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Trump tweet threatens war with Iran. TRANSCRIPT: 07/23/2018. The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell

Guests: Ron Klain

Show: THE LAST WORD WITH LAWRENCE O'DONNELL Date: July 23, 2018 Guest: Ron Klain

LAWRENCE O'DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Rachel.

So, I'm a little torn on this. Should we be grateful that federal trials are not televised so we actually don't have to spend the entire day glued to the TV on jury selection and everything else in the Manafort case?

RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST, "TRMS": I got to say that I am a person who absorbs information better from print than I do from watching moving images, let alone live humans, which I'm sure you could read something into in terms from my personalities. But for me, having the transcripts of these hearings, it's like these treasured novels that come out every day and I want to bind them and keep them as books.

And that -- I think when people watch stuff happen live, you don't necessarily pay as much attention to the written record of the trial once it comes out. So, I kind of loving having the transcripts.

O'DONNELL: I'm a huge approach appreciator of transcripts. I wrote about a court case, and you do find in the transcripts, gold lives on those transcripts.

MADDOW: Yes.

O'DONNELL: So, that's what we will be living with I guess in the Manafort case.

MADDOW: I promise I'll act them all out to the very end.

O'DONNELL: Can't wait.

MADDOW: Thank you, Lawrence.

O'DONNELL: Thanks, Rachel.

Well, there are 106 days, 106 days until the election and President Trump really seems to be panicking. It's not easy to tell when the president is panicking, but panic is an understandable Trump reaction to the possibility of this guy becoming the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, or this guy becoming the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, or Nancy Pelosi becoming the speaker of the House again.

The Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee already have some skilled former prosecutors on the committee. But if the Democrats win the House in November, they will add more members, more Democratic members to the Judiciary Committee and no doubt most of those new members will be experienced former prosecutors because it will be up to the House Judiciary Committee to initiate impeachment hearings if Robert Mueller presents the committee with what they believe to be impeachable offenses by Donald Trump. And if a Democratic controlled House votes to impeach the president, when the impeachment case goes to trial in the United States Senate, Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee will be the impeachment prosecutors in the Senate trial.

And if Democrats win the House of Representatives, President Trump's life is going to change instantly. And impeachment becomes a real possibility.

And so, at the end of the president's first weekend of contemplating how the public was reacting to the news on Friday that Michael Cohen has an audiotape of Donald Trump discussing hush money payments to a woman who says she had a yearlong sexual affair with Donald Trump, the president of the United States tweeted: To Iranian President Rouhani, never ever threaten the United States again or you will suffer consequences, the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before. We are no longer a country that will stand for your demented words of violence and death. Be cautious!

The president desperately needed a change of subject from audio recordings of the president talking about payoffs to women, so the president tweeted about nuclear war last night, this time with Iran. And last night when the president tweeted that threat of a nuclear attack against Iran, the president knew that in federal court in Manhattan today, in an evidentiary filing involving the FBI raids on Michael Cohen's home and office and hotel room, the lawyers involved were going to reveal as they did today that the FBI seized 12, 12 audio items they called them, audio items from Michael Cohen that are not protected by attorney-client privilege and are now in the possession of federal prosecutors, and those audio recordings might or might not include the voice of Donald Trump.

And Donald Trump knows, Donald Trump knows if his voice is on those audio recordings because Donald Trump's lawyers had the right to listen to those recordings when the court was deciding whether or not those recordings were protected by attorney-client privilege. Donald Trump obviously wanted to create a huge distraction for Monday's news cycle and he knew witch hunt just wouldn't do it. Not anymore. The president knew he needed something bigger than witch hunt and so, the president went nuclear with Iran.

Thanks to our experience with President Trump and North Korea, we now know that when the president goes nuclear in his tweets, we are not on the brink of launching a nuclear attack. We did not know that when the president began his five months of threatening North Korea with nuclear attack, but we do know that now. We know that the president is not a homicidal mass murderer willing to kill millions of people in north and South Korea on a whim. We know that.

We know the president is not going to launch a nuclear attack on Iran. But we know the president believes he needs to launch a rhetorical attack on Iran. We know the president has decided he needs a new rocket man, a new villain somewhere far aware to distract from the stories closing in on the president and to sound tough for those Trump voters who believe Donald Trump is tough. He can't do that with North Korean anymore because the president has declared the North Korean problem solved.

