Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: December 14, 2018 Guest: Pramila Jayapal, Sandra Cordero, Trevor Potter, Ilya Marritz, Doug Wise
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CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Tonight on ALL IN.
MICHAEL COHEN, FORMER LAWYER OF DONALD TRUMP: Nothing at the Trump Organization was ever done unless it was run through Mr. Trump.
HAYES: The walls are closing in. At least three federal criminal inquiries developing Trump`s business, his inaugural committee, and his campaign.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I was doing a lot of different things when I was running.
HAYES: Tonight, Michael Cohen on the President`s lies.
COHEN: To me, he doesn`t tell the truth.
HAYES: And why the Mueller team believes him.
COHEN: There`s a substantial amount of information that they possess that corroborates the fact that I am telling the truth.
HAYES: Then --
TRUMP: Ivanka is very much involved and she`s been involved.
HAYES: The President`s daughter embroiled in the dodgy spending by Trump`s inaugural committee. Plus --
TRUMP: They took a general that they said didn`t lie and they convinced him he did lie.
HAYES: The truth about Michael Flynn and the FBI. And the disgusting response from team Trump.
KIRSTJEN NIELSEN, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY, UNITED STATES: This family chose to cross illegally --
HAYES: After seven-year-old dies in Border Patrol custody.
HOGAN GIDLEY, DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY, WHITE HOUSE: Does the administration take responsibility for a parent taking a child on a trek through Mexico to get to this country?
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
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HAYES: Good evening from New York, I`m Chris Hayes. There are now three separate federal criminal inquiries into the President and his associates - - actually, I should say three that we know of. First, of course is the investigation by Robert Mueller and his team which has already ensnared Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen, George Papadopoulos and more than two dozen Russian nationals.
Then there`s the investigation by federal prosecutors into spending on Trump`s inauguration which reportedly includes a look at whether foreigners illegally funneled donations into Trump`s inaugural committee and a pro- Trump super PAC in an effort to buy influence. The latest revelations put Ivanka Trump squarely in the middle of that emerging scandal.
One of the reporters who broke that story joins me shortly. And then we have number three, the federal investigation in which individual one AKA Donald Trump has already shown up all over court documents as the person who directed the commission of a felony, several felonies that happened days before the election and that helped get him elected president.
Now, Trump insists Michael Cohen alone should shoulder the blame for making illegal hush money payments to women who say they had affairs with Trump, but Cohen has art -- who has already been sentenced to three years in prison has a very different story to tell.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He`s saying very clearly that he never directed you to do anything wrong. Is that true?
COHEN: I don`t think there`s anybody that believes that. First of all, nothing at the Trump Organization was ever done unless it was run through Mr. Trump. He directed me as I said in my allocution and I said this following the plea. He directed me to make the payments. He directed me to become involved in these matters.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was trying to hide what you were doing, correct?
COHEN: Correct.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And he knew it was wrong?
COHEN: Of course.
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HAYES: Cohen and federal prosecutors aren`t the only ones pointing the finger at Trump. Today, Kellyanne Conway`s husband George Conway, life want Republican, stalwart, wrote an op-ed with fellow lawyers Trevor Potter and Neal Katyal headlined Trump`s claim that he didn`t violate campaign finance law is weak and dangerous. One of the chief problems with the President is that Cohen`s testimony does not appear to be all that prosecutors have.
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COHEN: There`s a substantial amount of information that they possess that corroborates the fact that I am telling the truth.
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HAYES: That claim also appears in court documents and the White House appears to have absolutely no idea how to deal with it. Watch as Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley appears to basically short-circuit when asked about it today.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hogan, Michael Cohen says that President Trump did direct him to make those payments and he says there are documents to prove it.
GIDLEY: Sure. But the fact that I think the media is giving credence to a convicted criminal --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But he said there`s proof.
GIDLEY: I understand. But the fact you`re giving credence to someone who`s a convicted self-admitted liar --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The Special Counsel has it in the court documents.
GIDLEY: I understand that. He`s a self-admitted liar. You guys all know that.
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HAYES: Joining me now is Trevor Potter, the former chair of the U.S. Federal Elections Commission and General Counsel to Senator John McCain`s Presidential Campaign 2008. Potter co-wrote The Washington Post op-ed calling Trump`s case weak.
Mr. Potter, your reaction to a certain line we`ve heard from the White House and allies of the President that this is much ado about nothing. In the words of Rudy Giuliani, nobody got killed, nobody got robbed. What do you think?
TREVOR POTTER, LAWYER: Well, people have gone to jail for violations like this and less than this. So as a lawyer Mr. Giuliani knows better. What he`s obviously trying to say is that the campaign finance laws are not as important as say the banking laws, the money laundering laws, rules for which people have gone to jail recently.
