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1.3 million Cohen items released to the government. TRANSCRIPT: 07/02/2018. The Rachel Maddow Show

Guests: Emily Jane Fox, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch

Show: THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW Date: July 2, 2018 Guest: Emily Jane Fox, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch

CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST, "ALL IN": That`s "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. Much appreciate it.

HAYES: You bet.

MADDOW: And thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Happy Monday. Happy July. Happy to have you with us tonight.

Ready? Quote, in the matter of search warrants executed on April 9th, 2018, case file 18-MJ-3161 KMW. I don`t know if that`s a case file, case number. I don`t know what that number is.

It`s an official-looking number at the top. There it is, 18-MJ-3161. I don`t know what that means.

Then there`s headline, special master report. Barbara S. Jones, special master.

The court appointed the Honorable Barbara S. Jones, retired federal judge, as special master, to render decisions regarding privilege issues related to materials seized in execution of certain search warrants on April 9th, 2018, henceforth described in this document as the seized materials. This report is submitted to provide the court and the parties with an update of the special master`s progress.

Pursuant to the court`s order dated June 26, 2018, the plaintiff and intervenors have submitted designations for special master for items in their possession with the exemption of 22,633 items currently being reviewed by the Trump Organization. That review must be completed on or before July 5th, which is Thursday.

Quote: Once the Trump Organization submits its designations, any remaining items that are not designated privileged, partially privileged or highly personal, will be promptly released to the government.

And then there`s this. Quote, a release of 1,310,365 items that were not designated privileged, partially privileged or highly personal by the plaintiff or an intervenor was made to the government today. All right. That`s pretty much the whole special master report, signed by Barbara Jones, which is posted in a public docket in federal court in New York today.

What this order means is that a big part of Michael Cohen legal story is wrapping up. On April 9th, federal agents working in conjunction with federal prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney`s Office in the Southern District of New York, they executed search warrants and seized millions of files and documents from Michael Cohen, from the president`s long time personal attorney who is also a long time Trump Organization executive.

And when they executed those search warrants, when they seized those millions documents and files from Michael Cohen, the president lost his mind. As soon as he found out about that raid on Cohen`s office, he said, quote, it`s a disgrace, it`s frankly a real disgrace, it`s an attack on our country in a true sense. It`s an attack on what we all stand for. The president said that day, quote: Attorney-client privilege is dead.

As prosecutors confirm that Michael Cohen, the president`s lawyer, was the subject of a federal criminal investigation, Michael Cohen did try to build this legal strategy around the idea that federal prosecutors actually weren`t allowed to look at all the stuff that they had seized from his home and his office because he is a lawyer. And so, all his documents, all of his communications, all of those files that were seized from his office and his home, they`re all covered by attorney-client privilege. And the government can`t look at any of them.

One of the lawyers who Michael Cohen hired to defend him in this matter at one point said in court that attorney-client privilege would result in millions of the documents that were seized being denied to the prosecutors. So, the prosecutors might have thought they were getting everything from Cohen, but according to Cohen`s lawyer, millions of those documents would be held back because they were privileged.

That has not turned out to be the way it has gone. Today, what this new special master`s report says is there are about 22,000 documents that are still going through some layer of review, and she, the special master, will ultimately decide whether they are attorney-client privilege and they should be withheld, 22,000 documents still in the mix.

But, meanwhile, today, prosecutors were given 1.3 million documents, 1,310,365 items that were seized from Michael Cohen`s office and home today. Prosecutors got that many documents from Cohen`s office today. That is the bloody, bloody bottom line in this very short tidy little report today from the special master, a release made to the government today of 1,310,365 items.

We had also learned in court proceedings around this search warrant and all the stuff that with was seized from the president`s lawyer, Michael Cohen, we had also learned that there were about 16 pages that were taken from Michael Cohen`s office, even though they had gone through a shredder, agents collected the contents of the shredder basket and sent all the shreds down to Quantico for the FBI lab to reassemble those shredded documents.

Well, this afternoon, "BuzzFeed News" published what appeared to be the reconstructed stuff from that unshredding process. They published the shreds as pieced back together by the FBI. A bunch of it is super random and honestly, who knows what it is? It looks more like art than anything else.

But some of this stuff does seem fairly clear. Michael Cohen appears to have shredded what looks like an invitation to a dinner reception, welcoming a business delegation from Qatar led by the minister of economy and commerce. OK. There is at one point, a hand written reference to what appears to be the New York City law firm that employs a lawyer who at one point was going on TV all the time saying that he represented Michael Cohen, but it`s not actually clear that he ever did represent Michael Cohen.

