Summary
Interview with Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO). Steve Bannon is expected to turn himself into New York prosecutors likely for his role in getting people to donate money to build a private border wall.
Transcript
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST, "ALL IN": That is "ALL IN" on this Wednesday night.
ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT starts right now.
Good evening, Alex.
ALEX WAGNER, MSNBC HOST: Good morning, Chris.
I can`t -- still can`t get my mind around Republican candidates saying, I support the 1849 law that governs women`s reproductive freedom.
HAYES: I am -- I am so obsessed with that sound. I was just talking about this day because it`s so rare. I mean, it`s an amazing bit of honesty, but it`s so rare in the year 2022, you hear somebody being like I want -- give me the -- I want the 1849 one. Give me that 1849.
WAGNER: 1849, a lot was happening in America at that point.
HAYES: Yeah.
WAGNER: I`ll just leave it there.
HAYES: Yeah.
WAGNER: Thanks as always, Chris. Good show.
HAYES: You bet.
WAGNER: And thanks to all of you at home for joining us this hour.
Before today, the last time you saw one of these ceremonies was the spring of the year 2012. President Barack Obama was wrapping up his first term in office with the tradition that goes back decades, hosting the previous president for the unveiling of his official presidential portrait.
On that day in May of 2012, Obama made this statement about the point of these portraits, as an enduring memory of a president`s temporary time in office serving the people.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, THEN-U.S. PRESIDENT: The White House is many things at once. It`s a working office. It`s a living museum. It`s an enduring symbol of our democracy.
But at the end of the day when the visitors go home and the lights go down, a few of us are blessed with the tremendous honor to actually live here. I think it`s fair to say that every president is acutely aware that we are just temporary residents. We`re renters here. We`re charged with the upkeep until our lease runs out. But we also leave a piece of ourselves in this place.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WAGNER: We are renters here, charged with the upkeep until our lease runs out.
In 2012, we did not know how prescient those remarks were. There was no President Biden fighting for the soul of this nation. There was no President Trump fighting to stay in office. No insurrectionist storming the Capitol, no top-secret classified records taken from the White House and stored in a Florida closet -- none of that had happened yet. In fact, we wouldn`t see an official White House portrait unveiling again for another years.
Today, President Obama returned to the White House where his friend and now President Joe Biden unveiled Obama`s portrait, alongside that of the former First Lady Michelle Obama. During today`s event, the former president echoed the point he made back in 2012, that presidents are renters at the White House and that their time there is temporary.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: I`ve always described the presidency as a relay race. You take the baton from someone, you run your leg as hard and as well as you can, and then you hand it off to someone else, knowing that your work will be incomplete. The portraits hanging in the White House chronicle, the runners in that race. Each of us tasked with trying to bring the country we love closer to its highest aspirations.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WAGNER: Now, the reason this event was held today and not during Trump`s term in office, the reason it`s been a decade since we`ve seen one of these unveilings is because for the first time in U.S. history, the incumbent president refused to honor his predecessor with this rite of passage. Trump never scheduled the ceremony. And given the content of Obama`s address today, it might have been a little awkward for Trump given that he had zero intention of leaving the White House when his term was up.
Obama`s remarks about the peaceful transfer of power both today and in 2012 stand in stark contrast to the president who thought he owned the place, that he was the White House, a president who tried to overthrow the results of a legitimate election and would have preferred that President Obama be redlined out of the opportunity to rent the White House.
Trump made his campaign and his presidency about being the antithesis of Obama, about rejecting Obama`s legacy, rejecting inclusion and eventually rejecting the will of the people. You saw it early. You saw it as early as 2011 when Trump went on national TV saying President Obama should show his papers, show his birth certificate. Those claims continued through the years, along with the false assertion that Obama must be Muslim, not from here, not deserving the office of the presidency.
You saw Trump come down that escalator in 2015 to announce his bid for office while claiming Mexico is not sending their best. You saw it after far-right violence in Charlottesville in 2017 when then President Trump defended neo-Nazi violence by stating there were, quote, very fine people on both sides.
You saw it again and again and again during Trump`s presidency, all the way up to January 6th, when Trump refused to leave office and encouraged a crowd of his supporters that he knew were armed to storm the U.S. Capitol while the 2020 election results were being certified, to try to keep himself in that house as if he wasn`t a renter at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but an owner.
