Show: THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW Date: February 13, 2018
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST, ALL IN: That is "ALL IN" for this evening.
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW starts right now.
Good evening, Rachel
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Chris. Thanks, my friend.
HAYES: You bet.
MADDOW: And thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. It was one year ago today that the Trump White House personnel carousel first fell off its axis and started randomly flinging people off into the night. A year go today, White House national security adviser Mike Flynn became the shortest lived ever national security advisor when after 24 days on the job, he resigned.
You know, it`s interesting. Ever since, that story has been told as Michael Flynn being fired as national security adviser after 24 days on the job. He didn`t actually get fired though. He was allowed to resign and that detail is easier to remember when you look back on how the president talked about Flynn at the time.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Michael Flynn, General Flynn is a wonderful man. I think he`s been treated very, very unfairly by the media. As I call it, the fake media in many cases. And I think it`s really a sad thing that he was treated so badly. I think it`s very, very unfair what`s happened to General Flynn the way he was treated. Very, very unfair.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Clearly, this was not a president who had just fired Mike Flynn. Flynn was allowed to resign. The president said so himself awkwardly standing next to Bibi Netanyahu. Today, Israeli police announced that he could be indicted on multiple charges. Anyway, just a neurological accident.
But the fact Flynn was allowed to resign, that he wasn`t fired, the president made that clear himself and it was made clear at one particularly excruciating White House press briefing right after Flynn`s departure.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEAN SPICER, FORMER WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Good afternoon. Happy Valentine`s Day. I can sense the love in the room.
When the president heard the information is presented by White House counsel, he instinctively thought that General Flynn did not do anything wrong.
REPORTER: Back in January, the president said that nobody in his campaign had been in touch with the Russians. Now today, can you still say definitively that nobody on the Trump campaign, not everyone General Flynn had any contact with the Russians before the election?
SPICER: My understanding is that what General Flynn has expressed is during the transition period, we were very clear that during the transition period, he did speak with the ambassador.
REPORTER: I`m talking about during the campaign.
SPICER: I don`t have any -- there is nothing to conclude me anything different changed with respect to that time period.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: I don`t have any -- there is nothing that would conclude me. Mike Flynn resigned a year ago today. That was the press briefing that was held a year ago tomorrow when they first had to answer questions about Flynn. So, this is day 24 and then day 25 into the new administration. They are brand-new.
Sean Spicer as we now know, he had a difficult time with the job of being White House spokesman, this I think was a particularly difficult briefing for him but he did his best.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: Are you -- is the administration taking any sort of effort either cabinet-wise or like inside the shop to make sure that everyone comes forward who had any communications with the Russians about sanctions or otherwise?
SPICER: There is no other information. I mean, that -- as far as we are aware, that is an isolated incident that occurred.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: That was not an isolated incident that occurred. Will you make any sort of effort to make sure anybody who comes forward who had any communications with the Russians about sanctions or otherwise, as far as we`re aware, that was an isolated incident.
Not an isolated incident. A year ago today, February 13th was when Mike Flynn resigned because of his undisclosed contacts with the Russian government that he had lied about. A year ago tomorrow is when the White House was trying to explain away his resignation really more than sadness than anger, the president was still praising Mike Flynn to the rooftops. The official line on Flynn`s undisclosed contact with the Russian government which he lied about, was that there wasn`t anything wrong with the contacts per se in any way, they were an isolated incident.
There weren`t going to be any other surprises about Trump folks having contacts with the Russians. That was a year ago. Within two weeks, we`d learned that Jeff Sessions had also failed to disclose and lie about his contacts with the Russian government. Just a few weeks later, it was presidential son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner who is having to explain his own undisclosed contacts with the Russian government, which he lied about, not to mention the meeting he took during the transition with the head of a state-run sanctioned Russian bank.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SPICER: As far as we`re aware, that is an isolated incident that occurred.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: There were a lot of isolated incidents then it turned out. But they started with Mike Flynn leaving the White House a year ago today. It has since been a remarkable series of revelations about Trump campaign contacts with the Russian government. But it`s also been an incredibly tumultuous time in terms of Trump administration people flunking out, people resigning or getting fired or otherwise having to leave high-ranking government service.
This is our on-going list that we are struggling mightily -- can we make that any bigger? I don`t think even it`s legible.
Yes, boom! Thank you. That`s why you guys get paid the big bucks. Well done. Front got bigger. Whoo!