I think they are battling in the court of public opinion rather than in the law courts on that issue as they try to say that what has happened in the last couple weeks people going to jail for these offences, being sentenced for three years in the case of Cohen, guilty pleas, are really not -- it`s something people should worry about.
HAYES: You were the head of the FEC and you wrote this piece. So explain to me why you think that the -- on the law, let`s say the president weren`t the president. He were just individual one who had say, lost. Let`s say he`d lost the election and now he was facing this situation as a real estate developer. Why do you think his case is weak legally?
POTTER: Well, first of all, this is every candidate`s worst nightmare. You do a lot of things in a campaign privately behind closed doors that you assume will never see the light of day. And here the people in the room are telling the world and federal prosecutors what they heard. Even worse there are tapes, there are e-mails, there are multiple witnesses in multiple meetings. So that`s very net bad news for any candidate who has done something that they thought was never going to be heard of a night.
HAYES: Right.
POTTER: In terms of the action -- so that`s a bad place to start. Then in terms of what Cohen and the American media executives are saying, they`re saying they had a plan to engage in paying hush money payments that would prevent information from coming out to the public in the middle of the election which they felt apparently each of Cohen and the National Enquirer executives in the conversations with Trump understood that this was something that could affect the election if it came out.
So you have money being spent in an election context for the purpose of influencing an election according to witnesses that was not disclosed and was, in fact, illegal money. In the case of Cohen, it`s more than he`s allowed to spend. In the case of American media, they`re a corporation so they can`t spend money in coordination with a candidate to influence the election.
So illegal money, excessive money, and the allegations in these court pleadings are the President knew about it, the candidate at the time, Candidate Trump, he knew about it. And in the case of Cohen, Cohen says he directed it. So he`s an effectively not only a co-conspirator but he`s the leader of the band telling them what to do.
HAYES: Final question for you. You served as chair of the FEC. You served as general counsel for a presidential campaign that of John McCain. Imagine yourself as the general counsel for a campaign in which the candidate comes to you and says we`ve got this problem. There are women who say I had an affair with them. Can we just rustle up $150,000 of hush money that we`re route through a third party and then reimburse and cover it all up? Is that cool? Is that kosher? Like what`s your answer to that person?
POTTER: I hope I wouldn`t run out of the room screaming but there`s a chance. So you know, the problem is trying to do something like that in a campaign context where expenditures are supposed to be fully disclosed is clearly a problem. You have to say to the candidate, you just can`t do that.
HAYES: Correct.
POTTER: And you know, the White House -- the White House makes the argument well, there was the case involving Senator Edwards and he paid money and the jury didn`t convict him. And that`s a pretty weak read here because first of all, the prosecutors charged Senator Edwards. There was a trial. The jury didn`t convict him but they were split on it. And the facts were really different because this all happened before the election had started in Edwards case. It involved payments for a child he had had when his wife was sick. And he said, I didn`t want my wife to know about it and I wanted to pay for my child.
Here this is the month before the election. Unlike the Edwards case here, the two women were threatening to go public --
HAYES: Right.
POTTER: And all the evidence we`ve seen is that the urgency of the campaign was we`ve got to stop them from going public which is what makes it a campaign expenditure. And the Edwards situation did not have those same facts. So I think it comes out differently if it ever ends up in front of a jury.
HAYES: Trevor Potter, thanks for joining us. And joining me now for more MSNBC Legal Analyst Paul Butler, former Federal Prosecutor who worked in the Public Integrity Unit of the Department Justice and MSNBC Contributor Megan Twohey who`s Investigative Reporter for New York Times.
Paul, let me start with you on that question of Trevor Potter. I mean, part of the reason I asked the question is because it`s so preposterous it`s self-answering. Anyone who engages in the conduct knows what they`re doing is wrong almost by definition.
PAUL BUTLER, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: Exactly. So, can we just talk for a minute about how the President`s defense has devolved it started out as he didn`t know about the hush money which was a lie. And then he said it was a personal transaction which is different from what the criminal law says. And now he`s blaming Michael Cohen, the lawyer.
And it`s true that the prosecutor would have to prove willful intent. That the president knew that he was breaking the law. But there`s so much evidence of that including the cover-up so they disguised these payments as legal payments to Michael Cohen which they were not. There`s forensic evidence the tapes that Cohen made of his client, texts and e-mails. And then there`s eyewitness testimony from people like David Pecker.
So it`s not just Michael Cohen who is saying that the President coordinated and directed this, the Justice Department co-signed that. Chris they`re not going to accuse the President of the United States of an illegal criminal conspiracy unless they`re darn and they could prove it.
