All In with Chris Hayes, Transcript 06/09/15

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice-over): Tonight on ALL IN -- PETE SCHULTE: There is an indication based on watching the video that the white people that were around the officer weren`t talked to, they weren`t pushed away, they weren`t told to get on the ground, they weren`t put in cuffs. HAYES: My interview with the white police officer who says McKinney PD has a race problem. Then, fighting words from the president as the GOP begins to realize the looming disaster if Obamacare goes down at the Supreme Court. BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There is something, I have to say, just deeply cynical about the ceaseless, endless, partisan attempts to roll back progress. HAYES: Plus, a student loan victory for all in on your side. Could an obscure Ohio law finally bring justice for Tamir Rice? And Donald Rumsfeld is asking for a do-over on his criticism of the Iraq war. DONALD RUMSFELD, FORMER DEFENSE SECRETARY: We know there are some things we do not know. HAYES: ALL IN starts right now. (END VIDEOTAPE) HAYES: Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. Breaking news tonight out of McKinney, Texas, where the police response to a teenage pool party on Friday has reignited the nationwide debate about race and policing. Corporal Eric Casebolt, the supervisor seen tackling a 15-year-old girl on a cell phone video that`s been viewed more than 9 million times, that`s him there drawing his weapon, has now resigned from the McKinney police force. A 10-year veteran of the department, Casebolt had been on paid administrative leave since the video came to light. At a press conference just now, McKinney police chief Greg Conley announced Casebolt`s resignation and strongly condemned his behavior. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GREG CONLEY, MCKINNEY POLICE CHIEF: I want to say that the actions of Casebolt seen on the video of a disturbance of the community pool are indefensible. Our policies, training and practice do not support his actions. He came into the call out of control. And as the video shows, was out of control during the incident. I had 12 officers on the scene. And 11 of them performed according to their training. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: While the internal investigation of Casebolt has now been dropped, the police chief said the broader inquiry into what happened is still continuing. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CONLEY: We`re continuing the investigation. We`re continuing on all the allegations that are being presented to us. And any part of a criminal investigation regarding anyone will take a matter of time for us to work through all of those allegations and those people who have come forward. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Amid conflicting stories about what happened at the pool before police arrived, including allegations that some white adults may have verbally and physically assaulted black teenagers at the party, McKinney`s mayor insisted the situation was anomaly. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MAYOR BRIAN LOUGHMILLER, MCKINNEY, TX: It is not indicative of the community as a whole. We have a good law-abiding citizens throughout community, including our Craig Ranch neighborhood. We have good public servants in our police department and our fire department. The actions of any one individual do not define our community as a whole. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Joining me now, MSNBC national reporter Joy Reid who was just at that press conference. And, Joy, I`m very curious of what it is like on the ground there. Yesterday, you had 200 folks that were watching on the McKinney police department. I have seen many interviews with the residents of this particular home area, this particular neighborhood who say, look, there is no race issue here and a lot of people defending the police. What does it feel like there? JOY REID, MSNBC NATIONAL REPORTER: You know, it is interesting, Chris. We spoke with a small number of local residents, African-American. They came to the press conference and wanted to be here. In some cases, they even yelled out questions for the chief and for the mayor. And people here are very supportive of this community. One couple that we spoke with said they raised both of their daughters who now are in college out of state here. They said it is a wonderful place to live, that they did express shock when this happened. They had not had that experience here. Of course, you will also talk to people who say that this is a problem that needed to be unearthed. That sometimes these problems do remain beneath the surface. I can tell you one young resident that we spoke who`s actually a local barber who said he has been at every press conference and every protest, and the young woman who was thrown -- the young girl, the child, who was thrown to the ground, is a daughter of someone he knows. He said that he does not feel that this is the end. He still wants to see prosecution of this now former police officer. So, I think there`s relief. Every single person we spoke with said that they were relieved that this person will no longer be patrolling. People saying they feel safer already, knowing that he will not be patrolling the streets of McKinney, but expressing concern that he could go on to other police force. They want to see more happening. They want to see prosecution. HAYES: All right, stay with us, Joy, because I want to bring in to the conversation, former McKinney police officer, Peter Schulte, who is now a criminal defense and family law attorney. Mr. Schulte, you served on this force, and I saw some of the comments you`ve made about the issues facing this police department, particularly of racial bias. What is your experience of this police force? SCHULTE: Well, you know, back when I left back in 2004, we had probably one of the worst crimes the city has ever experienced. It`s a quadruple