One of the stories the president is going to want to be able to distract from is the prosecution of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, which a judge today decided to delay for six days. That means the Paul Manafort trial will get underway a week from tomorrow, testimony a week from tomorrow. And Donald Trump knows that nothing in that trial is going to help Republicans in the November election, that Donald Trump needs Republicans to win so that Republicans continue to control the House of Representatives where impeachment proceedings begin.

And Donald Trump's threatening of North Korea with a nuclear attack lasted five months, so we can expect his threats to Iran to last at least 106 days, at least through the election campaign this year and maybe through his own re-election campaign. And if necessary, in order to get elected, Donald Trump will start a war with Iran. Now, let me say that again because I know how crazy it sounds. In order to get elected, Donald Trump will start a war with Iran.

Now, I guess I've got to get ready for the Fox News attacks. They're going to come because I said the president of the United States will start a war with Iran to get elected. They are going to come after me for that one. It's a crazy thing to say.

And if you have been paying attention, you will notice that it is also self-contradictory to what I have already said, which is that of course Donald Trump will not go through with his threat to launch a nuclear attack on Iran. The only reason that I said in order to get elected Donald Trump will start a war with Iran is to let Trump supporters hear what that sounds like, feel what it's like, let the rage build up inside them that someone would accuse the president of the United States of being willing to start a war with Iran just to get elected. And I hope I have given them enough time already to start pouring out their rage at me on Twitter.

Not one of them. Not one Trump supporter, not one Fox News player objected in 2011 when Donald Trump tweeted: In order to get elected, Barack Obama will start a war with Iran.

In 2011, when Donald Trump was tweeting those lies about President Obama, I was the only person in the news media who I heard call Donald Trump a liar and it took the news media another five years to begin to call Donald Trump a liar and that only happened in the final weeks of his presidential campaign. And now, Donald Trump is president and now everyone in the news media not working on Fox News or right wing radio has repeatedly called the words of Donald Trump lies, and history will wonder what took them so long.

In order to get elected, Barack Obama will start a war with Iran. If you know what the news media did after Donald Trump tweeted that, they kept begging him for more interviews, to tell more crazy lies about Barack Obama and his birth certificate and they never once, not one of those interviewers ever once called any of that a lie.

And so, now, we have a president of the United States who tweets threats of nuclear war as his campaign chairman is a week away from going to trial and as his TV lawyer Rudy Giuliani is trying to figure out how to explain what the president said about buying the silence of a woman who says she had an affair with the president, and as a large majority of American voters who disapprove of President Trump step closer every day to a November election that could make New York Congressman Jerry Nadler the new chairman where his first decision might be whether to schedule hearings on the impeachment of the president of the United States.

Leading off our discussion now, John Heilemann, national affairs analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, and co-host and executive producer of Showtime's "The Circus". Also joining us is Ambassador Wendy Sherman, former undersecretary of state. She was the United States' lead negotiator for the Iran nuclear deal and is now an MSNBC global affairs contributor.

And, Ambassador Sherman, I want to start with you on this Trump nuclear threat, it sounds like, to Iran. I'm not taking it seriously, and I'm not taking it seriously based on the North Korean experience with the president and the five months he took us through threatening North Korea before completely -- reversing course completely and trying to make best friends with Kim Jong-un.

What -- how do you read what the president said about Iran?

AMBASSADOR WENDY SHERMAN, LEAD NEGOTIATOR ON IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL: Well, I certainly think it was a distraction and a deflection in the way that you described it. And somehow I think I ought to speak in all caps as if I will be heard louder, but I think we all know that when you're talking about serious things, a quieter voice makes a lot more sense.

Indeed, I think that the president is trying to goad Iran into a conflict. Secretary Pompeo gave a speech in California at the Reagan Library, and really pushed hard, saying we're for the Iranian people. And your government is corrupt and they are all hard liners and they're not going to give you a break, but we can. And he said that at the same time and invoked Ronald Reagan's call for freedom in his 1982 Westminster speech, he did that the couple of days before President Trump said he was going to take security clearances away from people who were speaking up and speaking their minds.

So, we're not exactly a beacon for freedom that Secretary Pompeo put out there and we have a president that has a playbook for Iran and a playbook North Korea but no strategy to get an outcome that ensures the safety and security of America.