The name of the law firm nevertheless turns up in Michael Cohen`s handwriting in these shredded documents.

So, "BuzzFeed" got what appeared to be the documents that were shredded in the Michael Cohen`s office and then the shreds were seized by the feds. They have now published them and we don`t know exactly what to make of them it is interesting to see them. According to "BuzzFeed`s" own reporting, these document shreds, the piecing back together of them, these were handed over to Michael Cohen`s attorneys and attorneys for the president so that they could review them to decide if they want to assert that there`s something in these documents too that might be attorney-client privilege.

Regardless, though, they`re now available online for your perusing pleasure. And the chain of custody, in terms of who had access to these documents, tells you a little something about how they might have been obtained by "BuzzFeed`s" reporters for the purpose of publication, right? These shreds were taken by agents. They were pieced together by the FBI. They were given to Cohen`s lawyers and the Trump Organization lawyers to say, you guys are OK with these? Are these attorney-client privilege? Do you need the special master to look at these?

At which point, somehow "BuzzFeed" gets them. At which point, it is probably also important to remember that "BuzzFeed News" was the first news outlet that published the Christopher Steele dossier back in January of last year, right? That collection of intelligence memos that were commissioned during the campaign as essentially oppo research on Trump and his ties to Russia, the Christopher Steele dossier has, of course, become this very controversial political hot potato.

But it is worth remembering that "BuzzFeed" is the outlet that published it and Michael Cohen is all over it. Michael Cohen is all over the dossier. Quote: A Kremlin insider with direct access to the Russian leadership confirmed that a key role in the Trump campaign Kremlin relationship was being laid by the Republican candidate`s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

The dossier says that Michael Cohen had secret, a secret meeting or meetings with Kremlin officials in August 2016. Quote: The agenda comprised how deniable cash payments were to be made to hackers who worked in Europe under Kremlin direction. Quote, Cohen now heavily engaged in a cover-up and damaged limitation operation.

Again, the Christopher Steele dossier is super controversial. But the former director of national intelligence during the time that the dossier was written, James Clapper told us here this show not long ago, as far as he`s aware, nothing in the dossier has ever been disproven despite all the political controversy around it.

Michael Cohen is all over the dossier named as a key player in the collusion between Russian government and the Trump campaign. For his part, he has vociferously denied what the dossier says about him. And at one point, he put his money where his mouth is on that. He actually filed a lawsuit against "BuzzFeed" for publishing the Steele dossier, specifically, for publishing the parts that mention him.

Since then, though, Michael Cohen dropped that lawsuit against "BuzzFeed" several months ago, and I hesitate to say that today we`ve now hit peak Michael Cohen weirdness, because if there is one thing we`ve learned in this scandal and in this presidency, it`s that things can always get even weirder. But with the president`s personal lawyer, with this fixer for the president who worked with him and worked at his business for more than a decade, we are really truly in a weird moment when it feels like something big is happening.

All right. Michael Cohen has not been charged with anything. There`s not even any indication that he has met with prosecutors. But two and a half weeks ago, June 13th, ABC News was first to report that Michael Cohen is, quote, likely to cooperate with federal investigators.

Now, whether or not that story from June 13th is true, Michael Cohen does not appear to have been upset about that reporting. There was a single byline on that article from ABC News on June 13. The byline was, George Stephanopoulos. Michael Cohen does not appear to be holding a grudge against George Stephanopoulos for that reporting, because this weekend, he gave George Stephanopoulos his first interview -- the first interview in which he has gone on record at length about this criminal investigation that he is currently embroiled in.

And I know this sounds like a little inside baseball, but this is worth noting at sort of pivot points in the news. George Stephanopoulos personally was the first person who reported that Michael Cohen was going to flip and start cooperating with prosecutors. George Stephanopoulos also now just got the first interview with Michael Cohen about his case. And in his interview this weekend, Mr. Cohen strongly hints at the possibility that he is in fact looking to cooperate with prosecutors.

We`ve actually got a little bit of brand new reporting tonight about how that interview came about and the strange story of why it was not on camera. We`ll get to that -- that reporting in just a moment. That`s brand-new.

But at this point in the Mueller investigation, at this point in the special counsel`s investigation in the Russia scandal, when so many people have been indicted, so many people have plead guilty, so many people have become cooperating witnesses of various kinds, we are at the point now when all of us watching this scandal, watching this unfold, we`ve learned to recognize sort of what it looks like when a person is to be flip. We`ve seen it happen enough times that we know how to recognize the signs.

