CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC HOST: Remember, the last two decades, I had the privilege of having not just the front row seat to American politics in history but a seat inside the lively political conversation of the country. And for that, I`m obviously thankful. And that`s HARDBALL for us tonight. "ALL IN" with Chris Hayes starts right now.
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CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Tonight on a special edition of ALL IN.
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): No one is above the law.
HAYES: Impeachment begins and the use of a Trump talking points ends.
REP. MARK MEADOWS (R-NC): What we do know is that there was definitely no quid pro quo.
HAYES: Tonight, the mountain of evidence there was absolutely a quid pro quo no matter what you call it.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There is no pro quo.
HAYES: Plus, new signs of the facts of impeachment are actually penetrating the Trump T.V. bubble.
GERALDO RIVERA, CORRESPONDENT AT LARGE, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: You`re the difference between Donald J. Trump and Richard Nixon.
HAYES: Then, how Rudy Giuliani went from prosecuting corruption to dabbling in it. And former Obama DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson on the shattered norms of the Trump White House.
Live from Studio 6A in Rockefeller Plaza, ALL IN the starts right now.
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HAYES: Hello everybody. How are you? Good evening. Welcome. It is great to have you all back here in our 30 Rock home. This has been a truly historic week. Obviously, there is now formally and officially House ratified impeachment inquiry into the President of the United States. You guys are a fan as I see.
And it is -- honestly, it`s even clearer now after yesterday`s vote that the President of the United States is almost certainly going to be impeached. And that is because the President`s own actions. I mean the President corruptly abused his power in attempting to coerce an occupied foreign country, Ukraine, to manufacture dirt on an American citizen. And not just any American citizen, his own political rival.
Now there has been one defense from the White House of the President`s actions from the beginning and that is no quid pro quo, right? I actually have a theory about this that at some point someone may be a lawyer, maybe someone pretending to be a lawyer told Donald Trump that quid pro quo is like a magic phrase with this negative incantatory power. And if you say it in the commission of your extortion, then it`s illegal and bad. But as long as you say no quid pro quo, anything you do or say is fine.
It`s like how some people think you can say -- they can say just like no offense but and then insult you. Remember, all quid pro quo is literally just this for that, right? I will give you this, you give me that. It is the most elemental form of corruption, of bribery, of extortion. And we know contemporaneously while carrying off what we are going to show you was definitely quid pro quo, the Trump squads cover story has been that there was no quid pro quo.
A quid pro quo, this for that, quid pro quo is also the standard that Republicans have set for what would constitute an impeachable crime, right? Now, I want to be clear here. I don`t think you need to show quid pro quo for the President`s behavior to be impeachable. He corruptly abused his power to coerce an occupied country to meddle in our election an investigate an American citizen. That infraction in and of itself meets, in my humble opinion, the threshold for high crimes and misdemeanors.
But that said, it is important to note that quid pro quo is the threshold that Trump and his allies have set the bar, right? If you get over that bar, you are in impeachment territory.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get us up to date on what`s going on.
REP. MATT GAETZ (R-FL): No quid pro quo.
REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): No one believes there is quid pro quo.
MEADOWS: What we do know is, is there was definitely no quid pro quo.
REP. LEE ZELDIN (R-NY): Absolutely no quid pro quo.
REP. STEVE SCALICE (R-LA): Absolutely no quid pro quo.
HOGAN GIDLEY, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY, WHITE HOUSE: No quid pro quo here whatsoever.
MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There was no quid pro quo.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No quid pro quo.
REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): No quid pro quo.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was no quid pro quo.
TRUMP: There is no pro quo.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): If you could show me that you know, Trump actually was engaging a quid pro quo outside the phone call that would be very disturbing.
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HAYES: OK, that`s an interesting thing to say, right? So Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. He`s the president`s golfing buddy, he`s one of the most devoted and self-abasing acolytes of the president who himself says here`s the standard of evidence to show me. Show me evidence of quid pro quo outside the phone call and then that`s disturbing.
So Senator Graham, if you`re watching us, we will now present nine damning pieces of evidence that show quid pro quo, OK. Here we go. Now, number one with apologies to the Senator from South Carolina, we do have to start with the phone call itself, OK. The phone call that Trump keeps saying is perfect, so perfect that he wants to read it live on T.V. as a fireside chat apparently.
On that call, the President does not say to the Ukrainian president, this is my quid and that is your quo. The President of Ukraine says we need military assistance basically to defend ourselves from occupying country, Russia, that is literally killing our soldiers. And Trump immediately responds, I would like you to do us a favor though. This for that, military assistance for investigations into my political rivals.
It`s like if you needed protection let`s just say hypothetically from say like the Russian mob, OK, and you go to your local New York mob boss for protection. He says sure, I will protect you but I would like you to do us a favor though. That is not an ask from the mob boss, that is not a polite request from the mob boss. That is the mob boss enunciating the conditions of your protection. That`s what happened in the phone call.
