Summary
Donald Trump and his allies wield threat of political violence amid the DOJ probe on his Mar-a-Lago documents. Sen. Lindsey Graham threatens Trump prosecution will cause riots in the streets. DOJ says it`s done looking through the latest set of documents that`s recovered from Donald Trump`s retirement home which makes Trump`s special master bid may be too late. The two people involved with stealing and selling Ashley Biden`s diary have now pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transport stolen goods and are facing up to five years in prison. President Joe Biden`s approval among young Americans are increasing after pardoning student loan debt. GOP candidates scrub their websites of anti-abortion views.
Transcript
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: And indeed the culture. Tonight, she`s wearing a figure skating-inspired Nike dress that she designed, made of six layers to honor her six past titles at Flushing. Her shoes include a diamond- encrusted swoosh because she shines bright like a diamond. And we wouldn`t have it any other way.
That is tonight`s "REIDOUT". ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES starts now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voiceover): Tonight on ALL IN.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): If there`s a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information after the Clinton debacle, there`ll be riots in the streets.
HAYES: Trump defenders use the January 6 playbook to menace the DOJ.
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We have seen these MAGA extreme Republicans making these kinds of comments, which is -- which is dangerous.
HAYES: Tonight, as the review of evidence from Mar-a-Lago continues, the White House announces a primetime address on the threat to democracy.
Plus, why Trump`s attempt to slow down the investigation may be too late. Then, are more arrests coming after guilty pleas for the theft of Ashley Biden`s diary. And new evidence that Texas podcaster could be on this update when it comes to student loan debt relief.
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): It could drive up turnout, particularly among young people.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES (on camera): Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. On this last week of August, this Monday, I think it is now safe to say at this point that just three weeks after the FBI search of Donald Trump`s Florida home, his defenders have run out of arguments. In the initial days after the search, Republicans, right-wing media, rushed to fill the vacuum of knowledge we had about what had led the FBI to take this admittedly extraordinary action with just about every bogus excuse in the book.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAYLEIGH MCENANY, FORMER WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: They just don`t give a flying flip about how politicized they look which is terrifying out of the department of the federal government.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Or the rule of law. It`s like Gestapo.
MCENANY: Yes, it feels that way.
JESSE WATTERS, HOST, FOX NEWS: You know, Trump is a momento guy. You`ve seen inside his office. There`s a lot of clutter, memorabilia.
SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): Do I know that the boxes of material they took from Mar-a-Lago that they won`t put things in those boxes to entrap him? How do we know that they`re going to be honest with us about what`s actually in the boxes? How do we know that was in the box before it left the residence?
WATTERS: What the FBI is probably doing is planting evidence which is what they did during the Russia hoax. We also have a hunch they doctored evidence to get the warrant.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He had a standing order. There`s the word I`ve been looking for. That documents removed from the Oval Office and taken to the residence were deemed to be declassified the moment he removed them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Every single one of those claims the ex-president`s supporters made to try to cast aspersions on the search has been shown to be wrong. They were all total nonsense. And over the last three weeks, every fact that has been revealed about the actual investigation classified documents recovered at Mar-a-Lago has made the story more and more damning for Donald Trump.
The chain of events, as we now know shows the U.S. government, the Justice Department, the FBI, the National Archives, trying everything they can to avoid getting to the point where they would have to execute a search warrant. They asked for the documents back multiple times. They sent a top Department of Justice official to visit Mar-a-Lago in person. They negotiated with Trump`s lawyers. They issued a subpoena. They did everything they could over the course, let`s remember, of a year and a half to avoid where we are at now.
But what are you going to do in the end? The ex-President refused to give all the documents back. They`re not his. That`s the plain truth. That`s it. And so, as the New York Times noted last week, some of Trump`s defenders have gotten a little quiet. "Republicans once outraged by Mar-a-Lago search have become quieter as details emerge. That photo is amazing, by the way. But others are doing what so often happens when people run out of arguments. They just resort to force, to menace, to the threat of violence. That`s what we`re hearing right now from Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GRAHAM: Most Republicans including me, believes when it comes to Trump, there is no law. It`s all about getting him. If they try to prosecute President Trump for mishandling classified information after Hillary Clinton set up a server in her basement. They literally will be riots in the street. I worry about our country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Literally riots in the streets. Senator Graham threatening violence if the government brings charges against Donald Trump for possession of the documents we know he had and were not his. Now, we have seen this exact pattern before, eerily similar. It is exactly what happened in the lead up to January 6. Donald Trump lost that election, and then immediately, even beforehand, he and his allies began by making completely false bogus claims about how their election was rigged, lying about it all, right, cycled through this litany of stories seeing -- trying anything that might work, that it was the voting machines infiltrated by the ghost of Hugo Chavez, or the absentee ballots, or the signature matching, or the election workers, or smuggling things in bags, or the Italian satellites. Each and every one of them rebutted. Each and every one of them wrong, failed.