From Thanksgiving of this past year, Thanksgiving 2017, I have two very distinct memories from that holiday this past year, which will always distinguish this past Thanksgiving from every other one I ever had in my life. The first thing I will never forget about this past Thanksgiving is that Susan and I got a turkey by accident that was too big to fit in the oven. It was her mom`s neighbor who was a farmer and he told us we were getting a little turkey. We got a gigantic turkey. It didn`t fit in the oven.

We had the raw turkey. It`s Thanksgiving Day. We had no idea what to do. We had to cook the turkey on the barbecue which was really weird. I will - - it was ultimately delicious but it was weird.

The other thing about this Thanksgiving which was different than any other and that I will always remember is that while we were figuring out how to cook the turkey on the freaking barbecue, "The New York Times" published this on Thanksgiving Day. Quote: A split from Trump indicates that Mike Flynn is moving to cooperate with Mueller. Quote: Lawyers for Michael Flynn, President Trump`s national security adviser, notified the president`s legal team in recent days that they could no longer discuss the special counsel`s investigation, according to four people involved in the case. This is an indication that Mr. Flynn is Cooperating with prosecutors or negotiating a deal.

Quote, Flynn`s lawyers had been sharing information with Trump`s lawyers about the investigation by the special counsel, but that agreement has now been terminated. All right? That was a really big deal this past Thanksgiving Day. That was the sign that this legal concern was going to spread.

Mike Flynn had had a joint defense agreement with his lawyers and the president`s lawyers were sharing information, working collectively. They`re all sort of pulling in the same direction. On Thanksgiving Day we learned first in "The New York Times" that that joint agreement between Mike Flynn and the president had been called off, Flynn was going his own way.

And as -- "The Times" nailed it. This was an indication that Flynn is cooperating with prosecutors or negotiating a deal. They got it right in the initial story. And the president`s legal team tried to say, no, no, no, don`t read into it. This doesn`t necessarily mean that, nothing to see here.

The day after Thanksgiving, the president`s lawyer, Jay Sekulow, told CNN that Mike Flynn calling off that joint defense agreement was, quote, not entirely unexpected. He said, quote, no one should draw the conclusion that this means anything about General Flynn cooperating against the president. General Flynn was, in fact, cooperating against the president and it turns out that dropping the joint defense agreement was in fact a really good sign that that was about to happen.

Within a few days, the following Tuesday, ABC News was first to report that Flynn`s lawyers were talking to lawyers in the special counsel`s office. And by the end of that week, eight days after Thanksgiving, Mike Flynn in fact stood up in court in Washington, D.C. and he did plead guilty, and he filed his cooperation agreement.

Incidentally, you should know that we`re going to see Mike Flynn in court again very soon, next week. That was ordered today in a brief ruling from the judge in Flynn`s case. The order literally, it`s only as long as you can see on the screen here. But the order sets up a joint status report hearing in Flynn`s case for next week, next Tuesday, July 10th, 10:00 a.m., and the judge says explicitly, quote, Mr. Flynn is directed to attend.

So that hearing next Tuesday in D.C., we will see Mike Flynn in court. It is likely to be the start of a long process that will result in Mike Flynn ultimately getting his sentence. His sentence will depend in large part on how much help he`s given the government since he plead guilty and destroyed to Cooperate with them.

At that hearing on Tuesday, we may get some information, some indication from the judge as to what exactly Flynn might be looking at in terms of prison time or other punishment.

But the first sign we had that Flynn was going to plead guilty and cooperate was Thanksgiving from "The New York Times" reported that he was canceling the joint defense agreement that he had with the lawyers for Trump. Well, ABC News is now reporting that we`re seeing that same process unfolding with Michael Cohen. They`re reporting specifically that at the end of this week, Michael Cohen will drop his existing legal team, which has represented him through this whole process of wrangling over whether or not the documents seized from his office are protected by attorney-client privilege, whether or not prosecutors can use those documents, that process is now ending. It is ending in a way that looks sort of disastrous for Michael Cohen.

His lawyers said in court that they were going to get millions of documents held back by attorney-client privilege. That has not happened. Instead, millions of documents have just been handed over to prosecutors and not very much turned out to be even remotely privileged at all.

But that process of prosecutors actually getting their hands on all that stuff they seized from Cohen, it`s going to come to an end at the end of this week. Michael Cohen is due then to drop the lawyers who have been representing him in that part of the fight, and then a new legal team will start representing him at the end of this week. And when that transition happens to his new lawyers, Michael Cohen`s join defense agreement with President Trump will end.

So, you see the parallel there with what we saw happen with Flynn, right? Before Flynn flipped, he dropped his joint defense agreement. We`re now seeing Cohen drop his joint defense agreement.

