trying to build. As your wife wrote in The New York Times, the question here under the first amendment is, would a reasonable observer take the President`s actions as an effort to condemn or disparage a religion? And that`s exactly what he made clear this morning in the four tweets. He has basically said in those four tweets, I`ve had the same intent from beginning to end from my campaign statements until 6:44 a.m. on June 5th, his intent has been the same and that is, to constitute and institute a Muslim ban.
HAYES: Right. And the idea of being that if that is the intent that is going to be hard for a court to sign off on that, right?
WANG: That`s absolutely right. The other thing he did in one of his tweets, the last one where he says, in any event, we`re doing extreme vetting right now is to completely smash his lawyers` arguments that they need the Supreme Court to immediately stay the lower courts` decisions that enjoin the ban order. So he really hurt his case today and imagine that his lawyers were scrambling to find a red phone to get the phone out of his hand so he couldn`t tweet anymore. But the damage is done.
HAYES: Well, Stephen, part of the - part of the novelty here, both sort of in a judicial sense in terms of how the President`s speech is being interpreted and cited and decision after decision, including campaign speeches, aide speeches, his speech, is the fact that he`s speaking about the legal matters in a way, and correct me if I`m wrong, you study this, Presidents don`t normally speak, right?
VLADECK: No for sure. I mean, not only Presidents, clients. I mean, I think any lawyer will tell you that the worst person to be handed a microphone or Twitter account while their case is pending before the Supreme Court, while the future of their cherished policy is hanging in the balance is your client because he`s not going to be objective about it. And I think Cecillia is exactly right. In this case, the problem is that the government`s basic argument to the Supreme Court is just, look at the executive order. Don`t look beyond the executive order.
HAYES: Right.
VLADECK: Everything he said was in the past. Well, it`s not in the past anymore. And so -
HAYES: Right. That`s a great point. And Cecillia, to the point about just look at what`s on the sheet of paper, I mean, it is the case that absent everything else context-wise, the President has a lot of latitude in immigration law, particularly and probably if you took away the context that this was essentially making good on a Muslim ban promise, you would probably have a much better shot to have it ruled constitutional.
WANG: Well, I think on its face, the executive order actually is very problematic, and probably couldn`t withstand first amendment scrutiny but what he`s done today is to make it very difficult, and I would say impossible for the court to ignore what he`s saying. As Steve Vladeck just said, he`s reaffirmed what he has been saying all along and again, the test under the first amendment is, what would the reasonable observer think looking what the President has done? You can`t ignore what he`s saying to this day.
HAYES: He also calls his own Department of Justice - I mean, it also seems like a bizarre preemptive move to sort of assign blame, even though itself - it itself is creating the destruction. But Stephen, I mean, he`s calling his own Department of Justice politically correct. His order, he signed, I mean, there is this is sort of, this is not my fault subtext I suppose here.
VLADECK: No, I think that`s right, Chris. I think it`s not my fault, it`s either the Justice Department`s fault or it`s the court`s fault. And I think this is you know, part of a larger pattern we saw with the NATO speech and with a lot of events lately where the President is trying to distance himself from responsibility for the policies that are being carried out in his name. you know, we have a constitution that has a unitary executive at the top. It`s going to be hard for the President to really say I really can`t be blamed for the policies everybody enacted because I told them to.
HAYES: That is - it`s a great point because from the very first moment, when he talked about the intelligence community, he talked about the government that he is running as if it is a foreign entity, or as if it`s something outside of him, or if it`s something that he`s in combat with which in some senses is as we`ve seen from the leaks of the bureaucracy and civil services may be not so ridiculous. Cecillia Wang and Stephen Vladeck, thanks for joining us.
WANG: Thank you.
HAYES: Up next. Breaking news about the top-secret NSA report that gives a detailed account of Russian hacking attempts in the days before the election and there`s been an arrest in the case. Full details next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: Russia`s interference in the 2016 election went far beyond hacking Democrat`s emails, according to a new bombshell report by The Intercept. The outlet obtained a top-secret NSA document from about a month ago detailing Russian efforts to infiltrate U.S. voting systems in the final days before the election. Barely an hour after that story published, the Justice Department announced it had filed charges against the individual who they say allegedly leaked the document.
Joined now on the phone by Ken Dilanian. He`s intelligence and national security reporter for NBC News.
Ken, tell me first about what the report says about what Russians tried to do, or did in the days right before the election.
KEN DILANIAN, NBC NEWS: Right, Chris, well, what this report does is shed more light on some things we knew, but didn`t know the details on, about the Russians` ability to infiltrate voter registration systems and to compromise some of the contractors around those systems.