The phone call itself is quid pro quo. The quid is military assistance. Now at that point was already being held up in exchange for the quo which is the investigations into Biden and the DNC. But OK, all right, Lindsey Graham says not good enough. You want something outside the phone call so here`s what we got.
Number two, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, a guy named Bill Taylor text messages of Trump appointee U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland who was a Trump donor and is up to these elbows in the shadow foreign policy. And Taylor messages him, "Are we now saying that security assistance and a White House meeting are conditioned on investigations."
That word conditions, that`s the quid pro quo right there, right? And Sondland not wanting to leave a written record of crime, responds "call me."
Number three, last week, same guy Bill Taylor testified before the Impeachment House committee and said that the Trump appointee, same guy Gordon Sondland who`s an amazing character by the way, told him that Ukraine needed to announce investigations, not just start them, they need to announce investigations into the Biden`s in exchange for security assistance.
Here`s the quote. Ambassador Sondland said, "everything was dependent on such an announcement including security systems." Dependent, conditions, that`s the quid pro quo. Everything was dependent on it.
Number four, that might surprise you. This one is Gordon Sondland the Trump appointee who has said over and over again there is no quid pro quo. But Republican Senator Ron Johnson told the Wall Street Journal himself on the record to a reporter back when the story was first breaking that Sondland "had described to him a quid pro quo." That`s right. The guy who has said there was no quid pro quo had warned a Republican senator there was a quid pro quo.
Number five, keep in mind Gordon Sondland who was at the center of this came and testified and by all accounts, he was somewhat squirrelly. There was a lot of stuff he didn`t remember. After he testified, his own lawyer told a reporter that Sondland believed there was a quid pro quo.
OK, so the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine Bill Taylor says quid pro quo. The Trump appointee who`s on the other end of that text you`ve changed Gordon Sondland, his lawyer now says yes, there was a quid pro quo. Both of them are working on the policy from notably different angles but they are not the only people who saw a quid pro quo.
Number six, Fiona Hill, she`s a Trump`s former top Russia aide on the National Security Council. She reportedly testified that at a White House meeting with Ukrainian officials, they`re in the White House, OK, Gordon Sondland just comes out and proposes a quid pro quo. And it was so obviously inappropriate the National Security Advisor John Bolton ends the meeting. He`s like no, you can`t do this. Get out of here you crazy kids. And Bolton then referred to what Sondland and Chief of Staff Mick Mulaney we`re cooking up as "a drug deal."
And after that meeting, Sondland takes the Ukrainian officials to side where he tells them according to testimony, a meeting with Trump is conditioned on a public announcement of investigation of the Biden`s.
Number seven, we`re still going, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman. You`ve heard of him, right? Decorated war hero, assigned to work at the National Security Council, a really interesting guy, fluent in Ukrainian and Russian. So this guy was so freaked out by everything that was going on that he goes to NSC`s top lawyer twice to raise red flags about it. And he also reportedly testified that he was convinced there was a quid pro quo even before Trump`s infamous phone call with the Ukrainian president.
Number eight, and there`s Tim Morrison. He replaced Fiona Hill at the National Security Council. He should be the most sympathetic witness to the President. He still worked in the White House the day before he showed up. But in his hearing, Tim Morrison confirmed that Bill Taylor`s testimony that there was, in fact, a quid pro quo.
And number nine, this is one little piece of evidence buried in the record. You might have missed it. That`s the Chief of Staff to the president Mick Mulvaney who got up in front of live cameras and just said to 330 million Americans, of course, there was a quid pro quo.
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MICK MULVANEY, ACTING CHIEF OF STAFF: Did he also mentioned to me in past the corruption related to the DNC server? Absolutely, no question about that. But that`s it. That`s why we held up the money. The look back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing that he was worried about in corruption with that nation, and that is absolutely appropriate.
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HAYES: So if the standard for disturbing Lindsey Graham who is as loyal the President in Congress as anyone for whatever reason is to show evidence of quid pro quo outside the phone call, then the last two weeks should be very, very disturbing to Lindsey Graham and everybody else, right?
Now, that`s the crime. I want to talk about the cover-up. And we have some breaking news on that tonight. Multiple outlets are reporting that the lieutenant colonel, Colonel Vindman testified that when he brought concerns about Trump`s phone call with the Ukrainian president to the NSC`s top lawyer, that Lieutenant Colonel Vindman was told by the lawyer don`t tell anyone about it. Real innocent behavior.
I`m joined now by one of the people reporting this out, Washington Post National Investigative Reporter Carol Leonnig who is also an MSNBC Contributor. Hey, Carol.
CAROL LEONNIG, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Hey, Chris. How are you?
HAYES: I`m great. So there`s sort of two elements here. We had gotten reporting for the beginning that there was a sort of freak out after the phone call. We`re getting more details about that. What do we know about Vindman`s interactions with the guy John Eisenberg, he`s the lawyer on the National Security Council when he goes to him to say this is bad news in the call.