[21:05:15]
Leading the charge to keep the -- to the Capitol building, to keep Trump in power, there were two violent racist extremist groups, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. Like Donald Trump, the Oath Keepers were spurred into action after Barack Obama was elected president. The group launched in the year 2009, in April. They recruited members throughout Obama`s first term in office.
Their tactics became more aggressive and more violent in after Obama`s reelection and that notorious standoff against the federal government at Bundy Ranch. Since then, the Oath Keepers have evolved from an obscure group to a household name, a primary example of anti-government extremism, a group that literally stormed the seat of democracy in an effort to keep its chosen candidate in power against the will of the American people.
Today, a judge declined to delay the trial of the leader of the Oath Keepers for seditious conspiracy. That first trial will now go ahead three weeks from now as planned.
Also today, the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extreme -- the ADL League, the ADL Center on Extremism released this report unmasking just who the Oath Keepers really are. The ADL combed through more than 38,000 names listed on leaked Oath Keeper membership lists.
What`d they find, they found that more than 370 members who work in law enforcement, they found more than 100 members who are actively in the military, and more than 80 members who are either running for or serving in public office as of August of this year.
And it`s more than just those demographics. The Oath Keepers membership lists included religious figures, teachers, civil engineers, firefighters, EMTs, people from all parts of American society, all of which raises fresh concerns about the ability of this kind of anti-government extremist group to seep into our law enforcement, into our government, into our daily lives.
Joining us now is Oren Segal, vice president of the Center on Extremism at the ADL, the Anti-Defamation League.
Oren, thank you for being here tonight.
OREN SEGAL, ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE CENTER ON EXTREMISM VP: thanks.
WAGNER: So I want to get to the report in a minute, but I want to contextualize this for everybody who`s sort of trying to make sense of this moment when it feels like violent extremism is surging in a way that I think shocks a lot of Americans. And we`ve played that sound of Obama at the White House for a reason. It`s in his first term in office that the origin story of the Oath Keepers begins, right?
What can you tell us about how Obama was a kind of catalytic event for this kind of extremist group?
SEGAL: So the Oath Keepers, in a sense, when they were created, benefited from three things that were very problematic for them. One, a Democrat took office, Obama specifically. Second, social media began to really take off, so they were able to spread their message, amplify it to a whole new set of people. But the third was the financial crisis. We were in the wake of that.
What happens during a financial crisis, people feel lost, they`ve actually lost a lot of their livelihood, and they`re looking to explain away the suffering that they may feel on other people.
WAGNER: Uh-huh.
SEGAL: Enter extremists, enter the Oath Keepers, who are also, by the way, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, you know, slinging these types of accusations against the new president at that time.
And so, those three things were tapping into people`s concerns, their grievances and their fears and offering what, you know, they thought was an alternative to the tyrannical government.
WAGNER: And then boom, four years later, or eight years later, I guess they get Donald Trump who gives voice to a lot of this grievance, right? What happens in the run-up to the 2020 election, what do you see in terms of Oath Keeper membership, about the sort of planning activities in and around this group, I mean how is that a surge moment for them?
SEGAL: Yeah, so it seems like many years ago, but the pandemic wasn`t that long, and during 2020 in particular, they used that as an opportunity to go out and protest, you know, vaccines and masks and any effort that they claimed would take away their rights and the rights of the people.
And so, you know, this is part of their ongoing sort of conspiracy theories, right? They point to new world order, concentration camps around the country, that people are taking away their guns or their rights to not get a vaccine or put on a mask. And so, they were using that moment at the time where an election was coming up. And then when the election happened, boom, there was another conspiracy that was being spread from the highest office, from social media, and they did what extremists do -- they never miss an opportunity to exploit a crisis and try to win hearts and minds.
[21:10:04]
WAGNER: And they recruit.
SEGAL: And they recruit.
WAGNER: And we`re seeing that again, right? I don`t know if it`s necessarily from the Oath Keepers but the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago has -- I mean, we have reporting, I think it`s from -- Facebook is having to crack down on groups like the Boogaloo Boys who are a violent extremist group on the fringes. They`re recruiting in the wake of the FBI search, again because that feeds into this paranoid conspiracy that the government, the jack-booted thugs, the black helicopters are coming from them.
Is the same true for the Oath Keepers? Have you seen a Mar-a-Lago as an inflection point in terms of recruitment?
SEGAL: So the Oath Keepers, it`s important to note, I mean, are a bit in disarray.
WAGNER: Yeah.
