Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: July 26, 2018 Guest: Jonathan Ryan, Jerry Nadler, Julia Ainsley, Ely Mystal, Andrew Desiderio,
CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC HOST: -- they require so little detective work tweeting maybe Trump`s impulsive choice of weapon that doesn`t exempted from the law. That`s HARDBALL for now. Thanks for being with us. "ALL IN" with Chris Hayes starts right now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Tonight on ALL IN
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There was no collusion. There was no obstruction.
HAYES: The Mueller probe closes in on obstruction.
TRUMP: Did he fight back? You fight, oh, it`s obstruction.
HAYES: As the money man for the Trump Organization faces Michael Cohen`s grand jury.
MICHAEL COHEN, FORMER LAWYER OF DONALD TRUMP: And I`ve spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up with --
HAYES: Tonight, the growing legal trouble for the President.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He knows where all the financial bodies are buried within the Trump Organization.
HAYES: Plus, 103 days from Election Day, Russian hackers target their first vulnerable Democrats. Then, the Congressman who moved to impeach rod Rosenstein announces he wants to run the House. And deadline day --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking Spanish)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (Speaking Spanish)
HAYES: What we know about the fate of thousands of children the Trump administration ripped away from their parents.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You might want to talk to you the Department of Homeland Security to see if it`s possible to reunite you and your daughter.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now
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HAYES: Good evening from New York, I`m Chris Hayes. In the secretly recorded conversation between Donald Trump and Michael Cohen, from two months before Election Day back in 2016, we were introduced you might remember to a new and fascinating character in the Trump orbit. The man that Cohen said that he had turned to for help in setting up the company that he planned to use to make a secret payment to ensure the former Playboy models story about an affair with Trump never saw the light of day.
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COHEN: I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend, David, you know, so that -- I`m going to do that right away. I`ve actually come up and I`ve spoken --
TRUMP: Give it to me.
COHEN: And, I`ve spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
HAYES: I`ve spoken to Allan Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up. Allan Weisselberg is a hugely important figure in the Trump Organization, once described by a person close to the company as the most senior person in the organization that`s not a Trump. Weisselberg can`t decades as executive vice president and chief financial officer at Trump Org. He`s so central to the organization that when Trump announced after he was elected he was giving up day-to-day control of his business, his lawyer said Trump was handing control over to just three people, Don Jr., Eric Trump, and Allen Weisselberg. Weisselberg has detailed information about the Trump Organization`s operations, business deals and finances according to Trump biographer Tim O`Brien. He knows more about the Trump Org`s history and finances than nearly anyone. And while Michael Cohen has worked for Trump since 2006, Weisselberg has worked for the Trump families since the 1970s.
As one former Trump or complete old our own Katy Tur, Allen knows where all the financial bodies are buried within the Trump Organization. Which is why today`s news may well have induced some serious panic in the President of the United States because according to The Wall Street Journal, Weisselberg has been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury in the criminal probe of Michael Cohen. Now, there`s plenty to ask about of course. Weissenberg is tied both the discussion over how to make a payment to suppress the Karen McDougal affair story it was discussed on the tape and to the $130,000 payment that Cohen made to Stormy Daniels to keep her Trump affair story quiet.
In May, the New York Times reported the Weisselberg has known since last year the details of how Cohen was being reimbursed which is mainly through payments of $35,000 per month from the trust that contains the President`s personal fortune. All that, of course, might just be the tip of the iceberg when it comes what -- to what there is to be learned from the man who knows where the financial bodies are buried. And now Weisselberg`s subpoena isn`t the only news that Trump should be worried about today. New York Times reporting as well that Robert Mueller and his team are now and I quote scrutinizing tweets and negative statement from the President about Jeff Sessions and James Comey as they look to build an obstruction case.
A former federal prosecutor telling NBC`s Ken Delanian that Mueller likely has almost everything he needs saying between the Lester Holt interview and the tweets Trump puts them on the five-yard line on making an obstruction of justice case. Joining me now to discuss what all this could mean for President, MSNBC Political Analyst David Corn, Washington Bureau Chief for Mother Jones and Natasha Bertrand MSNBC Contributor and Staff Writer at the Atlantic. David, let me start with you. The Weisselberg story strikes me as a huge, huge development.
DAVID CORN, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: I think you`re right because he does speak to the two hush money payments that we know already know about involving stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, the Playboy model and he probably can address a core question which is whether that -- what those payments were connected to keeping these women quiet because of the election in order to help Donald Trump`s electoral chances because if they were and that was explicit then they get into a whole area of campaign finance violation and illegal donations. So that`s really key there.
And the other big thing to think about is yes he knows where all the financial bodies are for you know, for dozens or you know, of a year`s scores of several decades and the issue would be whether the Southern District of New York attorneys who are talking to him start asking about things other than their hush money payments, other than things that just involved Michael Cohen. We do know that Trump nearly became under criminal investigation by Cyrus Vance, the Manhattan D.A. actually he was investigating. The investigation was dropped because of -- it was into a fraud at Trump Soho and the New Yorker did a great piece about a year ago by Adam Davidson raising issues of whether the Trump Organization violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. So if they want to take an expansive view in questioning this key player in Trump world, that could be something that truly freaks out the President.
