Show: THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW Date: June 26, 2017 Guest: Ezra Levin, Neal Katyal, Dahlia Lithwick
HAYES: That is "ALL IN" for this evening.
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW starts right now.
Good evening, Rachel.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Chris. Thanks, my friend.
HAYES: You bet.
MADDOW: And thanks to you at home for joining us this hour.
The president`s son-in-law has tonight hired one the of country`s most prominent criminal defense lawyers. This prominent criminal defense lawyer will be representing Jared Kushner personally in the Trump/Russia investigation. His name is Abbe Lowell.
He is one of the few criminal defense lawyers in America who I think counts as household name. He is most famous for having been the Democrats` top lawyer during the impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton. He also, though, represented the fabulously corrupt, convicted Republican super lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. He also represented former Democratic vice presidential nominee, John Edwards, when John Edwards was charged with using illegal campaign contributions to pay for the living expenses for his secret second family that nobody knew about.
Abbe Lowell has also been the defense lawyer -- he`s been the defense lawyer in the middle of ton of lurid political scandals. Charles Keating from the Keating Five savings and loan scandal had Abbe Lowell as his lawyer. Jim Wright who was the first speaker of the House to ever resign in scandal, he had he Abbe Lowell as his lawyer. Dan Rostenkowski who went straight from being chairman of the Ways and Means Committee to serving 17 months this federal prison, Abbe Lowell was his lawyer.
And now, he`ll be the defense lawyer for Jared Kushner too. Mr. Kushner is reportedly keeping his existing private lawyer, another Washington A-lister named Jamie Gorelick. But in addition to Ms. Gorelick, he is also now adding Abbe Lowell which means like Mike Pence, presidential senior adviser and presidential son-in-law and de facto crown prince of the Trump administration, Jared Kushner and Mike Pence honestly now both have better legal representation in this matter than the president does.
And I don`t mean to be weird ad hominem about this, but to face this scandal, and to mount a personal defense, the president himself has hired this guy, who like, you know, handled some of his divorce stuff. He also hired a lawyer who mostly does religious right televangelist kind of stuff and he also hired this guy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TV ANCHOR: You`re going to want to watch this next piece of video that we are going to show you. Raj Rajaratnam is free on $100 million bail after being convicted of all 14 counts of conspiracy and fraud in his insider trading trial. His attorney, John Dowd, has promised to appeal those convictions. This is the video that I was talking about. CNBC caught up with Mr. Dowd a short time ago.
REPORTER: Do you have comment for CNBC, though?
JOHN DOWD, ATTORNEY: Get the (EXPLETIVE DELETED) out of here. That`s what I`ve got for CNBC.
TV ANCHOR: Wow!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: That`s what I got for CNBC. CNBC doesn`t usually have to blur hand gestures. I mean, it`s like business stuff. You know what I mean?
But the president has hired this "Star Wars" bar scene legal team to mount his own defense in the Russia scandal. And that is fine. That`s his prerogative. He gets to do it however he wants to do it.
But it is worth noting that now in contrast, his vice president, Mike Pence, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, in contrast to what he`s done, they have hired real big-name lawyers with tons of relevant experience in big-name political scandals. Mike Pence hired Richard Cullen. Jared Kushner just hired freaking Abbe Lowell. So, that news broken first tonight by politico.com. We`re going to have more coming up in just a couple minutes about why Jared Kushner may be feeling the need to add such an A-list lawyer to his personal payroll.
There are two things have just come up that may explain the sense of urgency in terms of him putting together his legal team and hiring one of the most famous criminal defense lawyers in the country. So, we`ll get to some of that news ahead in just a couple minutes.
I want to start tonight, though, with this airplane banner towing a banner which was seen today flying high over -- well, flying high, well above what typically counts as American politics. The plane is on the left side of the screen. The banner is on the sort of lower right. And I think you can -- can we zoom in so you can see what it says?
Yes. Senator Heller, keep your word, vote no on Trump care.
Now, the only problem with this high-flying message today is that although this message targets Senator Dean Heller of Nevada, this banner actually flew today over Charleston, West Virginia, which I think was just a screw- up. I think this is also a heads-up to the people of Nevada that somewhere above Reno or Las Vegas, you`re probably about to start seeing a plane flying a banner for somebody named Senator Capito, because that is the one meant for West Virginia. West Virginia and Nevada are probably going to have to swap their bi-plane banners.
