Summary
In the wake of the mass murder of 19 children and two adults in Uvalde, Texas, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he is introducing legislation that would put a "national freeze on the sale of handguns." While U.S. allies pass meaningful gun control measures, U.S. policy stays stagnant in wake of mass shootings. Calls for gun reform grow as Midterm Election looms. Yesterday, Peter Navarro was served with a grand jury subpoena in an ongoing criminal investigation of January 6 by federal prosecutors.
Transcript
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: LGBTQ people and women and indigenous people and children who simply want to feel safe at school. So, on the last day of a chaotic, devastating month, let`s tap into that Kpop stand playbook. Let`s make gun reform and voting American phenomena too. And that is tonight`s REIDOUT. "ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES" starts now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voiceover): Tonight on ALL IN.
JUSTIN TRUDEAU, PRIME MINISTER, CANADA: We`re introducing legislation to implement a national freeze on handgun ownership.
HAYES: Canada boldly goes where America refuses.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why only in America? Why is this American exceptionalism so awful?
HAYES: Tonight, what we know about how to stop the American gun crisis and what`s being done about it.
Then, is Justice finally catching up to a man who all been admitted to plotting a coup on national television.
PETER NAVARRO, FORMER DIRECTOR OF TRADE AND MANUFACTURING POLICY: We had over 100 congressmen and senators on Capitol Hill ready to implement this week.
HAYES: The big new sign the Department of Justice is escalating their January 6 investigation. And as the right`s counter Mueller probe goes poof today --
SEAN HANNITY, HOST, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: The Durham report, the Durham indictments, OK.
HAYES: How the Republican Party`s rapid descent into conspiracy theory mania is accelerating.
REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREEN (R-GA): They want to know when you`re eating, they want to know if you`re eating a cheeseburger, which is very bad because Bill Gates wants you to eat his fake meat that grows in a petri dish. So, you`ll probably get a little zap inside your body.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Good evening from New York, I`m Chris Hayes. In the wake of the mass murder of 19 children and two adults in Uvalde, Texas, Canada is taking action against gun violence. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he is introducing legislation that would put a "national freeze on the sale of handguns." He says he does not want his country to become like United States.
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TRUDEAU: And unfortunately, the reality is in our country, it is getting worse and has been getting worse over the past years. We need only look south of the border to know that if we do not take action firmly and rapidly, it gets worse and worse and more difficult to counter. That`s why as of this moment, or as of the passage of this legislation, it will be illegal to buy, sell, import, or transfer handguns in this country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Something pretty striking about that phrase you use, right? South of the border described us, the United States. It`s a phrase you hear so often this country by people who are kind of denigrating Mexico is a supposedly lawless land of, you know, ultra-violence. That`s how they see us. And Canada notably has a relatively high rate of gun ownership.
I mean, as we have established while no country anywhere in the world comes anywhere near the astounding 120 guns per 100 residents in the United States, Canada is the next closest highly developed country. There are about 35 guns per capita in Canada. It`s the fifth-highest rate in the world after Yemen, and Montenegro, and Serbia.
And also, there`s a real gun culture in Canada. Hunting is popular. They`ve gun shows, pro-gun rights group fighting gun control measures called the National Firearms Association. So, Canada is probably our closest analogue not just in terms of guns, right, we have a lot in common, politically, and socially as predominantly English-speaking neighbors in the Western Hemisphere, but they`re doing it. They are doing what we just cannot seem to.
In addition to banning handguns, Canada is planning to ban the possession of assault weapons with a mandatory buyback program. That comes on top of the ban Canada already implemented on the use and sale of many semi- automatic rifles including the AR-15 after 22 people were killed in a mass shooting in Nova Scotia in 2020.
And of course, it`s not limited just to Canada. It`s striking to compare the United States to other members of its wealthy English-speaking cohort, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada. All those places, including the U.S. are either part of Britain or former colonies share language, many institutional features, in some cases immediate culture thanks to Rupert Murdock.