HAYES: Yes, I have to say as someone who is a stickler for the rules and has not ever committed any financial crimes, if my accountant is before a grand jury I`d be freaking out. If anyone and in this case you have -- I mean, this thing that has always been the case about the Trump Organization and has been made the reporting around at heart when we talk about (INAUDIBLE) money is how opaque and byzantine it is and there`s a person who`s got the kind of Rosetta stone for it, it`s the guy going to the grand jury.
NATASHA BERTRAND, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, and real estate is inherently a pretty shady business and the Trump Organization was even more opaque than the usual kind of real estate organization. But this is a huge development because it also indicates that it`s expanded into Trump`s business dealings. His financial past, his business real estate dealings over the last you know, 30-40 years are now squarely in the crosshairs here. And that, of course, is something that Trump said was a red line, but it was a red line in the Russia investigation. This is kind of an interesting roundabout way for him to get at it especially now that Weisselberg has been subpoenaed because of course, he is the guy. There were only two people who knew about every single deal that was coming into the Trump Organization since the Trump Organization was founded and that was Donald Trump, first his father and Allen Weisselberg. So this is a huge development and of course, he would have known about all of the dealings that Trump had with Russian oligarchs whether or not there was Russian money being laundered into his properties. Of course, I mean he knows virtually everything about every deal that has ever been made there so it`s a really big deal.
HAYES: Yes, that question David, which is hung over all this, right, which is what is the sort of economic financial entanglements in the background, right? We don`t have the axis still. It`s something you guys talk about in your book. There`s sort of questions on. There`s you know, the Trump is on the record saying we got a lot of money through Russia there. I mean, Weisselberg does seem like the kind of person who would know that definitively.
CORN: It seems like he would know everything. We know that there are some major loans in Trump`s business past including a gigantic one from Deutsche Bank when no one else would lend money to Trump that has really perplexed journalists and people have tried to find out more about that. We don`t know if there`s anything illegal there but it`s very mysterious, let me put it that way. He would be able to answer questions about that. Natasha is right. If the prosecutor wants to take a page of questions from Robert Mueller and ask about well, what did it mean when your son -- when Eric Trump -- not his son -- but when Eric Trump said we`re getting all this money in for our golf courses from Russia. What did it mean when Donald Trump Jr. said we`re getting a lot of money in from Russia back in the mid- 2007, 2008 period? So I mean, he can answer those questions which nobody yet has been able to.
HAYES: You know, there`s also -- you made an allusion to this and it`s an interesting part of this. So you`ve got the Mueller team preparing to go to trial against Paul Manafort in the Eastern District of Virginia. There`s another trial Paul Manafort in D.C. right? You`ve got a federal grand jury and the U.S. Attorney`s Office for the Southern District of New York but it has the grand jury of Michael Cohen which continues to proceed which is distinct but perhaps related to the Mueller team.
BERTRAND: Right, and the thing that all of these have in common is money laundering, bank fraud, tax evasion etcetera. This is really a follow the money and on all sides at the follow the money investigation. And that, of course, is always was how Mueller always -- was how Mueller was going to get to the heart of this. You follow the money you follow the trail and you see who has his leverage to who. Who owes this debt? Who -- why did he feel compelled to do that? I mean there are just so many threads coming together now especially with Cohen, Manafort and now Donald Trump`s personal finances being investigated. It just seems like it`s only a matter of time until those dots are going to be connected.
CORN: Well, and Chris --
HAYES: Yes, David.
CORN: I was just saying don`t forget that there`s a guy named Michael Cohen out there who really looks like he`s moving to full cooperation with the U.S. Attorney`s in Southern District New York and with Robert Mueller. So you have this you know pincer movement here being able to question Weisselberg and Michael Cohen. And for Michael Cohen to survived, he`s going to have to tell all, right? So I mean, I`m surprised -- actually, I`m surprised that the President has been as moderate in his tweeting today as he has been.
HAYES: And let`s remember that our friend David which we believe refers to David Pecker over AMI which (INAUDIBLE) National Enquirer that they ran a hit piece on Michael Cohen the cover today, the Drudge report referred to Michael Cohen as the rat.
CORN: Yes, they posted -- yes, the Drudge posted one of my pieces and put the rat title on it which we did not use. But yes they`re out to get them.
BERTRAND: What people -- what people are not clear about is the strategy here. I mean, you know, if Cohen wants cooperate with prosecutors, he would presumably do so behind closed doors. A lawyer can probably explain this better than I can, but you would presumably be doing so behind closed doors and not out in the open. So some people speculated that perhaps he`s signaling for some kind of plea deal or pardon, but then again it seems like he`s very much antagonized, the President.