LEONNIG: Yes. So this decorated Army officer basically has to pretty dramatic -- actually three now that I think about it dramatic interactions with John Eisenberg. He`s the lawyer in the White House Counsel who`s basically in charge of advising the National Security Council.
And what Alex Vindman says to him on July 10th is I was just in this crazy basement meeting in the White House and I want you to know that what Ambassador Sondland recommended to the Ukrainians about investigating -- announcing an investigation so that they could get their military aid is inappropriate and I need to alert you that I am lodging a complaint about this.
Another aid also complains right behind Vindman, that`s Fiona Hill who you mentioned earlier. Fine, Eisenberg takes notes, John Eisenberg. And next time they run into each other is really about two weeks later. Vindman is on the call listening in a special room in the National Security Council to President Trump`s conversation with Ukraine president Zelensky.
And as soon as the call hangs up, he looks over at the other people in the room with sort of raised eyebrows. He`s very disturbed because what the president has said sounds a lot like what Sondland said. And he`s very concerned that the president is essentially if not spelled out a quid pro quo explicitly, he`s implied it and he`s also recommending and pressuring a Ukrainian official to investigate a U.S. citizen which is way odd to him.
So he goes to Eisenberg and he says you know, John, I`m complaining again to you at which point Eisenberg says let`s move the transcript and the records of this call to a lockdown situation so that there are no leaks about this. Instead of saying I`m very concerned too, tell me more about those issues, he`s taking notes and then making a command decision at the time that they need to lock down these records.
Finally, the third time, Eisenberg is confronted -- by forgive me. Eisenberg confronts Vindman a couple of days later and says you know, I just got a call from the CIA general counsel. There`s been an anonymous complaint about this call with the President. And I just want to know, did you talk to anybody about this. And finally, he says, I don`t want you to talk about this to anyone else. Don`t discuss it.
And that`s series of events that make Vindman very concerned that the White House isn`t taking very seriously what could be you know, a violation of the law.
HAYES: Did Eisenberg say don`t discuss it because the call is so perfect other people will be jealous?
LEONNIG: I`m so sorry. There has been a technical difficulty. Can you repeat the question?
HAYES: Oh, you missed a great line. No, I`m just saying -- I was joking that clearly he didn`t tell him not to talk about the call because it was so perfect that other people would be jealous. Like this is a consciousness of the awareness on the part of Eisenberg something is amiss here.
LEONNIG: Yes. We`ve heard a lot of different explanations, Chris, for why you`d want to lock down the call, confront somebody and tell them to stop talking about it that are supposed to be not nefarious. They`re still to be proven.
N our story today, we wrote a little bit about all of these steps and a couple more that Democrats are eyeing and wondering was the White House engaged in a cover-up or was this a keystone kops event of oh my gosh, another dramatic thing has happened and let`s try to control it.
HAYES: Final question. One of the things that have come out in the testimony of Vindman is that there was a change, a material change to the transcript that the company Burisma which is the company that Hunter Biden serves on the board on, that was taken out and it were replaced. Words were put into the mouth as Zelensky the company that you have mentioned. And I will tell you when I first read the transcript that line jumped out of me because there`s no prior referent in the transcript.
He says the company you mentioned, you`re like, wait he never talked about the company. What do we know about that change?
LEONNIG: So this issue is fascinating to me too. And now we`re going to have a real nerd out because when the -- when it was first reported that Burisma was not mentioned in the rough transcript of the call or I should say the official record of the call, everybody was like wow, that`s kind of weird because Burisma is mentioned in other places. That`s just strange.
But it turns out according to our reporting today that Vindman actually took copious notes. And when he tried to get this official record of the call corrected, he said Zelensky never said this weird phrase, the company that you specifically mentioned in this issue.
So it`s not like an accident. It wouldn`t be something you would say in a transcription or that a person would take down notes. It`s not a phrase that -- I don`t know it had to be according to Vindman, it had to be fabricated.
HAYES: Inserted, yes.
LEONNIG: So why do that? You know, why create that and remove this specific mention? Here`s one reason why it`s significant according to Vindman`s testimony which we were learning more about today. If Zelensky mentions Burisma, it means he is prepped for what the President wants.
HAYES: Right.
LEONNIG: He is prepped. He knows in advance the leader of the free world wants me to investigate this company connected to the Biden`s, his Democratic rival.
HAYES: Right, that`s a great point. Carol Leonnig, great reporting, great explaining as always. Thank you very much.
LEONNIG: You`re welcome.
HAYES: My next guest literally wrote the book on impeachment. It`s called Impeachment: A Citizen`s Guide. He`s also a former member of the Obama administration where he headed up the Office of Information regulatory affairs. He`s now a professor at Harvard Law School, one of the most cited law professors in the country. Joining me now is Cass Sunstein. Good to see you, Cass.
CASS SUNSTEIN, PROFESSOR, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL: Good to see you.
HAYES: I want to go back to the sort of two tracks here of the facts and assume one set of fact and then assume the other. So let`s say that there`s no evidence of quid pro quo. Let`s say -- I mean, there is but let`s just for a moment imagine there isn`t. There`s just the phone call, there`s just the kind of coercion and the push, and the ask. How do you see that fitting with what the Framers described in the Constitution as bribery treason or high crime -- other high crimes and misdemeanors?