[20:05:15]
When one argument failed, they just went on to the next over and over and over and over again until they were out of time and out of excuses, nothing left. And so, what happened then? Well, then Donald Trump turned to his last remaining option, having failed to persuade, having failed in court, having failed to establish anything factually, he just went in the direction of menace and threats of violence. He told his supporters to come to Washington, rallying them, promising them it would be wild. He riled up what he knew, we now know, was an armed crowd, launched them towards the Capitol, explicitly directing them in that direct direction where they proceeded to set off a deadly riot and almost successfully pulled off a violent coup.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore. And that`s what this is all about.
Because you`ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don`t fight like hell, you`re not going to have a country anymore.
So, we`re going to -- you we`re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we`re going to the Capitol.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: That is what it sounds like when Trump and his supporters run out of arguments. It`s what we saw on January 6. It`s is what it looks like. And I fear, that is the path we are going towards again with the rhetoric of people like Lindsey Graham going on national television and threatening a riot. And of course, it`s not just Graham. Trump is doing his part as well. He knows what he`s doing. He`s goading this all on just as he was in the lead-up to January 6, on January 6. Just days after the surgery at Mar-a- Lago, he began menacing Attorney General Merrick Garland. There`s no other word for it.
According to an account from his own team, revealed in a court filing last week, the ex-president sent a message through one of his lawyers. "President Trump wants the Attorney General to know that he has been hearing from people all over the country about the raid. If there was one word to describe their mood, it is angry, the heat is building up, the pressure is building up. Whatever I can do to take down the heat to bring the pressure down, just let us know.
Trump has also been relentlessly attacking federal law enforcement, writing on his fake Twitter about the atrocities being perpetrated by the FBI and DOJ having to do with the raid and breaking in of my home Mar-a-Lago. He refer to our law enforcement as that of a third world nation. "They have no shame. They are destroying our country." He even shared an article called the FBI the Fascist Bureau investigation.
Now, remember, in case you`ve forgotten, just a few days after the search at Mar-a-Lago, a man tried to shoot his way into the FBI office in Cincinnati. A few days after that, a Pennsylvania man was arrested after threatened to slaughter and kill FBI agents writing in an online post, "You`ve declared war on us, and now it`s open season on Y-O-U.
This is not a thought experiment. It`s not a hypothetical. There is very clearly a real danger and all this threatening menacing rhetoric. And we`re now watching it play out in real time as Trump and his allies, like Lindsey Graham, repeat the same kind of script that led up to the violent insurrection on January 6, in which multiple people ended up dead.
Thankfully, this time around, we should note, they`re doing it with a much smaller platform. But it`s also clear their attempts at intimidation have successfully entered into public debate across the political spectrum, even among establishment centrist pundits about whether or not Donald Trump should be indicted. Lindsey Graham is not the only Trump ally who has argued that the ex-president should essentially be above law because his most extreme brainwashed followers will resort to violence if the law come for him.
But it just simply cannot be the case that the orderly administration of democratic rule, and a nation of laws can be vetoed by a violent mob as it almost was on January 6. Yet that is precisely what the ex-President is trying to do again.
Congressman David Cicilline, he`s democratic Rhode Island introduced articles of impeachment against Donald Trump over his attempted coup, and served as an impeachment manager in the second trial of the ex-president. He writes about all this in his new book out tomorrow House on Fire: Fighting for Democracy in the Age of Political Arson. And Congressman Cicilline he joins me here. It`s good to have you here.
REP. DAVID CICILLINE (D-RI): Thanks for having me.
HAYES: Do you interpret those comments the same way I do as essentially a threat from Lindsey Graham and from others who say they worried about civic peace if the President were to be indicted?
CICILLINE: Yes. I don`t think you can interpret them any other way. You know, I begin my book really in part to sound the alarm about the threat we face in this country, the threat to our democracy and the hopes of encouraging people to understand that must be our first priority in the Midterm elections is defending and protecting our democracy.
