Summary
Congresswoman Liz Cheney at the end of yesterday`s January 6 Committee hearing, described a phone call made by Donald Trump to a witness we have not yet seen. Sources say that the witness was a member of the White House support staff during Donald Trump`s time in the White House. Last week, we reported the story of a ten-year-old rape victim in Ohio who had to travel to Indiana to get an abortion. Ohio`s Republican attorney general David Yost appeared on Fox on Monday to claim that the story of the ten-year-old rape victim was made up by people pushing a pro abortion agenda and law enforcement was not even looking for a rapist. The Uvalde school surveillance footage shows the police officers waiting for 77 minutes to confront the gunman. NBC News has confirmed that the witness referenced by Congresswoman Cheney who was called by Donald Trump, is a former member of the White House support staff, according to a source familiar with the situation.
Transcript
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSBNC HOST: Good evening, Ali.
We have Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe joining us tonight, and Neal Katyal. And they both have a breaking news story to deal with, which you just delivered. Everything I know about it is when I just heard you say about it on TV.
ALI VELSHI, MSNBC HOST, "VELSHI": It`s jaw-dropping.
O`DONNELL: So, just give us the short recap of it again, the Donald Trump apparently reached out to a White House staffer.
VELSHI: A support staffer at the White House. We don`t know -- we don`t know the norm of they sport -- they`ve been described is a support staffer and it appears that it is not somebody with whom Donald Trump would`ve had a normal relationship that he would just called, because he does buddies who he calls on the phone a lot. And this person did happen to be in touch with the January 6th committee separately.
And so that feels to some people, and you will have this conversation with your experts, feels to some people like potential witness tampering. It`s been handed over to the Justice Department now to look into.
O`DONNELL: We will get professional reaction to it in this hour. Thank you, Ali.
VELSHI: I look forward to it. Thank you, my friend.
O`DONNELL: Thank you, Ali.
Well, I did something today that I did not want to do. I knew I had to do it. I watched all of the video released yesterday showing with the police were doing in the hallway of Robb Elementary School, after a mass murder fired his mass murder weapon into classrooms. Now, I would not have gotten through that video, I would not have gotten through the first few minutes of that video, if there had not been a very important, sound edit in that video that made it possible to watch it and listen to it. I`ll explain that later, as I describe the video.
The video does not show any children or teachers at all except for one child, very briefly, one child. He steps into the other end of the hallway, far away from the shooter. And when the child sees the man with the gun, the child turns around and runs back and hides in a bathroom. That boy remained safely for over an hour, until the police finally killed the mass murderer.
We first saw still images from the same video camera weeks ago, images of police officers standing close to the camera at one end of the hallway, and as far away from the murderer in the classroom as possible.
So, from an actual evidence standpoint, we really learned nothing in this video, nothing about the case. There is no reason for you to watch it. It shows you what you already know. That after an initial attempt to confront the mass murderer, the police did essentially nothing for 77 minutes. That`s what this video shows, and proofs and we already knew that. You already knew that.
The most horrific thing that we see and hear on this video is the moment when the murderer begins firing his assault weapon into the first classroom from the hallway because the camera only shows what happens in the hallway. Because the murderer is as far away from the camera as possible at that point at the at the end of the hallway, we see in the distance the first firing of that assault weapon while he then steps into the classroom.
We hear about a dozen bullets fired in about one second, maybe a second and a half. He steps into the classroom, and disappears for the rest of the video. And then we hear what could be at least 100 bullets fired over about three minutes with several pauses. There are several seconds long. And each pause you think and you hope, and you really think that the shooting is now over.
And then it starts again. With the video lets you feel, but news reporting like this cannot, is the passage of time.
[22:05:02]
When we read the words three minutes in the news account, it`s not the same as experiencing those three minutes, especially if it is three minutes of gunfire from a mass murderer, using an AR-15 in an elementary school. It is an agonizingly long three minutes.
The video begins when the shooter is still outside the school, and he fired his weapon outside of the school, which gets the attention of a teacher that calls 911 before the murderer enters the building. The terror in that teacher`s voice on the phone to 911, and as she screams at her students while she is still on the phone to 911, screaming to them to get into the classroom and hide, that is the sound of what it feels like when you see a fully equipped American mass murderer approaching your school.