SUNSTEIN: Well, if there`s no quid pro quo even implicit then I think we`re talking about an arguable high crime and misdemeanor, and that would be the question. And that term was actually well understood. It referred to terrible abuses of authority. And if what happened was there was an exercise of implicit influence to try to get an investigation of an American citizen who was also a potential political opponent of the president, then we are in the domain of an arguable high crime and misdemeanor.
HAYES: If we are then -- if you then stipulate there was a quid pro quo as I think the evidence continues to show, although we`re going to have a whole hearing about this, it seems to me that you know there`s two names crimes and then there`s the other category, right, treason, bribery, and then other high crimes and misdemeanors. That comes pretty close to bribery, right?
The exchange of things or extorting a favor from someone actually seems like it is pretty close to one of the things the Founders decided to specifically name.
SUNSTEIN: OK. So it`s good to make a distinction here among three kinds of things. There`s bribery which means bribing a person who`s not you, the president, or being bribed by a person if you`re the President. And I guess we`re not talking about the president being bribed, we`re talking about maybe the president bribing.
Whether this is technically bribery is actually more interesting than one might think because bribery is not defined in the Constitution, treason is. So the catch-all of high crimes and misdemeanors is probably the more reasonable route to take. Extortion isn`t in the Constitution at all. If we think of extortion as threat and bribery as offer, that`s the big difference between the two.
HAYES: Right.
SUNSTEIN: Extortion is very similar to blackmail. Blackmail is sometimes extortion by private people where extortion is blackmailed by public officials. If we had something like that which was you know, like I`m going to cut your knees off unless you do what I want you to do by a president of a foreign official that would very clearly be a high crime and misdemeanor.
HAYES: How have other Congress reason their way through the question of the law, right? So once the facts are essentially stipulated to where established -- and I don`t think we`ll ever get there given our epistemic environment. But once they are established, how have other Congress reason through to find out whether those facts match that threshold?
SUNSTEIN: Well, I actually saw this close up in the Clinton investigation. I was witness there on the legal standard and what was done. And on this count, it was responsible. On many counts, the Clinton impeachment was irresponsible. But here what was done was there was discussion with people of competing views, political and constitutional of what the standard was.
And there emerged actually a pretty strong agreement about the core of the standard which is terrible abuse of authority, which means that some things that are crimes are not impeachable like disorderly conduct or shoplifting. Those would not be impeachable. And some and some things that are terrible misconduct that aren`t crimes like bridging civil liberties or pardoning people just in order to protect yourself. That was a consensus during the Clinton investigation and the Nixon one too, and goes back to the founding period itself the pardon one.
So think of egregious -- the word egregious isn`t the best word, I wish we had a better one, but terrible abuses of authority and that`s what the Nixon and Clinton investigations involved that is that`s what the principle was. And what`s beautiful about this is that the Nixon one was done by the Democrats and the Clinton one was done by the Republicans. And what emerged were both on the issue you`re discussing, a broad consensus not a complete consensus but a broad consensus of what would count as impeachable.
HAYES: That was extremely illuminating. Professor Cass Sunstein, thank you very much. I appreciate it. All right, next. Have you been watching how Republicans are behaving this week? Just imagine how it will be when the public impeachment hearings begin. We`re going to try to talk about what that might look like next.
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HAYES: There`s a new poll out today from the Washington Post and ABC News that includes a pretty startling number. 18 percent of Republicans support impeachment and removal of Donald Trump. Now, to be clear, that number is an outlier. Other polls haven`t shown that to be the case.
The brute fact is that if the President is going to be both impeached and removed from office for the first time in American history, there`s going to have to be some kind of cratering of his Republican support. It was that cratering of Republican support that of course led to Richard Nixon`s resignation when Republican lawmakers marched up to the White House, told him he lost his support and he`s going to get removed.
But the thing is that a lot has changed since 1974. I mean, perhaps more than anything else, these structural polarization of the electorate, and also the fact that an alternate media environment exists for conservatives. One that Fox News` own Geraldo Rivera explains could have kept Nixon in office had it been around in 1974.
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RIVERA: You know, if it wasn`t your show, Sean, they would destroy him absolutely. You`re the difference between Donald J. Trump and Richard Nixon. In Nixon`s case, if he had someone that stuck up for him, he wouldn`t have been you know, motivated to cover up that burglary.
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HAYES: It could cut both ways. Here to talk about that now Philippe Reines who spent decades in the trenches of political combat as an adviser of Hillary Clinton both in her campaigns and the State Department. Maya Wiley Professor at New School, former assistant U.S. attorney, and an MSNBC Legal Analyst who`s been falling impeachment closely. And Evans Siegfried a Republican Strategist who wrote a book about the generational differences within the Republican electorate and what it means for the future of the party. Good to have you guys here.