I begin my book with the one-year anniversary of January 6, which was only attended by one Republican, a second Republican on January 6 Committee couldn`t come because he was having his first job. But that`s evidence of how little progress we`ve made in persuading our Republican colleagues about what`s really the threat here.
And this is an ex-president who used fear and division and threats of violence in an attempt to stay in power after the American people rejected a second term. He tried to overthrow an American election that work to really undermine the institutions of our democracy is ongoing. And when you see people like Lindsey Graham, who is essentially saying, either allow this President to get away with wrongdoing or there will be more violence. That`s a fascist statement. It`s the use of violence for political means.
And I know there was a lot of, you know, dusts up about using that word, but in my book, I talk about kind of the checklist for fascist. And you go down that list and Donald Trump has engaged in behavior, which meets almost all of those elements. So, this is a serious threat. The book is intended hopefully to raise the conscience of people, I was involved in both the first and second impeachment, the second impeachment as a manager. But this is the most dangerous time that I think we have faced, at least in my lifetime, in terms of protecting our democracy and our ability to continue to live in a democracy.
HAYES: There`s also something head-spinning when you just -- when you use the word fascist. You know, my background when I was younger, I came up in like a very sort of like left circle. Right now, it`s always kind of a boring liberal in the end, but it`s like, you know, the Fascist Bureau of Investigation is something that like you would read in like a left-wing anarchists like Zen or something, right? Like, the ex-President of the United States of the Republican Party and ostensibly the Conservative Party, talking about the Fascist Bureau investigation, and people in the other party basically, going along with this idea. There`s this like, conspiracy by the FBI to get Donald Trump. It`s just -- it`s really head spinning.
CICILLINE: No, it says big -- and particularly from a party that prides itself on supporting law enforcement and always criticizing Democrats for the opposite. This is about supporting the rule of law. We live in a country that requires that everyone follow the same set of rules. And if you break the law, you violate the rules, you must be held accountable.
Were taught since we`re very young, no one is above the law. If that is actually true, then Donald Trump must be held accountable for his conduct. And to see Republican colleagues trying to make excuses from that -- you played at the beginning of the show -- I mean, it`s head spinning. Every excuse in the world and no one has -- that I`ve heard of those same Republicans has answered the question, why in the world did Donald Trump take highly classified documents home with him in violation of the law?
HAYES: And keep them for 18 weeks? What was he doing? Why won`t he just give him back? There`s no answer for it. And on this, this point of the threat, I mean, it is striking to me -- I think, you know, people ask me about politics, I would say, look, one of the paradoxes here, one of the difficult things about preserving democracy is that most voters are going to vote on things like inflation, right, or choice, right? They`re going to -- they`re going to be focused on issues in their day-to-day lives generally.
It`s going to be hard to get people to care about democracy voting issue. And yet, right --
CICILLINE: They finally happen.
HAYES: I mean, I am. I am genuinely pleasantly surprised. This NBC News poll which we`ve shown a bit of the top issue volunteer by voters, right, is threats to democracy.
CICILLINE: Yes. I think the American people do understand in a very profound way, there`s something very dangerous is happening. And all of the things people care about are more difficult to solve if you don`t have a democracy, if you don`t have a functioning democracy where people are allowed to vote and select their own leaders, and their votes are counted and they`re represented.
So, I think people understand that the conduct of the former president and those who are supporting him is very dangerous. And, you know, my experience in Providence where there was a very corrupt mayor who was in office before, I was -- that, ultimately, it was the people who stood up and said, enough is enough, they elected me. And I think we need the same thing here for people to say enough is enough and elect people who are prepared to stand up and fight to protect our democracy, and do not support anyone from this party that`s not your grandparents Republican Party.
This is a party of corruption, and chaos, and QAnon, and Marjorie, Taylor Greene, and insurrection and the big lie. They have forfeit the right to have control over the economy, over our health care, over our democracy. And I think we have to continue to deliver. I think Democrats are delivering to the American people. At the same time, we need to characterize the Republicans for what they are in supporting this ex- president and promoting the untruths and the lies. And I think when we do that, we`ll prevail.
But this is -- you know, I would not normally write a book. I wrote a book because this is a dangerous moment and I feel like everyone has to do everything they can to sound the alarm, to raise your voice to make sure people understand the threat we face so that we can confront it, and defeat it, and preserve American democracy.