O'DONNELL: John, I want to read you what Tony Schwartz said about the Trump tweet and Tony Schwartz, of course, the author, I was going to say co-author, but he's the real author of "The Art of the Deal", the first Trump book.

JOHN HEILEMANN, NBC NEWS AND MSNBC NATIONAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: I believe he wrote every word in the entire book, including the articles at the end.

O'DONNELL: And really studied Donald Trump up close and got to know him. He said, there was nothing strategic about Trump's schoolyard bully all caps tweet about Iran. When he feels weak and vulnerable, he lashes out in an effort to recover his sense of self, which is so fragile and easily wounded.

HEILEMANN: I often scare people on television when I talk about Donald Trump being dark and paranoid and ominous. I always think when he's tweeting about something, I shouldn't worry about it very much, because it's mostly, when he's tweeting about, it's something -- it is gibberish most of the time, right? And it is just deflection and projection and incoherent rambling.

The stuff he doesn't tweet about is the stuff he cares about. What doesn't he tweet about? He doesn't tweet about Playboy models, doesn't tweet about Michael Avenatti, doesn't tweet about Stormy Daniels, doesn't tweet very much about the people who he's trying to take their security clearances away. Every once in a while he does that, but then he tries to do something he did today.

But the stuff that scares him, the stuff that worries him, I'll tell you what he doesn't tweet by, he doesn't tweet about Paul Manafort very often, right? The people who are a genuine threat to Trump, the people who are as you said before, there's been a lot of panic over the last 18 months. We've seen flashes of it.

But right now, you really feel the walls closing in. I always think when he's tweeting about Iran, it's dangerous, so it concerns me. But I don't take a word of it seriously because it is really just the ultimate, look at the squirrel.

O'DONNELL: And, Ambassador Sherman, it's -- it couldn't be more strange that the place we looked for for encouragement, the encouraging side of what Donald Trump's tweet threatening a nuclear attack, the encouraging side of it is, don't worry, the president doesn't mean a word he says. Like that's where we go for comfort.

SHERMAN: Indeed. You know, we saw the fire and fury around North Korea, and we saw this pomp and circumstance instead of persistence and precision. Now, we're seeing, you know, the school boy speaking loudly and showing off how strong and powerful he is when in fact all we're seeing is weakness and security.

Iran sees this. This is a culture that believes you either resist or you surrender and they are not going to surrender one iota to Donald Trump. They understand what the game is here.

Look, I'm all for standing up for the human rights of the Iranian people and I quite agree that all of the leaders in Iran, even those that we call moderate are hard liners. But the way to help the Iranian people was the Iran deal. That helped the people of Iran by lifting sanctions and it ensured our security and the world security by ensuring there wouldn't be a nuclear weapon.

I have no idea what President Trump thinks he's going to do. A tweet is not going to get him a, quote/unquote, better deal.

O'DONNELL: And, John, a new poll NBC/"Wall Street Journal" shows that the president's approval rating is far below majority. But 88 percent of Republicans say they support the president. And, unfortunately, in most of the media, they never do the math on what that actually means since only 26 percent of voters are Republicans.

HEILEMANN: Here we go.

O'DONNELL: Eighty-eight percent of 26 percent is something like 23 percent --

HEILEMANN: Yes.

O'DONNELL: -- of voters support Donald Trump.

HEILEMANN: Republican Party is shrinking. Man, you talk about getting abused by Fox News. I'm going to get abused for saying that. The Republican Party is shrinking. The Republican coalition --

O'DONNELL: That's just a numerical fact.

HEILEMANN: It's just a numerical fact, right? So, we have -- we spent -- this will be the third time that they have said this. We spend a lot of time focused on the Trump voter. We spend a lot of time focused on Trump's base.

I don't think it's wrong that we focused because it is the way to try to understand what Trump is doing, shoring up that base, it explains a lot of his tactical maneuvers and his long-term plan to try to survive the onslaught that he is facing right now on a variety of legal fronts. But in the end, the country is not with Donald Trump.

O'DONNELL: Right.

HEILEMANN: And we normally, in every election I have ever covered, going back to 1988, we focus on independent voters, moderate voters, swing voters. We focus on all kinds of voters who make that difference in elections. Now, we don't talk about that anymore.