And the report, for examples, describes 100 spear phishing attempts to local voting officials, it describes a successful hack against voting contracting company that operated in eight states, and it described something that these efforts going right up to the -- almost election day.
And so I`ve spoken to some experts in this case who have looked at this and said, you know, there isn`t anything groundbreakingly new here in terms of what we knew about they did, it`s just interesting details that had been classified.
But one thing that you come away with is that it appears that the Russians could have wreaked havoc on election day if had chosen to do so. They had access, it looks like, to voter registration files in some states. And I`ve talked to people who have suggested they could have, for example, changed data en masse, every third voter doesn`t match up. So people go to vote and they`re not allowed to vote. That would have caused mass chaos and delays at the polls.
They did do that for whatever reason. And we know there`s been reporting about warnings at very high levels from the Obama administration to senior levels of the Russian government, but this report adds to the details about what we know.
Now, the other fascinating aspect of this, of course, is an hour after the story broke, we get a news release from the Justice Department about the arrest of a leaker. Now, their announcement didn`t say this was the leaker, but we subsequently reported and confirmed that in fact this 25-year-old contractor at an NSA facility in Georgia is alleged to have been the leaker of this document to The Intercept.
HAYES: All right. Ken Dilanian, thank you very much.
DILANIAN: Thanks, Chris.
HAYES: Up next, we are days away from James Comey`s testimony. What to expect from the FBI director, fired by President Trump, speaks publicly about the investigation. That`s after this quick break.
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HAYES: After threatening to try and block James Comey from testifying in public three days from now, the Trump administration has decided not to go through with it. According to the White House, the president was considering invoking executive privilege to try and stop Comey from appearing before the Senate intelligence committee on Thursday, but as of today, that plan is off the table.
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SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, WHITE HOUSE SPOKESPERSON: The president`s power to exert executive privilege is very well established. However, in order to facilitate a swift and thorough examination of the facts, sought by the Senate`s intelligence committee, President Trump will not assert executive privilege regarding James Comey`s scheduled testimony.
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HAYES: Unless the president changes his mind, this means that in just three days, the whole country will get to hear Comey speak for the first time since the president fired him as FBI director last month.
Now, Comey is widely expected to discuss the circumstances of his dismissal, including what he`s described to associates as attempts by the president to pressure him over the ongoing investigation which involves the president`s own campaign, of course.
Senator Mark Warner, ranking member of the Senate intelligence committee, previewed his questions for Comey in an interview yesterday.
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SEN. MARK WARNER, (D) VIRGINIA: I want to know what kind of pressure, appropriate, inappropriate, how many conversations he had with the president about this topic. Did some of these conversations take place even before the president was sworn in. And I think Jim Comey deserves to have, in effect, his day in court since the president has disparaged him so much.
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HAYES: I`m joined now by Laurence Tribe, professor at Harvard Law School. Professor, you have written and been discussing this invocation of privilege. Are you surprised by the White House`s decision?
LAURENCE TRIBE, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL: Well, nothing this White House does really surprises me. But in this case, in particular, it seemed so clear that the claim of executive privilege was unfounded, and that the president had himself talked so much about what he claims happened in his conversations with the former FBI director, that there was no hope that he would win in court.
So he can look like he`s trying to facilitate the truth, which is a first for him, but in fact, he`s simply avoiding getting shot down by the courts.
Now when Comey speaks, I`m sure the president will claim that Comey is not tell the truth.
HAYES: Right.
TRIBE: But if he had tried to silence Comey before making that claim, that would have undermined the president`s position even more.
So for a change, he might be taking rational legal advice, which is something of a first.
HAYES: That was striking to me about this decision today, was precisely that. It is the advisable path legally. It`s what the lawyers I all talked to thought he should do. And we know from just his tweets this morning, for instance, he doesn`t always follow that.
So, if we get the Comey version of events that we are anticipating, and I imagine there will be more details, I mean, what`s the kind of legal bar here? What are you looking for in this testimony in terms of what he would say to clear some standard for just outright obstruction?
TRIBE: Well, if the president`s own versions of what he said are confirmed by Comey, and elaborated in detail, that comes awfully close to being obstruction of justice. That is, the president himself suggested that he asked for Comey`s loyalty, although he claims it was loyalty to the country and the constitution.
The president himself indicated in many of the things that he said in terms of the letter surrounding the firing of Comey, that he really wanted to get rid of the Russia investigation, because he concluded there was nothing to it.