It is a sound unlike any other that the human voice can produce. It is one of the reasons why you should not watch this video. You will never forget that teacher`s voice.
From the second that the teacher`s 911 call ends, you wait for the police to arrive as you then watch the murderer enter the school. The police arrive four minutes and 20 seconds after the 911 call, and it feels like an hour when you are watching that video.
When police arrive, three minutes after the murderer started shooting. The murderer is still firing his assault weapon in the classroom, went to police officers come running into the hallway and to their full credit, at that moment, they run straight to the sound of the gunfire, straight to it. The crouch outside of the classroom for almost a minute before the murderer realizes that they are there, and fires at them. And then they run back down the hall in retreat, even faster than they ran before. And that was the end, the end of the police attempt to save the teachers and children in that classroom for the next 77 minutes.
During most of the 77 minutes, the police say far away from the classroom, where they know the gunman is. And as the crowd of police officers grows and grows in the hallway to include state and federal, and local badges, no one appears ever to be in command, or in control of any of the police officers in and around the school.
Some police body cam video shows one state police official walking around outside of the school, nonstop, appearing to possibly be a command level officer. He`s on the phone the entire time. Surely talking about what is happening in the school, when trying to figure out what to do, or trying to figure out what`s more resources they can get. No police officers are seen using police radios. There is not a single police officer on the video whoever appears to know what to do. Not one.
They kept the hallway empty for almost the entire time, from as far distance as possible, they aimed rifles at the doorway of the classroom in the hope that the murderer would walk out of the classroom. That appears to be the plan, for most of the plan, if you can call that a plan.
Here is a still image from the video showing the empty corridor and the heavily armed policeman aiming at the classroom door. This has been called the picture of police incompetence. Law enforcement professionals have been unanimously critical of the police with shields and high powered weapons waiting 77 minutes before entering the classroom.
And yes, this is a total failure of police training, but it is also a picture of fear. Those police officers are not at all afraid of the murderer, they are deathly afraid of his weapon. They are afraid of going through a classroom door to face an AR-15. They all know what that weapon can do to them.
The AR-15 doesn`t just kill them. It can dismember them, and in the process of killing them, it can leave their faces right unrecognizable. They all know that. The first officers that ran down the hallway towards the sound of the gun were carrying handguns. As soon as they heard the weapon firing, they knew what they were up against.
[22:10:02]
And when they thought it was being fired at them, they ran away from that AR-15 as fast as they possibly could. They ran away from an AR-15 with high capacity magazines capable of firing hundreds of bullets.
If the murderer had a handgun, those police officers with the shields and high powered rifles would have taken their chances going through that classroom door. But the AR-15 kept them out in fear.
American law enforcement does not know how to fight the AR-15. That is not the fault of American police officers. They should not be facing AR-15s. AR-15s were designed for soldiers in combat, so were some of the uniforms worn by police officers in the hallway. They were dressed for war, but they were not willing to go to war against an AR-15 in a classroom.
As time passed in the hallway, and police became more confident in their safety to move closer to the classroom, and at that point, no one was controlling access to the hallway. Officers walked in and out of the hallway as they pleased. They appeared to be very busy, talking to each other, but they did nothing.
Now, as you watch these highly armed heavily trained officers, not having any idea what to do about a mass murderer with an AR-15 in the classroom. Consider the Republican solution to school shootings like this, which is teachers with guns.
Imagine, instead of the people that you see in the hallway on that video, imagine that that hallway is filled with teachers with guns. They would not be dressed like that, they would not have combat style camouflage uniforms. They would not have 1 percent of the training of those police officers, but Republicans like Senator Raphael Cruz who represents the state where that shooting happened. They believe that the solution is to fill that hallway with teachers with guns.
Highly trained police in combat uniforms with shields, and assault weapons, and body armor, cannot handle a school shooter with an AR-15. But Republicans think that teachers can go up against the next AR-15 that comes into an American school. We know it is going to be an AR-15. We know that is the favorite weapon of America`s mass murderers.