All we talk about is the Trump base, the Trump voters, how Republicans in a shrinking Republican coalition are with them. Instead of focusing on the fact that the ABC News poll today said 75 percent of the American people are against him attacking the intelligence agencies. Two thirds of the American people are against the -- disprove of how he handled the Helsinki. The vast majority of American is against Trump on these major issues.

And, again, I think we have to focus on his supporters because it's so important to what he's doing in the White House. But we also have to focus on the bigger picture, which is that the country, on the important issues, and this has huge political salience for these midterms and for his reelection if he gets that far. The vast majority of the country is not with him.

O'DONNELL: And, Ambassador Sherman, I just wanted to get your reaction more fully to this announcement by the White House today that not only are they thinking about taking away John Brennan's security clearance, basically FBI -- former FBI Director Comey, James Clapper, Hayden, Rice, McCabe, as Sanders (h)-- so a cross section of former Trump administration officials.

And I'm sorry to say you are not on the list. You didn't make that particular honor roll. But this is an unprecedented position by the White House. What's your reaction to that?

SHERMAN: It's unprecedented, it's absurd and quite frankly I and many other people could be on that list. Many of us have security clearances. When I left the administration, I went on the president's intelligence advisory board and kept my clearances.

Then when that term ended, the intelligence community wanted me to clean my clearances because they wanted me to debrief on the negotiations and on how to tried to get Americans who are held hostage out of countries. They wanted information.

If you are security clearances, it doesn't mean you get to read everything and know everything, it is on an as need to know basis. So, I haven't been back to the intelligence agencies, and sometime now don't have a right to do that. But I still have my clearances.

I would take it as an honor to be on that list. It is absurd. It is ridiculous. These are patriots who are standing up for the freedom that Secretary Mike Pompeo talked about the other night.

HEILEMANN: It's worst than that, though. It's not just absurd and ridiculous. It is dangerous.

SHERMAN: Yes.

HEILEMANN: And this other piece with the way the president talks about withdrawing broadcast network licenses, pulling credentials of a journalist who asks him questions that he doesn't like. This is the beginning of a step of how the president is trying to exercise actual power to try to silence people whose criticism threatens him. And it is -- it's not -- we shouldn't set our hair on fire about it, but this is an early warning sign of where this could go pretty quick.

SHERMAN: I agree.

O'DONNELL: We have to take a break here. Ambassador Wendy Sherman, John Heilemann, thank you for starting us off tonight.

And when we come back, President Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has said some contradictory things about investigations of the president.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'DONNELL: Today, a jury delayed testimony on Paul Manafort's trial by six days to allow Manafort's lawyers more time to review documents. If those lawyers end up appealing something in the Manafort case all the way to the United States Supreme Court, it is possible that two Trump appointed justices will hear that appeal if Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed.

And tonight, Senate staffers are studying Judge Kavanaugh's comments about investigating presidents, as those staffers prepare for Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing, we are one day away from the 44th anniversary of the Supreme Court rules in the Nixon case.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good morning. The Supreme Court has just ruled on the taped controversy and here's Carl Stern who has the ruling.

CARL STERN, NBC NEWS: It is a unanimous decision, Doug, 8-0, Justice Rehnquist took no art in the decision, ordering the president of the United States to turn over the tapes. It is an 8-0 unanimous opinion that President Nixon must obey the subpoenas issued by special Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski and turn over the disputed White House tapes to Mr. Jaworski. What we do not know yet is whether or not the president will obey that order.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'DONNELL: Of course, President Nixon decided he had to choice, he had to obey that order. He turned over the Watergate tapes in 15 days, after that ruling by the Supreme Court, President Nixon was forced to resign his presidency.

In new documents released to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh once suggested that the Supreme Court may have gotten the Nixon decision wrong.

In a 1999 roundtable discussion, Brett Kavanaugh said, quote: But maybe Nixon was wrongly decided. Heresy though it is to say so. Nixon took away the power of the president to control information in the executive branch by holding that the courts had power and jurisdiction to order the president to disclose information in response to a subpoena sought by a subordinate executive branch official. That was a huge step with implications to this day that most people did not appreciate sufficiently. Maybe the tension of the time led to an erroneous decision.