HAYES: I just wanted to be clear, I have no idea what Michael Cohen is doing. I have no idea what Lanny Davis is doing. I have no idea what many of the people involved the story they`re doing. David Corn and Natasha Bertrand thank you both for being with me.
CORN: Sure thing.
HAYES: For more legal implications of what we learn today, MSNBC Legal Analyst Jill Wine-Banks, former Assistant Watergate Special Prosecutor and Attorney Elie Mystal who`s Editor at the Above the Law Blog. Jill, let me start with you. This is a quote from the New York Times that Rudy Giuliani is talking about and it`s in response to the idea that the special prosecutor is looking at various public statements by the President tweets and other things. He says if you`re going to obstruct justice, you do it quietly and secretly not in public. You think that sells as an argument?
JILL WINE-BANKS, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: It doesn`t, and of course in normal situations, most kinds of obstruction is behind closed doors. But we live in a modern world where you can communicate easily through social media and you can send messages by publicly announcing a pardon of a case that involves contempt of court. And that sends a message to everybody I`ll pardon you, you don`t have to cooperate. In the same way that you can threaten witness against you in the public media and it will count just as much as if you had done it behind closed doors. Now, in this case, we have testimony that he did it behind closed doors and then he repeated it because it didn`t get through. He wanted it to happen and so he did it again. He`s been trying to obstruct this investigation from the very first day of it. He has done everything he could and it`s been partly public. He says things -- I mean who would have thought he would say to NBC`s Lester Holt, I did it because I wanted to get rid of the Russia investigations --
HAYES: I`m speaking about Russia when I did it. Just to be clear, yes.
ELIE MYSTAL, EDITOR, ABOVE THE LAW: Look, Giuliani makes no sense. I mean, he`s kind of saying -- it`s almost like you caught the client breaking into the bank in broad daylight and Giuliani says well, most people break into the bank at night. It`s like, OK, it`s not my fault, you have a dumb client, right? But the general thing here --
HAYES: It can`t be robbery, everyone knows you`re robbing the bank at night.
MYSTAL: But the general thing with Cohen and the tweets now, and it`s for the obstruction case at least it`s kind of like watching like a terrible prequel right? We already know what happened here so you`re kind of saying -- so it`s like Robert Mueller is investigating whether or not Chancellor Palpatine is secretly a Sith Lord. Yes, we know. We are like -- the tweets so, for instance, they`re already public information as I think you said in your opening. That already gets us to the five-yard line. We have the Lester Holt interview, we have the tweets, the only reason like this is a story today is because Mueller`s team keeps trying to say hey, Donald if you have an explanation for this, you need to sit down and talk to me.
HAYES: Right, well but here`s the thing about this too. Like we`re talking about the case for obstruction as if we`re talking about a normal client in the normal legal system which is not the case here, Jill. I mean that`s what I find so weird. Well, you know you`re seeing these sort of legal arguments being made by some of the President`s defenders and the President`s Lawyers saying well it`s not obstruction if he does it in the course of his official duties or if he is in power - if it`s public. Well, no that matters because obstruction doesn`t matter but for impeachment right? I mean, there`s not going to be any trial for obstruction of justice, they could return a report that says we believe the President obstruct justice but they`re not going to indict them for that.
BANKS: Well, they say they`re going to follow the rule of the Office of Legal Counsel that says a president can`t be indicted. I do not agree with that conclusion, I didn`t agree with the decision not to indict Richard Nixon. We did issue a report which was given to the House in order to have them have a roadmap for impeachment. The difference between then and now is that this House will do nothing with it. They will ignore any roadmap they are ignoring the evidence that`s in their face. It is -- I mean, right now it is obstruction in plain sight. It`s been obstruction in plain sight since the very, very beginning so it`s got to happen that something will be done. I think there`ll be a blue wave in November on a House we`ll treat it differently.
HAYES: I mean, ultimately that -- right, that`s when we say impeachment is a political question, impeachment is a political question, right? I mean, it`s the political bodies that will deal with it. But there are stronger or weaker cases. I mean, it does strike me that there`s an interesting -- and this idea that like you can`t -- it`s not obstructing if you`re doing things that are within the president`s power, right? And the President can tweet and he can talk about things and he can fire the FBI Director and that`s clearly the case they`re making. They`re not really denying it.
MYSTAL: Yes they don`t use -- they don`t understand the word abuse of power right? They think all -- they think any exercise of power is a legitimate exercise of power. We have a system where there are legitimate exercises and there are abuses of power and what we`ve seen consistently from Trump is an abuse of his power. But as Jill said, as she says it`s all -- it all comes down to politics. I think one of the interesting things that we learned in the past 24 hours is that Republicans do know how to spell impeachment right? They`re kind of going for the wrong guy but like they get the concept of impeachment so maybe that`s an indication that we`re moving for.