SEGAL: In part because an insurrection happened and we saw some accountability over people are arrested, including a lot of Oath Keepers, right? Some of them facing seditious conspiracy charges.
WAGNER: Stuart Rhodes.
SEGAL: Right, Stuart Rhodes, their leader, ostensible leader, is arrested. His lawyer is arrested. So, right now, they`re actually in a moment where they`re not exactly sure what they should be doing, their activity is well down than it`s ever been.
But this is where our report comes in. Efforts to undermine our democratic institutions remain, efforts not only for extremists to be part of the public discourse, but part of our public institutions --
WAGNER: Yeah.
SEGAL: -- that continues and that`s what we`re trying to shed light on.
WAGNER: I mean, that -- and that`s -- let`s get to the report now.
So the idea that you have people who are in government working actively against government and who have paranoid conspiracies about the government, but who are representatives of said government is very confusing I think to a lot of people. How does that work and why does that work?
SEGAL: So the Oath Keepers are looking to recruit primarily from the holy trinity if you will -- law enforcement, military, first responders. And what they`re appealing to is this idea of an oath to defend the Constitution. So they`re saying you all need to be part of our group because you said you would defend the Constitution but not our government.
WAGNER: Right.
SEGAL: They separate the two. And so, that`s why they`re able to appeal to those specific audiences but really they`re just selling a range of conspiracy theories and trying again to appeal to people based on patriotism.
WAGNER: Well, and I`m sure having another Democrat in office helps them promote this idea that that government is bad and that the real government, the pro-constitution government in exile if you will is the thing they need to defend and fight for. What is so shocking in this report is the degree to which it is a widespread swath of American society, right?
I mean, the fact that you`re talking about civil servants, teachers, and I will say there is not -- I mean, the numbers themselves are large, but I think a lot of people will say, oh, well, you know, we`re talking about 300 here, 370 there, what is revealed in the report is the degree to which these people are in turn influencers in their respective fields, right? In some -- a member of the Marine Corps -- I`ll read this quote from the report.
In some cases, individuals offered to use their positions in the military to spread the Oath Keepers` message to those around them. A member of the Marine Corps noted, I currently coordinate ground movements, I have influence on nearly 46,000 marines and sailors.
These guys are emissaries for a poisonous message, are they not? I mean, what -- how does -- how do they think it works?
SEGAL: It`s not just emissaries for poisonous message. These people are there to protect our communities. All of us.
And so, when you subscribe potentially to a membership list that is essentially a known extremist movement, they were an extremist movement when they started, they`re an extremist movement now, you`re not only legitimizing those points of view, but it`s not unreasonable for people to ask, well, they have access to information that normal people may not. What are they going to do with that?
And so, this is about infiltrating our democratic institutions, creating fear and anxiety. And what we`re trying to do is shed light on the fact that we need to hold people accountable in this country and you do that by sharing the data. Data drives policy, understanding where the threats are coming from will help us be in a better place so that we can respond.
WAGNER: It is a shocking report, especially in these times against the backdrop of news that we have today.
Oren Segal, vice president of the Center on Extremism at the Anti- Defamation League, thank you for your time tonight and thank you for your work.
Up next here tonight, Senate Republicans jumped to Donald Trump`s defense even amidst "Washington Post`s" reporting that the documents he had at Mar- a-Lago included one about nuclear capabilities. Senator Michael Bennet, a member of the Senate Intel Committee, joins us next.
And Steve Bannon gets ready to turn himself in to New York prosecutors tomorrow morning, despite a pardon from Donald Trump. Former prosecutor Barb McQuade joins us ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:19:32]
WAGNER: If you thought the latest "Washington Post" reporting that the FBI retrieved an ultra-classified top-secret document at Trump`s beach club, one describing a foreign government`s nuclear capabilities, if you thought that would make Republican lawmakers a bit more hesitant in their defense of the former president -- well, please do think again.
Here was Missouri senator, Republican Josh Hawley, today describing what he sees as his most pressing concern about the whole search at Mar-a-Lago and hint the word nuclear is not in it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOSH HAWLEY (R-MO): What I have a lot of concerns about is the FBI raiding the home of the likely presidential nominee in 2024, the former president of the United States. And particularly as we learn more and more about what`s going on with the FBI, and I got to tell you, I mean, maybe there is some valid explanation for why the FBI raised Mar-a-Lago, but if there is, we haven`t heard it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WAGNER: We haven`t?