But as the "Associated Press" reports, Brett Kavanaugh had a more favorable assessment of the Nixon case in a 2016 law review article in which he wrote, whether it was Marbury, or Youngstown, or Brown, or Nixon, some of the greatest moments in American judicial history have been when judges stood up to the other branches were not cowed and enforced the law. That takes backbone or what some call judicial engagement.

Joining our discussion now, Jill Wine-Banks, former assistant Watergate special prosecutor and an MSNBC legal analyst, and Ron Klain, former chief of staff to Vice Presidents Joe Biden and Al Gore, and a former senior aide to President Obama. He's also a former chief counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee where confirmation hearings for Supreme Court justice take place.

And, Jill, a little 44 year retrospective there that you remember well, the Supreme Court decision and then the president basically complying with the subpoena that you and your associates had directed towards the president's tapes. What do you make of what we're seeing in Brett Kavanaugh's history on this subject?

JILL WINE-BANKS, FORMER ASSOCIATE WATERGATE SPECIAL PROSECUTOR: Well, first of all, hearing that announcement sent chills down my spine in remembering the thrill of the victory of winning that case and knowing that we would get the tapes. That was really an amazing experience.

O'DONNELL: But, Jill, can I hold you right there for a second, because one of the notes that I didn't remember until I just heard it was the suspense question of would the president comply and follow the decision issued by the Supreme Court. How much of that suspension did you feel?

WINE-BANKS: We definitely worried about whether he would and what we would do if he didn't. The same question as to how you serve a subpoena is how would you seize the records? How could you get into the White House to get the tapes if he did not comply? That would have been an issue.

And I think what worries me is that with this president you don't know that he has any respect for the rule of law and that he might not comply. That is a very scary thing to think about. I worry about that. I really do.

And I think that Judge Kavanaugh's comments are not only unduly differential to presidential power, but they ignore that giving that kind of power to him as he would probably do would make him a dictator or a king. It would not be someone who was functioning under the rule of law. The decision was correctly decided. It was a unanimous decision with one member of the court having been appointed and worked on it.

O'DONNELL: And, Ron Klain, you have worked on so many Senate confirmations of Supreme Court justices. You come across snippets of comments like this from the nominees at different times. Sometimes they are hugely meaningful, sometimes not.

Is there a way of weighing these Kavanaugh comments?

RON KLAIN, FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF TO VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Well, look, I think it is a very big deal, Lawrence, because it is a comment on an issue that as Jill suggested is front and center in our civic life right now. Is the president above the law? Does he intend to hold himself above the law? Can he be made accountable?

And if Brett Kavanaugh means what he said in 1999, the answer of that would be no. The answer would be, it would not take a Saturday night massacre to get rid of Bob Mueller. It would just take a Saturday email to get rid of Bob Mueller, if Brett Kavanaugh is right about what he said in 1999.

Because his point is that piece is, hey, the president can't be accountable, can't be forced to turn over information to any subordinate officer in the executive branch. If that's the law, then Bob Mueller is really standing on -- not even thin ice, no ice at all in Brett Kavanaugh's view.

O'DONNELL: But, Ron, let me go to your experience to seeing this kind of material in the confirmation process. Sometimes you see a statement like that in 1999 in which he's in a panel discussion and he might be speculating and might be being more provocative in order to get a conversation going and then you see years later he's written something very respectful of the Nixon case, putting it down with Marbury versus Madison as one of the most important cases that the Supreme Court should be proud of.

How do you weigh those two different things?

KLAIN: Well, I think you have to look at the entire record here. We also have the piece he wrote that we discussed the night he was named where he said he now worked at the White House. The president really shouldn't be bothered by investigations. You put that together, and it is going to be a very significant thing.

One other thing, Lawrence. You know, Brett Kavanaugh is going to sit in front of that committee and he's going to bark about respect for president, respect for president, respect for president. But he was willing in 1999 to consider overturning an 8-0 decision in the Supreme Court that was 40 years old that was decided at the same time as Roe versus Wade.

So, I think this quote from 199 is also going to go to the question of whether he respects precedent and whether or not he's willing to overturn long-standing Supreme Court decisions.

O'DONNELL: Jill, what kind of answer could judge Brett Kavanaugh give in his confirmation that would satisfy you on the subject?

There probably is none that will satisfy me. I see his comment as another blinking red light that it should warn us all and that the Republicans and Democrats in red states should take very seriously.