We also share legal background and tradition, common law. And we have also all experienced horrifying mass shootings like the one in Uvalde. But unlike us, those other countries all acted in the wake of them quickly and swiftly to prevent that horror from occurring again. It happened in England in 1987 when a gunman there killed 16 people in the small village of Hungerford.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Residents were shocked. Many of them knew the gunman, Michael Ryan, a 27-year-old father of four who collected weapons. Witnesses said Ryan was dressed in combat fatigues and carrying three guns when he walked up the town`s main street and opened fire on the lunchtime crowds. These are scenes the British never expected to see in their own country where civility is still the norm and where violence is so rare, only one policeman in 10 carries a gun.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I didn`t think that this type of violence would happen in Britain sort of thing. He was the head of the papers in America.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: The British government wanted to stay that way. And so, the following year, they passed new legislation requiring shotguns to be registered, banning most semi-automatic and pump-action weapons. Sadly, it was not enough to prevent another horrific massacre. This is one of 16 kindergarteners and their teacher in Dunblane, Scotland in 1996.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Parents ran through the streets of Dunblane, rushing to find out if their children were still alive. Shortly after school began, Thomas Hamilton, a man described by neighbors as an unpopular loner burst into the primary school`s gymnasium. He was caring four handguns,
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HAYES: So, the government went a step further, banned all handguns. While U.K. has seen some mass shootings, since then, gun violence significantly dropped and there has not been a single school shooting in the country. The same year as Dunblane, 1996, Australia was rocked by a mass shooting in Tasmania, where 35 people were killed.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The massacre had begun at this cafe in the Port Arthur settlement. 20 tourists killed in the space of a few minutes. Outside, the gunman then sprayed a bus with bullets, killing four more. An amateur cameraman captured the scene as visitors huddled for cover. As Australia prepares to mourn the victims, there have been urgent calls for tough new gun laws to try and ensure it never happens again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: So, like in the U.K., the Australian Government answered those calls immediately. In just 12 days, they passed a law outlawing automatic and semi-automatic rifles and pump-action shotguns. They also implemented a buyback program where Australians turned in hundreds of thousands of weapons.
A 2011 study found that Australia`s firearm homicide rate declined by 57 percent in the seven years after the law was passed. And most recently, it happened in New Zealand when 51 people were killed in Christchurch.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was no accident that New Zealand`s deadliest terrorist attack began around 1:45 in the afternoon. A gunmen storming the Al Noor mosque when it was packed with hundreds of Muslims performing Friday afternoon prayers.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I could hear screaming and crying and I saw some people were, you know, drop dead.
HAYES: Shocking act of evil that rattled the conscience of the nation. And just days after the massacre, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced a ban on semi-automatic weapons. And weeks later, New Zealand Parliament voted to make the ban permanent. Today, Jacinda Ardern met with President Joe Biden at the White House where the President told her the United States needs her help.
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JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We need your guidance. And we`re -- you know, it`s a pleasure to see in person. You understand that your leadership has taken on a critical role in this global stage, the global effort to curb violence, extremism, and online, like happened in Christchurch.
And, you know, we want to be -- I want to work with you on that effort. And I want to talk to you about what those conversations were like, if you`re willing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: U.S. politicians seem to be paralyzed just forever unable to do anything after mass shooting and mass shooting. But again, that has not always been the case, right? The sort of pattern you see, the sort of strike to the conscience, the horror, the visceral anguish, we`ve seen that before nearly 30 years ago following a slew of traumatic shootings.
The U.S. enacted an assault weapons ban. It happened in 1994. It was bipartisan. It was very popular. It`s so popular, in fact, it was a wedge issue for Democrats. A 1993 poll found that 77 percent of Americans supported a ban on semi-automatic assault weapons. It was so popular George W. Bush basically prevaricated about whether he`s going to let it expire when he ran for reelection, and then he did.
We left that ban expire after 10 years. And of course, there has been no meaningful action since then as the shootings go on increasing in the frequency and the devastation. And gun violence, in general, has gone up considerably in this country in the last several years as have gun sales. Now, there are a lot of ways that America is just different from other countries.
But again, the question that still is not been answered is what is it that makes us different on this issue? Not the Constitution and not the Second Amendment. I mean, the politics. I mean, why are we not moved to action when our children are being murdered? Or a Sky News reporter put it in Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz "Why is this American exceptionalism so awful."
[20:10:05]
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MARK STONE, U.S. CORRESPONDENT, SKY NEWS: Why does this only happen in your country. I really think that`s what many people around the world just -- they cannot fathom. Why only in America? Why is this American exceptionalism so awful?
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): You know, I`m sorry you think American exceptionalism is awful.
STONE: I think this aspect. I think this aspect of it.
CRUZ: You get your political agenda. God love you.