Senator Shelley Moore Capito from West Virginia did get wrong banner for the wrong senator flown over her office in Charleston today. But Senator Capito also got a lot of people on the ground in exactly the right place. Her constituents today coming to her office in Charleston, West Virginia`s largest city, including a half dozen West Virginia residents who not only came to the office, but they came inside the office and they said that they would stay in there. They would sit in in an act of peaceful civil disobedience.
They pledged to stay until she pledged to vote no on the Republican`s health care bill. They said they`d stay until she said she would vote no or until they get arrested, whichever came first. And this afternoon, they got arrested. Six of them were arrested at Senator Capito`s office, including a local Episcopal priest.
Shelley Moore Capito is one of the Republican senators who really might vote no on this bill, in part because of the high number of people, easily more than 100,000 people in her state who would be expected to lose all health insurance coverage and have no options if this bill becomes law. Senator Capito of West Virginia, so far, has not said anything about how she is going to vote on it. But if you want to get a sense of what she`s facing back home over this bill, you see those arrests today, you see those people at her Charleston office today.
Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I want you to see a picture of somebody, a face. That`s my daughter.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK? She is beautiful.
She doesn`t take after her mom. But that`s OK. I want you to see her in treatment.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my gosh. How old is she?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She`s 41 years old. She`s been fighting this cancer.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What`s her name?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Amy Elizabeth Stills. She`s been fighting this cancer for four years. Very diligently. She has maintained her jobs. She`s gotten promotions, has led teams, as sick as she has been. She would not be alive today if it wasn`t for the ACA.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is she on expanded Medicaid? Or --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No. She`s working.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She`s able to get --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: With her job. But if she ever lost her insurance, in seven months, she went over $1,200,000 and this has been going on for four years. Pre-existing condition?
And we`re not sure how long she`s going to be able to work. Maybe forever. That`s what our goal is.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right, right.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But these are real people.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My daughter.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So I want you to have that in your brain. Look at this. I understand pressure. I understand what --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, I don`t.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I can only imagine. But West Virginia needs you so desperately to stand up against this immoral bill.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Senator Shelley Moore Capito, one of those votes who will be a make or break vote. For the Republican plan to kill the Affordable Care Act, which they reportedly want to take votes on and try to pass this week. The Congressional Budget Office today put out its new score of what the bill will do. That score projects if the Republicans are able to pass this thing, it will kick 22 million Americans off of health insurance.
Before today`s score, Nevada Senator Dean Heller had already, in fact, said he was a no vote on the bill. After the score came out today, Senator Susan Collins of Maine said she too will be a no vote on the bill. Now, that`s two. That`s all the no votes Republicans can spare.
If they get to three, if just one more Republican senator decides to vote no, this thing will be over.
Senate Democrats tonight are once again holding the floor of the United States Senate. They`re going to be holding the floor of the Senate indefinitely tonight. They`ve been there already several hours. They`re trying to sound the alarm against the Republicans` bill. They`re trying to rally more no votes against it.
The Democrats` takeover of the Senate floor on this tonight was led by Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono, who is going to be leaving the Senate tomorrow to undergo a second round of surgery to fight kidney cancer which she was just diagnosed with.
So, tomorrow, Senator Hirono is going to have a lesion on her rib removed in conjunction with her cancer treatment. But tonight she is leading the Senate, leading the Democrats in the Senate in this effort to try to save the Affordable Care Act.
But you know, no matter how dramatic things get in this fight on this issue in Washington, D.C., the real potent politics of this have been shaped not in D.C. They`ve been shaped at home, in the home states of all these people, at their offices, at all of their public events. Every time they show up in their home districts and their home states.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(CHANTING)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If you want to travel fast, go alone. If you want to travel far, go together.
(CHANTING)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are going to make the changes, we are going to pass the bill, and we`re going to repeal Obamacare.
(BOOING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: That was not the response that Texas Congressman Pete Sessions wanted to get from a roomful of his constituents there. But that`s what it`s been like.
Hometown lawmakers have been getting an earful from town halls to defend what the Republicans are trying to do on health care. It is also involved these organic grassroots group that have sprung up all over the country in every single congressional district in the country. Indivisible movement, holding rallies at lawmaker offices, demanding that their representatives do town hall events and meet with their constituents and explain their votes.