We have been struggling mightily to find the right font, to try to keep this thing update in terms of senior administration officials who have quit, been fired or left. Just in the past five days, we had to squeeze in a third White House deputy chief of staff, a White House speech writer, a White House staff secretary, the deputy head of the Federal Rail Association and associate attorney general, the number three person at the Justice Department, all of whom have announced their own departures just within the last four or five days.
But of everybody Mike Flynn was first. Look at everybody who has come since then. And now today, this totally unprecedented rate of turnover in the White House and in the senior ranks of this administration, it continues to be in focus because all of Washington right now is on the edge of their seat with expectation that President Trump is about to lose yet another chief of staff. John Kelly is taking the blame for the White House handling of Rob Porter, the staff secretary pushed out last week after serving more than a year in that high-ranking job without a permanent security clearance because of serious domestic violence allegations against him, allegations that were communicated to the FBI by Porter`s ex wives and the concerns were conveyed to the White House.
As John Kelly has bungled even the basic White House effort to get its story straight about what they knew about Porter and when they knew it and how decisions about employment and security clearance and resignation were handled, the reason it feels like John Kelly might have to go in this particular scandal is because of the repeated and increasing reports to White House staff, the people who report to him in the White House are turning against him with vehement.
In "The L.A. Times" yesterday, that dynamic looked like this, quote, over and over again in the past several days, various White House aides have buttonholed reporters to tell them they think Kelly either lied to them or tried to get them to lie about what he knew when.
In the "New York Times", the uprising against Kelly among his own subordinates now looks like this, quote, Chief of Staff John Kelly`s long- time deputy, Kirstjen Nielsen, was not a fan of Rob Porter`s. Nielsen has since left the White House to become secretary of homeland security. Nielsen while in the White House frequently blocked and tackled for Chief of Staff John Kelly, making herself the main line of approach to him. Without her, officials often approach Mr. Kelly freely now and he sometimes does not remember what he said to different people. Meow.
And now, this is what it looks like in "The Washington Post" in a story just posted tonight, quote, Kelly, John Kelly, White House chief of staff is a big, fat liar, says one White House official who demanded anonymity to share a candid opinion. To put in terms the general would understand his handling of the Porter scandal amounts to a dereliction of duty.
So, White House officials who are willing to speak about John Kelly that way to "The L.A. Times" to the "New York Times" to "The Washington Post", everybody who works in the White House as a White House staffer reports to John Kelly. Those White House staffers are now rushing to reporters all over Washington to tell them how terrible and incompetent they think John Kelly is, that they think John Kelly is, quote, a big fat liar and further that he has demanded that his subordinates in the White House lie for him on this matter.
Once it gets to that point within a staff, that is not likely to be sustainable. So, in a White House that lost one chief of staff and three deputy chiefs of staff and a national security advisor and all these other people, there is widespread expectation that President Trump is going to need a third White House chief of staff very soon. And honestly, while we`re on the subject, the other very senior White House official plainly on the hook for the handling of the Rob Porter matter is the White House counsel Don McGahn. We`ll be talking later on this hour about why it is there is not the same immediate expectation that Don McGahn might have to resign over this scandal as well as John Kelly.
The answer there might be as simple as the fact that Don McGahn has been in worse than this. Don McGahn is so centrally involved in so many of the biggest Trump administration scandals from Mike Flynn`s resignation a year ago on through the firing of Jim Comey and all the rest of it. So, that makes it hard to see why this particular bad scandal might be worse than any other one for Don McGahn. He`s really in the middle of every scandal in the White House including some of the ones that might result in serious legal trouble for the president himself but remains. Clearly something made Don McGahn sort of politically bulletproof. We don`t yet know what that is.
In a normal White House environment, you would expect a scandal like the Rob Porter controversy to result in the White House chief of staff and the White House counsel probably having to go since they are both responsible for White House personnel and things like security clearance issues. We might also expect that the White House communications director and White House spokesperson might have to go because of their roles in spinning what are now plainly contradictory White House tales about how this went down.
So, that -- that scandal, the Porter scandal continues to bang around Washington tonight like a pinball game without the glass on it. Something is going to break there. Now, the parallel to what happened to Flynn one year ago today are quite striking, both with Rob Porter and with Mike Flynn, these are scandals not only about the behavior of senior White House officials, the more damaging aspects of these scandals are about the White House reaction once they were informed about the troubling behavior of these officials.
Remember in Mike Flynn`s case, it was the acting attorney general and head of the national security division at the Justice Department, they physically personally came to the White House to warn that Mike Flynn was a serious security risk. There was good reason to believe he had been compromised by a foreign government while he was serving as national security advisor.