STONE: No, it`s honestly --
CRUZ: Why is it that people come from all over the world to America because it`s the freest, most prosperous, safest country on earth. And stop feeding a propaganda.
STONE: It may be the -- it may be the freest, it maybe the --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: You head what he says there in the end. Jelani Cobb is the incoming dean of Columbia University School of Journalism, staff writer for The New Yorker. His latest piece is titled the atrocity of American gun culture. And he joins me now.
And Jelani, in that last bit of the clip, the reporter for Sky News says it may be the freest, it may be the most prosperous, it`s not the safest. And that`s just the case. I mean, we just tolerate more mass deaths in this country than other countries do tolerate.
You`ve reported on this from a bunch of different angles. You`ve talked to social scientists, you`ve talked to policymakers, you`ve done ride-alongs with cops in Newark as they`ve worked on gun violence. You`re writing about it again. You`ve given sustained thought and reporting to this. What do you -- how do you answer the question of the root of our exceptionalism on this question?
JELANI COBB, STAFF WRITER, THE NEW YORKER: You know, Chris, I have to say that really, the most disturbing part of that clip was the idea that America is the safest. We have the most heavily armed civilian culture in the world. And I think that, you know, there are a number of different things, number of different tributaries that are fed into this.
You know, one portion of it is, you know, that historic tradition of gun ownership, which was indeed related to the founders concerns about slave revolts, and fear that they would need to put down rebellions by Black people who wanted the same sorts of freedoms that they had. But another part of it, the much more modern parallel of this has been a really metastatic form of paranoia.
The bumper sticker version of it is the difference between a citizen and a subject as a firearm. And people who have convinced themselves that the only thing that separates them from complete subjugation at the hands of the government, likely the hands of a liberal government, is the firearm or the 10 or 20 firearms that they have, you know, crammed under their bed.
And as long as people are thinking with that kind of logic, it makes it very difficult. It is as intractable as we`ve seen the issue be, you know, despite atrocity after atrocity, after atrocity.
HAYES: Well, and this -- I mean, I think this gets to something important that we`ve been focusing on here in the last week, which is the sort of three different purposes you can imagine for firearms ownership, you know, hobby-ism, hunting, shooting, protection from a home invader, right, or from a bear or something, right? You need to actually -- and then this third, right, the kind of taking on the tyrannical government, going to war personally against some unnamed menace. You know, selling a weapon called the urban sniper to a civilian population, which you could think about it for two seconds, is just deranged, a deranged weapon to sell a civilian, right? What possible University is using an urban sniper weapon.
But that -- the growth of that to me is the thing that really hinges here, because when you think about all those other countries, people will say this casually, gun rights folks, other folks, like, oh, well, there`d be a civil war if they ever tried to take our guns. And that itself ends up being the driver. That paranoia is precisely what`s at play.
COBB: Yes, it absolutely is. I mean, Chris, when you think about it, especially in states of the former Confederacy, that really holds sway when people talk about a civil war. Texas in the aftermath of this, I looked it up and saw that Texas has about 37 percent gun ownership in the population, which is you think it`s astounding to hear that every third person owns a gun in a state as big as Texas.
And then you think about Alabama and Mississippi which are both over 50 percent. And, you know, other states of the former Confederacy, which far outpace, you know, with the exception of Alaska, it`s the states of the former confederacy that far outpace these other states in terms of their gun ownership.
And so, this is-- this is the kind of resonant idea, you know, within the thinking and within the political rhetoric that we hear being bandied about that supports these kinds of positions.
HAYES: And yet the basic reality here, which is recognized, as you see the political action of those countries, Canada, Australia, the U.K., and New Zealand, right, causes difficult -- violence is complicated. Violent crime is complicated. Homicide, they`re all complicated.
COBB: Sure.
HAYES: But holding everything constant, what everyone recognizes is more guns tends to make it more likely that that kind of thing happened. And you, you know, you wrote a great piece about how this backfired. You talked to an assistant professor of criminology at Florida State who looked at gun ownership rates and the proliferation of concealed carry laws between 91 and 2016.
State lawmakers pushing for laxer laws have tended to argue more broadly on public service in terms of violence, but they found the opposite.
[20:15:18]
COBB: We found the opposite. You know, and it`s not shocking. It`s the kind of declaration of the obvious, but empirically grounded that the -- with the proliferation of these concealed carry laws, you`ve seen an increase in the likelihood of gun violence taking place. And they`ll even -- you know, to the point of, you know, the alleged good guy with a gun stopping the bad guy with a gun, you have these states where half the population has firearms, still have mass shootings, still have schools that are unsafe.