There is also a parallel to what happened with Trump deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates before he flipped. You might remember that Rick Gates and Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign chair and deputy chair, they were initially charged together on a whole bunch of felonies. Like Paul Manafort, Rick Gates initially started off fighting those charges, pled not guilty right out of the gate.

But a few weeks into it, after prosecutors filed a superseding indictment, dumping a whole new round of felony charges on them, Gates changed his mind, dumped his legal team. Instead, he signed up a veteran high-end white collar legal defense lawyer who`s had lots of experience in political scandals, and who himself was a former federal prosecutor in the U.S. attorney`s office in D.C., where Gates is now being charged.

Flynn dropping his joint defense agreement was the big red flag that he was about to flip. With Gates, it was that change of lawyer. That was the sign that he was about to flip. He brought a new legal team on board and that was the warning that he would stop fighting the charges against him and instead would plead guilty and agree to cooperate.

And it all happened pretty fast with gates. On January 23rd, we have the first report from CNN that Gates was getting this new lawyer. Exactly one month later, on February 23rd, there`s Flynn pleading guilty and flipping.

So, Michael Cohen, we can see the pattern emerging, right? Dropping his joint defense agreement with the president, bringing on a new lawyer who happens to be a highly regarded criminal defense attorney who used to work in the office that may be assembling charges against Mr. Cohen. There are all these red flags.

But he hasn`t met with prosecutors. If he`s going to be charged with anything, there is no reason to believe that Mr. Cohen knows yet what he`s going to be charged with.

I mean, in terms of our window into potential liability, one of the unshredded documents that was published by "BuzzFeed" today appears to be a receipt for a wire transfer payment made into an account in his name at First Republic Bank, a wire transfer of $62,500. That would appear to match some of the reporting about Mr. Cohen`s involvement in at least three different women being paid hush money, being given money in exchange for their silence on sexual affairs or sexual conduct.

Michael Cohen is involved in the Stormy Daniels hush money case. He`s involved in the Karen McDougal hush money case. And he`s also involved in the hush money case that reportedly involves Elliott Broidy, who is a deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee.

From other Michael Cohen banking records, we know that he received a whole bunch of gigantic and still mysterious corporate contracts right after the Trump election. From big blue chip companies like AT&T and Novartis, but also from a famously corrupt Korean aerospace company and also from a financial firm linked to a sanctioned Russian oligarch who is close to Vladimir Putin who Michael Cohen appears to have also brought to the Trump inauguration.

Cohen was also involved in the clandestine effort to pursue a Trump Tower Moscow produce a real estate project in 2015 and 2016. That`s an effort that was kept secret by the Trump campaign and denied by the candidate himself when he pledge he had no deals with Russia, even though he had signed the letter of intent for that project right in the middle of the Republican primaries, literally on the same day as one of the Republican debates.

George Stephanopoulos said he asked Michael Cohen this weekend if President Trump was involved in or had advanced knowledge of the Trump Tower meeting that took place during the campaign, for a whole bunch of Russians connected to the Putin government, showed up at Trump Tower, offering dirt on Hillary Clinton, and they got this meeting with Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. Mr. Stephanopoulos says when he asked Michael Cohen whether or not Donald Trump himself was involved in that meeting, or had advanced knowledge of it, Mr. Cohen refused to answer on the advice of counsel. He said he wouldn`t talk about that, at least in the context of this interview.

So, you think with all the different stuff that Michael Cohen is known to have been involved in. There`s got to be a lot of concern at the White House as to what Michael Cohen could say to prosecutors, what evidence he could provide to prosecutors if he did decide to cooperate. That is presumably why the president reacted so strongly and so negatively when Michael Cohen was first raided. The president literally called it an attack on the country. No, it was the execution of a search warrant.

To the president that day it looked like the end of the world. We don`t exactly know why. But given what we know Michael Cohen has been involved in, we can imagine.

If Mr. Cohen is now about to cooperate with prosecutors and all these red flags flying make it seem like he is, why is this all happening right now? How quickly do we expect this process to play out? When we saw these same kinds of red flags from Michael Flynn in the first instance and Rick Gates in the second, things happened very quickly when we saw these first signs.

Emily Jane Fox at "Vanity Fair" tonight has some new reporting on how quickly this does seem to be coming together, and in fact how -- how barely strung together it`s been just over the past couple days as somebody`s rushing toward something.

Emily Jane Fox is here with the new reporting, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MADDOW: Today, we learned that more than 1.3 million documents and items seized by federal agents from Donald Trump`s personal attorney Michael Cohen, those are as of today in the hands of federal prosecutors who say they are mulling a federal case against Michael Cohen.

Michael Cohen has also just done a strange, on the record but off camera interview with ABC News, with their star anchor George Stephanopoulos. In that on the record, off camera interview, Mr. Cohen vaguely hinted but didn`t definitely say he might be thinking about cooperating with prosecutors.