His colleague, Texas senator and member of the intelligence committee, John Cornyn, he chimed in, quote: I know the Presidential Records Act makes those not his records. I think what Merrick Garland decided to do was heavy-handed and frankly naive. What he`s done now is create a precedent that the Department of Justice can execute a search warrant against a former president when alternative means to accomplish the same result would have been available.
It`s not clear what Senator Cornyn is suggesting when he says alternative means, considering the government tried asking Trump to return these documents for more than a year and a half before finally executing a search warrant. It should also be noted that the FBI found over 100 classified documents, including that one related to nuclear weapons as part of a search that happened after Trump`s lawyers signed a statement swearing that there were no more documents located on the premises.
But sure, maybe there are some other alternative means that just haven`t been pursued here.
Still, despite Republican insistence that the recovery method is somehow more egregious than what was actually recovered, reality tells us the stashing of super secret documents at a beach club private event space, that might be the real problem here, not only for Trump but for national security. Right now, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, ODNI, is conducting an assessment to see just how much damage has been done and this latest reporting from "The Washington Post" only makes that work more urgent.
ODNI`s damage assessment is happening right now despite a decision from a Trump appointed Judge Aileen Cannon to use a special master to review all the documents taken from Mar-a-Lago. The judge`s order put a temporary halt on the FBI`s criminal investigation but it weirdly permitted the ODNI`s damage assessment to continue unimpeded, or at least that was the judge`s intent. But that is not how it works in reality.
Here`s how former CIA officer David Priess sees it, according to "The Wall Street Journal". Quote It is at best difficult and more likely impossible to do a meaningful ODNI damage assessment while the FBI investigation is stalled. ODNI needs to know what documents were at Mar-a-Lago and who may have looked at them, Priess said. That information is coming from the FBI`s investigation. The ODNI assessment is operating in a vacuum without information from an active investigation of who had access to those documents.
So this complicated ruling from that Trump appointed judge could likely hamper not just a criminal investigation into the former president but also the attempt to get to the bottom of a potentially deadly serious intelligence failure.
Joining us now is Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, who is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Senator Bennet, thanks for being here. Always good to see you.
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET (D-CO): Thanks, Alex, for having me. Congratulations on the show.
WAGNER: Thank you. Thank you for being on the show.
Let me -- let me just first get your assessment of what Republicans in the Senate think of everything that`s happened vis-a-vis Mar-a-Lago, because on one hand, you have Josh Hawley effectively saying the findings are no big deal, it`s the method by which they were found.
And then on the other hand, you have Senator Marco Rubio and I`ll quote what he said to "Politico" this morning, saying they never came to us and said there`s a bunch of missing classified information, speaking of the FBI. That`s part of the problem here. If this was so serious, it should have been raised to the congressional level. We get briefed all the time on counterintelligence threats.
Rubio seems to be taking this fairly seriously and seems to almost be complaining that Senate Intel hasn`t had a briefing on this.
One, does Senator Rubio have a point? And two, where do you see Senate Republicans on this? Is there any part of unity? What sense do you get?
BENNET: Well, I would say on the Intelligence Committee, we`ve worked in a bipartisan way over many years to take this stuff seriously. And if it turns out what Donald Trump has done is move classified documents to Mar-a- Lago in an incredibly unsafe and dangerous way, I expect that the Intelligence Committee will do its oversight in a bipartisan way, and we`re going to help ascertain what the Intelligence Committee has to figure out, which is what kind of damage was actually done to our national security.
I`m not as surprised as Senator Rubio is about the sequence of events here in the sense that the administration had asked over again, because they figured out that some documents had ended up there, and then Donald Trump`s lawyers apparently said -- testified that they had sent all the documents back. And now, we`ve -- it turns out that it`s not true, and it turns out that some of those may have to deal with very, very sensitive matters.
[21:25:03]
So I`m not at all surprised that the FBI has now taken the action that they`ve taken. We are going to now have to do our oversight as well.
WAGNER: Let me ask you about how compromised we may be here and get your view from the perch of the Intel Committee. How worried are you that clandestine operations could have been compromised here or could be?
BENNET: I`m really worried -- I`m really worried and people need to understand this isn`t just the substance of what`s in those documents. We obviously don`t know that yet, but that could be very damaging in and of itself. But then, what could also be revealed by the substance is the way in which that intelligence was collected, we call that the sources and methods of intelligence gathering, and that`s particularly sensitive when it has to do with human intelligence because adversaries by seeing the perception of piece of evidence sometimes can say, well, we know exactly who it is that have access to that, and that can become very dangerous for people that are working with the United States in our -- in our national security efforts.