Now, the revelations about Flynn`s behavior and his lies about his behavior, they did ultimately lead to Flynn`s resignation, but the delay between the warning and him leaving the White House is still now the bigger scandal for the White House. There is still ongoing open questions about why the White House waited 18 days after that hair on fire warning from the Justice Department before they did anything about Flynn. Eighteen days where Flynn had continued access to the most highly classified information in the U.S. government.
That was the Flynn scandal. Similarly, Rob Porter, the White House staff secretary, that scandal, FBI Director Chris Wray testified today that the FBI first notified the White House about problems with Porter`s background check for his security clearance last March, that`s months earlier than the White House has admitted. They were informed there might be serious problems with Porter`s application to get a clearance.
According to FBI Director Chris Wray today, the FBI first contacted the White House last March about problems with Porter`s clearance. They issued a final report to the White House in July. That`s a report where the FBI said they determined from a national security standpoint Porter couldn`t be cleared for access to classified information.
The White House then reportedly asked the FBI some follow-up questions about the problems with Porter`s clearance and the FBI got back to them in November. Porter was not granted a permanent security clearance. The FBI closed the file on him in January. They got some additional information about his case this month in February. Director Wray says the FBI then handed that to the White House, as well.
So, there have been all of these multiple notifications from the FBI to the White House about the problems with Rob Porter and why he`s not getting cleared to handle classified materials. In Flynn`s case, it was 18 days after the warning. Here from the initial notification, it looks like it was 11 months. But during that time period, just like they allowed Flynn to continue to access classified information, they allowed Porter to continue to handle highly classified information crossing the president`s desk.
CNN reported today that up until last week when he was finally forced out because of press attention, Rob Porter was being considered for a big promotion to become deputy White House chief of staff. They`ve gone through three of them already. He was apparently going to be number four, despite all of these notifications from the FBI about problems in his background check that resulted in him not being able to get a security clearance. They have been told all of those times, as of last week, they`re still going to promote him?
I mean, a year ago, it was Flynn with these dire national security warnings and the White House having no response until it was in the papers. Now, a year later, it`s Rob Porter with very serious warnings about him and his security clearance and the White House clearing him through until once again, it ends up in the newspaper and apparently that`s the reason why people get pushed out.
Like Mike Flynn, even in the face of this new considerable and pretty much out of control scandal about Porter just like with Flynn, the president apparently personally feels really positive about the guy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, we wish him well. He worked very hard. It`s, obviously, tough time for him. He did a very good job when he was in the White House and we hope he has a wonderful career and hopefully he will have a great career ahead of him, but it was very sad when we heard about it, and certainly, he`s also very sad. But we absolutely wish him well. Did a very good job while he was at the White House.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: The chiefs of all the major U.S. intelligence agency testified in the Senate today in a hearing about worldwide threats. They testified unanimously that not only did Russia target our 2016 elections in this country, they testified that they are also now targeting our 2018 elections.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAN COATS, DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: There should be no doubt that Russia perceived that its past efforts as successful and views the 2018 U.S. midterm elections as a potential target for Russian influence operations.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Despite the intelligence chief`s expressing that unanimous opinion today about Russia building and continuing their efforts to influence internal U.S. politics to skew our elections, there was a little awkwardness in the room today when senators asked whether the Trump administration and president himself actually have directed the United States to do anything to try to stop the Russians from that kind of interference again.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JACK REED (D), RHODE ISLAND: All morning, gentlemen, we`ve heard the story of Russia influencing our campaigns and indeed in the current campaign for the midterms. So, let me say has the president directed you and your agency to take specific actions to confront and blunt Russian influence activities that are ongoing?
CHRISTOPHER WRAY, FBI DIRECTOR: We`re taking a lot of specific efforts to blunt --
REED: Directed by the president?
WRAY: Not specifically directed by the president.
REED: OK.
Director Coats, have you received a specific directive to take specific steps to disrupt and understand first and disrupt Russian activities directed at our elections in 2018?
COATS: We work together on this throughout the agency has full understanding that we are to provide whatever intelligence is relevant and make sure that that is passed on to our policy makers including the president.
REED: Passing on relevant intelligence is not actually disrupting the operations of an opponent, do you agree?
COATS: No, we pass it on and they make the decisions how to implement it.
REED: Any of the other panelist have anything to add on this point?