homicide, and there were race tensions back then. So, I don`t know if it`s just something that`s just been ingrained in that police department as time has gone on. But, you know, I think probably what happened on Friday night was the 911 calls that were made described the people who were supposed to be there and who were not supposed to be there. So, when police arrived, they were looking at race as an indicator on who was supposed to be there and who wasn`t. I think that was a mistake. I don`t know if it was racially motivated or racial bias, but I think that was the factor that they were using. At least one particular officer, Corporal Casebolt, was using it to trying to differentiate who should have been there or who shouldn`t been there. HAYES: Yes. And, Joy, this was the Craig Ranch president talking about race in that neighborhood. Take a listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MCKINNEY RESIDENT: I had never seen racial problems in this community, never heard of them until now. This is not a race thing. Yes, there may have been wrongdoing and that needs to be handled with those people and that situation and not involve innocent people in the community. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: It does seem to me, Joy, it is very hard to watch that video and come to the conclusion that -- who does live there. And I don`t. But it`s very hard to watch that video and listen to the testimony by everyone there, including one of the teenagers, a white teenager that we spoke to on this program last night, Grace Jones, that that is true. REID: Yes, and it`s interesting, because we did especially speak before the press conference off the record with one of the officers who was sort of acting in the role of public information officer who made the point, because, you know, a lot of people, Chris, were talking about those civilians, those two men that you see walking among the police officers, seeming like they were almost a part of the scene. It does appear that they were actually directing police as to who was supposed to be there and who was not, because they had some association with the homeowner`s association. So, it is possible that police were taking their cues from white individuals who were saying that person belongs there, and that person doesn`t. Now, how they would know that, I don`t know because people that we`ve spoken with, including somewhere at the party say that most of the kids either live in the community, live near it, or went to school with the kids. These were all neighborhood kids. They were not outside kids. So, yes, you know, I believe you do have people being very defensive of this community, defensive of its racial climate, really trying to defend it as a neighborhood. But you definitely see from that video that it is clear who is being targeted, and it does seem that some of the adults, I think we need to talk about some of the civilian adults that were involved -- not only in instigating, but also directing police who they should be paying to, who they should be targeting. HAYES: Yes, and, Mr. Schulte, I mean, part of this also is, we are dealing with children here. I mean, you know, the police officers it seems to me have to be cognizant of the age of people they`re handling. We said it last night, I`ll say it again, which is that if you were to do that to your own child who was 14, conduct yourself in that way in public in front of people and there was video evidence, you would find yourself very quickly either brought up on charges or talking to someone who was knocking at your door, ready to take your child away from you. And it would be little excuse to say, well, they were mouthing off or they were not listening to what I told them to do, because you can`t do that to a 14- year-old. SCHULTE: Right. I`ll tell you, I`ve been saying this since Friday, the video service on Sunday, it does not matter what the kids were saying to the police officer, it doesn`t matter what happened at the party. How the officer reacted, by the language he was using and the force he was using would never be appropriate. I think Chief Conley, you know, said it today, he said it was not defensible. He did not follow the policy and that is true. I mean, I don`t think anybody could really defend his actions. And I think somebody, you know, who let his emotions get the best of him. I used to be a police officer. I mean, one of the things that we`re trained is how to keep our emotions in check. As the chief said tonight, you know, he was out of control from the very beginning. It`s going to be interesting to figure out now that we will not have a full investigation on what happened with Corporal Casebolt, it`s going to be interesting to see what do they finally conclude with when they complete the investigation of kind of what happened Friday night and the procedures and how those things were followed throughout the weekend. HAYES: Yes, that`s a question for you, Joy, because now there is kind of a battling accounts of the actual instigating incident that produced this blow-up. When we spoke to the young woman yesterday, she said that essentially a few adults there, white adults started saying racist things, get back to section 8 housing. She intervened and other friend. Another friend intervened, one of them struck her friend. So, they were actually the first ones to basically assault. Other people are saying people were showing up and cursing and being loud and menacing. So, the question is, where does this go next? REID: Yes, and that is a question that we also did ask, you know, standing there before the press conference began, whether or not some of those incidents are going to be investigated. There is a name of one particular woman and her sister that were all over social media now, one of them associated with Bank of America. Bank of America now looking into whether or not this was their employee associated with them. So, that is still ongoing. What the police officers were saying to us is that