Sometimes, it has involved creative protests like bringing props to representatives` offices. Sometimes, it has involved -- oh, this was a very good prop one. Each of these balloons delivered to New Jersey Republican Congressman Tom MacArthur`s office, in the third district in New Jersey, handed him these balloons to the staffer, each one representing 1,000 people who would lose coverage as a result of his vote for the bill that he helped pass in the House. You will notice the balloons are themselves filled with confetti which creates quite conundrum for staffers in terms of what do you with all those balloons once you get them in the office.
I mean, the activism has been tremendous in the home states and home districts of representatives from before the inauguration. From the fist moments of people organizing to see if the Republicans are going to be able to do what they said they were going to do on repealing the Affordable Care Act. It has involved a lot of meetings with the congressional staffers. It has involved not listening to the staffers of congressional lawmakers when they tried to placate the crowds in absence of said lawmakers.
Aides to Georgia Republican Senators David Perdue and Johnny Isakson found that out the hard way at a constituent event back in February where you can tell, they were just not prepared.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We need help with Medicare and Social Security. So many of you have already signed up on our sign-up sheet. But if you have not, this is how we`re going to be calling folks back into the conference room to discuss matters.
(BOOING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Huge constituent crowds were a staple of life for Republican lawmakers whenever they went back home this spring. Now, we`re seeing the protests which never really went away. Now we`re seeing them spring up with a new sense of urgency in response to the bill that is now pending in the Senate.
In Asheville, North Carolina, today, hundreds of people gathered to protest the new Senate bill. They gathered at the Vance Memorial in Asheville. Those in attendance said the rally was aimed at showing support for the 22 million people who could lose health care coverage if this bill becomes law.
Protesters have also been showing up outside their senators` offices in Doral, Florida. A hundred or so demonstrators showed up outside Senator Marco Rubio`s office to chant: vote no, Marco, vote no, Marco.
Protesters also on point staged a die-in, which is a technique from the AIDS activist movement that started in this country in the late 1980s. People lying down to represent people who they believe will be killed as a result of this legislation. If you can hear what they`re saying there, they`re saying Marco polio, Marco polio, a riff on both Marco Rubio and Marco Polo. That was Doral, Florida, today.
In Charleston, West Virginia, today, as we told you, protesters rallied at Senator Shelley Moore Capito`s office, six of them staged a sit in inside the senator`s office to make their message heard.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If this bill passes, if Senator Capito does not vote no, 170,000 West Virginians will be losing their health care. Over 25,000 West Virginians will not be able to get drug treatment. Senator Capito certainly knows that. And so, she -- to protect West Virginians, she needs to vote no on this health care bill.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: To protect our whole nation, 22 million people who lose health care if this is not voted no.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We`re showing any ounce of courage today, it is to inspire Senator Capito to show that same amount of courage in this odd state of politics where defending the health care of 22 million people requires courage. It should be common sense.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Senator Shelley Moore Capito, that was her district office in Charleston, West Virginia, today. She is one of the Republican senators who appears to be on the fence on this bill. It is down to one vote right now as to whether or not this will pass. If it does pass, again, the CBO projects as of today that that will result in 22 million Americans not just losing the health insurance that they`re on, losing health insurance coverage altogether.
Will protests like we saw through the spring, protests like we can continue to see today, affect the way this vote ultimately goes?
Joining us now is Ezra Levin. He`s co-executive director of the Indivisible Project, one of the architects of the protests against these efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Mr. Levin, it`s nice to see you again. Thanks for being here.
EZRA LEVIN, INDIVISIBLE PROJECT: Thanks for having me back.
MADDOW: So, a lot has changed since we first talked with you about this little movement that seemed to be springing forth out of nowhere.
LEVIN: I`m surprised as you are. We have an average of 13 groups in every month congressional district in the country.
MADDOW: Thirteen different groups in each district?
LEVIN: Thirteen, and this is not just an East Coast thing. This is not just a West Coast thing. This is Indivisible Auburn, Alabama, Indivisible East Tennessee, there are groups in Maine that spent last week going to every single congressional district office that Susan Collins had. They only had five of the six covered.
So, one of the groups drove four hours to drive to the Caribou office did a sit-in there, drove back the next four hours. And then what do they do when they went back? Then they went to their weekly Indivisible meeting to do more. She announced that she was against the bill. This is working because people are standing up.
MADDOW: Now, when we look at the short history, this phenomenal growth of the group that you`ve been part of and you helped start as a former congressional staffer, the growth of your organization and the visibility of the protests is something that is remarkable and it is easy to track. Your track record on the ACA, however, was that I think that the work that you guys did slowed the Republicans` effort to pass it in the House. In March, they put it up for a vote. It didn`t pass. In April, they tried to bring it back, it didn`t pass. Then in May they brought it back and it did pass.