ADM. MIKE ROGERS, NSA DIRECTOR: For us, I can`t say that I`ve been explicitly directed to, quote, blunt or actively stop. On the other hand, it`s very clear, generate knowledge and insight help us understand this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: So it`s nice to hear unanimity from our nation`s intelligence chiefs today, that we as a country are definitely about to get walloped again in another Russian operation against our next election, this year in 2018. It`s nice to hear at least them all agree on that. It`s less exciting to hear them say that, really, what they are directed to do is study the matter, that they had no instruction from the president that they should try to stop it, and that got one person in that room really mad. And that`s next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. ANGUS KING (I), MAINE: I am sick and tired of going to these hearings which I`ve been going to for five years where everybody talks about cyber attacks and our country still does not have a policy or doctrine or a strategy for dealing with them. And we are trying to fight a global battle with our hands tied behind our back. Director Coats, you have a stunning statement in your report. They will work to use cyber operations to achieve strategy objectives unless they face clear repercussions for their cyber operations. Right now, there are none.
Is that not the case? There are no repercussions. We have no -- we have no doctrine of deterrence. How are we ever going to get them to stop doing this if we patch our software and try to defend ourselves?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: That anger from Senator Angus King of Maine in the Senate today, his anger over country staying fine (ph) as Russia gears up to try to game another one of our elections. That was a remarkable moment in the intelligence Senate. It is I think hard to extricate that anger in the Senate from the fact we`re living with reverberations of what the Russians did to our last election as we`re now supposedly, or maybe not, gearing up for what they`re going to do to our next one.
What sunk Trump national security advisor Mike Flynn one year ago today when he resigned from the White House was not that he had secret communications with the Russian government. What sunk Mike Flynn a year ago today, he had secret conversations with the Russian government, which he lied about and those conversations specifically had been about sanctions.
Right after Christmas, after the election 2016, the Obama administration levied new sanctions, new punishments against Russia for interfering in our election. That day, Flynn started having secret contacts with the Russian government, which he lied about. In those conversations, he tried to undercut those sanctions.
A few months after Flynn`s resignation, we learned about the Trump Tower meeting that had happened during the campaign, which is attended by Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, and a whole bunch of Russians. That was a meeting they did not disclose until "The New York Times" published an account of it. Their initial defense for why they lied about that meeting, why they didn`t disclose the meeting, was that it just didn`t seem important to them, right? All the Russians wanted to talk about was the issue of sanctions. Same thing for Mike Flynn`s conversation and the transition.
One of the other weird Trump campaign contacts with the Russian government that we didn`t learn about until months after it happened was Erik Prince, Erik Prince going to the Seychelles Islands and meeting with the head of a Russian sovereign wealth fund. Erik Prince also tried to play down that Russian meeting as nothing important, but what did they discuss at that meeting? Sanctions. Russian sanctions.
And then Carter Page. Carter Page, the clown prince of this scandal, initially denied but then later admitted under oath when he went to Russia in the middle of the presidential campaign as a Trump campaign foreign policy advisor, yeah, the issue of sanctions may have come up in passing.
Even the forgotten Ukrainian peace plan scandal, remember that one? Trump`s personal lawyer Michael Cohen and a Ukrainian lawmaker and Russian Trump organization guy with extensive ties to organized crime, they met in New York at a hotel and come up with a secret Ukrainian peace plan that they reportedly delivered to national security advisor Mike Flynn in his officer still there. What was the subject of that plan? Well, among other things and first among everything else, it was a way to get rid of U.S. sanctions on Russia.
Sanctions, sanctions, sanctions, sanctions. The anchor that the 2016 election Russia scandal is dragging through our current news and the current behavior of the Trump administration is sanctions. Sanctions. The primary Russian objective of lifting the burden of U.S. sanctions on that country. Sanctions was at least partly the subject of every single surreptitious contact between the Trump campaign and Russia that we can document thus far going right back to Mike Flynn having to leave the White House a year ago today.
The Trump administration started making plans to unilaterally drop sanctions on Russia as soon as they arrive in Washington. Congress found about it and freaked out. Congress then insisted legally that the Trump administration had to enforce and increase sanctions against Russia. Trump administration then dragged their feet, didn`t want to do it, had to be nudged to comply to comply with that law.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson then killed off the office at the State Department that handles sanctions. Just before the State of the Union a couple weeks ago, another legal deadline arrived for new Russia sanctions that were supposed to be implemented by the Trump administration. They instead inexplicably declared that there would be no new punishment for anybody buying Russian military equipment, which had been the original idea behind those sanctions.