I mean, if 50 percent of the population is strapped, and that doesn`t stop the proliferation of violence, that`s a pretty good indicator that that theory doesn`t hold up.
HAYES: Jelani Cobb who really has done great work and great writing on this through the years, unfortunately, that is persisted that long, thank you so much.
COBB: Thank you.
HAYES: Up next, the latest push for Capitol Hill actually do something about gun violence in America. Plus, a January 6 subpoena for the guy who laid out his coup plot right here on MSNBC, and how the weird ranting of Republicans is actually more disturbing than it is funny.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TAYLOR-GREENE: Bill Gates wants you to eat his fake meat that grows in a petri dish, so you`ll probably get a little zap inside your body that say, no, no, don`t need a real cheeseburger, you need to eat the fake -- the fake burger, the fake meat from Bill Gates.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: That`s coming up. We`ll be right back.
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SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): We are going to work every single minute of every single day over the course of this week and next week to try to get enough of our Republican colleagues to yes. I hope they are moved by what they have witnessed in the way that the rest of this country has been moved.
This is a test of democracy. I mean, I think a lot of people in this country are giving up on democracy. And if we fail to come together in the wake of last week, I think a lot more people will choose to give up on democracy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: So, you can see there, right now there`s an ongoing push, again, for bipartisan gun legislation. We`ve seen this before in the wake of gun massacres and in the wake of the last week school shooting in Uvalde, Texas where an 18-year-old killed 19 children and two teachers. Today, Republican Leader Mitch McConnell signaled those called talks for continuing and they`re being led, as you can see, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut along with Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas. Both parties are discussing how they might be able to come together on some kind of gun legislation.
Whether or not bipartisan talks break down, there will be legislation introduced and there will be a vote in the Senate. Schumer has basically said that. Now, the question is will it succeed, will it fall apart the way it always has? Meanwhile, the House has already passed some gun safety legislation and is now moving ahead with its own legislation.
The House Judiciary Committee will consider advancing an omnibus gun reform bill called the Protecting Our Kids Act. Among its many reforms, the bill would raise purchasing age for semi-automatic rifles to 21-years-old and has criminal penalties for gun trafficking. The House committee is set to meet on that bill on Thursday.
Congressman Hakeem Jeffries is a Democrat from New York. He`s the chair of the House Democratic Caucus and a member of that Judiciary Committee, and he joins me now. It`s good to have you on, Congressman. As a member of House leadership, I always wonder particularly given how paper-thin that margin is in the Senate, given the fact that the House has passed a raft of legislation on everything going from voting rights, to gun safety, to the President`s entire domestic agenda that`s basically been stalled there.
How much do you in the House watch what`s going on there in the Senate or is it kind of like, we`ll cross that bridge when we come to it if they do something?
SEN. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): Well, we certainly do pay attention to what`s happening on the other side of the Capitol. And I think many of us do believe that the Senate has become a broken, undemocratic institution largely driven by the filibuster and the tyranny of the minority. And so, we`ve got every confidence in Leader Schumer, every confidence in Senator Murphy.
But we also have to do what we need to do in the People`s House, which is why under the leadership of Chairman Nadler on the judiciary committee on Thursday, we`re going to move aggressively with additional gun violence prevention measures, because that is what the American people are calling us to do.
And hopefully, in the court of public opinion, we`ll be able to put enough pressure on a handful of Republican senators to finally come to some common ground to respond to the carnage that we are all witnessing throughout America.
HAYES: Do you think that when you look at gun violence increase in say, the District you represent and in the city that you live in New York City where there has been an increase in gun violence, how much do you see it as a as driven by a supply, the fact that we had a record breaking year in 2020 for gun sales, that we`ve had a huge spike in the manufacturing and production of guns generally, that the country is independent of these particular instances of mass shootings that are horrific and sort of unique in their own way, but the daily experience of your constituents?
[20:25:11]
JEFFRIES: Well, our country has been flooded with guns and weapons of war, weapons of mass destruction. That`s what the numbers clearly tell us. We`ve got four percent of the world`s population, more than 40 percent of the world`s guns. That is outrageous. It`s estimated that there are more than 400 million guns circulating throughout America. And no law enforcement agency can tell you where the vast majority of those guns are because of the laxness of our national gun laws.