JILL WINE-BANKS, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: I think we need to make sure and Ron wrote a wonderful article that makes this point, that we need to see the paper trail. We need to see all of the documents. And the Republicans cannot get away with saying, oh, no, you don't get to see the documents from when he was in the White House. They demanded that in the past of Democratic nominee Lana Kagan and they should allow it for this candidate, too. We need to see everything that he has said.

O'DONNELL: Jill Wine-Banks and Ron Klain, the experts I most wanted to talk to about this subject. And I thank you very much for joining us tonight. I really appreciate it.

RON KLAIN, COLUMNIST, THE WASHINGTON POST: Thanks, Lawrence.

O'DONNELL: And when we come back, our next guest is the normally dispassionate nonpartisan congressional scholar Norm Ornstein who in his uniquely dispassionate and scholarly way will make the case that congressman Devin Nunes should be expelled from the House of Representatives.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'DONNELL: Hundred and six days from now voters in California is reliably Republican 22nd congressional district represented by Congressman Devin Nunes will have a choice of reelecting the chairman of the House intelligence committee or replacing him with Democratic challenger who on Saturday tweeted this.

We all know that Devin Nunes is a liar but it has now come to our attention he specifically lied about the FISA warrant and the FBI, going as far as to lie about the men and women tasked with keeping us safe. Nunes must be removed from the House special committee on intelligence effective immediately.

On Saturday the Trump administration did something that has never been done before. They released documents revealing the FBI's application to the FISA court to run secret surveillance on former Trump campaign official Carter Page. Those documents show that much of what Devin Nunes has said about the FBI's investigation about Carter Page is false, which should not come as much of a surprise since Devin Nunes publicly admitted that he never read the application for the FISA warrant.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you read the actual FISA applications?

REP. DEVIN NUNES (R), CALIFORNIA: No, I didn't.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'DONNELL: The documents reveal that the four federal judges who granted the initial warrant and renewed it for all appointed by Republican presidents. And they were all clearly informed that the Steele dossier was one of the pieces of evidence the FBI was considering and that the FBI informed the judges that the Steele dossier was paid for by a political opponent of a campaign. And Devin Nunes and other House Republicans have repeatedly lied about that. For those lies, the nonpartisan congressional scholar Norm Ornstein now leaves Devin Nunes should be expelled from the House of Representatives. Norm Ornstein joins us next along with John Heilemann.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'DONNELL: In a letter in 2013, Carter Page wrote, over the past half year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal adviser to the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for the presidency -- for the presidency of the G-20 summit next month.

Joining us now Norm Ornstein, a leading congressional scholar. He is with the American Enterprise institute. He is the coauthor of the book "One Nation Under Trump." And back with us, John Heilemann.

And, Norm, you have looked at what came out over the weekend in this FISA application and what Devin Nunes has been saying about it for the better part of a year. And I have to say that your reaction was as strong as it could be. Tell us why you think congressman Nunes should be expelled.

NORM ORNSTEIN, CONGRESSIONAL SCHOLAR: So there are a couple of things here, Lawrence. And of course expulsion is a pretty severe thing. We have only had five members of the House who have ever been expelled. Three of them in 1861 for giving aid and comfort to our enemies and conniving against the union. And then we had Aussi Myers (ph) with (INAUDIBLE) scam and Jim (INAUDIBLE) for corruption.

Look. When you look at the constitution, article three section three that defines treason, it is besides war adhering to their enemies, the state's, and giving aid and comfort. And I think what we have seen with Nunes going back to way before the attacks on the FISA report on the intelligence community undermining key security of the United States to when he was working with the White House against the interests of the Congress, shutting out the minority as the chairman of the intelligence committee, this is giving aid and comfort to our enemies.

And you know, I wouldn't say necessarily that I would call for the expulsion of Jim Jordan or Mark Meadows who have been utterly reckless. They don't have the leadership post Nunes had. And he has, I think, brought dishonor on the house and endangered the country and I don't say it lightly.