HAYES: Yes. And one of the things I think it`s really important to think about this in terms of the consequences of it is this was the most crucial period and vulnerable period in the Trump campaign. People forget because he ended up winning, he was this close to maybe being knocked off the ticket of having to go away after the Access Hollywood tapes. I want to show you what Michael Cohen said about that, Megan, because I know you covered -- you covered this. Take a listen to what Cohen said today.
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COHEN: You have to remember at what point in time that this matter came about two weeks or so before the election post the Billy Bush comments. So yes, he was very concerned about how this would affect the election.
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MEGAN TWOHEY, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, that`s absolutely right. I mean, as one of the reporters who is covering Trump`s treatment of women even before the Access Hollywood tape was released, it was a bubbling issue and it was something that Cohen himself was working to kind of swat away every time it surfaced. He -- and as early as 2015 when people were showing up with sort of incriminating stories, he was directing them to a AMI or trying to hush them up on his own.
October 7th, I believe when the Access Hollywood tape was released, was a huge like just took it to a whole another level. And people wondered if he was going to survive the weekend.
HAYES: Yes. Exactly. That was the question at that time.
TWOHEY: He had -- he had been denying that -- you know, any time there were allegations of groping or sexual misconduct, he denied, he denied, he denied. And then here comes this tape in which he was recorded in his own words bragging about it. And it wasn`t just -- it wasn`t just that he was recorded and in his own words bragging about it, it basically was an a rallying cry for women around the country who had -- who came forward and said this actually did happen to me.
Not only the back says Hollywood Tape come out but he then went on in one of the presidential debates he was asked directly about it by Anderson Cooper and he said I`ve never done any of those things. And there were women across the country who were watching that and said, wait a second, actually, I`ve had an encounter with Trump. He you know, sexually harassed me. He sexually assaulted me, and they started to come forward.
I told some of their stories. There were -- you know, Gloria Allred worked with women who came forward. And so in that period from October 7th through I think the Stormy Daniels payment was made at the end of October was a very critical period for Trump in which there were you know, I think that there was this fear that this whole issue could completely derail his chances of winning.
BUTLER: Really interesting connection with the collusion investigation because right after these tapes were released, literally two hours we had the WikiLeaks e-mail dump of Hillary Clinton, dirt on Hillary Clinton. Again, they were clearly freaked out about the Access Hollywood tapes and they were doing whatever they could to try to win the election.
HAYES: Let me -- let me ask you this. If you -- because you were in a Public Integrity Unit, right?
BUTLER: Yes.
HAYES: And most of those prosecutions are not the president of the United States. There are state reps, city council members, members of Congress sometimes. If someone comes to you with this facts, this set of facts and this evidence and these two people with a city council member or a state rep or even remember Congress who does exactly this, they`re probably getting prosecuted.
BUTLER: Absolutely. There`s no question. Again, the only reason that President Trump is not getting prosecuted is because he is President Trump. And the Department of Justice has this policy position that a sitting President can`t be indicted.
HAYES: Yes, go ahead.
TWOHEY: Right. But he could be indicted after he leaves office.
HAYES: He sure could. And one of the last things I want to just say here that I think important in terms of why this transparency matters in the federal election. American voters were robbed of corroborating details -- I mean when you look at the -- what Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels have to say about their consensual sexual encounters of the president in the Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow. You know, he orders dinner in. They`re brought there by Keith Schiller. That`s exactly what Summer Zervos who are alleges assault --
TWOHEY: Right. That`s exactly right. And it is important to make that there`s a distinction there.
HAYES: Yes, be very clear about that.
TWOHEY: Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels do not say that they were victims of sexual misconduct. They say that they engage in these consensual affairs. But the details of their stories do overlap with the details of women who did allege sexual harassment, who did allege sexual assault in terms of like the location, where they were invited. And that`s you can see why that would be potentially something that they`d want to cover up.
HAYES: Which is hanging like a sort of (INAUDIBLE) over the man with two weeks to go before the election as he`s hanging on by a thread that he would come back to win with some help from WikiLeaks and --
BUTLER: And the other -- real quick -- the other connection with the inaugural stuff is about transparency.
HAYES: Right, exactly. That`s right.
BUTLER: (INAUDIBLE) millions of dollars to elected official, the American people deserve to know who`s given the money and what it`s for.
HAYES: Paul Butler and Megan Twohey, thank you both for being with me tonight. Next, new reporting suggesting Donald Trump`s inauguration as Mr. Butler was just saying was paying lots of money to you`ll never guess, Donald Trump`s companies and Ivanka Trump was in the middle of it all. The reporter who helped break that story joins me in two minutes.