[20:15:07]
HAYES: And again, the danger here is literal, right, in the sense. I mean, the guy that shows up in Cincinnati, the NBC News reporting that FBI and DHS have warned of threats to federal law enforcement, of the spikes since the Mar-a-Lago search, sending out this bulletin which advises such threats are occurring online, that it calls on authority to be vigilant. So, this is -- this is a real thing.
Let me end on that because you just mentioned one of my favorite political stories in America, which is Buddy Cianci and Providence. For people that don`t know, this is a very charismatic, pugilistic, demagogic, one might even say, mayor who was also pretty corrupt. He ends up getting indicted. He does tie in prison. He comes out runs again, right? He had a hold on people despite everything. What do you learn from that? For this because there`s a lot there?
CICILLINE: Yes, I think in the end, what I learned from that is the virtue of the voter, that really the only way you could confront that was ultimately for people in the city to say, we have suffered enough with this kind of leadership. Our lives haven`t gotten better. We will not tolerate this kind of leadership and --
HAYES: Right. The prosecution ended up not being the magic bullet.
CICILLINE: That`s right.
HAYES: Right. He was prosecuted, and he comes out of jail and he runs again and he wins, right?
CICILLINE: And they said things about him that they said about Donald Trump. One of his supporters said, Buddy Cianci is going to rob a bank, and he would still get voted into office. It sounds familiar about Fifth Avenue. So, I think in the end, I saw the worst in politics, but I`ve also seen the best, the virtue of people to stand up and say enough, enough is enough.
HAYES: I strongly believe a majority of Americans across all sorts of different lines of -- you know, difference are in that camp and we`ll see. We`ll see what that does for the Midterm elections. Congressman David Cicilline, it`s great to have you here.
CICILLINE: Thanks for having me.
HAYES: Still ahead, time`s up. DOJ says it`s done looking through the latest set of documents that`s recovered from Donald Trump`s retirement home which this -- what this means for Trump`s dwindling legal defenses, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:20:00]
HAYES: -- potentially contain attorney-client privilege information. But DOJ did not respond to this specific claim of executive privilege. That is partly because, as we`re about to get into, it is sort of nonsensical. The DOJ is also saying they will respond to the motion filed by Trump`s lawyers and produced a more detailed list of materials recovered from the search, as well as an extra-long memo that they`ve gotten permission to file arguing against Trump`s call for this special master.
Asha Rangappa is a former FBI Special Agent focused on counterintelligence investigations as well as an attorney and senior lecturer at Yale. Brandon Van Grack is a former member of Robert Mueller`s team. He was a senior official in the DOJ National Security Division where he oversaw investigations into disclosure of classified documents and prosecuted cases involving the Espionage Act. It`s great to have you both.
There`s a lot to get to here. And it`s super confusing partly because the request by the Trump team is so incoherent in some ways. So, let me just start this way, Asha. I mean, the number one thing is no judge, no matter how powerful, can order time to be reversed. So, if you`re asking for a thing to happen that is already -- that has already happened, like there`s nothing to do about that, right? Like the biggest issue they have is the timeliness of this filing.
ASHA RANGAPPA, FORMER FBI SPECIAL AGENT: Right. I`m really trying to understand what the Trump lawyers` endgame is here because it sounds like they still want to ask for a special master. So, I`m trying to kind of reverse engineer this kind of like, you know how you play a record backwards to hear the secret message. And I think the problem that that happens here is, let`s say the Special Master is appointed, and that special master is asked to review, you know, to see if there`s executive privilege claims.
Like, let`s say they get what they want. They are not contesting the authority of the Presidential Records Act. It means that all of those identified documents will be returned to the National Archives, not to Trump. That`s who owns them. I`m not sure what they think at that point is going to happen. My -- I suspect that the Department of Justice would then ask NARA for those documents under the PRA, which they`ve already done for the previous tranches of documents. They would get it because there`s an ongoing criminal investigation. And so, we`re back to square one.
HAYES: Right.
RANGAPPA: So, I don`t really understand what outcome -- what the remedy is that they think is going to happen from this request.
HAYES: Okay. Let`s continue on that Brandon, because this gets to this weird, I think, abuse of the concept of executive privilege, which has been throughout. I mean, and even like Pat Cipollone I think in the way that he invokes it seems like really imprecise. You know, it`s not a magic thing that means like, these are mine and Donald Trump`s only. Like, it if belongs to the executive, it belongs to like, the existing executive of the government, right? Like, I don`t even understand what the nature of this executive privilege claim is, Brandon.