That`s what I`m really worried about here and obviously, we`re not going to know for a while how damaging it is.
WAGNER: I -- you know, you focus on adversaries, but what about our allies? Because there are plenty of governments that share intelligence with us and when they hear about the former president squirreling away documents that were in a safe, in a SCIF, and taking them down to his beach club that employs many people from outside of the country and in a closet that was not a SCIF to say the least -- I mean, does that chill our you know bilateral relationships with people who should we share intelligence with?
BENNET: Sure, it can be. I mean, I think that people understand that when you`re dealing with Donald Trump, you`re dealing with, you know, hopefully a unique character. But that`s why I think it`s really important for Republicans to stand up as well and say if this happened, it`s completely unacceptable. I mean, we have a standard of conduct in this government. We expect people to protect the nation`s secrets.
And one of the things that I`m really worried about is that people, you know, in a sense become apologists for Donald Trump and ratify behavior that just simply can`t be ratified and could be a real threat to our national security, if somehow it became normalized.
WAGNER: Well, yeah, and I hear you on the point that Donald Trump is a particular character in American history. But it does overall eat it away at America`s reputation in the same way that pulling out of accords like the Iran nuclear deal or the Paris climate agreement.
BENNET: No doubt (ph).
WAGNER: I mean, it`s about taking America seriously here. And if the president of the United States, regardless of how comical a character he is, is doing this kind of stuff, one wonders how seriously our allies want to take us when it comes to intelligence sharing.
BENNET: Well, there`s no -- there`s no doubt about that. I don`t think I call them comical. I don`t find them comical. But I do think -- I mean, one way of thinking about what you just said is how damaging it would have been to our relationships with countries all over the world if we`d re-elected Donald Trump president of the United States. They wouldn`t have believed it, and I think it would have destroyed our reputation.
On the other hand, I`ve just come back from a month in Colorado traveling all over the state, talking about the infrastructure bill that we passed, talking about the bipartisan postal reform bill and bipartisan gun bill and bipartisan veterans bill that we`ve passed, the CHIPS bill which is the first bill since Reagan was president where we said, you know what, we`re not just going to privilege people that want to make stuff as cheaply as possible in China over lots of other interests that we have, and then the most important climate bill that any government has passed.
I mean think about what that message is to the rest of the world versus the chaos that Donald Trump represented -- to say nothing of the kind of law breaking potentially that you see in the case of what`s going on in Mar-a- Lago now.
So, my point is the standard of success here should not just be, did you steal classified documents from Washington, take them to your beach club? The standard of success is, can we overcome the chaos of the Trump years, restore our democracy in a way that makes it work again for the American people and create an economy that when it grows, it grows for everybody? I think we can and I think we will.
WAGNER: I think the technical term there is raising the bar.
Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, thank you for your time tonight. Best of luck.
BENNET: Thanks, Alex.
WAGNER: Still ahead here tonight, in just a few hours, Steve Bannon is expected to turn himself into New York prosecutors likely for his role in getting people to donate money to build a private border wall. Yes, really. That amazing story behind that grift is next.
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[21:34:30]
WAGNER: These may look like Fox News articles, but they`re not. They are all from early 2019. Quote: Customs and Border Patrol officers seized $3.8 million worth of meth, heroin and fentanyl on the Arizona border. Donate now.
Border patrol in Yuma overwhelmed, 11,000 apprehensions in three days. Donate now.
A private group had started a GoFundMe campaign that fed off of Trump-led fears that our border was in crisis, and that group used those fears in order to privately fund a border wall.
[21:35:01]
It was a viral hit. It raised four million dollars in its first three days. The whole thing was so successful that former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon got involved.
Bannon had the bright idea that they shouldn`t just raise money to put into federal coffers to build the wall, but that they should build the wall themselves, cut out that pesky government middleman.
All in all, the group raised more than $25 million from thousands of donors. But when it came time to actually build the wall, the operation wasn`t exactly a well-oiled machine. This is the first wall they built, it is in Sunland Park, New Mexico.
One of the major problems with this wall is that it is just over half a mile long, so you could always just walk like five minutes to get around it. The second flaw is that the wall itself is comically scalable. This is a video of an eight-year-old girl climbing a replica of it in about one minute.