O'DONNELL: And John, the continued complains, and there is continuing complaint about this, that Jim Jordan is complaining saying, you know, the application never said to the judges that this Steele dossier was paid for by Hillary Clinton seeking information against Donald Trump. And that is technically true in the sense that it said all that, but it didn't identify the players. It refers to source number one, and it talks about a U.S. person and then it says that the FBI speculates that the identified U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit candidate one's campaign. And of course we would never want them to mention to the judge who candidate one is because we don't -- we want the judges to be political impartial. All of these judges were appointed by Republican presidents.

JOHN HEILEMANN, NBC NEWS AFFAIRS ANALYST: Four out of four Republican judges. Apparently they think the Republican members of the House intelligence committee think that the four Republican FISA judges are complete morons and couldn't figure out what the application was really trying to say.

If you had, if you brought any kind of like basic intelligence to read these document, every one of those FISA judges who are incredibly in fact sophisticated people who have been in the business of scrutinizing these applications for years and bring the highest level of kind of scrutiny to the.

They all know what this thing was saying. The fact that it didn't lay out exactly the kind of script that Jim Jordan or Mark Meadows that Devin Nunes would want to see, of course it is not written in the kind of hyperbolic ridiculous language that they would want, nor is it written in the language that would compromise national security in the way they would also want.

But it is, you know, if you read the material that was put out over the weekend, it is obvious that the claim they have all been making is just a flat-out lie and it's been a lie this is designed in order to prop-up - continue lies of Donald Trump want to propagate to try to protect his political scam.

O'DONNELL: Norm, Congressman Nunes is betting that his constituents at least won't be reading the 500 pages that was released this weekend which is probably a pretty good bet.

ORNSTEIN: It is a pretty good bet. And of course, just like Donald Trump, he is doubling down on the lies. And the lies go way back. This goes even beyond the FISA report itself. It is suggesting that the justice department and the FBI were working together to discredit Donald Trump, that it all began with and ended with the dossier. And we know that it began long before that as you mention with Carter Page.

Nunes is denying everything, doubling down. He has his allies in the media. You and I don't have to read all 500 pages even as redacted because we know great national security reporters like Charlie Savage has and lots of independent intelligence people have. You put it up against what Nunes wrote and it's clear that he not only lied in his memo and in what he has been saying, but he knew it.

This is not just out of ignorance. He didn't read the report, but he knew enough to know that all of this was false. This is really bad.

HEILEMANN: I wouldn't be so sure about his constituents. He is kind of (INAUDIBLE) up thing you got. The guy won reelection by 35 points in 2016.

O'DONNELL: Yes. It should be no doubt.

HEILEMANN: The most recent PBB poll has that of eight-point race. He is running (INAUDIBLE) chance. He is a career-bolic crunch prosecutor. That raise - is it now? And some people, you know, he was a toss-up. And if you go out there in the Central Valley, it was the people who are talking about it. they are ginned up. And Democrats are going to put a lot of money in that race. This would be a big raise who ever gets to win. They got to win a bunch of these races in California if they want to reclaim the House. But this one would be the one that who really win because Devin Nunes becomes such a symbol of the Trump called the personality.

I think Democrats are going to put a lot of shoulder into this race. And given how tight it is right now, eight points may sound like a lot. Pretty close to the margin of error in that race and it is never in the same vicinity of the same zip code of the margin of error ever since Devin Nunes won that seat.

O'DONNELL: Yes. I mean, he is supposed to have a 35 point lead.

HEILEMANN: He is.

O'DONNELL: He's got an eight-point lead.

John Heilemann, Norm Ornstein, thank you both very much for joining us tonight. I really appreciate it.

ORNSTEIN: Thanks, Lawrence.

O'DONNELL: And we now know that the Steele dossier did not launch the Russia investigation now headed by special counsel Robert Mueller, but the President continues to lie about that as we just discussed. Our next guest knows Christopher Steele and knows why the FBI took Christopher Steele's reporting seriously. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'DONNELL: This morning the President of the United States tweeted this set of lies.

So we now find out that it was indeed the unverified and fake dirty dossier that was paid for by crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC that was knowingly and falsely submitted to FISA and which was responsible for starting the totally conflicted and discredited Mueller witch hunt.

Joining our discussion now, Jonathan Winer, former deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement.

And Jonathan Winer, you know Christopher Steele. You have met with him. You have discussed the dossier. And you are continuing to speak with him. What is his reaction to tweets like this from the President?