This is just out tonight from Emily Jane Fox at "Vanity Fair", quote: Michael Cohen is still adjusting in this new place in this world, often musing about how best to protect his family and potentially to rehabilitate his image by repositioning himself in the vortex between Trump and prosecutors. Recently, that meant fighting back through the media. At the end of last week, Michael Cohen got his hair freshly shorn and picked out a black suit to wear for his first on-the-record interview.

On Saturday afternoon, ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos entered Cohen`s suite at the Regency Hotel where the two men spoke for 45 minutes. The interview was initially supposed to be on camera, but at the advice of Mr. Cohen`s counsel, Guy Petrillo, he`s the new lawyer who`s due to start this week, quote, they stuck to an audio-only format.

Quote: For months, people in his circle told me about the possibility of him sitting down with the formidable anchor for a news-making one-on-one. When the time was right, these people said Cohen would talk to Stephanopoulos, perhaps with his family on set to demonstrate the human toll of legal woes. All of this would be heavily promoted, of course, maybe for weeks and truly revealing and intimate. At least, that was the idea.

This interview on the other hand was not on a broadcast. It was revealed by tweet about 12 hours ahead of the interview`s publication and Stephanopoulos` on-air unveiling. The last-minute roll-out was triggered by an acute sense of urgency.

What is driving that acute sense of urgency? And why is he doing this last-minute rush to interview, where there isn`t any lead-up at all, where he`s wearing the suit, but then he can`t be on camera at the last second. What`s the connection between the timing of this weird new rushed half interview and him getting a new lawyer and him ending his joint defense agreement with the president? What`s going on?

Joining us now is Emily Jane Fox. She`s a senior reporter at "Vanity Fair."

Emily, thank you very much for being here.

EMILY JANE FOX, SENIOR REPORTER, VANITY FAIR: Thanks for having me.

MADDOW: Why was this planned to be a big broadcast special rolled out big interview? Or at least they were hoping for that. And then at the last minute, we get him in his suit, off camera, in a still image with written quotes. Why did it fall apart like that?

FOX: I think that down the road, there was supposed to be a big, on-the- record smashed Super Bowl like interview on a broadcast network. This was not the moment for this. There is nothing really to reveal yet. Nothing has yet happened.

MADDOW: People under active criminal investigation don`t talk to reporters for a reason.

FOX: They`re not meant to that. That`s not what`s meant to happen.

But there is this moment where something had to happen in Cohen land, and according to people who I spoke with today, there are a couple of reasons why this interview happened in the first place. Now everything that was in the interview is stuff that Michael Cohen has said to friends privately for months. These are things that I`ve reported over the past couple of months, things -- sentiments that he has expressed over and over again privately.

But they were expressed privately for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that his former attorney, or his attorney who is going to be no longer his attorney by the end of the week, Steve Ryan, was very much against him doing any kind of press.

MADDOW: OK.

FOX: So, he now has a new attorney who is still a little camera shy but not completely against him doing press.

There`s also a sense, a belief by Mr. Cohen and people in Cohen land, that there is going to be an onslaught coming from people in the president`s orbit, either character attacks or further attempt to distance themselves and the president from Michael Cohen. And so, there is a window of time where he felt like, I am going to try and restore my reputation before this attack.

Is it -- does Mr. Cohen have good reason to believe that there is going to be this kind of assault? Is he imagining that this might happen, but it`s potentially a delusion? I mean --

FOX: My sense is that it`s not imagined, and that he has -- he feels he has concrete reason to believe that that would be coming down the road, that that is perhaps a strategy in Trump land. Now, that is the craziest strategy I could ever imagine.

MADDOW: Yes, it doesn`t make sense as a strategy.

FOX: They should be probably throwing him a parade at this point to get him to keep what he knows under the vest and to continue to protect the Trump presidency and the President Trump himself and the Trump family, but that has not been the strategy from the get-go. We have seen from the start that the president has sort of distance himself. There was a moment a few weeks ago, when the president said a few weeks ago, when the president said, I liked Michael Cohen.

And that use of the past tense in describing their relationship was particularly bothersome and hurtful. That kind of language is what I think Michael Cohen believes would continue if not strengthen in the coming weeks. So, that`s another reason.

And there are people in Cohen`s circle who have been telling him over the past couple of weeks, you can turn this whole thing around. You are -- have been a villain and you can be a hero. You could be the guy to change this whole thing if you just come clean and start cooperating.