If that weren`t enough, it turns out that they built this wall too close to a federal monument which meant which meant that they were forced to build a gate in the center of the wall and keep it open all day long every day.
Then there was wall number two, the group`s final wall. This one was three miles long and built along the Rio Grande in Mission, Texas. The contractor for the project described it as the Lamborghini of walls. I didn`t even know such thing existed.
But when hydrologists and engineers inspected the wall, they discovered that it was built too close to the river and the land it was built on was eroding into the river so quickly that the whole thing was at risk of falling down. It proved to be so embarrassing that President Donald Trump, Mr. Build the Wall, he distanced himself from the whole project, tweeting: I disagreed with doing this very small tiny section of wall. It was only done to make me look bad and perhaps it now doesn`t even work.
Yes, perhaps. And it turned out to be a wise move for President Trump to distance himself from that wall because the very next month, Steve Bannon and the rest of the We Build the Wall fundraising crew, they were all indicted on charges of fraud.
Federal prosecutors allege that despite claiming to be a volunteer organization where even the most senior member didn`t get a penny in salary, Bannon and his partners took hundreds of thousands of donated dollars and used them for personal expenses like travel and paying off credit card debt. Two of the other people involved in this scheme pleaded guilty, but Bannon himself had an ace up his sleeve.
In President Trump`s very last hours in the White House, he pardoned Steve Bannon for his role in this scheme. And that is where this whole crazy story stood until today. "The Washington Post" broke news late last night that Steve Bannon is expected to surrender himself to state-level prosecutors in New York tomorrow and face a new criminal indictment. People familiar with the situation told "The Washington Post" that the prosecution is likely to mirror aspects of the federal case in which Bannon was pardoned.
So Bannon was pardoned federally, but the Manhattan DA`s office seemed to have picked up that picked up that case and now it looks like Steve Bannon may actually face justice at the state level.
So joining us now to help us understand exactly how all of this works is Barbara McQuade, former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, and a professor at the University of Michigan law school.
Barb, thank you for being with us tonight and helping us decipher this strange conundrum of Steve Bannon.
BARBARA MCQUADE, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: I`m glad to be with you, Alex.
WAGNER: So, first, let`s talk about this. So Bannon is pardoned on the federal level by Donald Trump in the final hours of his presidency, but now can face the state and prosecution on the state level. Should other Trump acolytes be concerned especially those who have received pardons from the former president?
MCQUADE: Yes, a pardon can only act against federal prosecution and so you know in this country, we have something we refer to as dual sovereignty, both states and federal government can charge people for the same crime. And so, even though Steve Bannon was pardoned for this conduct at the federal level, most states also have fraud statutes on the books and so as you said, it`s expected to reflect very much and mirror the federal charges. I would imagine state charges under New York law will look very similar.
And so, you`re right as you think about all the other people who receive pardons, corrupt public officials, could be charged again as long as the statute of limitations has not expired, with parallel state prosecutions.
WAGNER: And that state has standing to prosecute, right? Which they do in some of these financial crimes, especially here in New York City. I wonder what you make of the chasm between Steve Bannon`s statement today about this and the position he finds himself in.
I will read to those who are not familiar Steve Bannon`s statement of defiance: Just days after being swatted three different times by deranged thugs from New York City inspired by the Biden administration to assassinate me by police, the Soros-backed DA Alvin Bragg has now decided to pursue phony charges against me 60 days before the midterm election because "War Room", that would be his podcast, is the major source of the MAGA grassroots movement.
[21:40:18]
They are coming after all of us, not only President Trump and myself. I am never going to stop fighting. In fact I have not yet begun to fight. They will have to kill me first.
Here`s what I don`t get, he`s willingly turning himself in, Barb. How does this all square? They will have to kill me first, I have not yet begun to fight, but it appears that he`s cooperating with prosecution.
MCQUADE: Yeah. You know, it seems that so often with bullies, the bark is worse than the bite. Although I really am concerned about the -- they`ll have to kill me for his rhetoric, because it can tend to inflame people who listen to this, people will believe this.
You know, the idea that somehow he`s protected from the Justice Department`s memo on election sensitivities, he`s nobody. He`s not candidate. He`s not on the ballot. He`s -- you know, at best these days a podcaster. There`s absolutely no basis to suggest that they should stand down on him. And so, you know, all of this rhetoric is really a bunch of nonsense.