JONATHAN WINER, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, Christopher Steele is a man who is utterly committed to the truth and he believes when he has information that is important for the United States to know and the British government to know, he should provide it to them. In 2016, he had information about an attack on democracy, by far and adversary, and he thought it was tremendously important for the United States government know that in real-time so could respond.

O'DONNELL: And when is the last time you spoke to Christopher Steele?

WINER: Probably either over the weekend or late last week.

O'DONNELL: And what is his feeling about the way the president refers to them?

WINER: The whole thing is perplexing and distressing for him. He is completely committed to protecting and preserving and strengthening American democracy as he is committed to the British system. He believes in our country and he wants to see the country be open, free, and have the truth about what happened. And so, when he gets attacked, he finds it strange, disturbing, distressing. But I know he believes in what he did. And he is committed to the cause of the truth.

O'DONNELL: And, of course, the material released over the weekend indicate that pretty much everything that the President and Republicans have been saying about the Steels dossier is false, but tell us what his relationship was with the FBI and why the FBI decided that they should take his information seriously.

WINER: Well, my understanding was that he provided a great deal of information to the FBI on the soccer scandal and provided critical information to them in connection to that. Of course, they and other elements of U.S. government would have known him when he was in the British intelligence service. So he is a known (INAUDIBLE) who goes way back who has been found reliable over a great many years by great different people.

O'DONNELL: And what is your own assessment of the Steele dossier as of tonight?

WINER: Well, there is a lot in it that was fresh and shocking in the summer of 2016 when he was uncovering it which has been proven to be correct. There is a lot in it that is as of yet the proofs are unknown. Now back then when he wrote the shocking material about Mr. Trump's personal life. We didn't know about people like Stormy Daniels and their relationship to the President. That was not in front of us. There is a lot we didn't know about Mr. Trump's other activities that has been exposed since. What's critical is that we get to the full truth. Ultimately, the dossier and Mr. Steele will be judged by history and what proves to be true. So far the track record is pretty good.

O'DONNELL: Jonathan Winer, thank you very much for joining us. Really appreciate it.

WINER: You are welcome.

O'DONNELL: Tonight's LAS WORD is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'DONNELL: History was made in the Boston police department today which has been making history since Boston established the very first police force in America in 1838. In 1851, Bernard Maginskin (ph) became the first Irish police officer in Boston and the first Irish police officer in America.

Barnie Maginskin (ph) was not warmly welcomed to the police force. There were protest meetings held in Boston's venue (ph) hall with speakers claiming that it would be a conflict of interest for an Irish immigrant to be a police officer because Irish immigrants were committing so much of the crime in Boston.

But Irish immigrants kept coming to Boston and kept joining the police force. And by the turn of the century, the Irish had complete control of Boston police department for the next 120 years almost every Boston police commissioner was Irish-American.

Bill Evans whose brother was the Boston police commissioner before him is the current Boston Irish police commissioner. Here he is at a press conference this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL EVANS, BOSTON POLICE COMMISSIONER: I came on this job 39 years ago as a cadet on July 9th, 1980. I was a student at Suffolk University. I never dreamed of the day I would be up here as a commissioner. I was a patrolman for years, a sergeant, a lieutenant and a captain for 12 years and superintendent and now commissioner. There has been a lot of challenges out there, but I think we are in a good place.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'DONNELL: The integration of black police officers did not move as quickly as the integration of the Irish police officers. Horacio Homer became the first black police officer in 1878. Hundred years later, black officers were still a tiny minority in the Boston police department. But as Bill Evans said today, we are in a better place now.

Like the population of Boston, the Boston police department is now about 24 percent black. And today after commissioner Evans announced his retirement, Marty Walsh, the Irish-American mayor of Boston a pointed the highest ranking police officer in the history of the department, superintendent in-chief William Gross to be Boston's next police commissioner, Boston's first African-American police commissioner.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM GROSS, APPOINTED COMMISSIONER, BOSTON POLICE: Commissioner Evans, he came on the job before me. We have things in common. He was a Boston police cadet. I was a Boston police cadet. It shows that any kid in Boston and we were poor and made it, will have the opportunity to be the mayor or commissioner or chief if we all work together.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'DONNELL: If we all work together.

Boston's new police commissioner, Bill Gross gets tonight's LAST WORD.

THE 11TH HOUR WITH BRIAN WILLIAMS starts now.

END

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