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HAYES: New trouble for the President and his family. New York Times reporting that federal prosecutors are also looking into whether foreigners donated to Trump super PAC as well as his inaugural committee. A Wall Street Journal broke the news last night of the criminal investigation to the latter.
And remember, Trump`s inaugural committee raised a really stunning amount of money. Look at that bar up there. That`s a $170 million or twice as much as the next highest total. And the inaugural committee has publicly identified vendors for only $61 million spent leaving more than $40 million unaccounted for.
And now ProPublica and WNYC has more on that money. It doesn`t look great for the first daughter. "During the planning, Ivanka Trump, the President- Elect`s eldest daughter and a senior executive of the Trump realization was involved in negotiating the price that the Trump Hotel charged the 58th Presidential Inaugural committee for venue rentals. A top inaugural planner emailed Ivanka and others at the company to express my concern that the hotel was overcharging for its event spaces worrying of what would happen when this is audited."
Joining me now the co-author of that report, Ilya Marritz. He is a Reporter at WNYC and Co-Host of WNYC and ProPublica`s Trump Inc podcast. Wow, what an e-mail.
ILYA MARRITZ, REPORTER, WNYC: Yes. When we got that e-mail, I thought, OK, I`ve been looking at this inauguration for many months. I`ve thought for a long time that there is a bigger story to be told. Now we have something.
HAYES: So, walk me through this. So, you`ve got -- the inaugural committee is this -- is raising all this money. It`s going to spend the money to put on the inauguration. And Ivanka Trump is playing what role now?
MARRITZ: OK. So an inaugural committee is kind of a very precise thing. It`s like a very quick startup. That you have to start up and then shut down very quickly and raise a ton of money but just the exact amount of money to put on the parties. You don`t really want leftover money.
HAYES: It`s not a campaign. You`re not going to run again in --
MARRITZ: Exactly. And previous planners have all told me that they tried to avoid the appearance of pay-to-play or conflicts of interest. They really tried to limit donations to keep things above board. This inaugural did not limit the size of donations and seemingly diverged from the rulebook in other places too. What I can tell you about Ivanka`s roll is actually only what is in the e-mails. What we know from the e-mails is that Rick Gates, that Rick Gates --
HAYES: Yes.
MARRITZ: -- pleaded guilty to conspiracy was a senior person in the inauguration. He was big person on finances, had approval of a lot of the spending. Ivanka put him in touch with a manager at the Trump Hotel to get a better price quote on four days of events at the hotel. That manager came back with $175,000 a day or $700,000 for the four days that they were looking at. And Rick Gates seems to be happy with this.
Then one of the inaugural planners who they had actually hired to do this thing and evaluate these numbers said these numbers are really high. I suggest a number about half that. How about $85,000 a day. And let me remind you, daughter of the President of the United States, this is being done -- President-Elect of the United States I should say, this is being done in honor of the President-Elect and should this come out, there`s going to be some explaining to do. I`m paraphrasing but that`s kind of how this played out. All in mid-December so four weeks before the day.
HAYES: I mean, what`s striking here and again, it`s everything with this group of people. But just even setting it up this way is nuts. Like if you talk to any lawyer or anyone, Republican, Democrat, or whatever, like having the daughter representing the business interests of the hotel that`s going to make money off the money or raising for the new president is bonkers.
MARRITZ: To celebrate his ascension to the highest office in the land. My co-reporter Justin Elliott and I were discussing this. What side of the transaction is she on here actually? You could make the case that she`s representing her father`s inaugural, these party planners to celebrate her dad coming to office. But seems from the e-mails that she`s representing her company, her family`s company.
HAYES: You mentioned something important which is that they -- Obama and Bush had both put caps on donations $50,000 for Obama $100,000 for Bush. But they`re still enormous but not like you can`t write like a $10 million check.
MARRITZ: Right.
HAYES: Do we know everything there is to know about who the donors are and where the money went?
MARRITZ: I don`t think so. I mean, we already know from the public record that a Ukrainian Member of Parliament successfully made a straw donation to the inaugural through -- with the help of a guy named Sam Patten, a government relations specialist.
HAYES: Who has pleaded guilty.
MARRITZ: Who has pleaded guilty so that is all on the public record now. I would like to find out what more there is. What I`ve heard from people who worked the inauguration is that Rick Gates was making some strange asks of them. For example, would they be willing to take payment not from the inaugural committee but from a would-be donor directly. They didn`t understand what that meant but they regarded it as strange. And now they regard -- now that they know what happened with Rick Gates, they regard it as even stranger.
HAYES: People told you this who work for the committee?
MARRITZ: Yes.
HAYES: Ilya Marritz, great reporting. Thanks a lot.
HAYES: Thanks very much.