Here in New York, as you know, Chris, and have spoken about, most of the guns used to commit violent acts in the communities, the neighborhoods that I represent, come from out of state, often the neighboring state of Pennsylvania or up the iron pipeline from states in the Deep South.
Same situation in the south side and west side of Chicago. Why? Illinois has tough gun laws, but most of their guns come from the neighboring state of Indiana. And that`s the situation across the country, which is why it requires a national solution.
HAYES: We started talking about guns in the Senate, their Senate talks there. There was a tweet today from Joe Manchin in which he talks favorably about capping prices on prescription drugs, using Medicare`s negotiating ability. That was a key element of that big social insurance climate package that actually passed the House that has essentially been killed by as far as we can tell, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema in the Senate.
There are some talks about getting something out of the Senate, and many people were encouraged by that. And I just wonder if like you, Hakeem Jeffries of Democratic leadership, and the speaker, and Steny Hoyer, are you guys texting about that tweet? Like, is that a smoke signal? Do you have other communication behind the scenes that there`s something to be done there?
JEFFRIES: Well, it`s hopeful, although I personally have not had any communication with some of the more recalcitrant members of the United States Senate. And it`s a very different institution. And there`s a lot of individuality. We often say about the Senate, Chris, 99 is not enough because often a single senator can stand in the way of progress. And certainly in a 50-50 Senate, the power of anyone individual to obstruct is enormous.
But the American people are hurting. We need to lower costs. Certainly, health care costs, the high cost of lifesaving prescription drugs, housing costs, energy costs, childcare costs, and hopefully we can find a pathway through the Senate. If they can reach agreement in the Senate, we will move that bill expeditiously to the House and to President Biden`s desk.
HAYES: Final question for you about a contested primary that happened down in Texas. And it happened against an interesting backdrop. Of course, we`ve seen the leak of what appears to be a draft opinion by the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. We`re still waiting on whether that is going to be what the court issues, but many people expect it will. And of course, we`ve had the Uvalde shooting and discussions of gun and gun safety.
Henry Cuellar who is an incumbent Democrat in the Rio Grande Valley primaried by a young lawyer named Jessica Cisneros. Cuellar has an A rating from the NRA. He`s the lone member of your caucus now who`s opposed to abortion rights. Everyone else is on the side of Roe. You, Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn, Nancy Pelosi, the entire House leadership endorse Cuellar. Some people went down to campaign for him.
And I just want you to respond to people who say this shows that what the Democratic leadership cares about isn`t just a member of the club, they care about incumbency and who`s part of their club more than they do about issues like roe abortion and guns?
JEFFRIES: Well, I certainly at the end of the day, evaluate the totality of someone`s record. And while I may disagree with Representative Cuellar as it relates to reproductive freedom, and in the past may have disagreed with him in terms of his position on gun violence preventive measures -- though I do note that Representative Cuellar did support universal background check legislation that was passed by the House as well as closing the Charleston loophole.
I do think that from the standpoint of his overall membership in the House Democratic Caucus, whether that`s his support for the infrastructure, investment and jobs act, ultimately, his support for Build Back Better, and in many other areas. Henry Cuellar, from my standpoint, had earned my individual support.
Different members of the caucus may make different decisions. But when I made the commitment to support him, it`s a commitment that I was going to stand by.
HAYES: All right, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York, thanks for coming on. Come back soon.
JEFFRIES: Thanks, Chris.
HAYES: All right, still ahead, the Justice Department takes a major step in their investigation of January 6 as the Trump aide who openly bragged about his coup plan on this very station finally get to summon. That`s next.
[20:30:00]
HAYES: It`s pretty rare that you hear someone monologuing about an unlawful plan to overthrow a free and fair election live on national television here in these United States. But that is exactly what happened when Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro talked to my colleague Ari Melber back in January describing the plan he called the Green Bay Sweep.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NAVARRO: The plan was simply this. We had over 100 congressmen and senators on Capitol Hill ready to implement the sweep. The Sweep was simply that. We were going to challenge the results of the election in six battleground states. These were the places where we believe that if the votes were sent back to those battleground states, and looked at again, that there would be enough concern amongst the legislatures, that most or all of those states would decertify the election. That would throw the election to the House of Representatives.