State Department announced that the existence of a U.S. law in this subject in their estimation, it was deterrence enough against any bad Russian behavior. Those sanctions were not meant to deter Russian behavior. They were meant to be punishment for past Russian behavior, for them attacking our election. But the State Department decided to let it slide.
The Trump administration was also required by law to produce by the end of January a detailed report identifying, quote, the most significant senior foreign political figures and oligarchs in Russia. The way this list was supposed to be put together was that it was supposed to take into account high net worth so very, very rich Russian individuals. It was supposed to consider their, quote, closeness to the Russian regime. It was supposed to consider their specific relationship to Vladimir Putin or other members of the Russian ruling elite and crucially, to put together that list, U.S. government officials were supposed to determine, quote, any indices of corruption with respect to any of those individuals.
They were supposed to come with this oligarch`s list. This oligarch`s list was an object of serious fear in Russia. The U.S. government was going to use its resources to compile a list of gazillionaire Russians who became gazillionaires corruptly because of their ties to Putin`s regime through ill-gotten means, right?
Now, there are credible reports such a list was actually produced by specialists career employees within the U.S. government. That was first reported by the Atlantic Council. We were able to confirm it with a person who had knowledge of the process by which that list was created.
We believe such a list was generated as a U.S. government work product as required by that U.S. sanctions law. But when it came to the deadline, it came time to push publish the list, that list was never published. When the oligarchs` list sanctions deadline arrived, instead, Steve Mnuchin`s Treasury Department literally just put out a list of rich Russians that they had copied from the "Forbes" magazine billionaires list, plus, a directory of people that work in the Kremlin.
Putin`s government had been terrified about the actual corrupt Putin connected oligarchs` list that the United States was about to put out. They expected to have global consequences in terms of the ability of the Putin regime and it`s enablers in Russia to maintain their wealth, to keep doing what they`ve done all these years to keep Putin in power. They were shaking in their boots about that list.
And again, we have reason to believe that such a list was created by the U.S. government, but somewhere before the deadline, it got submarined and replaced instead with this list that was a joke. "Forbes" magazine list and the Kremlin phone directory, ha. So much for the corruption, closeness to Putin, all that out the window. Give them a list of rich people and forget it. Mike Flynn has been gone for a year as of today. Trump campaign chairman and deputy campaign chairman were both arrested in October. So much for the corruption, closeness to Putin, all that out the window. Give them a list of rich people and forget it.
Mike Flynn has been gone for a year as of today. Trump campaign chairman and deputy campaign chairman were both arrested in October and are facing multiple felonies. The White House even today right now is an escalating turmoil over the mishandling of classified information and elevation of seriously flawed White House personnel to very senior positions. Congress is waking up to the fact the next elections are less than a year away and there`s no clear sense from our intelligence agencies that we are defending ourselves against Russia doing again what they did to us in 2016.
But what they did to us in 2016 more than anything appears to have been motivated by sanctions, by Russia`s desire to get relief from sanctions. And the Trump administration is in charge of that and the Trump administration is behaving pretty inexplicably when it comes to Russian sanctions.
It is amazing where we have been in the past year. It is necessary to look up, look forward and see what we`re bumbling into the months ahead. But there is also something wrong with where we are right now as well, with what the administration is doing right now because administration is doing right now on sanctions is what Russia was asking them for all through the 2016 campaign in all those secret meetings.
We didn`t know at the time it was happening, because those meetings were secret. And that was our excuse then. But now, we know that is what Russia asked for, and now, right now in 2018, we can see in real-time that they are getting what they wanted and what they asked for from this administration.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MADDOW: -- joint confirmation hearing, Rod Rosenstein and Rachel Brand sat at the same table and answered questions together. They were nominated as a pair to be the number two and number three picks at the Justice Department. They were also confirmed as a pair.
Now, Rosenstein is still there, but Rachel Brand, the associate attorney general, she quit on Friday night after just nine months on the job. She`s leaving that plum assignment in public service to go work instead for Walmart. She reportedly said the Walmart job is an opportunity she just can`t pass up.
But there was reportedly something else on her mind, as well, when she decided to leave the number three job in the Justice Department. NBC News reported soon after her resignation, that Brand quit her top job at the Justice Department out of concern that she might be asked to take over for the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in overseeing the Russia investigation.
Quote: public criticism of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein by President Trump worried Rachel Brand that Rosenstein`s job could be in danger, quote, should Rosenstein be fired, Brand would be next in line to oversee special counsel Robert Mueller`s investigation into Russia`s medaling into the election, thrusting Brand into a political spotlight that she told friends she did not want to enter.