BRANDON VAN GRACK, FORMER SENIOR OFFICIAL, DOJ: Well, the reality is, it`s really not worth too much time trying to figure that out because asserting a privilege claim against the privilege holder, in this case, the executive, it doesn`t appear to carry much water and I think what we`re going to see tomorrow from the Justice Department is a very vigorous assertion of that fact.
And so, probably, you know, a case adverse, we might as well wait to see what that is and we`ll see how strong I think the Department`s view of that particular issue is.
[20:25:27
HAYES: So -- OK, these filings seem like sort of a sideshow. They`re an attempt to delay. They`re an attempt to throw something at the wall and see if it sticks. The judge, indicating she might be inclined to grant it. And a lot of people pointing out it`s just -- it`s neither here nor there, really, if it`s granted in terms of the ultimate resolution of the case.
The DOJ court filing today on classification review which seems significant. The Department of Justice and Office of Director of National Intelligence are currently facilitating a classification review materials recovered pursuant to the search, as Director of National Intelligence advised Congress, ODNI is also leading an intelligent community assessment of the potential risk to national security that will result from the disclosure of these materials. What`s the significance of that? Why is that happening and what does that mean?
RANGAPPA: Well, the classification review itself is really to look at, you know, what is the nature of the material that has been recovered, and then this will go to the damage assessment, because the classification is related to -- its hierarchical scale of the type of damage that it would cause.
And I suspect that the Department of Justice has included that to say, by the way, there are national security implications here, because this court, as far as I can tell, is supposedly exercising what`s called equitable jurisdiction, which means they`re looking at fairness. And the government always gets a feather on the scale when there are national security interests involved. Those should give be given great weight. And I think that they`re pointing out that in this clown show, there are real national security issues at hand.
HAYES: And Brandon, there`s also the question down the line, right, of the competing imperatives here about keeping the secrets secret, which is, of course, what`s kind of at the core of a lot of what the transgression is here, and a possible prosecution or trial in which there would be some tension between the aim of keeping the secret secret and a certain amount of transparency will be necessary to actually bring a case, right?
VAN GRACK: That`s right. Ultimately, it`s one of the core challenges of prosecuting cases involving the mishandling of classified documents. It is not uncommon if you have highly classified documents, some of which appear to have been involved and seized from Mar-a-Lago to just simply be so sensitive that, for example, they cannot be provided to a jury, which does not yet have a security clearance. They -- that is not part of the process, or they cannot be provided to defense counsel.
And so, it is oftentimes a challenge determining what documents, what classified documents actually can be used to prosecute an individual in a case like this.
HAYES: Wait, let me just follow up on that. Meaning, in that circumstances, would you just not include those super, super, super classified documents in the -- in the trial at all. They just wouldn`t exist for the purposes of the trial, essentially?
VAN GRACK: That`s -- so, that`s exactly right. You`re almost looking for -- we call them Goldilocks documents -- that sort of just right, not too sensitive, but also conveying on their face enough harm or potential damage that a juror, for example, could see them and realize that there`s something here that`s different than what you would read about in the New York Times.
HAYES: That`s fascinating. Asha Rangappa and Brandon Van Grack, that was really illuminating. Thank you both.
Coming up, it worked once again, so why not try again? The latest details in the Republican plan to use dirty tricks to get Donald Trump reelected, next.
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[20:30:00]
HAYES: In 2016, dirty tricks and criminal election sabotage by Russia helped propel Donald Trump in the presidency. Then in 2020, Trump supporters tried a whole bunch of other dirty tricks to keep him in the White House. You know, figured it work once, they do it again. The most infamous example is Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani scheme in Ukraine directed by the President in which the sitting president used American foreign policy and the State Department in coordination with his private attorney to repeatedly attempt to blackmail the president of Ukraine, Zelenskyy, into digging up dirt on his political rival, Joe Biden.