So I feel like you know, we only have these two -- we`ve got three precedence, right? We got Andrew Johnson during Reconstruction, very different time, very different era. We`ve got Nixon and we`ve got Clinton. And I feel like we keep pointing back to Nixon particularly because this feels more like Watergate than the Clinton impeachment.
But if someone who is like been on the other side of the Republican attack machine like advising Hillary Clinton, how much faith do you have that the current information environment means that facts can come out, that people are persuadable, that the 40 percent of the country that continues to approve him can be brought to the other side?
PHILIPPE REINES, FORMER ADVISER TO HILLARY CLINTON: Naively probably more than you think.
HAYES: Really?
REINES: Really.
HAYES: I am surprised by that.
REINES: Because not to a point where this number of 18 percent is going to go to 80 eighty or 100 percent. But if you look back at the last two and a half years, when facts have been entered into the public debate whether it was the Mueller indictments, whether it was the Don Jr. phone call, whether it was the media, or whether there is a formal investigation, whether it`s what`s happening now, the needle has moved.
There`s a reason why the numbers are going up despite the fact that there hasn`t been a single hearing. And I actually go forward a little bit because look, he`s going to be impeached. That is a foregone conclusion. He is unlikely to be removed. But what is hopeful is that balance will be restored come November 4th the day of the election which is barely a year from now.
Because what hopefully will happen is that the Republican senators, in particular, will pay a steep price for politicizing it. In which case it is possible the next time we need this, it won`t be taken as truly. And the problem with 98 is that basically the Republican neutered impeachment.
HAYES: Because they did it in a lame-duck session.
REINES: Because they did it and we`ve been afraid to use it. For the last two years, Democrats -- look at what happened in 98. Look at what happened in 98.
HAYES: The other -- the flip side of that that I can see since you say that is imagine a precedent in which impeachment becomes routine and is essentially just a no-confidence vote, that as long as you hold together your caucus and don`t get a two-thirds majority in the Senate, everyone goes -- right? Like the or that we see partisan polarization do its battle between the two parties in oscillation and I would say Republicans have exacerbated this more than Democrats. Like, you can imagine a scenario in which, like, I can see Republicans getting ready to impeach the next Democratic president from the first day.
SIEGFRIED: Of course because we now tell everybody in our political system that whomever we are running against is an existential threat to their very existence. You make them feel cornered and they have no other recourse to 100 percent support the person who is fighting for you no matter what they do even if it`s going toward illegal action.
HAYES: Trump -- you`re nodding your head, or shaking it.
WILEY: No, I`m disagreeing, and not because I -- it`s not because I don`t think the danger is there, but what we`ve seen in the polls over the past two years is people, including Democrats, being very reticent about impeachment. So it`s not that suddenly people were jumping on the, yes, we don`t like Donald Trump, let`s impeach him. Even Democrats were saying, no, no, no what really changed here is we had a simple story. The facts have become clearer and clearer, and all the witnesses have been corroborating some very important scary facts that go to the heart of national security.
REINES: I mean, look, we`d be sitting here either way talking about impeachment. If Hillary Clinton were president, Republicans would not be debating, they`d be impeaching her for email, for Benghazi, for just being Hillary Clinton. And that`s an abuse.
HAYES: Wait a second, but it`s important you made that point...
REINES: But she wouldn`t be removed. And there`s a reason why the bar is so high.
HAYES: My point about that, you`re thinking about that which was the thinking I think of people who supported Bill Clinton in `98 which is they want the guy gone anyway, this is what they found. That`s exactly what Republicans tell themselves, right. I mean, I`m not saying the facts are the same. But what I am saying is the cast of mind here of Republicans, right, they`re telling themselves the facts don`t matter, because they wanted this guy gone anyway.
REINES: It`s called delusion.
WILEY: But this assumes they`re paying no price. This goes back to Philippe`s earlier point, which is, I mean, that holds if there`s no cost. In other words --
HAYES: Politically, you`re saying.
WILEY: Politically, right, because at the end of the day this is a political calculus for the folks who are going to levy votes. That`s why we`re talking about polls. We`re not talking about the rule of law, we`re talking about polls.
HAYES: Well, let me ask you this, then. It was interesting to me, so only one -- no Republicans voted for the inquiry, right, and Republicans pointed out the last few times it was a bipartisan vote, this time, of course, Amash was a Republican and coming out for the inquiry rendered him anathema, so it`s a little circular logic to say that he`s not a Republican. Are you surprised that someone like Will Hurd, who is retiring, who used to be in the CIA, who is in a district that Hillary Clinton carried, wouldn`t even vote for the inquiry?
SIEGFRIED: No, I`m not surprised at all. In the Republican Party right now if you cross Donald Trump that`s career suicide. And Will Hurd might have a future in politics. And for him to go and not knowing what the Republican Party is going to be like in 4 or 8 years and really gamble like that would be absolutely
REINES: Also, what`s the point, if you`re Will Hurd and you voted yes yesterday, you`d have Donald Trump tweeting --
HAYES: OK, but the four --
REINES: He can still vote a month from now.