HAYES: Coming up, Michael Flynn claims he was duped by FBI investigators and Robert Mueller is having none of it. The Special Counsel smackdown after this.
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TRUMP: They took a General that they said didn`t lie and they convince him he did lie and he made some kind of a deal.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: Tonight we are learning some disgusting new details surrounding how Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn was treated by top federal officials.
SEBASTIAN GORKA, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT: This is classic entrapment, Sean. The patriot who was trapped by a political use of the intelligence community and law enforcement.
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HAYES: Ever since Special Counsel Robert Mueller filed a sentencing memo on Trump`s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, President Trump and Trump T.V. have been spinning the narrative of poor innocent Michael Flynn duped by the G-men who came to his office and trapped him into lying. And Flynn`s own lawyers suggested that Flynn had been tricked into committing this crime.
But today Mueller responded saying in effect that the narrative the Flynn was tricked is patently ridiculous. Today`s new court filing saying "a sitting National Security Adviser, former head of an intelligence agency, retired lieutenant general, and 33-year veteran of the Armed Forces knows he should not lie to federal agents.
Let`s bring in MSNBC Contributor Natasha Bertrand, Staff Writer at the Atlantic covering natural security and the Mueller investigation. Doug Wise, former CIA officer and a former Deputy Director of Defense Intelligence Agency under Michael Flynn.
Doug, let me -- let me start with you. What do you as someone worked with General Flynn, what do you make of the argument being made on his behalf that he was duped into lying to the FBI?
DOUG WISE, FORMER DEPUTY DIRECTOR, DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY: Well, I don`t accept that argument, Chris, quite frankly. And I think the Special Prosecutor outlined it very clearly. Somebody with that amount of experience, and with that amount of maturity, and that amount of training, and that amount of education should have been in the perfect position to know exactly what was expected of him during an interview with law enforcement officials at the federal level. I mean, he would have known unequivocally.
And in fact, in his position as the director of DIA he was often forced into taking acts against employees who had failed to live up to their obligations.
HAYES: Yes, that`s -- that is a great point. There`s also the other problem with this, Natasha, from just -- I mean it`s not a serious argument but for the moment pretending it is. He lied to a bunch of people including the vice president which is the reason the President fired him. So it wasn`t just like the wily G-men who got him. Like he was telling this lie all over town.
NATASHA BERTRAND, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Right. This was a scheme. This was a narrative that he was trying to maintain throughout the transition period and into his time in office. And I`m not convinced that it was just to protect the president. Because remember that Michael Flynn was freelancing on a whole variety of issues including a U.S.-Russia nuclear reactor plan that would have required the U.S. to lift Russians -- to lift sanctions on Russia in order for it to work.
So Michael Flynn had an incentive there by himself just to have the sanctions lifted and to have that conversation with Kislyak.
And then of course, you know, I also am not necessarily convinced that, perhaps, Vice President Mike Pence did not know about this. I think that that it is definitely possible that, you know, we don`t know the whole truth about that.
But assuming, you know, for our purposes, that he did lie, this was not just a one off. I mean, this was him going into this meeting, importantly, the FBI officials said, we asked him multiple times the same question over and over again, giving him a chance, essentially, to tell us, oh, maybe, actually, I remember it this way. No, actually, I misspoke, I remember it that way. He repeated this over and over again. And he was practiced.
The FBI agent said they had no hint of him lying. They said he seemed totally comfortable.
HAYES: Doug, you worked for General Flynn. And the man`s reputation was quite stellar as he came up through the armed forces and at DIA, or before he sort of achieved the head of DIA, for the work that he had done in the field particularly in counterinsurgency and intelligence. There is a story today in the Washington Post sort of what happened to this guy. How did he go from that person to this person? As someone who worked next to him, what do you make of that?
WISE: Well, I think -- let me go back and address the issue of the prevarication to the federal agents. Mike Flynn`s ability to lie didn`t just start when he sat down with those agents. I mean, quite frankly, the subterfuge began on the explanation as to why it was denied the third year by the Pentagon as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
I mean, quite frankly, the issue that, somehow, he became an ideological opposition to the president makes no sense to me. First thing is, the director of DIA is not a cabinet official. I doubt for a minute that President Obama even knew who Mike Flynn was. He doesn`t, unlike the CIA director, attend DCs and PCs. And so this whole thing that he got fired because of ideology is a canard.
He got fired because he did things he was told not to do, and he didn`t do things that he was told to do by the senior officials by whom he worked in the Pentagon.
No, going back to the question of the the Mike Flynn, the consummate military intelligence professional, quite frankly it is a mystery to me, as it is I think to a number of his close friends even, and his colleagues. How you can have this consummate military background, which I should say is probably the best pedigree that any director in the history of the agency ever had.