So, NBC News reported that Rachel Brand decided basically to jump out of the plane and parachute safely to Walmart headquarters. And the response from the Justice Department was strong and memorable. Justice Department told NBC News, quote: all of this is false and frankly ridiculous. Quit being ridiculous NBC News.
Well since then, since that initial NBC reporting, politico.com has matched NBC`s report and they`ve added to it. Quote: Rachel Brand badly wanted to avoid overseeing the Russia investigation according to two people familiar with her thinking. And there is this, Walmart began courting her around the time Trump began making noises he might fire Rosenstein.
Walmart, why did you do that? Why did you start doing that precisely then?
Julia Ainsley at NBC News has been reporting Rachel Brand has been unhappy at the Justice Department for months. She was frustrated in her position, quote, there were pull, as well as push factors that led to this decision.
Joining us now is Julia Ainsley, NBC`s national security and justice reporter who broke this story for NBC News.
Julia, it`s great to have you with us here tonight. Thanks for being here.
JULIA AINSLEY, NBC NEWS NATIONAL SECURITY AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Thanks for having me.
MADDOW: So, watching this from the outside and not totally understanding the kinds of dynamics that buffet people at the top of the Justice Department, the thing that seems striking from outside is the possible oversight of the Mueller investigation that Brand might be called upon to become the new oversight for the Mueller investigation if the president fired Rosenstein.
Now you reported that was part of her thinking about why she left, right?
AINSLEY: That`s right. It was part of her thinking, along with just a general lack of support and it`s not just if he had been fired. It`s also if he had to recuse himself. As we know, Rosenstein could be a witness in the obstruction case because it was he, Rosenstein who wrote the memo that the White House used to justify the firing of James Comey FBI director. And so, if he had to recuse himself, she would then fall into that line just like Rosenstein took over from Sessions once he recused himself.
So, there was sort of this domino effect happening and we know months ago, Rachel Brand was reading those tea leaves, looking at Rosenstein, looking at all the pressure he was under and telling people I don`t want anything to do with that.
MADDOW: So, should we see the Brand resignation? Is there any reason to see that resignation as a sign, as an indication that either the firing of Rosenstein is coming or a recusal of Rosenstein is coming, something that would effectuate this big change in Rachel Brand`s life?
AINSLEY: So, I would think that if it weren`t for the timing. Just like you pointed that Walmart began courting her a while ago when the heat was pushing up, ratcheting up on Rosenstein. It`s not that something has changed within the last week that all of a sudden she wanted to jump ship.
Jobs like these just aren`t something that you get overnight. This has been in the process for a long time, but it seems there has been a slow burn. She`s been seeing what could come.
She also just feels really unsupported. There are a lot of vacancies at the Justice Department when you oversee part of the Justice Department and 30 percent of these division heads are still unfilled, that`s a tough place to be and to be in a place where she would have less support and more pressure seems like a place someone who spent a career that is so far good been very illustrious would not want to end up. That could really tarnish her reputation if things went awry.
MADDOW: Is there any indication the Walmart job offer came about as a favor to the Trump administration if the president is trying to game out how he might try to end the Mueller investigation if clearing people out who might oversee the Mueller investigation in ways he doesn`t like, if that`s part of a White House legal defense strategy on this Mueller investigation? Is there any indication that Walmart was approached to make her an offer she couldn`t refuse or that they were involved at all in the thinking about this that might becoming from the White House?
AINSLEY: I don`t have any reporting there was back channel conversations between the White House and Walmart to give her something she couldn`t refuse. I imagine that Rachel Brand had a number of options as been approached by the private sector many times in her career and decided to take this one because of the time income a lot of ways. And so, it was a matter of she was now willing to exit this place in the public sector, which she hadn`t for a long time. She served under the Bush administration, under the Obama administration.
So, I think the key thing to read into this is that there is someone pushing someone like this with this kind of reputation out of the government and into the private sector rather than Walmart coming along to kind of clean up for the Trump administration. But gosh, if that`s there, I hope we find it.
MADDOW: Me, too.
AINSLEY: That would be interesting.
MADDOW: Julia Ainsley, NBC`s national security and justice reporter, who had a real scoop with this one -- congratulations, Julia. It`s nice to see you.
AINSLEY: Thanks.
MADDOW: Thank you.
All right. Much more to get to here tonight. Do stay with us.
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MADDOW: This is news I did not expect to be breaking this evening, no, I never expect in my whole life news like this would be breaking.