HAYES: Let me ask you about the former, though, because people say this all the time on the Hill, staffers, you know, you don`t want him tweeting about you. Who cares? Honestly, why do you care? Why do you care --
SIEGFRIED: Because you get a (inaudible) you should like it.
HAYES: But Will Hurd is retiring.
SIEGFRIED: But it`s for the future. And then there are people not retiring who are thinking I don`t want to get a primary, I`m just going to keep my head down. I care more about my seat than doing what`s right.
WILEY: Well, it also may be who is looking for lobbying jobs and want to make sure they can still get an open door when they --
SIEGFRIED: And they don`t want to lose their committee assignments --
REINES: I just think they`re human beings and don`t want to deal with it.
HAYES: That`s the thing I find so sort of Shakespearean about this whole thing, because people keep saying like well they don`t want the tweets and they want -- you`re a U.S. Senator, like who cares? The guy tweets at people.
SIEGFRIED: But you know what, I don`t care that Will Hurd voted no yesterday? When the time comes, I hope -- I don`t care that Mitt Romney votes for these judges. I`m not expecting him to defect to the Democratic Party. We`re going to need these people at certain moments.
HAYES: OK, that`s my question for you. Bill Kristol said that he called around to his friends in the House, the moderates, to the extent they exist. And you know they suddenly, you don`t want to let them know there`s a jailbreak until -- can you imagine any House votes going against the president on impeachment?
REINES: No, I can`t. I think the House as a caucus is pretty united behind the president, because they will pay that political price. The Senate gets a more interesting, but at the same time I think senators are taking that calculus in.
The way we`re looking at the schedule of impeachment, if and when there is a trial, it`s not going to be until before many of the primary filing deadlines are in the Republican Party for 2020, so Cory Gardner is sweating. You`ve got Susan Collins --
HAYES: Great point.
SIEGFRIED: That is why Mitch McConnell, for all the Democrats saying Mitch McConnell is going to short circuit it, Mitch McConnell is going to hold a 2 minute hearing, no he`s not, because he doesn`t want to deal -- and by the way, if he has the votes why does he care if he holds --
HAYES: He`s also had some free passes to give out. Philippe Reines, Maya Wiley, Evan Siegfried, that was great.
SIEGFRIED: No, thank you.
HAYES: Don`t go away. Up next we`re going to talk about one of the most puzzling -- I guess that`s the adjective we`re using -- of the about one of the most puzzling -- I guess that`s the adjective we`re using -- figures in this entire saga, the president`s bag man, Rudy Giuliani. What`s up? That`s next.
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HAYES: So I don`t think we have definitive records, but as far as we can tell no U.S. attorney has ever ended up indicted by the office he used to run, which is a situation that`s a possibility for Rudy Giuliani right now who is reportedly under investigation by the Southern District of New York after his two business associates, my favorite characters in this drama, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were nabbed at the airport last month with one way tickets.
Now, we know Giuliani has been in business with them. We know Giuliani has been flying around the world serving both as the president`s lawyer and a kind of shadow Secretary of State while also collecting cash and advocating on the behalf of god knows who in his foreign consulting business, a blurring of lines between public and private interests that has helped throw the Trump presidency into the worst crisis its ever faced.
So how does a man who was a federal prosecutor, a mayor of New York City, and a candidate for president, turn into this? As Vera Bergengruen writes in her new cover profile of Giuliani in Time Magazine, quote, "over the past 18 months Giuliani has violated the unwritten rule of American public life, that you can pursue money or political power, but not both at once.
And Vera Bergengruen is here with me now. Good to see you.
It`s a great piece.
VERA BERGENGRUEN, TIME MAGAZINE: Thank you.
HAYES: Let`s talk about the business side. What is Rudy`s business? I actually don`t even understand. Like, what is the guy doing to make a living?
BERGENGRUEN: Right, so basically if you look at a map where`s Rudy? He says he`s been to over 80 countries, 150 different trips. And he`s basically just leveraged his, you know, law and order kind of brand, the same way Trump branded hotels, to just, you know, cut down on corruption, Latin American countries hire him, everybody hires him to, you know -- Mexico City, Bogota, they all say come on here in, help us bring down crime. Presidential candidates hire him as a kind of just extra brand on the side. So, really, that`s basically what he`s done. He`s made so much money doing that.
HAYES: So, my question also is, there`s a Foreign Agent Registration Act, right, and that`s what Michael Flynn got in trouble for not registering as a foreign agent when he was taking half a million dollars from Turkey. Giuliani is not registered as a foreign agent, correct?
BERGENGRUEN: Correct.
HAYES: Do we know -- like, honestly, do we know what governments are paying him is my question?
BERGENGRUEN: No, well basically he says -- he told us, you know, I don`t have to register because I`m not lobbying U.S. officials, I`m not on Capitol Hill lobbying U.S. officials on behalf of foreign governments. It`s really convoluted, because he basically -- he says he doesn`t have to do that, but really he`s kind of lobbying foreign officials on behalf of the U.S., on behalf of Trump, so it`s like a really --
HAYES: That`s a great point.