This individual, Mike Flynn, held every position in military intelligence that you could possibly hold and it prepared him to succeed in DIA. And how he got from being a consummate military intelligence professional to the podium at the Republican National Convention screaming locker her up, I think you`re going to have to ask his psychiatrist that question, because it`s a mystery to me and many others.
HAYES: Natasha, there`s one -- there`s another mystery here that remains unsolved, which is, why did he lie? And it is so striking. 178-page filing, the defense sentencing memo, no explanation. Like presumably, if there is an exculpatory one like, well, he just thought it would create bad publicity for the president, even though he was doing nothing untoward so that`s why he lied, but they never explain.
BERTRAND: Right, and this goes back to, I think, the explanation, which is, he wasn`t necessarily just doing this for the president. He was maybe doing this for his own personal reasons, that maybe he was pursuing illicit projects that he did not disclose, or maybe he was -- you know, if he was doing it to protect the president, maybe he knew that the president was pursuing a Trump Tower deal in Moscow, and not lifting the sanctions would be necessary in order to pursue those financial ambitions.
And so I think that, of course, that is still the major question here, because it wasn`t just him that lied, it was KT McFarland, it was a number of people who then had to change their stories about this.
So, clearly, there was something more nefarious going on. And I think it is really interesting that instead of explaining why they lied, they`re now trying to put it back on the FBI, even though Mueller gave him such a good deal. I mean, he only had to plead guilty to one count of lying, even though he`s, you know, vulnerable to violations of FARA, for example, and other serious charges.
HAYES: All right, Natasha Bertrand and Doug Wise...
WISE: Chris, may I comment on that?
HAYES: Guess not.
Still ahead, Trump administration`s jaw-dropping response to the death of a 7-year-old girl who died in their custody. Tonight, what we know about what happened and the backlash to what the ACLU is calling a culture of cruelty on the border.
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HAYES: Thing One tonight, remember that time when it was Melania Trump`s birthday, and the president obviously didn`t get her anything?
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you want to tell us what you got her?
TRUMP: Well, I better not get into that because I may get in trouble. Maybe I didn`t get her so much. I`ll tell you what, she has done -- I got her a beautiful card. You know, I`m very busy to be running out and looking for presents, OK? But I got her a beautiful card and some beautiful flowers.
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HAYES: Obviously, he didn`t get her the card or the flowers either.
He`s very busy, OK? Meetings and calls and meetings and calls.
Apparently, Melania is, to her credit perhaps, taking a page out of Donald`s book on gift giving this holiday season. The entertainment website Hollywood Life reports, "according to a source, Melania absolutely loves Christmas. She goes all out. But as of now, she`s yet to buy Donald anything. Melania says he is next to impossible to buy for. And often, they don`t exchange gifts at all for Christmas."
Well, bah humbug, I guess.
Christmas with the Trumps sure doesn`t sound like the jolliest affair. In fact, it sounds downright awkward. And that`s Thing Two in 60 seconds.
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HAYES: Donald Trump is heading down to Mar-a-Lago next week, possibly right as the government is shutting down. And he`ll reportedly be staying for 16 days straight through the end of the year. So the whole Trump family will be there for Christmas. And while we don`t know if Melania is moving murder forest down to the winter White House, we do know that the exchanging of gifts is likely be an awkward affair.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What`s the best or worst present you`ve ever gotten?
DONALD TRUMP JR., DONALD TRUMP`S SON: Well, you know, I`m the namesake, so I got re-gifted all of the things that were monogrammed for him at times.
so, you know, there was one Christmas where he may or may not have given me the gift that I had given him the year before, because I monogrammed it, and it was like, oh, yeah, here -- like, I know you didn`t get this. How do you know that? Because I gave it to you last year.
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HAYES: Well, that`s perfectly normal. Just as normal as this conversation the president had from Mar-a-Lago last year, when he was calling children on Christmas Eve.
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TRUMP: What else do you want for Christmas? What? Oh, that`s good. They`re very hot. You know, they`re selling very well. But I think Santa is going to get that for you. I predict that Santa is going to get that for you.
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HAYES: And around 9:15 p.m. on December 6, a 7-year-old Guatemalan girl named Jakelin Caal and her father turned themselves into U.S. border officials in New Mexico. Caal was in U.S. custody for about eight hours in a remote facility before eventually being taken to a larger facility and then on to emergency medical care. She died of dehydration and exhaustion a day later.
And the first impulse in a morally functioning person upon hearing this story is despair, grief, and empathy. But those traits are largely absent in the current leadership of homeland security. And so instead, they have spent much of the time blaming the girl`s father.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yeah, it is heart wrenching, is what it is. And my heart goes out to the family, all of DHS.