But "The New York Times" has just broken some unusual news. The president`s long-time personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, says today that he paid $130,000 out of his pocket to a pornographic film actress who had once claimed to have an affair with Mr. Trump. This was the Stormy Daniels scandal, you`ll recall. There were multiple reports that Stormy Daniels was paid $130,000 just before the election to keep quiet about her alleged affair with President Trump while he was married to his current wife.
Michael Cohen is the man who is reportedly behind those payments but he`s told "The Times" tonight after a lot of questions, weeks of questions about whether or not that might have been some sort of campaign contribution. Some campaign contributions, Cohen is reporting it was his personal money he paid.
Quote: In the most detailed explanation of the 2016 payment made to the actress, Mr. Cohen said he was not reimbursed for the campaign, neither the Trump organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, Stormy Daniels, and neither reimbursed me for the payment either directly or indirectly. The payment was lawful. It was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure by anyone.
Mr. Cohen declined to answer several follow-up questions including whether Mr. Trump had been aware that he made the payment, what the motivation was for the payment, or whether he made similar payments to other people over the years.
So, again, you know you never expect that your news job will have you talk about stuff like this but there are several weeks of reporting about the alleged relationship, which Mr. Cohen has denied between Mr. Trump and this porn star, Stormy Daniels. The $130,000 payment is part of it they did not deny. The only question is who paid that money.
Now, we`ve got the first account of who did it. The president`s personal lawyer says he paid it personally and nobody reimbursed him, out of his own pocket.
We`ll be right back.
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MADDOW: -- we are having to throw out the planned show and observe news as it comes in. Welcome to my world.
A remarkable headline just posted by "The New York Times" in the last couple of minutes. Trump`s longtime lawyer says he paid Stormy Daniels out of his own pocket.
This is a story that was first broken in "The Wall Street journal" several weeks ago in January. "The Wall Street Journal" reported that a porn star named Stormy Daniels, that`s her stage name. Her real name is Stephanie Clifford.
She alleged that she had had an affair with President Trump while he was married to his current wife. She detailed this affair in great detail for a tabloid magazine, which later posted her account. What "The Wall Street Journal" reported was that a payment had been made to her just before the election basically for her to keep quiet about the affair.
"The Wall Street Journal" then further reported on an LLC, a Delaware-based LLC, a shell corporation that had been set up to facilitate this payment, amid multiple denials that there had been an affair. Nobody really denied that this payment had happened, which gave rise to questions that this had perhaps been an in-kind, illegal -- illegally large campaign contribution to the Trump campaign. It led more broadly to questions about who paid this money. Who was paying women, at least one woman to not talk about her alleged affair with President Trump right before the election?
Well, now the president`s long-time personal lawyer Michael Cohen has told "The New York Times" in a statement that he paid that money out of his own pocket. Neither the Trump organization nor the Trump campaign was party to the transaction. Mr. Cohen is not answering whether Mr. Trump himself was aware of the payment, what the motivation was for the payment. Mr. Cohen is also not saying whether he made similar payments to other people over the years.
That story has just broken. This happens at a time when all of Washington son the edge of their seats wondering if the president is about to lose another chief of staff in the Rob Porter scandal, the staff secretary who was just pushed out last week amid domestic violence charges and now serious questions as to how the White House handled those questions. That scandal is raising serious questions about the future of Chief of Staff John Kelly, also about the future of White House counsel Don McGahn.
Joining us to try to make sense of this milieu in which we now live is Andrea Mitchell, NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent the anchor of "ANDREA MITCHELL REPORTS", and the one person who I know I`m fortunate to work with who has literally seen it all, who is never rattled and who knows how to keep these things in context.
Andrea, thank you for being here.
ANDREA MITCHELL, NBC NEWS CHIEF FOREIGN AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: I`m rattled.
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MITCHELL: Officially rattled. About to lose it. I mean, what else can happen tonight?
MADDOW: Tell me what rattles you the most. Is it the accumulation of all these happening at once, or one or more of these things seems like it`s the straw that breaks the camel`s back?
MITCHELL: What`s truly unsettling a year after Mike Flynn left, exactly a year after Mike Flynn was fired is that this White House has had at Peter Baker`s count a 34 percent turnover, the chaos in the White House and the lack of institutional knowledge.
The fact that they for days have been trying to blame the FBI for the failure to properly vet Rob Porter. They shouldn`t have done that they shouldn`t have laid it at the feet of the FBI on the eve of Christopher Wray testifying for the Senate Intelligence Committee. That was a mistake.