HAYES: Well, and you let me -- one more thing about this. I think there`s a weird way in which all this has been reported and talked about which is like these separate things, collusion and obstruction right? Like they`re unrelated or were they`re loosely related. I mean it strikes me that like the whole thing about Nixon right? It`s the cover-up not the crime is about the obstruction. It`s -- I mean the whole point of that was that he knew what they were doing, he knew about it after the fact particularly in he tried to cover it up. It`s possible the President didn`t know about collusion at the time but still tried to obstruct and that`s still very serious if that were to be the case.
BANKS: That is exactly correct. Everybody keeps saying well, you can`t have a case if for obstruction if you don`t have an underlying crime and that is not true. There is no evidence that Richard Nixon knew about the break-in until the day after the break. But as soon as he did, he started working to cover it up and all of the actions he took or illegal obstruction of justice.
HAYES: That`s exactly right. Nixon doesn`t know about the break-in until after it happened, right? So like to extend the collusion metaphor it`s like if -- let`s say there was collusion, I don`t know if there was but let`s say there was but the President didn`t know about it while was happening. Like Nixon didn`t know about break until after it happened.
MYSTAL: It`s another like one of those like fun words right? We don`t need evidence of a crime, we need evidence of criminal intent. He intended to do something wrong. Whether or not what he did was actually factually did he know, it doesn`t matter. If he intended to do something wrong, then you can call it obstruction.
HAYES: And that`s why -- that`s why I actually, Jill, that point about he didn`t know until the day after which I think about a lot is it does strike me the transition period is going to be a key part in all of this because there`s a lot that goes down during the transition. We know that there`s a lot. They`re looking at about the transition which is the sort of after the fact like OK, what do we do now. And I think my eyes continue to be sort of plastered to that. Jill Wine-Banks --
BANKS: It is.
HAYES: Jill Wine-Banks --
BANKS: I just --
HAYES: Yes, please, go ahead.
BANKS: I just wanted to say that the issue of whether he knew or didn`t know, he clearly had actions that followed his knowing it and those actions are definitely culpable. Jill Win-Banks and Ely Mystal, thanks to you both. Next, breaking news tonight, the first identified attempt by Russian hackers to interfere in the 2018 election using the same criminal methods. How the vulnerable Democratic Senator targeted is responding tonight and the reporter who broke that story with some fine forensic work in just two minutes.
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HAYES: Breaking news tonight, what appears to be the first identified case of Russian election interference in the 2018 midterms, the Daily Beast reporting tonight that "the Russian Intelligence Agency behind the 2016 election cyber-attacks targeted Senator Claire McCaskill as she began our 2018 reelection campaign in earnest. Missouri Democrat is in a tight race for her seat and she`s been a critic of both Russia and Donald Trump. In a statement tonight Senator McCaskill said "I will not be intimidated. I said, it before and I will say it again. Putin is a thug and a bully." Andrew Desiderio is one of the reporters who broke that exclusive story The Daily Beast. He joins me tonight. All right, Andrew, what do we -- what happened and when did it happen?
ANDREW DESIDERIO, REPORTER, THE DAILY BEAST: So what we know is that the Russian GRU which is the main intelligence Directorate in Moscow ordered even more cyber-attacks against American entities specifically targeting Democratic candidates. This is the exact same tactic that they used in 2016 that they were actually indicted for just a couple of weeks ago by the Mueller probe. And what they did was they used what`s called a phishing operation where they try to trick certain people into changing their passwords and it leads them to a page that looks like they`re actually changing their password but in reality it`s just a way for Russian intelligence services to infiltrate that computer network. That`s what we saw that happened to John Podesta, Hillary Clinton`s 2016 campaign chairman when his e-mails were released so the exact same tactic that they used just two years ago.
HAYES: Right, so Podesta gets hacked and he gets an e-mail saying this is from Gmail, you need to change your password. He actually passes it by a person and says it`s it -- you do need to do that. He goes to a page that looks like a Gmail page. He puts in his password and boom they`ve got his e-mail. So we have -- you have located forensic evidence. The exact same thing happened here?
DESIDERIO: That`s correct, and we traced it right back to the Russian GRU.
HAYES: You know that for a fact?
DESIDERIO: Yes, we do.
HAYES: So this -- when did this happened?
DESIDERIO: So this happened -- the first-known incident was sort of late last year. We have a what was a screencap from a saved page that Microsoft captured from September 26th in which was senior policy aide for the senator had actually clicked the link and went to change his password.
HAYES: Wow.
DESIDERIO: And we -- that was September 26th. We know that on August 30th the President traveled to Missouri for a tax reform event and he said explicitly vote her out of office referring to Claire McCaskill. So we`re not exactly sure what initiated the cyber-attacks or when they were initiated but we do know that they occurred around the same time that the President was in Missouri and was using his perch to campaign against Claire McCaskill.