they now have to take complaints. They can`t make somebody be a complainant, right? So, if there was somebody who was involved in a physical altercation and they want to press charges, they need to come forward. So, the police are now saying they would like people to come forward and in a lot of cases what they`re saying is, it`s the adults that are more likely now that are coming forward and speaking up and saying, hey, I was assaulted, rather than the teenager. So, in this case now, what you have is the very teenagers who are telling many people in the media that they were struck or that they were injured or that an adult attacked them, they are not actually the ones who are coming forward and necessarily filing complaints. I do want to tell you real quickly, while I have you, Chris, going on behind me right now. I don`t know if it is in frame. There is a meeting about to take place. An interfaith group that`s being led by the United Methodist Church. There are a couple of pastors here that are going to do, the African-American and white clergy coming together, a gathering that`s taking place, all going toward trying to heal the community. But on the question that you asked, yes, police say that there are still potential open investigations. The investigation they did not talk about however, the one people are talking about is whether Eric Casebolt is out of legal jeopardy, because even though he`s resigned, that`s still an open case. HAYES: Yes. And, Peter, that seems a big open question, which is whether he`s going to face legal sanctions or charges for what we all saw him do on that video. SCHULTE: Yes, that is a question, Chris, because there is a crime called official oppression. It`s a class A misdemeanor, that`s going to be filed against public servants who violate the civil rights or put somebody under arrest or detain them, when they`re not enough legal justification for it. And I`ll tell you, if it is a class A misdemeanor, and it`s not successful in beating it, he can never be a police officer in the state of Texas again. So, it`s going to be interesting to see if the police department continues a criminal investigation with Eric Casebolt, with another law enforcement agency in Colin County. I don`t think they can be done with this, just based on the international coverage this has had. HAYES: Good point. Peter Schulte and Joy Reid, thank you both very much. Still ahead, Donald Rumsfeld retreats from his comments on Iraq and democracy. Plus, evacuations of the White House and Capitol Hill after two separate security threats today, a very scary moment. And the president shred those seeking to kill off his signature accomplishments. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) OBAMA: There is something, I have to say, just deeply cynical about the ceaseless, endless, partisan attempts to roll back progress. (END VIDEO CLIP) (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: All right. Here is Donald Rumsfeld boasting about the chances of a successful democracy in Iraq circa 2003. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) RUMSFELD: People said the Japanese couldn`t have a democratic system. People said the Nazis couldn`t be replaced with the democratic system. Is somebody smart enough to know that the Iraqis are, for whatever reason, unique on the face of the earth that they`re not capable of living in a free system? I don`t know that. I`m hopeful that`s wrong. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Now years later, Rumsfeld tried to walk that back, and facing harsh criticism he tried to walk that walk-back back, I think. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson will help us reality-check all of it, ahead. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: Supreme Court may be about to hand the Republican Party the political victory of a generation, a decision that could destroy a major feature of Obamacare. But what is supposed to be a dream outcome for the GOP may well be its worst nightmare. And no one seems to know that better than the man whose signature accomplishment hangs in the balance. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) OBAMA: There is something, I have to say, just deeply cynical about the ceaseless, endless, partisan attempts to roll back progress. I mean, I understood folks being skeptical or worried before the law passed and there wasn`t a reality there to examine. But once you see millions of people having health care, once you see that all the bad things that were predicted didn`t happen, you`d think that -- it would be time to move on. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Those remarks from a forceful and emotional speech at the Catholic Health Association today came one day after the president called out the Supreme Court for accepting what he said was a legally dubious challenge to a law he says has become, quote, "part" of the fabric of America. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) OBAMA: This should be an easy case. Frankly, it probably should not have even been taken up. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: The case is King versus Burwell, and it centers on just one line from the massive health law, which says federal health care subsidies are available to Americans who bought their policies through, quote, "an exchange established by the state." More than 30 states didn`t themselves establish an exchange, instead allowing the federal government to establish one for them through healthcare.org. The plaintiffs argue that anyone who got insurance through healthcare.org is not legally eligible for a subsidy, since their coverage did not come via, quote, "an exchange established by the state." Now, there are a lot of problems in that argument, including the fact that no one who wrote the law says they intended it to be interpreted that way. But that didn`t stop the Supreme Court from taking the case, its decision is expected soon and if the court sides with the plaintiffs, 6.4 million