You know, this is just a very sad example of the dangers of this journey. This family chose to cross illegally. What happened here was they were about 90 miles away from where we could process them. They came in such a large crowd that it took our border patrol folks a couple times to get them all. We gave immediate care. We`ll continue to look into the situation.
But again, I cannot stress how dangerous this journey is when migrants choose to come here illegally.
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HAYES: Comments from a DHS spokesperson on paper were even worse, spending nearly the entire time castigating migrants, including the line, quote, "once again, we are begging parents to not put themselves or their children at risk attempting to enter illegally. Please present yourselves at a port of entry and seek to enter legally and safely."
But here`s the thing, this administration has quite publicly, systematically and possibly illegally been making it harder to do just that. As Dara Lind of Vox wrote, "families have been stopped outside of ports of entry before they can even set foot on U.S. soil and trigger their legal asylum rights."
And, yes, it`s true the journey is dangerous, but that`s, in part, because CBP makes it more dangerous on purpose. Border patrol, for example, has dumped water left by good Samaritans in the desert to prevent people from dying of thirst."
So, here then is the logical conclusion of the Trump administration`s stated policy of deterrence. The only way to deter people desperate enough to undertake such a journey is to be even more monstrous than whatever it is they`re fleeing. And that is what the Trump administration seems determined to do, which means that to the people running this country right now, Jakelin Caal`s terrible, unnecessary death isn`t a horrifying failure, it is a useful talking point.
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HAYES: There`s a long list of unanswered questions about the death of 7- year-old Guatemalan girl in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection last week. NBC News reporter Julia Ainsley has been reporting on the death of this little girl. She joins me from Washington, D.C. with the latest.
Julia, what do we know about what happened while she was in U.S. custody?
JULIA AINSLEY, NBC NEWS: Right, Chris. So Jakelin Caal crossed the border in New Mexico, and she was apprehended near a place called Antelope Wells, that`s not your typical border station that would have medical personnel or asylum officers who were ready to hear her case and administer care. She was actually held with 163 other immigrants for about eight hours before they were put on a bus and taken to a larger facility more inland.
It was determined that she was not feeling well before the bus left. Her father said she was starting to throw up. They put her on the bus anyway. And she spent an hour-and-a-half on that bus ride, and at the end of it, Chris, she wasn`t breathing. There were two people there, once she got there medical personnel who revived her. They airlifted her to a hospital. She eventually died of a cardiac arrest, luckily with her father by her side.
But it is clear she was showing signs of dehydration and exhaustion before that bus ever left. And I asked a lot of the officials today on this conference call we had and then off again just going back trying to get all these details, and they said that they couldn`t have gotten an airlift to that spot at that time, that it was actually better for her to stay on that bus.
But a lot of people I have spoken to have said that shouldn`t have been the case. And when there is a medical emergency like that, you should be able to administer help.
But what this really comes down to is this might not be a rarity. I mean, Jakelin Caal is part of a policy actually that they don`t put medical personnel at these stations in these remote locations, and that they don`t make it easy for these people to seek help. And actually, there are more people like her and her father who were forced to go to these remote locations, because they`re being asked to wait when they try to enter the legal way and claim asylum through legal ports of entry.
HAYES: Those remote locations, we should just be clear, they`re called elaira`s (ph) in Spanish or iceboxes because they`re kept so cold. Those have been around forever. Those -- and then not being medically staffed. That is not a Trump administration policy. That is the way things have operated for a very long time.
AINSLEY: Yeah, that`s true. I mean, it`s operated that way for a long time, but we`re seeing more people who are having to wait longer at the legal ports before they go to those area.
HAYES: So they`re pushing them into those sort of more remote areas.
AINSLEY: And those are -- when you think of the children in cages that we saw this summer, the ones who were waiting at the border before they went into HHS custody, Health and Human Services, as they were ripped apart from their children, ripped apart families, they ripped them apart at these places, they held them in cages at these places, they`ve long been places that you could not keep children for long periods of time, and they`re really not built for children at all. The commissioner of Customs and Border Protections said on the Hill this week they built these places for migrant men, not for these vulnerable populations.
HAYES: Julia Ainsley, thank for reporting on this.
I want to bring in Democratic Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington State and Sandra Cordero, the director of Families Belong Together, a coalition working to end family separation.
Congresswoman, you and your colleagues have written a letter to DHS about this case. What do you want to find out?
REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL, (D) WASHINGTON: Well, we have a lot of things we want to find out. The most important thing that we heard today on a conference call, we were briefed, members of congress, were briefed by DHS. Chris, they never reported the death. Any time that somebody dies in the custody of DHS, of CBP, they are supposed to report, I think it`s within 24 hours, to the appropriators. We are hearing about this a week later. So that is a huge issue for us.