HAYES: Wait, so on August 30th, he goes there. He does an event in Missouri saying vote her out of office. Then you have September 26th a senior policy adviser for the Senator is the victim of one of these phishing attacks and does actually click on the link?
DESIDERIO: Right, he clicks on the link. We don`t know if he was a victim in the sense that the hack was successful. We have no evidence to believe that it was successful, and the Senators office said as much in their in their statement tonight but that is basically what happened, yes.
HAYES: Do you -- it sounds from the reporting and I read the story number of times just to make sure. It sounds like Microsoft because this was sort of done rather than Gmail which is what John Podesta (INAUDIBLE) and Microsoft exchange e-mail or they were phishing and they were sort of putting up an imposter Web site that looked like it. Microsoft did figure this out at some point, right?
DESIDERIO: They did. Microsoft executives spoke at the Aspen Security Forum and mentioned that they had pinpointed three candidates for -- that are standing election -- for an election this year that they had sort of found that this was happening for and that led us sort of to track down who those candidates were. And the first such instance we found so far is that Claire McCaskill was the first one.
HAYES: Wait a second, so the guy gets up, their security person at Aspen says we`ve actually -- we`ve been working on this. We`ve actually found three attempts at three candidates. You guys hear that you and Kevin Poulsen is a hacker himself. You go to work -- you forensically track this down as being McCaskill. We don`t know the other two but we think there are two more at least?
DESIDERIO: That`s right. That`s what the Microsoft executives said and what Microsoft was able to do was create what`s called a sinkhole server whereby they retrieved the data themselves after the individual clicks on the fake link. So they knew it was happening and they caught it in its tracks. And again we have no evidence to believe that the hack was successful.
HAYES: I mean, it`s remark -- this is literally the exact same game plan they`re running.
DESIDERIO: Yes, exactly. That`s what they did to John Podesta. That`s what they apparently did to the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Again, not only did they do this but they were indicted for it just two weeks ago by the Mueller probe.
HAYES: All right, Andrew Desiderio, thank you so much for great work. I really appreciate it.
DESIDERIO: Thanks, Chris.
HAYES: Coming up, Congressman Jim Jordan announces his bid for Speaker of the House amidst his sexual abuse scandal and a hatchet job attempt to impeach the man in charge the Moller investigation. More on that next.
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HAYES: Representative Jim Jordan has chosen a curious time to launch his bid for House Speaker. In a letter to his Republican colleagues today, Jordan wrote that "I want to run for the Speaker of the House to bring real change to Congress." He also mentioned the need to do the right thing, his words, on non-discretionary spending and entitlements. What the letter doesn`t mention is that Jordan himself is in the middle of a scandal, a very serious one in which he has been accused by seven former wrestlers of turning a blind eye to numerous sexual abuse allegations at Ohio State where Jordan was once an assistant coach. Jordan says the men accusing him are lying.
Also not mentioned is that Jordan`s bid for House Speaker comes one day after he signed on to articles of impeachment against Deputy Attorney General Rob Rosenstein which garnered signatures from only 11 of the 236 Republicans of the House, appears to set a rather low bar for impeachable offenses which might not be a great idea. For more on impeachment and Jim Jordan, I`m joined by New York Congressman Jerry Nadler who is the ranking Democrat on House Judiciary which of course of the committee from which any and all impeachment proceedings begin. Congressman, welcome.
REP. JERRY NADLER, (D) NEW YORK: Hi.
HAYES: Let`s start -- articles of impeachment against Rod Rosenstein. My sense is you are not in favor.
NADLER: No, I`m not in favor. They are absurd, and aside from being absurd, they`re really just an attack on the Mueller investigation, and it`s a desperation attack.
HAYES: One of the -- the articles of impeachment struck me as fairly shoddy, not particularly well fact checked.
NADLER: And nonimpeachable.
HAYES: Well, one of the things they say is that under Rosenstein`s supervision, Christopher Steele`s political research was not vetted before it was used in October 2016. Some House Republicans want to impeach Rod Rosenstein for something that happened six months before he took office. He, of course, was not there in October 2016.
NADLER: That is true.
They point out that on the third renewal on the FISA application for Mr. Page, he signed off on the third renewal when he was in office. And it was perfectly proper to sign off on it. And it had a lot of material in it that the first three didn`t, showing that they had already hit paydirt on information with respect to his being a Russian agent, which is -- without which he wouldn`t have gotten a renewal.
And they`re saying that basically he shouldn`t have signed off on it, because in the first one, not the fourth one, which is the one he signed off on, the first one they say that the Steele dossier was used as part of the basis for the application, which is true, and that they didn`t tell the judge, the judges that the Steele document was compiled by somebody who was paid for it by an alternative campaign, except that they did tell them. It`s very specifically there. And Nunes and at this point Jordan everybody else is simply lying about it.
HAYES: It strikes interesting that Paul Ryan says he doesn`t favor this. And that the House Republican leadership want absolutely nothing to do with it.
NADLER: That`s true.
HAYES: Why?