people would lose subsidies. That would leave millions probably without health care coverage, and might well cause Obamacare to fall apart. It would be for those people and for everyone else around the health care industry a catastrophic outcome. But as the president pointed out yesterday, there`s a simple fix. Congress could, of course, pass a one- sentence provision to tweak the law`s language at issue in the case and avert the disaster for millions of Americans. That one sentence fix is simple legislatively, but for Republican Party nearly impossible politically, because the conservative base would revolt against anything that could be seen as boasting or cementing Obamacare. If the court rules with the plaintiffs and the GOP refuses to act, Republicans risk being widely blamed for refusing to help millions of Americans whose lives have now been made a lot worse. Joining me now, Tim Carney, senior political columnist at "The Washington Examiner". Tim, here is my read on the politics of this -- I think during the sort of high water mark of Gruber video comments, there was this kind of extatis (ph) like we found the smoking gun, we`re going to win this case. And there was a lot of confidence. And at least as I read it, there seems to be like waning confidence in the outcome and also increasing worry about, OK, if we win, what does the next day look like? Do you think there is going to be a next day bill ready to drop that just fixes the problem? TIM CARNEY, THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER: It`s hard to predict exactly what is going to happen. The Republican Party, as you see by the size of the Republican presidential field, is not a top-down system. It`s a very sort of democratic robust debate-oriented system at the moment, unlike the Democratic Party. So, the question that we have now, what approach will they take? There is a couple different things. Is there a full replacement idea to do? And is there a bridge and should we combine them? So, some people are saying -- well, this is a chance if Obamacare really is falling apart, as your sort of lead-in package suggests, well, that`s a chance to give a package that says, all right, we want these people -- because some of these people can`t afford health insurance without some sort of, you know, tax credit, or something like that. Give them some of that, together with actual reform that strips away the first parts of Obamacare that made health care so expensive. HAYES: Well -- CARNEY: The GOP is not at a point where there`s any consensus on that. But the question is, even if the GOP comes up with a plan, I don`t think President Obama is willing to sign it. I think he would rather score a political victory, dragging out these people over 18 months and signed a compromise. (CROSSTALK) HAYES: So, the devil is in the detail, let`s just say the health care inflation has decreased, slowed to the lowest levels in decades since the law has been past. Now, you can say the law has nothing to do with that, that`s a bunch of other factors. That`s an argument. But just in terms of numbers, right, we are not seeing accelerating inflation under the Affordable Care Act, just as a fact of where things stand. The second question, though, is right, the devil is in the details. My big question is, if you`re a Republican governor, right, the day after King Burwell comes down, you know, you`re going to have interviews in every of these states that didn`t join the exchange of some person saying all of a sudden, my health care went up $800 or $400 or $300, who`s going to fix it? And I think what embodies this problem is this John Thune tweet, in which he said, "6 million people risk losing their health care subsidies, yet POTUS continues to deny that Obamacare is bad for the American people." Those subsidies were created by Obamacare. It`s going to be very hard to say this is Barack Obama`s fault, isn`t it? CARNEY: It was an interesting messaging experiment by John Thune, one that I would not have advocated. But you do have the fact that a lot of health care plans were outlawed. It became illegal to buy some more affordable health care plans because they said these were essential benefits, or you do need this sort of deductible. Plans I might want to buy. I don`t want contraceptive coverage or fertility treatment coverage, or some of these things that, some of these things became illegal by the health care became more expensive, and the subsidies from Obamacare offset some of that. Or you had to buy health insurance when you didn`t want to buy health insurance. Remember that Supreme Court case, and those became more expensive. So, what will the governors do? This is where the question comes in of can Republicans get a good thoughtful response, because you can have their help for people to afford health insurance, and this is exactly what McCain and Bush proposed -- tax credits for the individual market or tax deductions for the individual market, without creating the exchange, because I see the exchange as a way for the government to control our health insurance, and that`s exactly what I don`t like -- what I don`t think is progress. HAYES: Right. Yes, I understand where you`re coming from, you say control, others say regulate the bottom end, which is a part of the health care market, I have some personal experience with, which is pretty terrible and I experience it. But that`s going to be -- the point is the day after the case if it comes down to it for the plaintiff, is the thing you`re articulating is, what is the plan that Republicans say? And I think it`s going to be very interesting to see what Mitch McConnell has to say. Tim Carney, always a pleasure. Thank you. CARNEY: Thank you. HAYES: Joining me now, MSNBC senior political analyst, David Axelrod, former senior adviser to President Obama. So, this is a little bit of concern-trolling, because you`re viewing it from the other side, of course, and you have a stake in this law that you worked very hard on getting passed. It does