Trump got caught and he was rightfully impeached for it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): He tried to cheat and he got caught. Now, this wasn`t the first time. This Russian effort to interfere in our elections didn`t deter Donald Trump. It empowered him. The day after Special Counsel Bob Mueller testified before Congress about Russia`s sweeping and systemic effort to influence the outcome of our last election, the day after President Trump believed that the investigation into his first electoral misconduct had come to an end, the President was back on the phone urging get another country, this time Ukraine, to help him cheat in another election.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[20:35:03]
HAYES: And it wasn`t just the Ukraine scheme. There were a number of other dirty tricks in the work from Trump allies ahead of the last election. There was Kanye West bizarre presidential campaign where he essentially ran as a kind of pro-Trump third-party candidate, was helped and encouraged by Republican operatives, hoping we think to pull some votes from Black voters away from Joe Biden. I think that was the thinking.
Then there was the fake electors scheme which remains under criminal investigation, the attempts to publicly pressure government officials to overturn the results after the election. But then before the election even happened, right, there also the leaks from the misplace laptop of Joe Biden`s son, Hunter, and more seriously, in some ways, the theft of the diary of Joe Biden`s daughter Ashley.
A woman named Amy Harris found the diary at a friend`s house where Biden had been living. Harris, a friend, offered the diary to the Trump campaign. But according to federal prosecutors, and get this, this is truly shocking, Harris` co-conspirator text her "Trump campaign can`t use it. They wanted to go to the FBI. There is no way Trump can use this. It has to be done a different way."
The two instead sold the diary for $40,000 to the right-wing smear group that calls itself Project Veritas, best known for misleadingly editing sting videos. Harris colleague tested the group would use the tape to "ruin actually Biden`s life and try and affect the election. First, the smear group tried to use the diary to blackmail, then-candidate Biden into sitting for an interview. It didn`t work.
Then surely, surprise, surprise, the diary ended up online, though it didn`t get that much attention at the time, it didn`t affect the outcome of the election. But as always, the people doing Trump`s dirty work were caught holding the bag. The two people involved with stealing and selling the diary have now pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transport stolen goods. They face up to five years in prison.
Michael Schmidt is covering the story for The New York Times and he joins me now. This is really a wild story, Michael. First just tell us based on the pleading, right, these two individuals pled guilty, what exactly these people did, what they`re guilty of.
MICHAEL SCHMIDT, WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Basically, they`re guilty of transporting stolen property over state lines. So, they took property that they knew was not theirs that they had no right to. They brought it up to New York to show to Project Veritas. And then after Project Veritas agreed to purchase the diary from them, the documents put out by federal prosecutors say that these individuals went back into the home where the diary had been found to retrieve additional items that were given to Project Veritas.
Now, you would wonder why did they need additional items? Project Veritas was trying to authenticate the diary. They were trying to ensure that if they went ahead and made a big deal about publishing it, that it indeed came from Ashley Biden. And these additional items that came out of the home, which the documents say these individuals took, you know, in response to talking to Project Veritas, show how the criminality of the entire thing has raised questions about these additional items and why it was that they went and got them.
HAYES: So, I want to talk about that, because there`s a fascinating part of the filing about what Project Veritas exposure can be. But just to -- just to make sure I understand this, these folks were ideologically motivated, I guess. They were just like, big conservatives who just happened to find the President`s daughter`s diary. Is that -- I mean, it`s really a wild coincidence.
SCHMIDT: I think that they`re -- I think they were people who were sympathetic to Trump more -- but more importantly to them, I think they were motivated by money. They thought that this would be a way that they would make money and that Project Veritas would pay them thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of dollars.
HAYES: So, to that point, right, Project Veritas obviously, we have robust First Amendment in this country, and that`s good. And documents of unknown province, right, can be published with First Amendment protections. In fact, the New York Times and others have done that. But there`s obviously lines. This is -- this is the line that stands out here.
Employee one, this is -- we assume of Project Veritas, asked Harris and Robert Kurlander, the defendant, to return to the residence. This is the residence where they found the diary, so they could obtain and provide the authorization more of the victim`s belongings that Harris had described earlier, but not yet provided the organization.
The employee one also repeatedly informed Harris and Kurkander he was working in consultation with and at the direction of an executive of the authorization. This seems like it opens up some possible criminal liability to Project Veritas. What is your understanding?
SCHMIDT: That is exactly where the question of Project Veritas and the entire investigation will hinge? Does the government think that because Project Veritas told them to go back in and take additional items and was basically part of that scheme, because of that role, should they bring charges? And you know with the First Amendment, does the First Amendment protect them at all?
And what I think some legal experts will say is that, as a news organization, you can be in receipt, you can take in stolen property. The stuff that Edward Snowden took from the NSA was all stolen from the NSA.
[20:40:28]
HAYES: Correct.