In the 77 minutes when the police in the hallway were busy talking to each other, in the classrooms, children and teachers we`re bleeding to death.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MIAH CERRILLO, 11-YEAR-OLD SURVIVOR OF ROBB ELEMENTARY MASSACRE: I went to the other classroom, and then he went through the door between our classrooms, and he shot my teacher, and told my teacher, good morning, he shot her in the head. And then he shot some of my classmates, (INAUDIBLE) he shot my friend that was (INAUDIBLE) and I thought that he was going to come back to the room. So, I got blood and I put it all over me. And --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When did you do then, when you put the blood on yourself?
CERRILLO: Just stay quiet, and I got my teacher`s phone and called 911.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What did you tell 911?
CERRILLO: I told them that we need help.
ARNULFO REYES, TEACHER WHO SURVIVED UVALDE SCHOOL SHOOTING: After everything, I get more angry because you have a bullet prevents, I had nothing. I had nothing. You`re supposed to protect and serve, there is no excuse for their actions, and I will never forgive them, I will never forgive them.
REPORTER: How many students were in your classroom when the shooter came in?
REYES: Eleven students.
REPORTER: So the shooter killed every single student in your classroom?
REYES: Yes, ma`am. I lost 11 that day. And (INAUDIBLE) I`m sorry. And I did my best -- I did when I was told to do. Please don`t be angry with me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: We have only shown the sections of the video of the school that day, in the hallway, that included images that we have already seen before from that camera. Many of the families of the victims of the mass murder have objected to the release of the full video by the "Austin American- Statesman".
[22:15:05]
I saw no reason to show the new parts of the video that disturbed the families the most, even before the families objected to it. "The Austin American-Statesman" has defended publishing the full video on its website, saying that they did so only after, quote, long and thoughtful discussions and after so much evasion from local officials about what actually happened in the school.
"The Statesman" said: Our goal is to continue to bring to light what happened at Robb Elementary.
But even when trying to deliver full transparency of what happened inside of the school, "The Austin American-Statesman" still decided to edit the video. One is the blurring of that one child`s face on the video, the child that seized the murder, opened fire from the other end of the hall.
And the other edit from the sensitivity of not just the families of the victims, but for all of us, it`s an audio edit that repeatedly flashes in the corner of the screen, while the mass murderer is firing his AR-15 -- in the classroom. And this is the edit that I needed, I couldn`t have watched this video without this edit. And when we hear the sound of the guns -- the corner of the screen carries the written message. The sound of children screaming has been removed.
Joining us now is Texas State Senator Roland Gutierrez.
Senator Gutierrez, you had been on this case from the start. You have been working for the kind of transparency that the "Austin American-Statesman" has also been working for, the release of this video was something that was plans at least partially, at least part of the video, that was going to happen in the next few days, the family of believed that they had, families believe that they had a chance to see it first. That didn`t happen because of this leak.
What is your reaction to the release of the video first of all? And what it means in the community? We will get to the contacts of it in a moment.
ROLAND GUTIERREZ (D), TEXAS STATE SENATOR: Well, thank you, Lawrence.
I don`t want to defend or attack "The Statesman". I mean, they are going to do their job and their job is journalism. The people that I`m going to attack, or whoever the government released this video early, these families were promised a process. And that promise was that they would see, be the first to see this sensitive video on Sunday night, this coming Sunday.
That didn`t happen because somebody, either in that committee, or at the Department of Public Safety, or in the governor`s office, or eight legislators, who asked for this video and signed nondisclosure agreements, one of those persons that I`ve mentioned, or groups of persons, disseminated this to the media, in violation of what they told this family.
And that is just wrong. It has just been one constant stab in the gut after another.
O`DONNELL: Senator, when I watched the video, as I said, I really didn`t learn anything. I mean there are some really horrible experiences that you go through, but in terms of the evidence of the case, and what the police didn`t do, I didn`t feel like I learned anything about it except I have a stronger feeling for how many officers were in that hallway.
GUTIERREZ: Well, Lawrence, it probably left more questions yet unanswered. I`ve talked to you and others about this. I saw a snippet of a video about seven days after the incident when I got into a discussion with the PIO of DPS. And I saw it in the command trailer.
And that snippet was different from what I saw in this video. We don`t see that here today. And I don`t know if it was from the fish eye camera, or from a body cam. But you see sheet rock, construction material, flying over the heads of those officers, that are running away, that you mentioned earlier.