And, you know, if he wants to go the hard way, they`ll come arrest him. But instead, he has a lawyer who has negotiated a self-surrender, which is not the kind of courtesy every defendant gets by the way. And so, they are really giving him -- I think a real accommodation here by allowing himself to turn himself in.
WAGNER: Are you surprised that he`s doing the self-surrender given the fact that he has been convicted on conte -- like he`s been charged and convicted on contempt of Congress for refusing to testify and yet, in this instance, he`s cooperating and turning himself in?
MCQUADE: I`m not surprised. I mean, what alternative does he have? He could run, he could try to you know escape and get out of the country. But he`ll be found. There`s really not a good alternative.
You know, people sometimes flee when charges are filed but U.S. Marshals almost always finds them, and then the consequences are worse because in addition to the underlying charges, now you`re also facing unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.
So he may talk a good game, but I think he`ll be there when the court hearing begins tomorrow.
WAGNER: I think talk is the operative word there, right?
Barbara McQuade, former U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Michigan, thanks as always, Barb, for shining a light on all of this.
Up next, Republicans in one state fight attempts by voters to put abortion rights on the ballot in November. Republicans who allegedly believe in states rights. That`s next.
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[21:47:12]
WAGNER: See if you can spot the pattern here. This was Congressman Jack Bergman, a Michigan Republican on the day the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade: The ruling today on Roe v. Wade properly returns power to the states and ends decades of bad precedent.
And here`s how Colorado Republican Congressman Ken Buck responded the same day: The power to decide this profound moral question has officially returned to the states where it will be debated and settled in the way it should be in our democratic society by the people.
Here`s Minnesota Republican Tom Emmer: Every life is precious and the decision to defend it should remain with the states.
Or how about Arizona Republican Paul Gosar? This is not a federal issue. This is a state issue. We the people. The states gave the federal government limited powers and we have to take them back.
So what do all those statements have in common? They`re all from Republicans, they`re all really big on the idea that abortion should be decided by the states, and they all just happen to have been issued by co- sponsors of a federal bill to ban abortion nationwide, a bill that would take away power from, you know, the states.
"The Washington Post" found that 28 of the Republican co-sponsors of that federal abortion ban issued statements after the Dobbs ruling saying abortion should be left up to the states. "The Post" reached out to 28 of them, all of them, only six of them responded to defend their position.
The Republican line about abortion being an issue that should be left up to the states has always been a red herring, an attempt to distract from the real agenda of blocking access to abortion by any means necessary, and nowhere is that more clear right now than in the state of Michigan.
Earlier this year, hundreds of thousands of Michigan citizens signed a petition to put abortion rights up for a vote. More than 750,000 signatures were gathered, almost twice the number that were needed. But that effort to get abortion on the ballot that effort has hit a roadblock.
Last week, the state`s board of canvassers made up of two Democrats and two Republicans deadlocked on whether to advance the ballot initiative with both Republicans deciding against putting abortion up for a vote at the state level.
Abortion rights groups quickly appealed the decision to the state Supreme Court. They asked the court to respond by today and that is because abortion rights advocates in Michigan are racing against the clock.
Absentee ballots have to be available for all registered voters by September 29th, which means all ballots must be finalized and ready to print by this Friday. It`s Wednesday, if you`re not keeping track of the calendar.
Today, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed a brief in support of getting that measure on the ballot and the court`s decision about what will actually be printed on it and what voters will actually get to decide on come November. Well, that could come at any moment.
[21:50:05]
Joining us now is Nicole Wells Stallworth, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan, one of the groups fighting to give Michigan voters a chance to vote on abortion rights this November.
Ms. Stallworth, thank you for your time tonight.
NICOLE WELLS STALLWORTH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF PLANNED PARENTHOOD ADVOCATES OF MICHIGAN: Thank you for having me, Alex.
WAGNER: So let`s talk about what the court`s going to do here. I know that the abortion rights groups have asked the court to respond by this evening. It`s 9:50 in the east. What`s your expectation in terms of a reply from the court at this point.
STALLWORTH: Yeah. I mean, as you noted in your opening remarks, the court legally, they have until Friday to respond to our request to find our number of signatures significant to be placed on the November ballot. We are awaiting their decision and in the meantime, we`ve not lost sight of what`s truly at stake here. We understand that Michigan voters recognize that this is not a partisan issue at all. Michigan voters recognize and understand that this is truly a matter of who gets to make decisions about their personal health care. Michigan voters understand and want those decisions to be made between themselves and their doctors and that`s what we`re really fighting for and what`s at stake here.