NADLER: Because it is absurd. Because it`s just absurd. It is an attack on the special counsel. I don`t know that they want to have that attack on the special counsel. They have been trying to attack the special counsel through everything that`s been going on with Strzok and everything else. But this is a particularly absurd one. And they realize how absurd it is looking it is.
HAYES: Jim Jordan is running for House Speaker. I`m imagining he probably will not get your vote. Are you satisfied that he has been truthful about everything with respect to allegations while wrestling coach at Ohio State he did know about a doctor there who has been accused of molesting many of the people in his care?
NADLER: Well, I don`t know whether he has been truthful or not, because I don`t know the facts. I mean, that`s the kind of thing where you withhold judgment until you see the facts.
All I know is there are quite a few accusers, and that gives you pause.
HAYES: We should say not accusers of him, accusers of the doctor.
NADLER: About hundred accusers of the doctor.
HAYES: Many. I mean, that I think is almost -- I mean, these are allegations, but they have piled up to the point that I don`t think that`s really in factual dispute.
NADLER: There are seven former wrestlers who say they know -- that Jordan knew and didn`t do anything about it. And maybe they do and maybe they don`t.
HAYES: Does that concern you?
NADLER: Of course it concerns me. It`s got to be investigated.
HAYES: Should the House. Should someone in the House be investigating it?
NADLER: Probably, yeah.
HAYES: Impeachment is something that would be in your baliwick were you to be the committee chair. We`ve talked about this before. You`ve been very cagey, you know we have to wait until all the facts are in.
What do you think about this argument, this is an abstracted argument but I want to ask you about the argument that obstructing justice by the president is impossible if he is functioning in his official capacity, or if he`s doing it loudly and publicly.
NADLER: That is absurd. To make that argument is to say the president is a king and can do no wrong. The president -- the argument says that if the president does something within his power it cannot be obstructing justice. Well the fact -- and it cannot be a crime, in fact, is what they are saying. Well, that is nonsense. If the president decides to increase agricultural subsidies that may be in his power, if he decides to do that because someone wrote him a personal $100,000 check, that is the crime of bribery, because he would have done it for an improper motive.
So, the president can do lots of things within -- as can anybody else -- which they have the power to do, but if they do it for an improper motive, it is a crime.
HAYES: One of the -- I have been wondering about just exactly what a House in Democratic control would have access to. And one of the things I have wondered is, could the House just get the president`s tax returns?
NADLER: Oh, certainly. We could...
HAYES: Like tomorrow?
NADLER: The committee -- various committees with jurisdiction and with proper cause could subpoena the president`s tax returns. For example, if the judiciary committee were looking into the question of the president`s violation of the emoluments cluase of the constitution, you would ceratainly want to see the president`s tax returns. If there were reason to believe that he hadn`t paid taxes properly, or that perhaps there was something interesting about his tax policy that might be reflected in his personal returns then the weighs and means committee woulc have jurisdiction.
HAYES: It strikes me -- you know, it was one thing during the campaign the president refused to release his tax returns, right, and I`m being sort of and yadda-yadda-yaddaed his way through. And then was sworn in. And then in 2017 in April said he was filing for an extension, but that extension only goes to October, so presumably he`s filed. It is crazy to me that we haven`t seen his taxes while president.
NADLER: Well, it is crazy. And for the last 40 or 50 years, it is unprecedented. And if you ask them about it, Sarah Huckabee Sanders simply says, well, that`s over. Nobody cares about that except reporters.
But the fact is, it is not over, it is crucial. One thing, for example, the big elephant in the room from the very beginning of this -- from the middle of the campaign was the president is nasty. He`s nasty to the prime minister of Great Britain. He`s nasty to the Prime Minister of -- to the chancellor of Germany, even to the prime minister of Australia, you remember he got into it. The only person he is obsequious to is Vladimir Putin.
HAYES: He`s the only one.
NADLER: Why?
Well, maybe Putin has something over him. And the fact we know -- we know from his son saying so, much of his money, financing that Trump Enterprises came from Russia for the last 15 or so years. And we certainly would want to look and see maybe Putin does have something over him, because of ifnancial circumstances.
HAYES: Well, it sounds like it would be a lot more fun to the chair of your committee than the ranking member. I`m just going to say that.
NADLER: It`s a lot less frustrating.
HAYES: Analytically.
Congressman Jerry Nadler, thanks for joining us.
NADLER: thank you.
HAYES: Ahead, we are just hours away from the court mandated deadline for the Trump administration to reunite the thousands of families that they ripped apart. There are new stories and new numbers, and we will have those for you.
Plus, tonight`s, Thing One, Thing Two next.
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HAYES: Thing One tonight is the Sea Quest. She`s 164-foot mega yacht worth $40 million. And while the Sea Quest has been spotted all over the Atlantic and the Caribbean, this week he`s been on Lake Erie in Huron, Ohio. And that`s where there was a bit of an incident. Apparently, someone un-moored the Sea Quest in the middle of the night, setting her adrift. No one was hurt, but the yacht struck the dock as the crew struggled to get her back under control, sustaining an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 dollars in damage from scrapes and scratches.