So once we have more details, and once we know, as I suspect we will, that Comey has contemporaneous memoranda describing those details, we`re very close to criminal obstruction of justice, and certainly very close to obstruction in the most fundamental political sense.
And I really think it`s going to be quite explosive, unless Comey, for some unexpected reason, clams up and says that he`s not allowed to give details. But I can`t imagine that.
HAYES: It seems like such a strange legal limbo to find ourselves in. You know, we were already there in some ways if the memos are true about the president attempting to influence or quash this investigation. But if Comey comes right out and says, look, I think he fired me because he wanted to stop this investigation, because he wanted to cut it off, it`s all just sort of sitting there. What does everyone do next?
TRIBE: Well, I think Comey is much too careful, and much too precise to start reading the president`s mind.
HAYES: Right, right, right.
TRIBE: And I don`t think he will answer what he thinks the president was trying to do. He`ll just lay out the facts. And the facts will speak rather eloquently for themselves. Even critics of Comey, and I`ve criticized him a lot from time to time because of the way he acted during the election, asymmetrically with respect to Clinton and Trump, even his most severe critics have never suggested that he lacks integrity, or precision, or honesty. This guy is as honest as he is tall.
And I think we`re going to have quite a show, because he`s not going to grandstand. He`s not going to try to read the president`s mind, he`ll just lay out the facts. And I suspect they`ll be pretty eloquently speaking for themselves.
HAYES: All right, Laurence Tribe, thanks you for joining me.
Ahead, the president lashes out in the wake of the London attack going after the courts, Democrats, even his own Justice Department, raising questions about how he would handle a similar crisis within our borders.
Plus, an update in our quest for information on Trump`s taxes in tonight`s Thing One, Thing Two right after this break.
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HAYES: For the past month, this show has been trying to get the White House to confirm a very simple question: did the president of the United States file his tax returns this year? And as we`ve noted, not only has every president for the last four decades released their tax returns to the public, it`s also been routine for the White House to confirm, of course, the basic fact the president filed tax returns.
For instance, under President Bush there was an announcement every year in the White House website, along with the summary of the president`s income and taxes paid. President Obama`s White House made that announcement every year online along with the links to the tax returns themselves for anyone who wanted to peruse them.
Now, we weren`t asking to see President Trump`s taxes. Clearly, he`s not going to allow that to happen. We just wanted to confirm whether or not the president decided to file his tax returns to the IRS. After four weeks of asking we just got a response beyond no comment. And that is Thing Two in 60 seconds.
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HAYES: For weeks, the White House has refused to confirm whether or not the president filed his tax returns this year. This show first put in a request, the White House press office four weeks ago on May 3rd, asking whether the president filed his return or as we suspected filed for an extension, or just taken no action at all.
But we consistently received the same response just as we did this past Friday. You will need to contact the Sheri Dillon, the president`s personal tax lawyer from the law firm Morgan Lewis.
But Morgan Lewis told us they had no comment, which led to a strange situation. No one, for some reason, would just confirm this basic noncontroversial action that millions of Americans complete every year until this Saturday. We once again asked for comment and we finally got an answer. The White House now said President Trump filed for an extension on his tax returns this year. Is that so hard?
This means he`ll have six months from tax date to file April - October 18th of this year. So, mark your calendars, because here`s something else that`s special about that date: the president will file tax returns the White House cannot say are under audit.
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HAYES: In the wake of the latest terror attack in England, President Trump has been busy assigning blame, seemingly preparing scapegoats if and when an attack were to happen here. From those in his own administration who, quote, watered down his travel ban to Democrats for holding up his nominations, tweeting Dems are taking forever to approve my people, including ambassadors. They are nothing but obstructionists. Want approvals.
But as Senator Ben Cardin pointed out earlier in this show, these vacancies have nothing to do with Democrats. One notable example in the wake of Saturday`s attack, the U.S. ambassador to the UK. The president knows who he wants for the job, but never formally submitted his choice to the Senate, which means that New York Jets owner Woody Johnson has been waiting nearly 140 days since President Trump announced he was being tapped as serve as ambassador.
In fact, out of 559 Senate confirmable positions, 15 had been announced but not actually nominated, according to The Washington Post, and 442, 79 percent are unfilled because there is no nominee.
What those unfilled positions say about this country`s readiness under the president, next.
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HAYES: President Donald Trump hasn`t even nominated 79 percent of the 559 Senate confirmable positions in his administration, including national security posts like the head of the Transportation Security Administration or the assistant attorney general for national security at the Justice Department, or a director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
Then there`s the very high profile vacancy created when the president eased the, quote great pressure of the Russia investigation and fired FBI Director James Comey.