WAGNER: I think it bears mentioning how critical Michigan is geographically in terms of access to reproductive choice. I think we have a map here that just shows how much abortion access has been curtailed, sort of a curtain falling over many parts of the country. What does it mean to have Michigan be a safe place for women seeking abortions? I mean what does that mean practically from the perspective of Planned Parenthood?
STALLWORTH: Yeah. Sure, you make a really great point. Right now, about one third of the country has lost access to abortion completely after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, and that means that Michigan is a place where patients are turning for their abortion care.
At Planned Parenthood of Michigan, we have certainly seen that kind of increase. We`ve had to increase capacity by about percent for abortion appointments. We are seeing patients travel to Michigan from all over the country. We`ve seen patients from Oklahoma as far as Texas. Many of them are coming in from Ohio to receive the kind of care that they medically deserve.
WAGNER: What about -- I mean, one thinks that the Republican resistance to this is deeper than -- well, I don`t even know what they offer as in terms of their resistance to be honest since they consider this a states rights issue. But politically, it -- absolutely, reproductive choice is something that favors Democrats, right? I mean, you`re seeing women cutting across educational backgrounds which tends to be the dividing line strongly favor Democrats who are standing on a platform of reproductive choice. Do you think that political reality is fueling some of the Republican resistance you`re seeing in the state of Michigan to putting this on the ballot?
STALLWORTH: You know, I really find it to be incredibly unfortunate to see partisan politics undermine our democracy, particularly what happened at the board of canvassers last week here in Michigan. But I think we have some lessons to be learned here because we`re living and existing in a world that we`ve not seen before, which is the fact that people don`t have access to the basic health care into abortion that we`ve seen for over the last years.
WAGNER: Yeah.
STALLWORTH: And we can look to the state of Kansas to really help us understand politically what`s going on there, as Kansas recently in their primary election saw the voter turnout more consistent with what they see in a presidential election during a midterm election. The other thing that we`re seeing here in Michigan is that truly, this is not a partisan issue for voters and that`s really important to note and to sort of really understand because we need to make sure that voters understand what their options are when they go to the ballot box on November 8th and also what choices that they have in candidates who are going to respect their right to make their own personal medical decisions about their lives and their bodies.
WAGNER: Nicole Wells Stallworth, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan, we will be following this story. Thanks for your time tonight.
STALLWORTH: Thank you for having me, Alex.
WAGNER: Up next, how residents of one state banded together to avert mass blackouts during a historic heat wave. That`s next.
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[21:58:48]
WAGNER: It was a Saturday morning in January of 2018, and a little after 8:00 a.m., people in Hawaii saw this alarming message pop up on their phones: ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii, seek immediate shelter, this is not a drill. That message came from Hawaii`s Emergency Management Agency, and it sent people scrambling for shelter. Hawaiians sent their goodbye messages and prepared for what they believed was impending doom.
But about 40 minutes later, a second message came through. False alarm. There is no missile danger or threat to the state of Hawaii. Repeat, false alarm.
So, yeah, that was not great, sending people into a frenzy, worried they would die that was definitely not the move. And though this example is sort of unfortunate, it does prove the point they`re reaching out to residents in an emergency situation that can be extremely effective.
Just yesterday, amid a record heat wave out West, millions of Californians received an alert, one that possibly saved the state`s power grid, with temperatures well over 100 degrees, officials worried that increased use of air conditioners would overwhelm the state`s capacity. For hours, the grid struggled to keep up with demand and by 5:30 p.m., the state`s grid operator warned that blackouts were imminent.
At 5:48, California`s office of emergency services sent out this text alert. It read: Conserve energy now to protect public health and safety extreme. Heat is straining the state energy grid, power interruptions may occur unless you take action. Turn off or reduce non-essential power if health allows.
You know what? People heeded that request and within minutes, the impending grid -- the impending grid emergency, it was over. It appears that message literally helped prevent mass blackouts. Between 5:50 and 5:55 p.m., demand for power dropped by 1.2 gigawatts. For context, one gigawatt in power, about 750,000 homes.
Words have power especially the ones in an emergency alert text.
That does it for us.
Now, it is time for "THE LAST WORD WITH LAWRENCE O`DONNELL".
Good evening, Lawrence.