What did you learn from that process now as the Senate is considering it?
LEVIN: Yes. So, what we learned is that early on, there was a ton of pressure during the February recess is when people were back in their districts. They were hearing from their constituents and they heard from people in the Deep South, from people in deep blue districts, from all over they didn`t want to see this go through.
Ultimately, they rush it through right in the end. They were able to get it in the House. But not without a lot of pain. They barely did it with two votes.
Then we saw in the Senate was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Republican from Kentucky, he is smart. He saw what happened in the House. So, what he did was try to keep it in the dark.
So, for the last several weeks, he`s been crafting this bill in the dark because he knew if there was sunlight on it, people would see everything that was wrong with it and they would stand up and they would pressure their senators to oppose it.
So, what has happened with the CBO report, the actual bill -- we know it is really bad. We know millions of people lose their health insurance. We know thousands could die. We know this is all in service of cutting billions of dollars of taxes for millionaires.
But there`s one good thing. It is public now. We know about it. So, people are coming out. We identified 11 Republicans in ten states a couple weeks ago. They look gettable. And in each of those states, there have been Indivisible groups going out the past couple weeks saying, look, I could be bankrupt or dead without the Affordable Care Act. You need stand up for me. Don`t stand up for Trump care.
And what we see that`s working right now. It is not just Democrats standing up against the bill. You`ve covered this already. Senator Heller in Nevada has stood up against it. We`ve seen Senator Collins in Maine.
MADDOW: Were they two of the 10 that you targeted?
LEVIN: Absolutely. We have dozens of Indivisible groups at both of those states. But its` not just Indivisible groups, I want to be clear. There`s a brought resistance out there made up of folks who are joining Planned Parenthood or NARAL or Ultraviolet or Move On or Working Families Party, or OFA. A lot of folks are coming out against this.
And it`s not just Democrats. This bill has an approval rating that`s less than 20 percent for a reason, because people recognize that it will really affect their lives. So, for folks watching right now, the answer should be really clear.
You should look at what`s going on around you, see that people are standing up and making their voices heard, and stands up yourself. There is a rally going on outside the White House, or outside the capitol right now with Senator Booker, and civil rights legend John Lewis, Congressman John Lewis, and they`re pointing out, this isn`t just about health care. This is a massive social justice issue.
If you look throughout history and wonder, what would I do? If I were alive back there, would I stand up? The answer is, it is what you`re doing now. And you have a chance. People all across the country are standing up right now.
The next 48 hours is crucial. Like you said, we need one more Republican to drop off this bill and we can save thousands of lives. We can save health coverage for millions if people stand up over the next 48 hours.
MADDOW: Ezra Levin is the co-executive director and one of the founders of the Indivisible Project. Thanks for coming in, Ezra. And I just -- I do want to say, I think, as people are watching this unfold and try to understand this in policy terms and political terms, everybody keeps looking at Washington, and what happens in the Senate hallways to figure out what`s happening.
Honestly, it`s in the hall ways outside these district offices for these senators where I think the real politics is being shaped here. Thanks for helping us understand.
LEVIN: You`re exactly right. Thank you so much.
MADDOW: All right. Still ahead tonight, a really, really, really, really good question. for the really highfalutin criminal defense attorney who is just hired by the president`s son-in-law.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MADDOW: I mentioned at the top of the show that the president`s son-in-law and senior adviser, which let us not forget, is a bizarre combination of things in America, right? Jared Kushner, 36 years old, no politics background. He worked in his family`s real estate company and then married Ivanka Trump.
Jared Kushner is now a senior White House adviser, as well as being related by marriage to the president. He has just hired one of the most prominent criminal defense lawyers in the country. He has hired Abbe Lowell.
That news coming in tonight as the White House also announced that they have finally submitted the nomination for the person they want to be the new FBI director after the president fired James Comey -- Christopher Wray. He was named as the new FBI nominee several weeks ago, but tonight, the White House finally put his name forward to the Senate, formally, so they can consider his nomination. Those confirmation hearings should be fun.
Now, I mentioned before there are two things that we`re just learning about now that may explain why Jared Kushner is putting together a nuclear level criminal defense legal team. One of those things was the A-1 lead story in the "Washington Post" today. We`re going to get to that in a second.