So, the confluence of all those factors of a window opening where he perhaps feels more comfortable that he could turn this around with a new lawyer who perhaps is less averse to him talking to the media, and the sense that his reputation may be further damaged in a couple of weeks, that is why we saw him go on the record.

MADDOW: Is he expecting to be charged?

FOX: I don`t think it`s out of the question. I don`t think anyone in his position would think that they would be surprised if charges came down. I don`t think there is any special knowledge of charges.

MADDOW: Isn`t -- doesn`t it potentially hurt his leverage with prosecutors? If he has to -- if he is going to try to cut himself a deal, I will cooperate with you if you are lenient with me, I will tell you what I know. It will cost me lots of things. But if you`ll treat me better because I`m going to tell you what I know, let`s work out a deal.

He would seem to be hurting his own leverage in those discussions by talking what he knows in a public environment.

FOX: Now, if read the interview closely, there are two little bread crumbs that to me seem more like loaves of bread that I picked out.

MADDOW: OK.

FOX: Stephanopoulos asked specifically about two things that he knows. Now, this was an interview that was not on camera, that was in print, and things are chosen to be included. One of those things was if he was directed to give a payment. And the other thing was about the meeting in Trump Tower with Don Jr.

MADDOW: In both cases, that`s Stephanopoulos asking specifically Cohen, did the president specifically -- did President Trump tell you to make this payment, and did President Trump know about that Trump Tower meeting?

FOX: Exactly. And Michael Cohen`s answer to both of those things was, at the advice of counsel, I`m not going to go into both of those things.

You have to stop and wonder why those two things were specifically mentioned and why those two things he could not answer.

MADDOW: What do you think the answer is?

FOX: I think that perhaps there are signals about what he knows of those two things. So if prosecutors are reading those interviews, and I am sure that they were not lost on prosecutors as they were not for the rest us, perhaps those were signs.

MADDOW: And we know the prosecutor -- it`s been incredibly reported that the special counsel`s office is interested in the Trump tower meeting and in the hush payment and if Mr. Cohen is saying that he is not in an interview -- I got it.

I don`t feel any more relaxed about this, though.

Emily Jane Fox, senior reporter for "Vanity Fair." thank you, Emily.

FOX: Thank you.

MADDOW: Much appreciate it.

All right. Lots more to come tonight. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MADDOW: Senator Chuck Schumer got the cardboard treatment tonight. The top Democrat in the U.S. Senate was supposed to hold a town hall tonight in his own neighborhood in Brooklyn. It would have been the senator`s first town hall of this entire year, but he didn`t show up. His office told us he had plane trouble and he got stuck in Upstate New York.

His office then said instead of being able to be there in person, he would do this Brooklyn town hall by phone. His constituents decided instead to break out the cardboard version of Senator Chuck Schumer, and then they asked flat Chuck Schumer their questions instead.

It was all happening in a sweltering un-airconditioned hall that his constituents didn`t leave even when they found out that their senator couldn`t be there in person.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ATTENDEE: Tonight, we`re here to talk to everyone, we`re hoping to talk to him and ask him one very simple question. Will you whip the votes, hold the Democratic Caucus together against the Supreme Court nomination. And since he`s not here to answer that question, then we`ll start a little chant to get a little energized.

It`s a very simple one. Whip the vote. Here we go.

Whip the vote. Whip the vote. Whip the vote. Whip the vote.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: He wasn`t even there, but they all stayed.

Apparently, the cell service inside the sweltering hall was sort of lousy, and so, the crowd at one point moved across the street so they could in fact take a call from Senator Schumer. Senator Schumer told them via speakerphone that the president`s pick for the vacant Supreme Court seat was not a fait accompli and that simply delaying the inevitable would not be good enough. He told them, quote, we need victory. And then they told him they need him to fight.

There`s been a lot of talk about strategy inside the Democratic Party now that the president has this chance to pick a second justice for the Supreme Court, even as this serious counter intelligence probe involving him and his campaign proceeds. The only way the Democrats can have any influence on that Supreme Court process is if they stick together as a caucus, all the Democrats sticking together, and then they need to persuade just one Republican, just one, that that vote on the nominee should not happen until after the November elections.

Now, that`s the way. That is the one way that Democrats can have an influence on this process. Who knows if Democratic senators are up to that task? But voters who want that outcome seem to have their own very clear strategy for trying to get it. If you want your senator to fight, if you want to stiffen your senator`s spine, you have to show up and you can show with a cardboard cutout of your senator if you can`t get senator, or him or herself.

Civic engagement in the Trump era, we have seen this before. We have seen it work. This week marks the start of the July 4th recess which means the Senate is back home for the holiday. We know from experience what that can look like when the country is fired up about something.