SCHMIDT: It`s not like the NSA just donated it to Edward Snowden who gave it to the press. So, the question here is that if these individuals who say they were engaged in, you know, First Amendment activity that were working for Project Veritas, directed them to do this and played a role legally in this scheme to obtain the stolen property, would the government go ahead and try and bring charges?
And all we know in that area is that the government was so interested in this question, so interested in Project Veritas` role that last year they got a search warrant to go to the homes of its founder and the, you know, two individuals who were involved in obtaining and trying to authenticate the diary. And those just getting a search warrant -- I mean, obviously, we`re learning a lot as a country about search warrants now, but getting a search warrant on someone who is antagonistic to the administration and claims to be a journalist is a pretty extraordinary thing. It`s not a former president, but before that, you know, it was certainly pretty remarkable at the time.
HAYES: Yes, it`s going to be interesting to see how this -- how this plays out. There`s some nuggets in that filing to follow. Michael Schmidt who has been covering this, thank you so much for coming on tonight.
SCHMIDT: Thanks.
HAYES: Still to come, it turns out helping people who need it makes them like you more. It`s crazy. Why President Biden`s rising poll numbers have Republicans scrambling, next.
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JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Using the authority Congress grant at the Department of Education, we will forgive $10,000 in outstanding federal student loans. In addition, students who come from low- income families, which allowed them to qualify to receive a Pell Grant, will have their debt reduced to $20,000. Both of these targeted actions are for families who need it the most.
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HAYES: It`s pretty rare on politics, you get to see how a policy like President Joe Biden canceling student loan debt for millions of Americans can so immediately and tangibly affect millions of people just basic materials security in one moment or next. It`s something we saw play out on social media as young people reacted to the news.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We did it, Jill. We did it, Jill.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When you found out the Pell Grant kids get an additional 10,000, I love being poor today.
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HAYES: It was, I have to say, a joy to watch. The policy even made its way into the popular culture with a professional wrestler referencing it in a rap dissing his opponent.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- telling me in, you little jerks get no respect, we wipe you out like Biden did students debt.
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HAYES: For all the hand-wringing by centrist economists and backlash from Republicans, it looks to be a very popular policy. There`s some polling now to show that. People under the age of 30 are the most directly impacted by this policy. And as of the end of July, 49 percent of them are approved of President Biden`s job performance according to a CBS-YouGov poll. And then in the days after the announcement, that same poll showed Biden`s approval swing up to 59 percent. That`s a pretty big difference.
Another poll found Biden`s approval among 18 and 25-year-olds was just 44 percent at the end of July. After the student loan announcement, it jumped up to 53 percent. Even before all this, the President`s overall approval rating went up six points in the latest Gallup poll. It`s worth noting this happened as we`ve seen gas prices go down, major climate legislation passed, and everyone has been reminded what a threat to democracy the ex- president was and remains.
So, there`s a lot going on here. Certainly several lessons wrapped up in all that. But one is that -- is that sometimes you do actually get rewarded by voters for making good popular policy. The counter-example is a Republican Party tethered to the criminalization of abortion, a position largely rejected by the American public. That`s next.
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HAYES: When you`re running for office on a platform that the vast majority of American voters disagree with, one that is ready been repeatedly rejected by voters this year, well, it`s no wonder Republicans keep trying to memory hold their extreme positions on abortion. First, it was Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters who ran on explicitly anti-Roe position. His website tattered his 100 percent pro-life bonafides. He said he supported the federal personhood law which basically would give rights to fertilized eggs and zygotes, something that would result most likely in nationwide criminalization of literally all abortion everywhere.
Last week, he scrubbed all that from his platform. It doesn`t exist on the website anymore. He`s now trying to pass himself off as a "common sense politician on abortion access." So is Michigan Republican Tom Barrett. His congressional campaign website used to have values section where, not surprisingly, he touted his lifelong work in the anti-abortion movement, pledge to "always work to protect life from conception." That section has now disappeared from his website.
When the Detroit News asked him about the change, he said he didn`t know about it but "I`m sure we probably were updating things based upon the issues that were most salient right now, which are inflation, cost of living, crime, border security. Those are really the four pillars that are the leading issues that voters are most concerned with. Of course, when actual voters in Michigan were asked by the research firm Epic MRA what their number one issue is right now, abortion top the list in Michigan.