But the other one is about something that happened in December between Jared Kushner and something that everybody calls VEB, because the full thing is stands for is hard to pronounce. It`s Vnesheconombank. Vnesheconombank, VEB.
In New York, in December, during the transition, we know that Jared took a meeting with the head of Vnesheconombank, VEB. The White House says this was a meeting that Jared Kushner took in his role as an official in the transition.
But it was an unusual meeting. It was Jared Kushner and the chairman of VEB. That`s a man named Sergei Gorkov. He`s graduate of what`s basically KGB school in Russia.
So, trained by Russian intelligence. He was handpicked for this job at VEB by Vladimir Putin personally. And him coming to New York and meeting with Jared Kushner right after the election, during the transition, that has already been a matter of some interest because of who Sergey Gorkov is, but also because Jared Kushner didn`t disclose that he took this meeting when he applied for a security clearance.
We reported on Friday about a letter from the Republican and Democratic leadership of the Senate Judiciary Committee writing to the White House and the FBI expressing concerns about Jared Kushner`s security clearance, asking the White House and the FBI about the status of the clearance. Well, now, on top of that, we`ve got new reporting "The Financial Times" which makes this already mysterious meeting between the VEB guy and Jared Kushner all the more intriguing.
We had known before that the VEB had been used as a cover by the Russian intelligence services in the recent past. We knew, for example about, the intelligence background of the chief executive who met with Kushner but we also knew the number two official in the New York office just finished a federal prison term for espionage, basically, for working as Russian spy, undercover of working as an official at VEB. We also know the VEB paid the spy`s legal fees in that case.
We also knew VEB was singled out for U.S. government sanctions against Russia, because of its importance to the Russian government.
What we didn`t know before this reporting today from "The Financial Times" is that while VEB is technically described as a bank and the VEB statement about why they were meeting with Kushner was that they said it had to do with the business strategy as a bank, VEB doesn`t appear to actually be a bank.
As reported today in "The Financial Times," VEB has no banking license. They`re also not regulated as if they`re a central blank. They have no independent board that oversees them which banks have to have.
In VEB`s case, they do have a board a supervisory board who approves all their decisions, but in the case of VEB, every single person who serves on that board is a currently serving Russian government official, including the prime minister.
VEB is also not in a position where they can raise capital like a normal bank. They`re basically just a pass-through for Russian government money. Vladimir Putin gives them about 300 billion rubles a year from government funds and that`s their capital. That`s what they have to spend.
And that`s a lot of things, but that`s not a bank. At least not in the way we usually think of a bank.
From "The Financial Times" today, quote, the bank has no cash. They have no capital. They`re basically just an arm of the Russian government then.
So, why were they meeting with Jared Kushner during the transition? And a meeting that was reportedly requested by the Russian ambassador, and a meeting that Jared Kushner did not disclose when he was asked to until he was forced to by press reports about the meeting.
I don`t know why Jared Kushner took meeting and I don`t know what VEB was doing with anyone in an American presidential transition, but Jared Kushner`s very expensive, new, famous criminal defense lawyer may have a crack at that soon.
Plus, the bigger, weirder stuff that also broke today. That`s next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MADDOW: The president has not released his tax returns other than the two pages of his 2005 return that David Cay Johnston got his hands on a few weeks ago. So, he hasn`t really released tax information of any consequence and no tax information that looks anything like what other modern presidents have released.
But he has released financial disclosure statements and those make clear there`s one bank he owes more money to than any other learned, and that bank is Deutsche Bank. A major reason that Donald Trump owes this one bank so much money, hundreds of millions of dollars is because for a long time, Deutsche Bank was pretty much the only bank that would still do business with him.
During his decades in the New York real estate world, Donald Trump became notorious for reneging on his financial obligations, for failing to pay back loans. And I`m not saying whether that`s good business or bad business, but that is famously the way he did business, to the point every bank in New York refused to take him on as a customer anymore, except one - - except for Deutsche Bank.
And the weird thing about that, by all appearances, Deutsche Bank had just as much reason to want to be rid of Donald Trump as customer as the other banks did, maybe even more so. Less than a decade ago, not only did Trump fail to pay Deutsche Bank over $330 million he owed them on a loan for Trump Tower in Chicago. When they tried to collect on that loan, he turned around and sued them. He claimed it was their fault that the apartments in his new Trump tower were not selling.