The last Fourth of July break was the apex of the fight over Republicans` effort to take away the Affordable Care Act, to take away health insurance from millions of people.

When Congress left D.C. for the Fourth of July recess last year, they came home to people lining the streets and holding die-ins and candlelight vigils, people following their representatives across the state, and dogging them at town halls, and showing up outside local offices and refusing to leave.

The Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act failed. That pressure, all that activism worked, even when everybody said that it wouldn`t, it worked. And now, this Fourth of July with another national fight over the fate of the Supreme Court brewing, and we are starting to see that pressure getting started.

The game is different. The stakes, if anything, are higher, but everybody knows the play book now. Here it comes.

We`ll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MADDOW: There are 27 people who live in Antler, North Dakota. We talked about this place on Friday night`s show. Population 27.

This is Antler, North Dakota. That makes this assembly in antler more than half the town, 15 people turned out this weekend in Antler, North Dakota, 15 of 27 to protest the zero tolerance policy that`s taking kids away from their parents at the U.S. border.

They were joined by an estimated 35,000 people in Washington, D.C. across from the White House. Another 55,000 people marching in L.A. 60,000 people in Chicago which was twice what the organizers there expected. It was 94 degrees in Nashville on Saturday, but still tons of people turned out in Nashville. People turned out in more than 750 towns and cities around the country to protest against the Trump administration taking kids away from their parents at the border and then effectively refusing to give them back.

One mom named Jenny Gonzalez, crossed the border in May with her three young kids. The kids were taken away from her by the Trump administration. The kids were brought to Cayuga foster agency in New York City. While her kids got sent to New York City, their mom Jenny Gonzalez got sent to Arizona, to a detention facility in Eloy, Arizona.

Her lawyer did a radio interview last month in which he discussed her case. And after that radio interview, one New York City mom, a regular mom, called up Jenny Gonzalez`s lawyer, said, I heard you on the radio. He told her that if his client was going to get reunited with her family, the first thing she needed was money so she could get out on bail. You can`t get your kids back if you`re being held in detention. You have to get the mom out so the mom can go try to get the kids, right?

After hearing that from Jenny Gonzalez`s lawyer, that mom in New York who heard him on the radio and called him up and said, money? That we can get done. She and her friends raised more than $30,000 from a little more than 500 people this in six days. And they posted bond for jenny Gonzalez. Her bond was set at $7,500.

Posting bond enabled her to walk out of that detention center in Eloy, Arizona. But she still needed help getting to her kids, who, again, were clear across the country. They moved them all the way to New York. Ms. Gonzalez was released from detention without any ID of any kind, without any ID, you can`t get on a flight.

So, these people who had reached out without knowing her from New York to try to help her, they worried that she would be vulnerable all over again to immigration or law enforcement if she tried to make the trip, certainly by flight but even by bus. They ended up coordinating a nine-person cross- country driving relay to drive Jenny Gonzalez from Eloy, Arizona, to New York over the course of four days.

Just about an hour ago, she finally arrived. She made with it a crowd of supporters gathered to greet her, because of the rules, her kids will still have to spend nights in foster care until a family member is able to sponsor them. She got there too late we`re told to see them tonight but she expects and hopes to see them tomorrow morning at the Cayuga Center.

So they don`t even have the ending they`ve been dreaming of. But that mom and her kids will be able to see each other tomorrow, we think, because of the actions of another group of moms, just ordinary people. So, they now have this plan, this sort of Underground Railroad plan for how this can work. They say they plan to keep doing this for other families, posting bond for the moms.

It all starts with a chance to post bail in an immigration court to get the moms out, right, the dads. It all depends on having the opportunity to make bond. Even as people have figured out how to help make that payment, that single first step, just getting that opportunity may have just gotten harder.

And that story is next. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MADDOW: The immigrant mom who arrived in New York City tonight, hoping to reunite with her kids who were separated from her at the border, she was able to do that thanks to a network of volunteers and a crowd funding campaign to pay her bond to get her released from detention. This is one new tactic that`s been invented and is now being deployed by Americans opposed to the Trump administration`s policy of separating immigrant parents from their kids.

Raise money, raise bond for parents who have been arrested, get those parents released on bond and then get them to where their kids are so they can get back together with their kids. The new system just invented to deal with this new thing the Trump administration is doing. But that new system only works if parents are allowed to post bond.

This is new from "Mother Jones" magazine. Quote: Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, who is working with separated mothers at the T. Don Hutton Detention center near Austin says that until late last week, parents at the facility who passed credible fear asylum reviews were usually being released with bonds of about $1,500. But that appeared to change on Thursday. Lincoln- Goldfinch says the deportation officer assigned to her client, a young mother, told her that he received instructions from his superiors to deny bond to separated mothers.