The New York Times wrote an article, pointed out by one of our producers a few months -- like a month ago. November 2016, he wanted to be secretary of state, and he didn`t pass the vet in the Trump White House, which is saying something. Rudy Giuliani -- it`s the headline, Rudy Giuliani`s business ties viewed as a red flag for Secretary of State job. And what`s remarkable it`s like, no, you can`t be secretary of state. And he was like screw it I`ll do it any way in like a shadow capacity.
BERGENGRUEN: Well, the interesting thing is he basically said, you know what I think, you know -- yes, they didn`t want him there. But he kind of said I think can do a -- serve a better role on the outside, and it turns out that was really true because he had no constraints, like, you know, you`ve got Pompeo making $250,000 a year, and he`s spending that a month. You know, he`s making -- he basically was able to have some of that power because people know he`s Trump`s lawyer without the rest.
HAYES: But it`s a petri dish, is the problem, right. I mean, running around with a lot of money coming from different interests, and you don`t know who they are and you may not be reporting them while you`re talking to the president, like it just seems like you`re bound to violate the law.
BERGENGRUEN: Well, that`s why it`s never happened before. It`s a really strange situation, because no one would want that on their behalf as the president of the United States.
HAYES: Right, exactly.
BERGENGRUEN: You know, and he`s going out there and just talking to all these foreign leaders. And he shows up and says I`m a private citizen. I`m doing my business deals. I`m representing my client. And everyone`s telling him, yes, but your client is the president of the United States.
HAYES: And we all know that. And I also can`t tell it`s like a Russian nesting dolls of like con men and marks where like I can`t tell who`s doing the conning and who`s the mark. Like Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, they seem like they`re -- like Rudy`s the mark for them, and then the president`s a little bit of a mark for Trump -- for Rudy, like how do Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman end up in his circle?
BERGENGRUEN: Right, so I mean, apparently they hire him for their firm which is called Fraud Guarantee, and the reason it`s called Fraud Guarantee is because the guy committed fraud and he didn`t want when people Googled his name for it to be a negative thing, so he named his company that.
HAYES: Yes, he cleaned out his Google search results.
BERGENGRUEN: Yes, SEO for the win, right.
And so he did that. And, you know, he just got to mesh with these two guys, but it`s basically what Giuliani did with Trump where he basically gets a lot of access because he says I work for Trump. They got a lot of access because they say I work for Giuliani and they show people their phones with pictures of Don Jr., with Trump, and so they get a lot of access.
HAYES: They`re running the exact same -- like junior version of Rudy Giuliani, these two guys are running except they`re now indicted and he`s under investigation.
BERGENGRUEN: About right.
HAYES: All right. Vera Bergengruen, it`s a great piece. Thank you so much.
Coming up, a new poll shows an astonished number of Americans think this is all just normal behavior from our government officials. I`ve got a member of the Obama administration who begs to differ. Jeh Johnson is here with us next.
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HAYES: One of the biggest things that Trump has going for him is the profound cynicism of the American public about the actions of our political class. There is this recent polling that I saw about a week ago that stuck out to me amidst all the impeachment polling, and it`s not about impeachment, it`s about whether people think what Trump did, meaning his comments and actions about Ukraine and investigating Joe Biden, whether they`re essentially out of the ordinary and abnormal, right?
And despite the fact they are pretty abnormal, 46 percent of registered voters in battleground states see it as typical of what politicians do compared to 42 percent who view it as something much worse.
And for those who are removed from the daily workings of governance, it`s just hard to convey how norm shattering and lawless what the president did is. But some of the people who have best insight into that, about what is normal and abnormal, are people who worked for the last administration, which both because of I think the president`s character, Barack Obama`s character, and also by necessity politically was an incredibly scrupulous administration about following the letter of the law.
Help me welcome one of the cabinet members from that administration, the former secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson.
JEH JOHNSON, FORMER SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY: How are you?
HAYES: Have a seat.
So I want to start with this, right --
JOHNSON: By the way, this is way more fun than talking to a little lens.
HAYES: Yes --
JOHNSON: This little location. This is great.
HAYES: I like human beings.
JOHNSON: So do i.
HAYES: Yes, so let`s start with this idea. That polling number really jumped out at me, because I do think it`s the case that a lot of people cynicism. They think there`s a lot of corruption and self-dealing in government, and they`re not necessarily wrong about that. But as someone who was there, who was the general council for Department of Defense, who was at the Department of Homeland Security, like what is your response to people who say this is normal?
JOHNSON: Well, you`re right. It didn`t start with the Trump administration. There`s been a long-term trend line of a loss of confidence in our leaders dating back to the Vietnam, Watergate era. The Obama administration was for eight years absent at any whiff of scandal. And I have to say that started with Barack Obama himself.