He turned around, and -- he owed them $330 million. He turned around and sued them for $3 billion. He did not win.
But even after stunts like that, Deutsche Bank explicably continued lending Donald Trump money, a lot of money, hundreds of millions of dollars. And that is now a new kind of awkward because now, Trump is president of the United States and Trump administration`s Justice Department is currently deciding whether or not to bring federal criminal charges against Deutsche Bank for its role in a $10 billion Russian money laundering operation. Deutsche Bank has already paid hundreds of millions in fines over this money laundering fiasco, but that`s nothing compared to what the Feds could extract from them if federal prosecutors decide to bring charges on top of the state charges they have already faced.
Congressional Democrats have recently been sounding alarms about the ability of the Trump Justice Department to conduct this investigation into Deutsche Bank and Russian money laundering to be able to do it fairly given Trump`s personal obligations to that bank. Congressional Democrats led by Maxine Waters have been asking Deutsche Bank to turn over documents directly to Congress about their dealings with Trump. So far, the bank has refused those requests.
We`ve known all of this for a while. This mysteriously unshakeable relationship between Trump and Deutsche Bank. But it turns out the bank also has a special relationship with Donald Trump`s increasingly beleaguered son-in-law. "Washington Post" reports today that one month before Election Day, so October, this past October, Jared Kushner`s real estate company got a $285 million loan from Deutsche Bank.
It was part of a refinancing package for a property that Kushner had bought a year earlier, a property that according to an appraisal by Deutsche Bank, had increased in value by nearly 60 percent in just that one year that Kushner`s company had been managing it. That magnificent appraisal allowed the company, the Kushner`s, to get an extra $74 million in cash over what they paid for that property year earlier.
Now, another interesting part of this is that Jared Kushner reportedly personally guaranteed this loan. Meaning he is personally on the hook if the whole deal goes south. And yet, despite taking out this massive loan just before the election on very like impressively rosy terms, just before Deutsche Bank was about to pay hundreds of millions for Russian money laundering, despite being the personal guarantor of this massive loan from a bank under investigation by the federal government, is father-in-law was about to run, "The Washington Post" reports that Jared Kushner did not mention this $285 million loan on his financial disclosure form, when he entered his father-in-law`s administration.
Again, he only got the loan a month before Election Day, but it slipped his mind when it came time to disclose these things. He kept it secret. We already know that Jared Kushner failed to report his meetings with the Russian ambassador and the head of a Russian state bank on his security clearance form. It now turns out he also failed to disclose this giant, personally guaranteed loan from Deutsche Bank that`s in the middle of a Russia money laundering scandal.
I don`t know Jared Kushner personally. I don`t know anybody who knows Jared Kushner personally. But everybody who has had any interactions with him say that he is so poised. He is so savvy. This guy can move among rich and powerful in a way that just exudes competence.
Why can`t this guy fill out his forms properly? We did get the news today that Jared Kushner has hired a big name criminal defense lawyer to add to the team repping him in all the Russian investigations. It does seem like he probably is going to need the extra help.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MADDOW: One of the first things that Donald Trump did as president seven days after he was inaugurated was he tried to enact the Muslim ban he had been promising for all those months as a candidate. On a Friday afternoon, his first full Friday on the job after the inauguration, he signed an executive order banning people from several Muslim majority countries from coming to the United States.
And by the following day, by Saturday, this is what our nation`s airports looked like. Protesters descended on airports where travelers are being detained. Volunteer lawyers did as well. By Saturday night, the day after he had signed the order, President Trump`s Muslim ban was handed its first legal setback. In the first ruling on it, a federal judge blocked the deportations of people who had valid visas who were nevertheless being detained. That was day one.
And it got worse and worse for the administration from there. President Trump`s Muslim ban has been blocked and revised and blocked again at every level and every court where it has been considered. The Muslim ban has been slowed and stopped by the federal courts. But now today, the president and his supporters are celebrating what they were calling a victory on this issue at the Supreme Court. Next to the court`s decision today, starting on Thursday, so starting the end of this week, a partial version of the Muslim ban will go into effect.
The court announced today that it will hear the case. It will review the lower court rulings in the fall. But in the meantime, between now and the fall, part of the ban gets put in place. The court says the ban can`t target people who have a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States. So, if you`re from one of these Muslim majority countries, you have a family member living in the U.S., or a job offer, you`re going to school here in the U.S., you won`t be banned, at least not yet.