It is a closer camera angle than what we see where they are stationed 50 feet away. And in that moment, you see the sheer power of that weaponry, the power of the weaponry that these cops evaded, and stayed away from.
[22:20:01]
And those children had to deal with for 77 minutes. That`s disturbing.
O`DONNELL: Yeah, and those first two officers actually, because they were hit with some of that stuff that was coming off the wall, they actually thought that they were, that they had been wounded. But both of them hung in there, they didn`t leave the scene, but they never went back in to that engagement point again for the 77 minutes.
This is -- there is no other weapon, I personally, Senator, do not believe, that there is another weapon that could have kept the entire presence of Texas Rangers, Texas State Police, County Sheriff Officers, you`ve all day local police, the school police. There is no way any other weapon could have kept them all, federal officers, all in fear, in the hallway, as far away as they could be.
GUTIERREZ: I agree, Lawrence. But as you see what we have seen and what we don`t see, they do not show us this other video angle that I was talking about.
And it is important for this reason, we have seen and the Senate hearings, and in the House hearings, props brought in. We have seen doors, we`ve had people blamed, teachers blames, and they brought in an entire door. But they never once brought an AR-15. That is never been there prop.
And it is why they will not show us this video. America needs to see this so that they can understand the extreme power of this ammunition and this weaponry, and so they can understand that an 18 year old with no training, should never have access to this type of weapon of war.
O`DONNELL: Texas State Senator Roland Gutierrez, thank you very much for joining us once again tonight.
GUTIERREZ: Thank you, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
And coming, up harbor lard professor will join us with his we to tonight`s breaking January 6th news and there is an update to the revelation from Vice Chair Liz Cheney and the January 6 Committee, at the end of yesterday`s hearing. NBC News has confirmed that the witness referenced by Congresswoman Cheney who was called by Donald Trump, is a member -- former member of the White House support staff, according to a source familiar with the situation.
Professor Tribe will join us next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:27:13]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): After our last hearing, President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation, a witness that you have not yet seen in these hearings. That person declined to answer, or respond to President Trump`s call and instead alerted their lawyer to the call. Their lawyer alerted us. And this committee has supplied that information to the department of justice.
Let me say one more time. We will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: And our breaking news tonight are new details about what Liz Cheney was just saying, about the January 6th witness that you just heard, talking about, a source telling NBC News that the witness is a member of the White House support staff from Donald Trump`s time in the White House.
CNN is reporting tonight, quote: The support staffer was not somebody who routinely communicated with the former president and was concerned about the contact, according to the sources, and informed their attorney.
Comments from Congresswoman Liz Cheney at yesterday`s hearing seemed to be aimed at Justice Department officials who may be contemplating how to handle the potential case against Donald Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHENEY: President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child. Just like everybody else in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices.
As our investigation has shown, Donald Trump had access to more detailed and specific information showing that the election was not actually stolen, and almost any other American. He was told this over and over again. No rational or sane man in his position could disregard that information and reach the opposite conclusion. And Donald Trump cannot escape responsibility by being willfully blind.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Joining us now is Professor Laurence Tribe who has taught constitutional law at Harvard Law School for five decades.
Thank you very much for joining us tonight, Professor Tribe, at this breaking news moment where we have a little bit more detail about that Trump phone call.
[22:29:45]
O`DONNELL: Apparently a relatively low level staff person who may be in a position to support and corroborate Cassidy Hutchinson`s testimony. This could be anybody from a waiter who had to clean up the spilt ketchup when Donald Trump was throwing food, according to Cassidy Hutchinson or any other element of her testimony.
LAURENCE TRIBE, PROFESSOR, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL: It is extremely, extremely disturbing. The fact that it is a low level White House staffer makes it all the more incriminating.
If Donald Trump were to call Mark Meadows or something, perhaps that could be part of an ordinary conversation. After all, even though Trump now is distancing himself from Meadows, and he seems almost not to know who the guy was. The fact is that if it was a high-level person, there could be all kinds of reasons for the call.
But Donald Trump is not one of those employers who cares about low level staffers. You can be sure that when we get the details, it will be clear that he was not calling about the weather, or to find out whether the staffers kid got into high school.
The only conceivable reason for Donald Trump to call a low level staffer would be to discourage that person from corroborating the explosive incriminating testimony of someone like Cassidy Hutchinson. That is a grave federal crime. It is punishable by 20 years in prison.