ARI MELBER, MSNBC HOST: You`re describing the way that the incumbent -- hold on, hold on, you will get your turn. I just let you go for a while. Let`s go this back and forth, sir.
NAVARRO: That`s good. That`s good.
MELBER: Then you will use the incumbent losing party`s power, that was the Republican Party that was losing power, to overtake and reverse that outcome. Do you realize you`re describing a coup?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Good question. That was almost six months ago. It seems like Peter Navarro was largely escaping any consequences for just spelling this whole thing out until yesterday when we learned Navarro was served with a grand jury subpoena in an ongoing criminal investigation of January 6 by federal prosecutors out of Washington DC.
Luke Broadwater is a congressional reporter for The New York Times who reported on that grand jury subpoena. And he`s been closely following the January 6 investigations by both the Select Committee and federal prosecutors. And he joins me now.
All right, Luke, so we`ve got the category of people that stormed the Capitol on January 6 that were there unlawfully. There`s hundreds and hundreds of hundreds of arrests, a whole bunch of cases. There`s a conspiracy case has been brought against some militia members as well. That`s on one side. Then the question of like, is there criminal exposure for people higher up, masterminds, people who are trying to do this stuff.
The Navarro news seems significant in that respect. What do we know about it and how significant does it seem to you?
LUKE BROADWATER, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Well, you`re right. I mean, the Justice Department has charged more than 800 of the rioters or the people who were there trying to break into the capitol that day. But since those charges, they`ve started to work backwards from January 6. And we`ve started to see grand juries issue subpoenas for people who were involved with the planning of the rallies on January 6 that preceded the violence, people who are involved in the so-called fake electors team which was the pretense for overturning the election.
And now we have the first subpoena for documents and testimony from someone inside of the White House. This is Peter Navarro who is summoned to appear before a grand jury on Thursday. We know there are at least three grand juries in Washington that have been looking into various aspects of this. His grand jury is a different Grand Jury than the one that has issued subpoenas for the fake elector scheme.
So, we are still trying to wrap our heads around what all these means, but the subpoena to Mr. Navarro, by his own admission, asked for voluminous documents, including his own communications with President Trump himself. So, those are the questions that they want to ask him under oath before a grand jury on Thursday. I asked him whether he planned to comply with this subpoena. And he said that was TBD.
Well, that`s I mean, it`s striking that he is the first we know of in this category, right? I mean, I haven`t missed something, that there`s no one else in the -- in the White House in that sort of inner circle, who appears to have gotten a grand jury subpoena of this kind.
BROADWATER: I mean, it`s possible there is someone and we haven`t learned about it. But this is the first one we in the news media have learned about. Now, his case is may be somewhat unique, and that he has a referral from the Congress for contempt of Congress. So, it`s possible they`re simply invested in him to decide whether or not to issue that charge against him.
But these questions seem to go beyond just Peter Navarro. Asking about conversations with President Trump, about communications with Trump, about all the documents he refused to turn over to the House Committee, which involve, you know, the Green Bay Sweep which you described which you which involved January 2 phone call with hundreds of state legislators to try to get -- to get them to go along with the plan to overturn the election, those things seem to go well beyond just a simple contempt of Congress referral.
So, you know, it remains to be seen what`s going to happen here, but we do have an inkling now that another grand jury is looking closely into the political actors that led to January 6.
HAYES: Yes, and I want to talk about also -- so, there`s that. I mean, it`s interesting, it`s a different grand jury and the alternate electors, right, because obviously there`s a bunch of stuff that we know they`re trying all sorts of things from, you know, trying to rattle the cage of the U.S. Attorney in Georgia to maybe getting rid of the Acting AG to set up this letter.
But the fake elector plan, you know, always struck me as interesting because it was one of the few where there`s like, there`s a very clear paper trail, right? I mean, these people signed a document attesting to a thing that wasn`t true and they sent it. And the times has reported saying that a federal grand jury in Washington has started issuing subpoenas in recent weeks to people linked to the alternate electrode plan, requesting information about several lawyers, including Mr. Trump`s personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, and one of his chief legal adviser John Eastman.
That seems like a pretty -- there`s something going on there clearly in terms of the Feds looking at that as well.
BROADWATER: Yes, absolutely. And if you look at the names that they asked information from, it`s basically every attorney that was involved with Donald Trump in trying to come up with plans to put forward this scheme of the fake electors. So, it`s people who wrote the initial documents, it`s people that reached out to various state legislators and to state slates to try to get them to sign their names to these fraudulent documents. And we know that it is potentially a crime to submit false documents to the National Archives, as was done in this case.