But everybody else who doesn`t have that kind of connection, if you`re from one of those countries, President Trump`s ban will now keep you from being allowed to come into this country. And the president and his allies are obviously very happy about it. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the decision is an important step toward restoring the separation of powers.
Trump`s Department of Homeland Security says the decision restores to the executive branch crucial and long-held constitutional authority. The president himself today calling this decision, quote, a clear victory.
But with all of that, even as the president is declaring this a victory, I have to tell you -- one of the key figures in the fight against the Muslim ban begs to differ. And he joins us tonight to explain why.
Neal Katyal was acting solicitor general in the Obama administration. He was the lead attorney for the state of Hawaii`s challenge to the travel ban and he joins us now.
Mr. Katyal, thank you very much for being here.
NEAL KATYAL, REPRESENTING HAWAII IN MUSLIM BAN CHALLENGE: Always fabulous to be with you.
MADDOW: I wanted to talk to you today because I went to go look at your Twitter feed to get your response to this ruling of the Supreme Court as the administration and the president were celebrating it. And I expected you to be inveighing against the injustice of this ruling, but you actually seem sort of positive on it.
KATYAL: Yes, absolutely. I mean, I was surprised to hear the president declare a unanimous victory today. I mean, honestly, if the president wants victories like this, we`ll give to it him.
I mean, here`s what happened today. The U.S. Supreme Court, 6-3, not unanimous, a 6-3 ruling against him, said the key parts of the Muslim ban and the refugee ban can`t go into effect. And, you know, to be sure, there`s this technical piece for people who have no U.S. connection that they, the Supreme Court said the president had won on. That is not and has never been the kind of heart of our challenge.
The challenge has been, look, you know, you`ve got all these people in the pipeline who want to come visit, 90-day, and the president is having a 90- day, a 120-day suspension. Those people very much are people who have connections to the United States. So, you know, it is true, he won something like that. So, if there is a Somali or Yemeni tourist who wants to come to the United States who doesn`t know anyone here -- yes, the president has been able to block that person from coming in as a result of the Supreme Court decision today.
If you think that`s some big threat to our national security, I`m not even sure that any such tourists exist, but, you know, that`s what the president won. You know, ultimately, it has been a lot more talk than it has been action on the national security front.
MADDOW: Neil, let me ask you about the 90-day threshold too. I realize just that I may just being naive about this. But the way they phrased the ban initially was that there was basically an emergency national security emergency in effect. They needed to take this extreme measure in a temporary way for 90 days in order to sort of get a handle on this situation.
I mean, by the time -- with what the Supreme Court did today, by the time the Supreme Court hears arguments on this in the fall, 90 days will be, will have elapsed between when this starts on Thursday and at the end of 90 days. So, I mean, is there a chance it will get thrown out because it will be expired by the time they hear the case?
KATYAL: Yes, that`s the million-dollar question. It is always tough to, you know, read too much into a 12-page Supreme Court opinion. But I do think that the Supreme Court was deeply skeptical of the president`s rationale. He kept saying, I need 90 days to study the problem. He`s already had more than 90 days. He wants another fresh 90-day clock.
The Supreme Court said, OK, today we`ll give you that extra 90 days to study the problem, but by the time we`re hearing the case in October, you know, that -- you`ve been able to study the problem all you want.
So, is there really a national security justification? I expect that to be front and center of the argument the Supreme Court will hear in October. What is the true national security rationale for this as opposed to the invective and other things that the president has voiced time and again against Muslims, which really seems like the animated focus against the ban?
MADDOW: Neal, you have been supportive of Neil Gorsuch as President Trump`s nominee for the Supreme Court. Were you disappointed in his votes today?
KATYAL: Well, look, I mean, you know, my view on Justice Gorsuch is that the Democratic should have applied the same standard to him that we asked the Republicans to apply to Justice Kagan and Sotomayor. I was very upset with Republicans who voted against those justices.
You know, I was very clear in my support for Justice Gorsuch that, you know, he wouldn`t have been my first choice but we lost the election. I think we will see over time a principled good jurist in Neil Gorsuch, not someone that Democrats would appoint but someone who is the kind of Republican equivalent to the Democratic nominees that I mentioned before.
MADDOW: Neal Katyal, former U.S. acting solicitor general -- really appreciate your time tonight, Neal. Thank you very much.
KATYAL: Thank you.
MADDOW: All right. We`ve got more ahead. Stay with us.