Joining me now, Nayerra Huq, she`s former senior adviser to President Barack Obama and former State Department spokesperson; and Ali Watkins, national security correspondent for Politico.
So, there`s sort of a bunch of different levels to this, right, there`s staffing vacancies then there`s staffing being ignored. And I want to start with that with you, Ali, which is this scope by Politico, your colleague there, that basically the people that he does have, right, some of the positions, the high profile ones at State and Defense and National Security Adviser told him to put a pledge in his NATO speech basically saying Article 5, we stand with you, and they were gob smacked and surprised when it was not in there. So, he`s not evening listening to the people he has, it seems.
ALI WATKINS, POLIITCO: This is - it was an interesting story from my colleague because it`s been a consistent thing that I`ve heard from sources within the intelligence world over the last month, two months really, was this question of why can`t the staffing kind of pull him back from the ledge is the quote one of them used. It`s almost like their expectation is that Trump doesn`t really know thousand handle this himself, but there`s this almost high bar that a lot of people within the intelligence world are kind of setting for the staff around Trump of why couldn`t you pull him back from this ledge, why are you not able to kind show him how to maneuver.
But he just seems to be almost immune to this guidance, per my colleague`s story.
HAYES: Yeah, and Nayyera, then there`s - so there`s the guidance he doesn`t take and then there`s just vacancies. And I wonder, you know, we have got this situation developing in the Middle East in which a bunch of Gulf countries, led by Saudi Arabia, are cutting off all diplomatic ties with Qatar. They`re cutting off flights. This is really intensely escalating very quickly.
And it just struck me like does it matter there aren`t a bunch of people confirmed at the State Department at a moment like this?
NAYYERA HUQ, FRM. STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESPERSON: Well, here`s the thing, you actually do have career diplomats who weren`t there who literally their job is to every day represent U.S. interests and share information about how to advance that in countries like this. So, there is a career foreign service ambassador in Qatar and you have people in all of these Gulf states who would have probably liked to know in advance that Donald Trump was going to Saudi Arabia and announce a couple of billion dollars in arms sale thereby upsetting the entire balance of the region.
So, things - information like that is generally helpful to share with people you have on the ground and good for diplomacy. So, this is not just a diplomatic problem, this is something emblematic of how Donald Trump does business.
As a CEO, it is all about his whims and what he wants and it doesn`t matter if it creates a log jam in process in actually getting things done. The sad thing is we don`t have a CEO of this country right now who is the visionary leader who can share a vision for foreign policy and national security.
HAYES; There`s also the idea of the first round of vacancies, Ali, that are going to created, right. So, you have got this incredibly understaffed federal bureaucracy, at least at the leadership level. You`ve got folks now who are sort at the end of their rope. I mean, you know, you wonder if folks are going to leave. There`s all sorts of question about how long Mattis, for instance, who seems to be totally, you know, in opposition to much of what the president says in his public record is going to be able to hang on.
WATKINS: You`re right. And there was this initial hesitancy I think when the Trump administration first started staffing up its national security positions. I talked to several people in town who were kind of approached by the Trump team and they were a little like, we don`t know if we want to do this.
You know, when you saw this initial kind of acceptance of like this is my chance to help, this is my chance to guide. And I think, you know, three, four months, what are we in at this point I think people are seeing that you don`t necessarily have a chance to shape policy.
And I`ve talked to several people who have kind of jumped off that train and really don`t want to touch an administration gig right now.
HAYES: Nayyera, what is your view on this about this sort of idea of people being in our out, right, like the idea that if good folks are in there they can restrain this president? But they maybe are complicit in bad decisions he makes. What do you think of that?
HUQ: Well, this is fundamentally why career officers exist and you have a different political class of officers as well. And the career officer`s job so to keep things of the basic functions of government running. The basic functions include things like making sure Social Security gets paid out, taxes get collected.
But overseas the basic functions are being able to represent your country and execute policy. And the challenge is when you don`t have that kind of direction, you don`t have even at the middle level managers to share the information - you know, we had our officers overseas in Europe talking about, don`t worry, it`s OK, we`re going to support Article 5 and suddenly they turned out to be liars because their own leader does not know what he wants to do on a day-to-day basis.
HAYES: All right, Nayyera Huq and Ali Watkins, thank you.
That is All In for this evening. The Rachel Maddow Show starts right now with Joy Reid in for Rachel. Good evening, Joy.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END