strike me that it does really present a political problem for Republicans if they win King/Burwell, because they have all of these people who the press can go interview who are screwed, frankly, and they have to come up with a solution. DAVID AXELROD, MSNBC SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think if the case goes against the law, which I really don`t think it is going to. But if it goes against the law, I think the Republicans are going to be the dogs who caught the car. I think it`s a political disaster for them. I think indicative of that is the proposal that Ron Johnson has made, the senator from Wisconsin, who suggests they pass a bridge and support the subsidies through the next election. No coincidence that he is up for re- election in 2016. And I think it`s telling that he wants to bridge the subsidies. But the fact is, Chris, they`ve had five years to come up with a plausible alternative to the Affordable Care Act, and they`ve failed to do so. So, it`s unlikely that they`re going to do it overnight. HAYES: That`s a really good point. You`re going to have actually a fairly, there`s a significant number of Senate Republicans in cycle in 2016 who are facing competitive races. And that is a really good point. That they will be really out spoken, particularly if they`re in state where they suspect a Democratic presidential nominee will carry to get something done. AXELROD: Right, and unlike 2014, 2016, you have a lot of Republican incumbents in these blue states, in Illinois, and Wisconsin and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Florida and New Hampshire. All of whom are going to feel some jeopardy if this law goes -- if this law is unraveled. HAYES: I think the other thing here is it`s going to be very hard because the nature of this challenge is, and I`m going to editorialize for a moment, in such clear bad faith. I mean, if there is no principle at stake at least in the mandate challenge, you could argue there is a sort of principle about what exactly the government could and could not regulate in terms of commerce, can it make you buy insurance? In this case, they`re trying to destroy the law and found a way they believe they could do it. It`s very hard for Republicans to make the case of exactly what this is about, I mean, other than getting Obamacare. AXELROD: Well, that`s exactly what it`s about. And you`re absolutely right. I thought it was telling that Olympia Snowe, who opposed the law, said everybody in Congress knew that these subsidies were to go to anyone in any exchange. Everyone knows that. So, the Supreme Court would have to deliver a very cramped ruling in contravention of its normal practice of taking legislative intent into account in order to grant the plaintiffs the complaint here. That`s why I think they will not do that. But if they do, you know -- as a political matter, I think it`s worse for the Republicans than it is for the president. I think we ought to dismiss the political argument for a second, though, and say for millions of Americans, it will be a disaster. For the system itself, it will be a cataclysmic shock. So, it`s not good for the country if the Supreme Court goes the other way on this. HAYES: Oh, it`s going to be total chaos and tremendous angst, for lots of people who are suddenly going to find themselves -- who may already be sick, maybe in the midst of chemotherapy, a million different possibilities. AXELROD: Yes -- go ahead, Chris. I`m sorry. HAYES: No, you go ahead. AXELROD: I was going to say, you know, I said this often, but I have a child who has fought -- battled with epilepsy all of her life, started when she was 7 months old, had uncontrolled seizures for 19 years. And I was a young reporter at "The Chicago Tribune" when this happened, and I had insurance, and I almost went bankrupt because the insurance didn`t cover her medications, it didn`t cover some of the treatments that she needed. And there are many, many Americans like me who are in that situation, I don`t think we want to go back to that. HAYES: Yes. David Axelrod, thank you very much. Always a pleasure. AXELROD: Good to be with you. HAYES: Still ahead, Donald Rumsfeld continues to rewrite the history of the Iraq War by claiming he never thought democracy was a realistic goal there, despite saying things like this back in 2003. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) RUMSFELD: For if Iraq -- with its size and its capabilities, its resources and its history -- is able to move towards a path of representative democracy, however bumpy the road may be, then the impact in the region and indeed in the world could be dramatic. (END VIDEO CLIP) (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The order came without warning, a bomb threat phoned into Washington, D.C. police led to the unprecedented evacuation shortly after 2:00 p.m. during the daily televised briefing, startling members of the White House press corps quickly ushered out of the building just steps from the West Wing. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: It was an unnerving afternoon in the nation`s capital where two separate bomb threats for evacuations on Capitol Hill and in the White House briefing room. Secret Service evacuating the White House press corps as a precaution following a bomb threat after the threat that had been phoned to the D.C. police just before 2:00 p.m. today. The entire process unfolding in front of cameras as members of the press were ushered just outside of the West Wing, and a bomb-sniffing dog was brought in to sweep the area, which included a room where White House staffers work. Some cameras were covered during the sweep. The president was in the Oval Office and the first family was in the residence at the time, but were not evacuated. After about 30 minutes, the scene was cleared. Today`s briefing resumed. This came just hours after another threat was phoned in to Capitol Police prompting the evacuation of multiple floors of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENITIFIED MALE: A separate bomb threat was phoned in earlier on Capitol Hill, interrupting this senate hearing on the TSA just after noon. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We`re clearing the floor. So if you could in orderly fashion please exit as quickly as possible, thank you. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Capitol Hill police searched the room looking for anything suspicious. More officers and dogs combed the hallway, but nothing was found. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Tonight, the Secret Service is investigating whether the two threats were connected. We`ll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: Donald Rumsfeld is back-tracking from his back-tracking today. Yesterday we brought the story of the former defense secretary`s interview with The Times of London in which he spoke of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq initiated by president George W. Bush in these terms. Quote, I`m not one who thinks that our particular template of democracy is appropriate for other countries at every moment of their histories. The idea we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic. I was concerned about it when I first heard those words. Now, the reaction to that from many quarters was one of let`s say surprise, including today from Bob Woodward, journalist who has written multiple books on the Bush administration. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BOB WOODWARD, WASHINGTON POST: He was the person who was saying to the president, look this is going to be a lot easier than we think, and in the end they were literally saying to the president this is just going to take a couple of weeks. We`re now 12 years after the invasion and we still label Iraq unsolved. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Now, in a phone interview with CNN, Rumsfeld said quote, when we went into Iraq, my view -- and I thought it was a broadly held view -- was the goal was to have Saddam Hussein not be there and to have what replaced Saddam Hussein be a government that would not have weapons of mass destruction, that would not invade its neighbors, and that would be reasonably respectful of diverse ethnic groups, meaning the Sunni, the Shia, the Kurds. That was kind of the understanding I had. And I thought everyone had. Rumsfeld added regarding the Times of London interview, the implication of that statement was anti-Bush is ridiculous. Joining me now, former chief of staff at the State Department during General Colin Powell`s term, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, currently, distinguished adjunct professor of government and public policy at of the College of William and Mary. I have whiplash, colonel. You`re reaction. COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON, FRM. CHIEF OF STAFF, STATE DEPARTMENT: I think one has to understand Mr. Rumsfeld and understand that what motivated Mr. Rumsfeld from my perspective, for the four years that I worked with Secretary Powell, was winning the bureaucratic struggle. He lost the focus on the strategic picture as he did this. He may have won the bureaucratic struggle, principally with my former boss, but he lost in the process the strategic picture. I think perhaps he may be looking back at the strategic picture now. And he may be seeing something he doesn`t quite like. HAYES: Here is also -- this is him now just within the last hour I guess, trying to clarify in a phone interview. Take a listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD RUMSFELD, FRM. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: We were not there to be occupiers. And my concern -- I`m for democracy, but my concern about the word was that it would leave the impression in that country inaccurately that the United States` intended to impose its form of democracy on their country. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: I mean, the record is the record. They talked about democracy all the time. WILKERSON: The record shows that what we did was send a whole lot of young mostly Republican, mostly energetic dynamic, but know-nothing people to Baghdad. And I would include in that, with respect to Eric Gaulter (ph) and so forth, Jerry Bremmer, the guy who headed everything, and asked them to build Jeffersonian democracy in that embattled place. That is what we did. Rumsfeld was fully aware of it as was everyone else. And he is looking back on it now and saying essentially that he wasn`t is sheer nonsense. HAYES: And you know the point to me, and one of the things that I think frustrates me about watching all this, there is a lot that frustrates me, is also just the idea that democracy was ever really the intention in any meaningful way. I mean, you made the point, I mean, when you peeled the curtain back, you had 27-year-olds right wing think-tanks who were there to, you know, run the -- setting up whatever the parliamentary system was. And you had to think to yourself, well, you wouldn`t put those people in part in charge of the war part, you`re putting in charge of this part, sort of shows what you actually care about. WILKERSON: I think you`re right in many respects. I have always thought that this was a camouflage for our real purpose, which was essentially to make sure that potentially 300 to 400 billion barrels of oil got access to the world, was not controlled by a dictator. Was it a reasonable price and consistently available for our allies and ourselves? That has always been my view of the strategic purpose of that war. And look at what we`ve done to that with respect to that strategic purpose. We`ve made a mess. HAYES: Yeah, I mean, you have refineries under control of ISIS now. WILKERSON: You do. And you also have government in Baghdad that had plans to be at almost Saudi Arabia levels of production per year in six or seven years, and with the political situation and the security situation the way it is now you`re never going to make that. So we actually made the situation worse with regard to what was an essential strategic objective, access to the oil under the deserts of Iraq. HAYES: Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, it`s always a pleasure. Thank you for very much. WILKERSON: Thanks for having me, Chris. HAYES: Still ahead, an extraordinary legal maneuver in Cleveland as members of the community seek justice for Tamir Rice, using an obscure Ohio law. One of the people behind the move joins me ahead. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert pleaded not guilty to federal charges today in his first public appearance since being indicted for allegedly illegally structuring bank withdrawals and lying about why he was taking the money out. A federal official tells NBC News that Hastert had agreed to pay $3.5 million to a former student to keep that student from revealing alleged sexual contact that took place decades ago when Hastert was a teacher and wrestling coach. A massive, massive media scrum greeted the 73-year-old former speaker at a federal courthouse in Chicago where Hastert was released on bond and ordered to surrender his passport. The longest serving Republican House Speaker in history ignored, shouted questions from reporters after the hearing ended. He arrived home late this afternoon. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: There is a for-profit school called Corinthian. It was a disaster. The federal government essentially cut off from access to federal loans. It has left people with thousands of dollars in debt while going under and not really giving them much to show for it. You have nine attorneys general calling on the Department to Education to forgive those student loans. Should the department forgive the loans? ARNE DUNCAN, DEPARTMENT OF EDUACTION SECRETARY: We continue to be very concerned with the issues. We`ve met with some of these young people as recently as the past two weeks. And we`re going to continue to look at this very closely to see what the right thing is to do, not just in this situation, but more broadly. HAYES: I mean, that is a non-answer, but your answer is you are looking into whether you should. DUNCAN: We are looking at this very, very closely. And again talking to young people who have been negatively impacted. And for me, it`s not just about those individuals, it is about where you have bad actors for far too long they were allowed to just do what they wanted. We have tried to be very, very clear that we will not tolerate that. And whatever political pushback we get, we`re fine with that. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was cautious in his response when I pressed him on fate of hundreds of thousands of students who attended the campuses of Corinthian colleges. For years, that for- profit chain was the subject of federal and state investigation, and had been accused of luring students in with false promises, deceptive marketing, and profiting off predatory student loans. Corinthian filed for bankruptcy protection in may after closing its remaining campuses in what the Department of Education called the largest college shutdown in American history. Now, the Department of Education has announced a series of debt relief measures that could help students affected by Corinthian`s closure, that`s what we`d like to call, All In on your side. As the Los Angeles Times reports until now only about 16,000 students, those that attended that suddenly closed in April have been eligible for debt forgiveness. The new policy allows other students to seek debt forgiveness if they believe that they were victims of fraudulent marketing and recruiting practices. This could pave the way for a potentially large group of students. The Department of Education estimating that if all 340,000 Corinthian students over the last five years applied for it and received the debt relief, that could cost alone could be as much as $3.5 billion in forgiven student debt. It`s a major step in the right direction, for sure. But it is not blanket relief. Students defrauded by Corinthian must navigate through a documentation process. Given Corinthian`s track record, it doesn`t seem unreasonable to ask that all loans be forgiven. As Secretary Duncan himself noted yesterday, you would have to be made of stone not to feel for these students. Some of these schools have brought the ethics of payday lending into higher education. (COMMERCAIL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REV. DR. JAWANZA COLVIN: So let me be clear. Today we are not taking actions against police officers, we are taking actions for the people. We believe that we are on the right side of history and that our actions are in a long human and civil rights tradition. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: All right, more than six months after a rookie Cleveland police officer shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice, as Rice played with what was a toy gun in a park, a group of citizens are literally taking the law into their own hands and they`re doing so by invoking an obscure rarely used Ohio statute that get this, it allows, quote, a person with knowledge of offense to file an affidavit to circumvent prosecutors and to formally ask a judge to issue an arrest warrant. That affidavit was filed this afternoon demanding that Cleveland police officers be arrested in the shooting death of Tamir Rice on charges of murder, aggravated murder, involuntary manslaughter, reckless homicide, negligent homicide and dereliction of duty. A lawyer for Tamir Rice`s family, who according to The New York Times, worked with the community leaders as they plan to seek charges, told the paper, quote, "if you look at every other instance it ends up unfavorable to the families." He was referring of course to similar cases in which charges were not brought against police officers, whether it was officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, where a grand jury not indicting officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of