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MADDOW: As we`ve been talking about tonight, today, there were major decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court, but those major decisions today were not the biggest news out of the Supreme Court. The biggest news out of the court today is that these guys are still on it.
Justices sometimes take the last day of the term to announce they are retiring. But today was the last day of the term and neither 80-year-old Anthony Kennedy nor 69-year-old Clarence Thomas said anything about leaving. And that will be seen as good news for anybody who doesn`t want the new president to have the chance to pull the arm off another soon to be Supreme Court justice anytime soon.
Even though no one retired today, should we be expecting that sometime soon anyway? Now that this term of the Supreme Court is over, what did Donald Trump`s first Supreme Court pick end up being like anyway?
Joining us now is Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor and legal correspondent at Slate.com.
Ms. Lithwick, it is lovely to see you. Thank you for being here.
DAHLIA LITHWICK, SLATE.COM SENIOR EDITOR AND LEGAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey there, Rachel.
MADDOW: What is the scuttlebutt about retiring justices? Does no word on that today mean nobody is stepping down in the foreseeable future?
LITHWICK: I think it becomes very unlikely. I think particularly when we see the gerrymander cases are coming up, those are reverse engineered to be Kennedy babies. And now I think the travel ban cases also reverse engineered to be like, please, Justice Kennedy. I think he`s in it, at least for the next term. And I also think it`s worth saying -- you know, it`s not at all clear that these rumors were coming anywhere from him in the first instance.
MADDOW: It was just people doing numerology with the calendar?
LITHWICK: Well, numerology and maybe a little upselling, maybe trying to say, hey, we did so well with Gorsuch, we can get you another one, people who held your nose and voted for Trump about the Supreme Court. So, I think it was a little bit of an effort to keep people who were engaged because of the Supreme Court engaged over the summer.
MADDOW: Well, let me ask you about Gorsuch. We just had Neal Katyal on because of his role in fighting the Muslim ban. Controversially for a Democrat, somebody who was an Obama administration official, he also supported Neil Gorsuch`s nomination, sort of vouched for him, which was important coming from a Democrat.
What do you make of what we have learned about Gorsuch? What`s he going to be like? What have we seen in the weeks he`s been on the court?
LITHWICK: This has been really dispiriting, Rachel. I remember, you can call this the you-told-me-so portion where I came to you and said, no, no, he might even be to the left of Scalia. He`s clearly aligned himself time and time again actually with Clarence Thomas, more than anyone. So, not just to the right of Scalia, to right of Alito, but right there with Clarence Thomas in lock-step.
And today, especially just a whole raft of decisions that came from him that show he is going to be anti-same-sex marriage, very, very eager to pull down the wall between church and state. And as we saw on the travel ban, really eager to afford Trump broad, broad executive power.
So, this is not your center right justice. This is somebody who I think in hindsight, when Dems decided to filibuster him, I think they knew what was coming up the pike.
MADDOW: Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor and legal correspondent for Slate.com -- Dahlia, it`s great to see you. Thanks for being here.
LITHWICK: Thank you.
MADDOW: All right. We`ll be right back. Stay with us.
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MADDOW: So, we have breaking news just in in the last couple of minutes from the White House. And I have to tell you we don`t really know what to make of this. But it is a serious sounding statement from the White House. We do believe this has come from them.
I should tell you they put out no supporting information to explain what this was about or what they`re sort of bracing us for here. I`m just going to tell you exactly what they`ve just said, this has jus come out, without warning.
The United States -- a statement from the press secretary: The United States has identified potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime that would likely result in the mass murder of civilians including innocent children. The activities are similar to preparations the regime made before its April 4th chemical weapons attack. As we`ve previously stated, the U.S. is in Syria to eliminate ISIS. If, however, Mr. Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price.
Again, we do not know what this is about. The White House has not put out any supporting information, nor have they made any officials available to explain this. Our producers at the Pentagon and State Department are trying to chase this down, but they can`t -- at this point -- get any supporting information either. We`ll let you know as we learn more.
That April 4th chemical weapons attack referenced in the statement of course was followed on April 6th by President Trump ordering 59 Tomahawk missiles to be shot into Syria. I don`t know if that`s what they`re sort of -- if that`s what they`re implicitly referencing here. But, again, an unusual statement just moments ago from the White House press secretary.
That does it for us tonight. We will see you again tomorrow.
Now, it`s time for "THE LAST WORD WITH LAWRENCE O`DONNELL."
Good evening, Lawrence.
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