I sat in countless meetings with him where we would talk about the intelligence picture. We would talk about law enforcement, the attorney general. You did not need to tell Barack Obama, don`t tell the Department of Justice what to do with a particular case. He knew that because of his own moral and ethical compass. You don`t shade the intelligence picture. You don`t interfere with the federal criminal justice system. And that trickled down.
HAYES: It was also -- I mean --
JOHNSON: We had people like Cass Sunstein in the administration who just they knew what public service meant and what the obligations of service meant.
HAYES: It was also -- my wife worked in the White House and White House Counsel`s office so I have a sort of perspective on this, it was also a very lawyerly place. Like there are a lot of lawyers, and there are a lot of lawyers who take the law very seriously.
JOHNSON: There were a lot of lawyers who were not supposed to be lawyers. The president was a lawyer, the vice president was a lawyer, the secretary of state, secretary of defense. The most feared line for somebody who was a lawyer in the administration is when a non-lawyer with a law degree begins with I know I`m not supposed to practice law but, and they proceeded to tell you what the law should be.
HAYES: But I thought of you because there was this small article in Yahoo! in how the Pentagon officials at one point they run a legal analysis about withholding the aid, right -- when the president is withholding the aid. And they concluding -- they`re worried it`s illegal. Like, we -- this has been appropriated by congress. We have to spend it in this quarter. And you were the general counsel for DOD, like what would you have done if you run this legal analysis and it comes back you have to spend this money?
JOHNSON: Well, where do I start?
What`s so interesting about the current situation is not just the lawyers recognized that this was wrong, unlike the situation during the Trump campaign with the Russians where just a few people in Trump Tower knew what was going on, there were a lot of people, dedicated public servants, who come straight out of central casting -- the straight arrows, the lieutenant colonel, the decorated army veteran, Taylor, Morrison, who all recognized this isn`t right, this is not what we should be doing in national security and they want to talk about it. They cannot be bottled up, even if it means resigning from career federal service.
HAYES: Yes, I think that -- in some ways that`s why this is so high relief, right, because you have this culture clash between people who don`t think there`s anything wrong and people who do.
There`s another sort of legal conundrum today which is the Department of Homeland Security, which you were cabinet secretary for, is now without a head today. In fact, the president came out and he said that the acting head, I think Chad Wolf, had taken over, but then the current spokesperson, McAleenan spokesperson said that he was actually still acting. It`s like two popes situation over at DHS.
What is going on over there?
JOHNSON: So the president`s looking for his fifth Homeland Security secretary, technically he`s looking for his sixth. Do you know who the first one was?
HAYES: No.
JOHNSON: Me.
HAYES: Oh, right.
JOHNSON: 7 hours and 32 minutes, because I was designated survivor that day.
So I make a great trivia question, who was the first member of Donald Trump`s cabinet to resign.
HAYES: That`s good.
JOHNSON: But I got to be serious here, and I wrote an op-ed about this last week, in the public eye these days Homeland Security is nothing but border security separating kids at the border. And if the military, if you`re standing in the end zone, the military protects you at the 50-yard line, the intelligence community protects you at the 50-yard line. The Department of Homeland Security protects you at the 1-yard line -- land, sea and air: aviation security, maritime security, port security, border security, cyber security, cyberspace. And it is a vitally important department to protect all of you, and it is rudderless right now. There`s no leader.
And I know from personal experience how important it is to have a cabinet level person who has eyes and ears on all the different ways bad things or bad people can get into this country.
HAYES: You just mentioned immigration, which of course has been sort of the focus of all the DHS. And I wanted to ask you about this. There was this viral image at one point of children behind chain link fences in immigration detention that was sent around and people were saying look at what Donald Trump is doing, and it turned out to be from 2015, from the Obama administration when you were at DHS. And I wonder as you watch this and you think about family detention, which you guys tried at one point, the conditions under which you held people, if you have regrets, if you think there are things we did when we were dealing with lots of kids showing up at the border that I wish we hadn`t?
JOHNSON: Well, look, there`s no way you can go through a difficult public position wrestling with difficult public issues and not have some regrets, but I do believe that we did the best we could with what we had with the best of intentions. And so if there are images of kids in chain-link fences, you will also find images of kids in chain-link fences from 2015. And I`m in there with them talking to them about the dangers of the journey, why they came, because I wanted to understand these kids and what motivated them to come from Central America.
And what they said to me over and over again is my mom sent me up here to be with my grand mom because the gangs were going to make me join or they were going to kill me.
And so we have to enforce the law. Americans want secure borders, but we in public service have to wrestle with these tough issues with a good degree of humanity, understanding the story at the most basic level. And that`s what, I think, a lot of us in the Obama administration tried really hard to do.
HAYES: Jeh Johnson, great to have you here. Thank you.
JOHNSON: Thank you.
HAYES: Do not go anywhere. Rachel Maddow is next, so stick around.
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HAYES: Thank you all for joining us tonight. Thanks to my audience here in Studio 6A. Everyone watching at home, we will be back here next Friday. Make sure to tune in then.
That is ALL IN for this evening. "The Rachel Maddow Show" starts right now.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END