Because Christopher Wray was not going to lie under oath. He was not only going to defend his agency but explain the facts of life to this White House. It is not up to the FBI to make these decisions. And they were not made within the last weeks, months, even a year ago they had already told the White House there was a problem.
And in all of the past White Houses that I have covered, the general counsel, the chief of staff are responsible for flagging these things to the president of the United States, or to the chief of staff or whoever is making the decisions on the political end of the White House. The FBI simply vets and reports.
And when they give an interim security clearance, that means it`s a denial of security. That means you should be shuffled out of the White House. You should not be as a top assistant to the president anywhere near that building.
And the fact is, it is not a backlog. It is not the fact that there is 700,000 more people backed up. The top assistant to the president are the first people done, they`re done within a month or two.
And the fact that there was a problem with Rob Porter was reported in real- time in a timely fashion. And Christopher Wray made that clear.
Then today, Sarah Sanders tried to blame, this tried to say that nobody was lying. Kristen Welker said, well, then, who is lying? The timeline doesn`t add up. Is it the chief of staff? Is it the FBI? Christopher Wray?
She said, well, both are true because it was not the FBI and the counsel`s office. It was the Security Office of White House Personnel. Well, Peter Alexander is reporting tonight that that story doesn`t add up. That it really is the political wing, that those are professional security people and they pass it on to the political people.
So, it`s a long way of saying what`s truly shocking is that they have not figured out a way to understand how to make the trains run on time.
MADDOW: And, Andrea, we are absorbing that that while we`re still absorbing continued scandal from the campaign.
MITCHELL: Exactly.
MADDOW: With this news about the Stormy Daniel payment, Michael Cohen just telling "The New York Times" tonight he paid that personally out of his own pocket, it had nothing to do with the Trump campaign, there has been an unusual story developing around Michael Cohen, right? Long time personal lawyer of the president, long-time Trump Organization lawyer him.
He was not part of the campaign. But the RNC recently reported that the RNC is paying a lot of money to the law firm that is representing Michael Cohen in the Russia scandal. He is the president`s lawyer. He had to get his own lawyer to defend him in the Russia scandal. And the RNC appears to be paying that firm, we think to pay for Michael Cohen`s Russia defense when he was not part of the campaign.
Now, Cohen is saying that he was personally paying off women to not talk about their affairs with president Trump just before the election. Who -- I mean, usually, congressional committees would look into that sort of thing. I doubt the Republican-controlled Congress is going to do that here.
Who takes this on? Who investigates these things?
MITCHELL: It`s funny you ask that, because Ron Wyden said to me today when I was covering the intelligence hearing, he was on his way in, I said, what do you want to see, what do you want to hear today? He said, I want to hear follow the money, but the leadership, the Republican leadership won`t let us do that.
So, he was complaining that the Senate Intelligence Committee is being stymied when in fact as we know the House Intelligence Committee is a disaster. The question was raised last night, you know, why does it even exist anymore? So, the fact that they have not gotten to the bottom of this.
I have to just say there was a moment of pride as an American sitting in that hearing room today to at least watch the fact that Republican political appointees, Coats and Pompeo, who have not been known to distinguish themselves because we don`t hear from them very often, and when we do seem to be making some excuses or shuffling, they were absolutely straight forward in saying what they knew and what they believe believed to be the case about the Russia investigation. You pointed that out earlier. And that is at least something.
They were not kowtowing to the president.
MADDOW: Andrea Mitchell, host of "ANDREA MITCHELL REPORTS" which is weekdays at noon Eastern here on MSNBC -- a fast-breaking news night. I had a whole bunch of different stuff to talk to you tonight, Andrea.
MITCHELL: Yes.
MADDOW: Thank you for switching gears with us. Much appreciated, my friend.
All right. We`ll be right back unless something else happens in the next five seconds, in which case I`ll still be here.
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MADDOW: One year ago tonight, the Trump White House started shedding its first high-ranking officials, just 24 days into the new administration. One year ago tonight, the departure of Michael Flynn, who has since fled plead guilty to lying to the FBI and has become a cooperating witness into the special counsel investigation into the Russia attack.
Well, tonight, one year on, we bookend that achievement with the news in "The New York Times" that the president`s personal lawyer says when it came time to pay a porn star right before the election to say that she didn`t have an affair with Donald Trump, he found $130,000 in his own pocket and he swears it didn`t come out of the campaign or out of the Trump organization.
That does it for us tonight. We`ll see you again tomorrow.
Now, it`s time for "THE LAST WORD WITH LAWRENCE O`DONNELL."
Good evening, Lawrence.
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