Now, there`s different state laws in different states about how you can submit these electors. And there may be some that are legal and some that are potentially illegal. And so, I believe that`s what the Justice Department right now is looking at. If there was anyone who violated the state laws in this attempt to, you know, I guess, trick the Congress into believing that we`re multiple slates, and then pressure Mike Pence to throw out legitimate slates in favor of the fraudulent slates.
HAYES: Don`t mind us, we`re just the electors from Wisconsin. Like, fake mustache, glasses, the who knows? Luke Broadwater, thank you much. I appreciate it.
BROADWATER: Thank you. Coming up, from the gazpacho police to the peach tree dish. The very serious problem for all of us beyond the quotable Marjorie Taylor Greene next.
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HAYES: Georgia Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has no committee assignments after having them all stripped. And so, she really doesn`t do anything for her constituency. She certainly doesn`t really like, write laws. She has a very active on social media pages and she is always on them. Over the weekend, she had a live stream on her Facebook page, and it was the usual mix of bizarre and offensive conspiracy theories on everything from the monkeypox virus to the LGBTQ community.
And while everything she said is of course, bonkers, she managed a bit of a triple Lindy in this one with an assault on reality, science, and the English language all at once. The whole -- the petri dish hamburger conspiracy theory.
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TAYLOR-GREENE: You have to accept it, everyone. You have to accept the fact that the government totally wants to provide surveillance on every part of your life. They want to know when you`re eating, they want to know if you`re eating a cheeseburger, which is very bad because Bill Gates wants you to eat his fake meat that grows in a petri dish. So, you`ll probably get a little zap inside your body that say, no, no, don`t eat a real cheeseburger. You need to eat the fake -- the fake burger, the fake meat from Bill Gates.
They probably also want to know when you go to the bathroom and if your bowel movements are on time are consistent. I mean, what else are these people want to know?
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HAYES: I don`t know. 10 percent I think it`s a bit. Like, she did it on purpose. I don`t know. Marjorie Taylor-Greene who won her primary by more than 50 points last week says that Bill Gates wants you to eat artificial meat that was grown in -- and I quote -- petri dish. Also, the government is going to probe your bowels for remote surveillance.
It shouldn`t go without saying none of what she said is true. Gates is not working to build a global surveillance street to track when you use the bathroom zap you for eating meat. But it is very funny that a sitting member of Congress doesn`t know what a petri dish is. Just like it was funny when Greene referred to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has "gazpacho" police instead of Gestapo.
But again, behind the gaff is like a genuinely dangerous trend in American politics. Conspiracy theory mania is devouring the Republican Party. Like, the basic set of facts that people understand about the world, that kind of stuff that used to just be relegated to anonymous message boards and Facebook memes.
The man at the head of that party, the ex-president, of course, leading the charge. Just today, his pack promoted a blog post falsely claiming the Georgia Republican primaries were "rigged" because Trump`s preferred candidate for governor lost by 52 GD points, and his choice for Secretary of State lost by nearly 20. And in Trump`s mind, the only way his endorsed candidates could have been rejected so thoroughly by voters is that there was massive fraud.
Trump`s meltdown continued today as he fumed on his off-brand social media platform about the latest results of the special counsel investigation launched by his Attorney General Bill Barr as the right-wing counter- program to the Mueller investigation.
Today, Michael Sussman, a former Clinton campaign lawyer targeted by this probe was acquitted on charges of lying to the FBI, leading Trump of course to go on a rant, calling our legal system "corrupt, compromised." We`ll have much more on how that Trump world conspiracy theory turned real-world investigation went poof next.
[20:50:00]
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HAYES: Way back in the before times, May 13, 2019, then-Attorney General William Barr selected then U.S. Attorney for Connecticut John Durham to lead an investigation into the origins of the federal probe into Russia and the Trump campaign. Just before the 2020 presidential election, Barr named Durham a special counsel which meant he could keep on investigating no matter who was in the White House.
And the whole point of this manifestly from the beginning was to find evidence that the Mueller investigation was the thing that Trump falsely said it was, a "witch hunt." The Mueller investigation lasted less than two years. The counter Mueller investigation has lasted now more than three years. It has only led to charges for three people including a former attorney with ties to Democrats named Michael Sussmann. And the whole Sussmann case hinged on whether or not he had lied about representing another party when he first reported a tip to the FBI about the Russia investigation. That`s it. That was the whole case. Today he was fully acquitted.