Natalie Allison is a national reporter for Politico, and she joins me now. Natalie, you`ve been reporting on these the Senate races across the country. I want to talk about Masters just to begin with. They all have a similar issue which is if you`re coming from a crowded Republican primary, you got to be very, very anti-abortion to win primary. But now, you got that position in a time when the polling on this has shifted pretty rapidly. How are they dealing with it?
NATALIE ALLISON, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, POLITICO: Yes, that`s right. These Republican primaries, they were all a race to the right. Not only were they trying to win Trump`s endorsement by championing election fraud themes, but also the support of the traditional conservative base who cared a lot about a candidate being strongly anti-abortion. And now, they`re general election candidates. They`re on the ballot at a time where a lot of voters in these battleground states are realizing a right to an abortion, a woman`s right to choose in that instance is not a given anymore.
And so, these candidates are naturally not leading with this anti-abortion rhetoric like we saw. You mentioned, Blake Masters. This is a candidate who during the Republican primary said that abortions are demonic. As you mentioned, he supported a federal personhood law. Now he`s changed the rhetoric on his website. He`s trying to describe his views as common sense. He now says he only would support banning abortion very late in pregnancy. And that`s certainly a softening of that.
We`ve seen someone like Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, another battleground state, who late last month was forced to put out a really lengthy statement explaining his views promising that he did support exceptions in the case of raping incest. And we`ve seen this play out in other states. We`ve seen Republicans in places like Washington State and Colorado, putting out videos and even T.V. ads promising that they aren`t going to support a nationwide abortion ban and promising that they`re not going to try to strip people`s abortion rights. And so, Republicans have really been put on the defense right now.
HAYES: Yes, it`s a great point in those states like Colorado or Washington where you`re already dealing with a state where Republican has a little bit of an uphill battle. Those are states won by Joe Biden, for instance, and have a kind of democratic advantage. There we`ve seen them go out and just say like, I`m just not interested in this, like, affirmatively trying to say, don`t worry about being and abortion, voters of Colorado and Washington state.
That`s not something I think a Ron Johnson or a Blake Masters can pull off. I mean, they just strike me as completely different situations, particularly that Ron Johnson has a long career as a U.S. senator with a whole bunch of votes and people know where he stands on the issue of abortion.
ALLISON: That`s right. And they`re continuing to say that they`re pro-life. So, J.D. Vance is another example. Someone who in his Republican primary had the endorsement of the anti-abortion, Susan B. Anthony, had the endorsement of the Ohio Right to Life. And then last month in an interview, he`s asked about his support for federal abortion ban and his answer was not right now. He didn`t say I would never support this, but he said, I don`t think this is what we need to do right now.
And so, they`re doing a really tricky dance right now to not alienate those voters who put them on the ballot in the Republican primary, but also not to go too far for general election voters.
HAYES: Yes, just for a snapshot -- a snapshot of the abortion support, this polling, legal in all or most cases, 61 percent; illegal in all and most cases, 37 percent. That`s from actually all the way back in March. Those numbers may have changed quite a bit since Dobbs. But you -- I also wonder how much we`ve seen Democrats go on the offense on this. I mean, obviously, we`re not getting a ton of ad spending yet. That`s mostly going to come after Labor Day.
We saw this special election in New York 19 where Pat Ryan in a district Biden only won by two percent really lead with abortion as an -- as an issue, won that race. Are we seeing Democratic candidates proactively trying to bring this up and go at their opponent over it?
ALLISON: Yes, we`re absolutely seeing that. In the case of Joe O`Dea in Colorado, Michael Bennett is the Democratic incumbent he`s up against, put on an ad attacking him on that. We`ve seen Catherine Cortez Masto doing that in Nevada attacking Adam Laxalt on the Republican side. And in all of these cases, these Republicans have had to come back and try to correct the record saying the Democrats have exaggerated my position on this. Let me clarify my position on this. Talking about abortion at a time when a Republican really doesn`t want to be talking about abortion. They want to be focusing on the economy, on inflation, on Biden, things like that.
HAYES: Yes, this is the point right? If you`re -- even if you`re rebutting or presuming to rebut a charge about your extremism, on abortion, you`re talking about abortion. And you`re talking about abortion at a time when the Republican Party is on the wrong side writ large of American public opinion in the wake of that Dobbs decision by the Supreme Court. Natalie Allison who`s been covering all this across country, thank you very much.
ALLISON: Thank you.
HAYES: That is ALL IN on this Monday night. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.