The government doesn`t appear to have any plan for giving back the kids they have taken away from their parents. Getting the parents bonded out is the only way anybody else has been able the try to MacGyver a system where the parents and kids can be reunited. If the Trump administration is now going to stop giving these parents bond, even that made-up new MacGyvered system will go away too.

Now, ICE told us tonight that there has been no policy change related to bond, but that`s not what we are hearing from the border.

Joining now is Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch. She is an Austin-based immigration attorney.

Ms. Goldfinch, really appreciate your time tonight. Thanks for being with us.

KATE LINCOLN-GOLDFINCH, AUSTIN IMMIGRATION ATTORNEY: Thank you for having me.

MADDOW: So, usually when you represent a client in a circumstance like this, with these parents who have been separated from their kids, they are able usually to post bond at the discretion of the court?

LINCOLN-GOLDFINICH: It`s a long established policy that asylum seekers who pass a credible interview are issued bond by ICE. And ICE, you know, in the last several months has been issuing bonds of $1,500 so that people can get out as soon as they pass their incredible fear interview. On Thursday, that policy changed, which was within 48 hours after the judges ordering reunification of the separated families within 30 days.

MADDOW: OK. And that judge`s order, that`s really important part of this. This is a federal district judge in California who issued an order, a binding order nationwide that the Trump administration needed to get kids under the age of 13, 14, younger kids back with their families, forgive me, get back with their families within 14 days and slightly older kids within 30 days.

LINCOLN-GOLDFINCH: Yes.

MADDOW: You`re saying that you think this bond change, which you have seen with your clients on the border, may have been in response to that court order?

LINCOLN-GOLDFINCH: That`s what it appears to be. It is certainly what I have seen on the ground with my clients and that`s what my colleagues are reporting from detention centers around the state of Texas.

MADDOW: Wouldn`t the court order imply they need to do the opposite? They need to be doing more to get parents out so they could be reunited with their kids? This feels to me -- the way this is -- you`re describing this with the timing and this abrupt change, it feels like they`re acting in defiance of that judge`s order.

LINCOLN-GOLDFINCH: That was my reaction. And when I spoke with a deportation officer, I said I don`t see how this is possibly in compliance with a judge`s order. And he said, I don`t see how it is either.

MADDOW: Are you seeing with your clients or any of the work you`re doing in Texas, are you seeing any effort by the government to at a systemic way, on a large scale way, in an orderly way to try to start complying with that order, to try to start getting some system in place to reunite parents and kids?

LINCOLN-GOLDFINCH: None. We`re seeing no activity towards those efforts. In fact, it`s the opposite.

MADDOW: What do you think will happen if the court order is flagrantly defied at this point, as an attorney, as somebody who is involved with these things, as somebody whose parents bear the brunt of this way in the most personal way, what do you think will happen at the end of the 14 days and then the 30-day period?

LINCOLN-GOLDFINCH: Well, I`m sure the ACLU will attempt to enforce the order in court. But, you know, on the ground what will happen is the children and the parents will continue to suffer. I spoke with three mothers today separately, all of whom were completely distraught because they haven`t seen their children in almost six weeks. Their kids are calling them from the detention centers crying, saying they want to get reunited.

I represent a little boy who is not in detention. He`s been released with his family. And cries for his mother all night in his sleep, and he`s terrified of the police because he thinks they`re going to take him away. There is, you know, really, there is a lot of suffering going on in the moment. And it`s really hard to watch as a mother and as advocate. This has been different.

MADDOW: Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, immigration attorney working in Austin -- thank you for helping us understand. I want to clear that ICE is telling us that what you have observed and what you clients are up against is not happening and we wouldn`t know the ground truth of it if you weren`t telling us about it. Thank you for helping us understand.

LINCOLN-GOLDFINCH: Thank you.

MADDOW: All right. We`ll be right back. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MADDOW: The top of the show, I showed this new report from the court today related to Michael Cohen and the 1.3 million documents that they were -- that were seized from him that went to prosecutors today.

I then wondered out loud on TV. Never wonder out loud on TV. What that series of numbers and letter was at the top of the report. Maybe a case number? What are those initials? What is this?

Soon as I said that, boom, thank you, Internet. Now we know. KMW, Kimba Maureen Wood. It`s the initials of the judge.

Thank you, Internet. Thank you, Esquire Rob, self-described extreme moderate who likes whiskey. Much obliged. You helped me get the show right tonight.

I shouldn`t ever wonder out loud on TV.

See you again tomorrow.

Now, it`s time for "THE LAST WORD WITH LAWRENCE O`DONNELL".

Good evening, Lawrence.

END

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