Eric Garner here in New York, or last month in Madison, Wisconsin when prosecutors didn`t charge a white officer for killing an unarmed 19-year-old Tony Robinson Jr. What`s happening in Cleveland appears to be, well, a novel approach to put pressure on the Cuyahoga County prosecutors to file charges against the officers involved in the shooting of Tamir Rice, but ultimately those charges must still go through a grand jury. Joining me now, Rhonda Williams, a professor at Case Western Reserve University who signed today`s affidavit seeking charges. Professor Williams, I have never heard of such a thing. How did this come together? RHONDA WILLIAMS, CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERESITY: So, we were called together by Pastor Colvin, whose clip you played earlier who launched the press conference for us. And we are all committed activists. We`re lawyers. We`re civil rights activists. We`re academics. And we`ve all been engaged in community around the issues of police and community reform and the criminal justice reform. And so we came together and we began to have a conversation. And we have talked about how it is really important for communities to be engaged, for a community to have input, for community to have voice, for community to work on behalf of residents, for residents, by the people, for the people. And so we came together and discussed this. And we decided that you know, six months has passed, more than six months has passed. And we have a 12-year-old boy who will not see his 13th birthday. And we see in the video that he died by deadly force at the hands of the Cleveland division of police. And six months, we have been waiting, we have been waiting. We`ve been waiting locally and nationally, people of conscience have been waiting. We have been pleading. We`ve been demanding. We`ve -- we came to a point that what else can we do? How can we move this forward? How can we get this into the criminal justice system? How can we get this case to a place where it`s transparent, where we can hopefully see the justice system work even with all its flaws? And so we decided that it was time for those who often don`t have voice, the voiceless, to speak. And on behalf of communities, we`re speaking. On behalf of Tamir Rice, who is not here, on behalf of all of those victims who are not here, but particularly this case is about Tamir Rice, but you know we have to understand that Tamir Rice is happening in the largest constellation of issues both in the contemporary context in Cleveland and elsewhere across the nation, but also in an historical context. And so we said the voice of the voiceless must speak. Community must be engaged. We are going to come together as residents and we`re going to do this together and we`re going to stand together. HAYES: Let me ask you to respond. I saw the statement from the police union in Cleveland today, and it was -- strong. Let`s say. Steve Loomis, this is the president of the Cleveland Police Patrolman`s Association says this, "it is very sad how miserable the lives of these self-appointed activists, civil rights leaders and clergy must be. I can`t imagine being so consumed with anger and hatred." He went on to then say trying to coerce public officials into filing charges is a very dangerous game." What is your response? WILLIAMS: You know, when I hear mob rule, because I`m a social justice advocate and scholar, and when I hear mob rule I hear and I see and I remember lynching. And I see and I hear and I remember parties where black bodies hung from trees. I see and I hear black people losing their lives at the hands of police and at others, vigilantes, and others who take extralegal violence into their own hands. What we did was we came together, myself, one of eight, came together and decided here is a statute we can use, a legal statute, a legal vehicle to try to use the current democratic system as it exists, with all of its flaws, but with some possibilities we`re hoping to actually push forward the arc of justice. So for me, you know, I don`t want to get into a virtual tet-a-tet with Steve Loomis, because I think the focus needs to stay on the community and community engagement and community voice and community input and community desire and community demand and community hurt and anger and pain and frustration. And none of these in a city where we`re trying to reform the police system, many of us want a transformation of the police system, transform the criminal justice system, is a recipe for trust and transparency and community-building. And for the past, unfortunately, the criminal justice system has not done its best by victims and by people of color. HAYES: Let me ask you this, my sense is that obviously what`s implicit here is a lack of trust in this particular set of circumstances, as well. Obviously, we`ve seen generally what`s happened. We saw what happened to Eric Garner and Michael Brown. But am I right to adduce believe that you just don`t think this prosecutor`s office can independently investigate this? WILLIAMS: We have concerns. HAYES: Yeah. WILLIAMS: A law -- the action of today. So, we have concerns. But again, we have come together as community to say we have to stay engaged and keep our voices loud. You know, Martin Luther King said that direct action created creative tension, and that often power and policy did not change without that creative tension of direct action, of people engaged, of holding and speaking power to power, speaking truth to power, right? And so that is what we`re doing. And that is what we want to focus on. And we want to see a criminal justice system that historically has not worked in the most fair, equitable just way for people of color to work, right? And/or for people who are losing lives at the hands of police officers. The police are not above the law. HAYES: Rhonda Williams, thank you for joining us. That is All In for this evening. The Rachel Maddow Show starts now. THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END