Police are looking for surveillance video that may reveal the perpetrator, and so they had not yet determined if the person who did it knew that the owner was the Sea Quest was the mega rich with Amway money billionaire, Secretary of Education Betsy Devos.
Now, one would imagine the Devos family does have insurance to cover the damage, and luckily, they do have nine other yachts they can ride in while the Sea Quest gets fixed up.
But of course, not everyone in Trump`s orbit has that kind of dough, some are just out there trying to make a buck, like former Press Secretary Sean Spicer who is having just a heck of a time hawking his new book.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, Sean, you are a real piece of garbage. And I hope you look around and you see all these empty seats.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a garbage book, and you`re a garbage person.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Tough review.
That`s Thing Two in 60 seconds.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: There`s been quite a bit of public heckling of Trump administration officials lately. You may remember both Homeland Security Secretary Kristjen Nielsen, and White House adviser Steven Miller were confronted by protesters at Mexican restaurants last month.
The former press secretary Sean Spicer is probably wishing he could have it as easy as those two. This week, Spicer had a New York book signing for his new memoir in which he praises President Trump, quote, "he is a unicorn riding a unicorn over a rainbow."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, Sean, you`re a piece of garbage. And I hope you look around and you see all of these empty seats and you realize even in New York City, people will not come and pay money to hear you speak.
I`ve read the reviews. It is a garbage book.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Take him down.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Easy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right. All right. Let him up.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is a garbage book and you are a garbage person.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Well, it ain`t all rainbows and unicorns here, pal.
Second protester at Sean Spicer`s book at the event was also reportedly thrown out for silently holding up a sign that read "LOL, Fox News won`t hire you," which is mean.
The brave thing is currently 193rd on the Amazon best-seller list. And it`s not because there`s no market for garbage books. Number one, and number four on that list are Fox News analyst Greg Jarrett`s "The Russia Hoax," and anchor Jeanine Pirro`s "Liars, Leakers, and Liberals."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: The story of how Columbus, Ohio police detectives came to arrest Stormy Daniels earlier this month has been a problematic one, to say the least. The adult film star who was paid off by Michael Cohen to keep her Trump affair story underwraps was arrested at a Columbus, Ohio strip club where she was appearing on July 11.
And the Columbus police department originally claimed Daniels, who was arrested with two other women, was taken into custody, and I quote them, "as part of a long-term investigation into allegations of human trafficking, prostitution and other vice related violations."
Kind of weird. I mean, the charges were dismissed the very next day.
Columbus police chief said a mistake was made during the arrest and launched an internal investigation. And the whole incident clearly seemed a bit suspect. And now we know that it was.
Emails first reported by Derek Meyers for the web site Fayette Advocate and subseqently obtained by NBC News, indicate that the arrest of Stormy Daniels by the Columbus vice squad appears to have been planned in advance.
For example, the day before the bust, vice unit detective Shanna Keckley (ph), one of the arresting officers, emailed herself news clippings about Stormy`s upcoming performance as well as a screenshot of the location of a club where she was performing and a picture of Stormy Daniels posing with with Donald Trump.
Then, after the arrest, detective Keckley (ph) emailed a colleague, "you`re welcome. Thank me later in person."
She also sent an email to several other Columbus PD colleagues saying I got elements along with Susan in Lancaster. We arrested Stormy this morning. She is in jail.
Now, All In contacted the Columbus Police Department today. They told they are continuing their investigations into the motives of the officers who arrested Stormy Daniels. But they seem pretty clear.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Today is the deadline for the Trump administratioon to reunify immigrant children ripped away from their parents. So far officials say 1,442 children out of more than 2,500 are now with their parents. Even for those parents. But here`s the thing, even for those families brought back together, the ordeal is far from over.
About 900 parents have final orders of deportation. I means that as soon as they`re reunited with their kids they could get sent right back to the violence and danger they fled. And that doesn`t even include the 431 children whose parents appear to have already been deported and who the administration argues have lost the right to get their kids back at all.
Here to help me understand what`s happening in these families, I am joined by MSNBC News national secuirty and justice reporter Julia Ainsley, and Jonathan Ryan the executive director of RAICES, the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services. It does work down on the border.
All right, Julia, the status report we got today, the hearing is actually tomorrow. What did we learn?
JULIA AINSLEY, MSNBC NEWS: So the numbers that you just laid out, Chris, what`s weird here is that the government is actually sort of changing the finish line. It`s like you`re running a race and then all of a sudden you decide you`re at the end. It is really hard us to keep track of exactly what goal they`re trying to meet here. Just a few today`s ago they said that they were trying to reunite children with 1,632 parents. And now they said that it is at 6:00 a.m. this morning, they were able to reunite children, 1,442 children.