Now let me be clear. We don`t know if he left a voice mail. We don`t know how the staffer knew that it was Trump although his voice is hard to disguise. What we do know is that at this point, if the Department of Justice, having been alerted to this obvious attempt at witness tampering does not immediately open a full blown investigation into that federal crime, and as the attorney general has promised, follow that wherever it leads without fear or favor, not pausing because you don`t want to embarrass the former president. You don`t want to prosecute a former president. That is banana republic stuff.
If the attorney general hesitates now, that will be a grave abdication of duty on the part of Merrick Garland. And I do not expect that he will do that. I expect that he will pursue this dramatic new lead exactly where it takes the Justice Department.
O`DONNELL: Well, as I think our audience knows, Merrick Garland, along with many other prominent American lawyers, studied constitutional law in Professor Tribe`s class. And so your insight into him, we take as valuable.
What is this particular element mean? I mean let`s assume for a moment that Donald Trump did not make contact -- sufficient contact or leave a voice mail for example that would sufficiently show jury tampering -- you know, witness tampering in the text of what he said. Is the actual making of the call something that prosecutors would take and weigh in the totality of the picture of evidence they are looking at?
TRIBE: For sure because Even if we don`t know, and we can`t read this fellow`s mind, the mind of Donald Trump is impenetrable I must say. Even if we don`t know what he had in mind or exactly what he would have said if the staffer had agreed to talk to him, the very fact of making that call and obviously being concerned about a witness who had not yet been publicly heard from, is evidence of what they call consciousness of guilt.
It goes to the question of whether Donald Trump was as Liz Cheney remarkably, eloquently reminded us of. He`s not merely a child, innocent child or a 76-year-old man who is watching the walls close in on him.
That`s what it makes it look like. And it seems to me that it is important in that way, as evidence of his state of mind quite apart from its significance as potential proof of the federal crime of witness tampering.
O`DONNELL: Professor Laurence Tribe, thank you very much for joining us once again. We always appreciate it.
TRIBE: Thank you, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
And we will have more on this breaking news next with Neal Katyal.
[22:34:40]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O`DONNELL: And we are back with more on tonight`s breaking news. You will recall at yesterday`s January 6th Committee hearing, Congresswoman Liz Cheney at the end of the hearing described a phone call made by Donald Trump to a witness -- a January 6th committee witness who said that we have not yet seen. So it`s a witness that we don`t know about out here, they know about. And Donald Trump somehow knows is a witness to the January 6th Committee.
[22:39:51]
O`DONNELL: That witness then reported this call to a lawyer, the lawyer reported it to the committee. And tonight, sources telling NBC News that the witness was a member of the White House support staff during Donald Trump`s time in the White House. CNN is adding to that, saying the support staffer was not someone who routinely communicated with the former president and was concerned about the contact, according to the sources and informed their attorney.
Joining us now is Neal Katyal, former acting U.S. solicitor general and an MSNBC legal analyst. And Neal, what strikes you about this latest detail about who this witness might be?
NEAL KATYAL, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: So Lawrence, first as your colleague, I don`t mean to take away from this breaking news. But I just watched your coverage of the school shooting video right now, and I just have to say that it is a privilege to be on with you. Your wisdom, your humanness, your heart. It is a privilege to do anything with you, my friend.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
KATYAL: Now, with respect to this news, I think it could be potentially very serious. Everyone knows you don`t talk to witnesses. The one exception to that is the mob and Trump ran the White House the way that the mob runs things.
And witness tampering is a very serious offense as Laurence Tribe just said. It could be potentially, you know, a decades long sentence, for good reason because truth seeking depends on witnesses coming forward. And the best defense once Liz Cheney made this allegation that might be coming up with for Trump and I said this to our colleague, Nicolle Wallace was well, Trump could say, look, I didn`t know this person was a witness, I call this person all the time.
And that to me, is the most significant part of this -- your reporting which is this is not someone that Donald Trump routinely called otherwise. And so if that fact holds up, it`s going to blow a hole in his defense, and it looks like Trump is desperate.
So remember with Cassidy Hutchinson, he used a cut-out, someone else called Hutchinson, and said hey, you know, President Trump wants you to be loyal. He knows you`ll do the right thing and so on.