The medical care is a huge issue for us. This has been an ongoing issue, as you point out. But it`s gotten particularly bad. And as Julia said, when you have people that are lining up by the thousands at the border, because we have closed down essentially our legal ports of entry, we want to know what is the impact of these cruel policies, metering, you know, and sending back people. What is the impact of those on these kinds of issues where people go to another place to try to cross, or they go to places that, you know, they`re sort of forced into that area.
So we`ve asked a number of questions around this, but number one is they actually did not follow what they were supposed to do, which is report to us within 24 hours. Most of us on Judiciary and the appropriators found out about this through The Washington Post story.
HAYES: Wow. Sandra, I know you`ve been down at the border. What do you see down there in terms of the downstream effects of what the congresswoman and Julia were talking about, this blockage at the ports of entry?
SANDRA CORDERO, FAMILIES BELONG TOGETHER: Thanks, Chris. It`s awful. The situation is just overwhelming, it`s overwhelming for the community of Tijuana, for all the communities of people, civil society that are trying to help them. There is a backlog of about 3,000 to 5,000 people, and it`s completely illegal, as the congresswoman said, of this practice of metering. And that`s going to take months and months to be able to turn themselves in.
HAYES: Can I stop you for a second, just the practice of metering, which congresswoman, explain what the practice of metering is and why it`s illegal.
JAYAPAL: Yeah, so basically, what they`re doing is they`re saying we`re not going to allow people to come and seek asylum. We`re only going to take a tiny, tiny trickle of people. And when I was there, I spent a day at the Tijuana border, it`s exactly what Sandra is saying, that essentially, they have stopped people from approaching the border. They`ve actually moved U.S. forces further and further into Mexico so that technically they can say you`re not on U.S. soil, and therefore you can`t claim asylum, but then in addition, they`ve got thousands of people that are waiting to be processed.
And actually, it`s really important that people understand. They really want to be doing this legally. Everybody wants -- everybody that I met with, and I think the people that Sandra`s been on the ground with, they want to try and do this legally, and they are not being allowed to do what is actually in our laws and in our human rights treaties, and it`s a travesty.
HAYES: Sandra, you are nodding your head. That`s what you saw as well?
CORDERO: Yeah. I just came back from two 10 days, different stints in Tijuana. And they`re not letting anyone in, particularly very vulnerable populations. We identified a single father with a young daughter who has cerebral palsy, and we had to do a lot of intervening just so she could get medical care and be allowed to go to the front of line. They`re not letting unaccompanied minors in, and they`re putting them in really dangerous situations where they`re now at the hands of human traffickers or other dangerous individuals who just want to do them harm. And this is on purpose. This is part of the systemic cruelty of this administration.
HAYES: What do you say, congresswoman, to this argument, I mean, they`re kind of making it on its face, even in the wake of the death of a 7-year- old girl, like, well, this is what you get. I mean, this is what you`re saying, right? If your daughter has cerebral palsy and needs medical care in the border town of Tijuana and you can`t get it, you shouldn`t have brought her here. We have to stop people from coming. What do you say to that argument?
JAYAPAL: Well, it`s ridiculous, because all the people that I spoke to are fleeing death. And the conditions in the countries, and the majority of the people that I spoke to were from Honduras, they are still -- they told me over and over again, what they told me during the family separation crisis, we have to leave because we face death at home.
So it`s not that they`re seeking the American dream, they are just seeking to get away from the reign of terror. So this is outrageous. It is, again, against our international human rights treaties. But most of all, Chris, it just breaks my heart, seeing a young unaccompanied minor who had been shot in both knees by the Honduran gangs and was weeping as I -- because they were all turned -- I tried to accompany some people across. They were turned away. And it was only because I was there that I was able to spend a couple of hours and get them in to present themselves for asylum.
That`s just absurd. We`re not upholding our own laws much less our moral obligations. And it`s not going to stop people from coming to have cruel policies, because they`re fleeing death and that`s just the way it is.
HAYES: Sandra, what do you want people to know about the situation down there as they think about what our government`s responsibilities are?
CORDERO: I`m going to echo what the congresswoman said, everyone that we`ve talked to, or everyone who -- most of the people we`ve talked to really are just exerting their legal right to asylum and want to do this the right way, but they`re just not being allowed to, and that puts them into further danger and puts them in more vulnerable positions.
So this needs to stop, and it`s ridiculous that it takes a congresswoman or a congressperson for anyone to exert their legal right. That`s just completely wrong, it`s completely immoral, and it needs to stop.
HAYES: Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and Sandra Cordero, thank you both for your time.
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