So we`re changing what we`re comparing here. Are we looking at the number children or the number of parents, so it is hard to figure out exactly if they`re getting there. And I asked that question on a press call and said what is the goal? What is the number you`re trying to reach in order to say that you`ve reunified all of the eligible children? Which we know is also up for some debate, who is eligible and who is not.
And the answer I got was the data is dynamic. And I think that brings a lot of follow-up questions to ask.
HAYES: Yeah, so what we should say is that even by their own numbers, right, they`re not reuniting everyone, right. They`re saying there is a whole -- there is basically -- they`re saying there are 900 who don`t qualify for various reasons. A big chunk of that is because the parents have already been deported.
Jonathan, I`m curious if what you`ve seen on the ground among clients of yours both reunited and not reunited?
JONATHAN RYAN, RAICES: Yeah, exactly.
And I think it is really a sign of just how kind of low this administration has sunk that we are right now talking and rounding off to the nearest 100 the number of families that have been separated.
If just one family is separated by our administration, that is unacceptable. And that`s what we deal with on the ground is we`re representing these people one by one.
We`re seeing families in large numbers start to come into the so-called family detection centers who are fighting for their lives against a deportation order. People held if for-profit prisons with their children. This could be a mother in a cell with her 16-year-old son.
We`re also seeing, and we know, that there are many families who have been deported. But even for those who are getting released, we talked over this weekend to a woman who we represent named Darlin (ph) who, in the days before she was to be reunified, really the day she was supposed to be reunified with her child, they mixed up the paperwork and they had actually her daughter, her 13-year-old daughter, in a car on the way to the detention center. And because of that mix-up, they said, oh, I`m sorry, your mother doesn`t love you and doesn`t want you. That is going to permanently scar that young girl.
There are hundreds, thousands of people are young and going to be permanently traumatized by what has happened to them. And we did that to them. We have to own that as an entire nation now. For the rest of my life, we are going to be that country that hurt so many children.
HAYES: Julia, one of the things that`s happened, there`s sort of a question of whether -- and Jonathan makes a good point like rounding off to the nearest 100, like each one of these is a human being, a cluster of families that if they were ours, if they were you or I or anyone would be in just utter distress, right.
So, these numbers, you know, well, we`re plus 200, down 200. It is important to keep that in mind. There is also the fact that it really seem like the end game here is getting everyone out, right, renouncing any asylum rights. I mean, we know that they were essentially trying get people to sign papers to renounce their asylum rights.
And to the point I made earlier, I mean, a lot of these folks are going to get sent into stuff they fled at great peril.
AINSLEY: Yeah, that`s absolutely right. And there`s been a lot of question over who exactly signed those rights away.
Right now, they`ve only been able to tell us that about 85 of the deported parents actually signed waivers. And we know that there are about 431 children who have deported waivers -- deported parents. So it is a question of, OK, how many of those were deported before they were even read their rights, or even given the option to reunite with their children before deportation? And then even of the 85, how many understood what they were signing? There were multiple affidavits filed last night that describes parents who did not speak the language on the application, parents who were told that they would be just signing to release their child not understanding they`re actually waiving away reunification rights.
And then there`s also a question of different forms. There`s one form that lays out numbers to call, how to get legal advice, but that form didn`t go into effect until July 8. All of the forms before that just said do you want to be deported with your child or without? It didn`t really get into the fact that they were waiving away their reunification rights or the fact that they may still have outstanding rights to asylum.
HAYES: Over and above the separation issue, Jonathan, has the Trump administration broken U.S. law on asylum in the way they`ve handled this?
RYAN: Oh, without a doubt. It is against both domestic and international law to refuse to allow individuals to apply for asylum.
You know, contrary to what many people have said on television, you cannot apply for asylum at the embassy in your home country. That`s -- there`s no law for that. There`s no process. And it would be a suicide mission to do that while you`re still in a dangerous country.
And so without a doubt, I mean, what they have done is they have forcibly removed children from their parents against their will that held them in confinement. They`ve kept information away from the parents. And they`ve used that separation, the distress and the trauma of that to force hundreds of families on sign away their rights to asylum, a protection that they dearly need.
There are people who are going to die as a result of these deportations. It is just a fact.
HAYES: All right. Julia Ainsley and Jonathan Ryan, thank you very much for taking some time on this tonight.
RYAN: Thank you.
HAYES: As always, do not forget to check out our podcast, "Why is This Happening?" We`ve covered everything from family separation with Lee Gelernt, actually who is the attorney on the ACLU for that case that we were just talking about. There`s going to be a hearing tomorrow -- that`s the Devestation Puerto Rico -- to this week`s episode with Giorgio Angelini about discriminatory housing policies, which, yes, could easily be a boring topic, but I promise a fascinating conversation. If you don`t believe it, read what other people are saying by searching our hashtag #withpod.
And then go download and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
That is All In for this Evening. The Rachel Maddow Show starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.
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