Danya Perry is the former Deputy Attorney General for New York State as well as a former Assistant U.S. Attorney, and she joins me now. I know you`ve been track -- you`ve been tracking this case very closely. What was the case ultimately here?
[20:55:33]
DANYA PERRY, FORMER DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL, NEW YORK: Ultimately, it was a big clunker. It started with a big bang and ended with a deafening thought today. As you pointed out, the special counsel was brought in under then- Attorney General Barr to investigate the investigators. And it really was to try and examine the supposedly cozy ties between the Clinton campaign and the FBI.
And what they came up with, as you said, is a whole lot of nothing. They indicted Michael Sussmann, who was not exactly a household name, of one count of lying to the FBI, making a materially false statement in connection with his tip that he brought in to the General Counsel of the FBI at the time. And according to Special Counsel, Durham, he lied about who his client was.
He said he didn`t have a client, according to the indictment. And according to the indictment, in fact, he was representing the Clinton campaign. As the jury found today resoundingly, swiftly, and handily, there`s no there- there.
HAYES: We should be clear. Like, this is the first trial Durham has had, right? It`s been three years. It was this attorney, this one count that he misrepresented who his client was in this one interaction. The trial lasted for a while, right?
PERRY: A couple of weeks.
HAYES: I mean, I just want to be clear, like there are murder trials in New York all the time that don`t make it to day four.
PERRY: Yes.
HAYES: I mean, this was --
PERRY: This was a one witness trial.
HAYES: This was a one witness two week trial, three years in this investigation for a single misstatement, according to the indictment, that was the jury returned an acquittal on in four hours?
PERRY: A couple of hours, about six, but it was over a holiday weekend. Usually, they like to get their lunch, their free lunch out of it, and that`s what they did here today. A couple of the jurors were interviewed and said, this was not about politics, this was about a waste of governmental resources. They found there was no there-there. There was no lie. There was certainly no intention to lie, and there was nothing material about the lie. It did not matter.
HAYES: The broader scope here is that the animating the impetus behind the Durham investigation was basically that the Mueller investigation was corrupt, it was rotten to the core, it was all this like elaborate con job put on by the deep state teaming up with Democrats to take down Donald Trump. Now, nevermind the Mueller report produces this huge report in 10 instances of obstruction, obtains multiple convictions before multiple juries, gets plea deals, etcetera, right? This has now gone on for three years and like it really looks like bubkis.
PERRY: Bubkis, I think, is exactly what the jury found today. That, you know, it`s a case that is really outside of the heartland of what typically is brought by the Department of Justice. You rarely find a one witness case. This was the testimony of the Special Counsel to the FBI that had happened five years prior. There were no notes, there was no recording. His own testimony was ambivalent. Maybe said this, maybe he didn`t. It would not have been broad. But for the fact that --
HAYES: Durham has to show some work product for three years. I mean, that`s the natural conclusion here. Plus, it`s a classic example of projection. I mean, it certainly looks -- and you followed the Durham case which I`ve sort of flitted in and out of following in a close way. It certainly looks like essentially, you have a situation where the thing has become precisely what, you know, they said the Mueller investigation was, this open-ended goose chase where like you have to deliver something or you can`t justify it, it just goes on and on.
PERRY: Yes. I mean, former President Trump said this was the biggest political conspiracy, crime of the century bigger than Watergate. And there was certainly a lot of pressure on the special counsel to find something. And this is what he found after three years, many millions of dollars, and a lot of waste of resources.
HAYES: Can he just go -- keep going forever.
PERRY: There is no natural conclusion. There is another trial in October, same thing, lies to the FBI by an expat Russian analyst, small potatoes. It`s not this broad kind of conspiracy that we`ve been hearing about for a couple of years.
But he does -- you know he is outside of the -- of the Department of Justice technically. So, as with Mueller who understood when his time was up, hopefully, Special Counsel Durham would do the same.
HAYES: All right, well, Danya Perry, thank you so much for that. Tips to you, kids, at home. Don`t talk to the FBI about a lawyer. Think.
That is ALL IN on this Tuesday night. "MSNBC PRIME" starts now with Ayman Mohyeldin. Good evening, Ayman.