But what happens in criminal investigations, Lawrence, over time, is that the walls start closing in and cut outs get scared. And so it may be that we have reached the point where Trump doesn`t have the cut-outs to go in and intimidate witnesses anymore. He`s got to pick up the phone and do it himself. And like everything else Trump touches, he will botch it.
O`DONNELL: What does that tell us about Donald Trump`s relationship with his criminal defense lawyers? Because if they are at all good, they would have said to him do not reach out to any of these possible witnesses. Don`t do that. He might just have terrible lawyers. He has had terrible lawyers before. But he also is the kind of client who doesn`t listen to the good advice from lawyers either.
KATYAL: Yes. It could be either of the above. I mean this is the guy who hired Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, people who should not be advising anyone about anything, you know. And so it could also be that they actually told him that.
You`re absolutely right, Lawrence. The first thing you as a lawyer in this situation is to tell your client you better not call anyone affiliated with this investigation in any way, shape, or form. That is an easy crime for the Justice Department to prove. I suspect they`re looking at it right now. And if I am Donald Trump I would be very worried.
O`DONNELL: And sometimes in situations like this especially when they become public, a little bit of a snowball effect. This might not be the only such phone call Donald Trump has made. There might be some other witnesses out there who got calls like this, who might now decide I think I should bring this call to the attention of the committee.
KATYAL: That`s a 100 percent right. It is very doubtful this is a one-off call. In fact, we already know the committee has already put forth evidence saying that other people -- I was saying Cassidy Hutchinson is one example, who got such calls basically with intimidation. There, with a cut out.
Now, the question is, how many times did Trump not have a cut out available and do it directly. You know, both are possible, both create criminal exposure for him, whether he used a cut out or not. If the cut out basically flips and says hey, I was acting at Donald Trump`s behest when I intimidated Cassidy Hutchinson. That is very, very bad for Donald Trump.
O`DONNELL: Neal Katyal, thank you very much for joining us once again. We always appreciate it.
KATYAL: Thank you.
O`DONNELL: Thanks, Neal.
And coming up, Republicans added to the horror suffered by a ten-year-old rape victim, who had to cross state lines to receive abortion services by spreading a lie in Rupert Murdoch`s media and elsewhere that it was a made- up story. That she didn`t exist. Now, the rapist, the accused rapist, has been arrested.
Congresswoman Cori Bush will join us next.
[22:44:52]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O`DONNELL: Last week, we reported the story of a ten-year-old rape victim in Ohio who had to travel to Indiana to get an abortion.
Dr. Caitlin Bernard told us she got a phone call from a colleague who was a child abuse doctor in Ohio. The Ohio doctor was treating a ten year old pregnant rape victim and asked if Dr. Bernard could help her receive abortion services in Indiana.
President Biden told that victim`s story at the White House as he signed an executive order protecting abortion access.
[22:49:57]
O`DONNELL: Ohio`s Republican attorney general David Yost appeared on Fox on Monday to claim that the story of the ten-year-old rape victim was made up by people pushing a pro abortion agenda and law enforcement was not even looking for a rapist.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVID YOST, OHIO ATTORNEY GENERAL: Not a whisper, and we work closely with the decentralized law enforcement system in Ohio. We have regular contact with the prosecutors and the local police and sheriffs. Not a whisper anywhere.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: On Tuesday, Attorney General Yost said "Every day that goes by, the more likely that this is a fabrication -- that there is not a damn scintilla of evidence."
The Rupert Murdoch owned "Wall Street Journal" called it quote, "an abortion story too good to confirm`. The Rupert Murdoch-owned "New York Post" attacked this network for covering the story.
When news broke today of an arrest in the case, David Yost issued a statement saying, "We rejoice anytime a child rapist is taken off the streets."
The "Columbus Dispatch" reports "Columbus police were made aware of the girl`s pregnancy through a referral by Franklin County Children`s Services that was made by her mother on June 22nd. On Kune 30th, the girl underwent a medical abortion in Indianapolis.
Gerson Fuentes, 27, was arrested Tuesday after police say he confessed to raping the child on at least two occasions. The ten-year-old also told police that Fuentes was the father of the pregnancy. The girl had just turned ten recently, meaning she was likely impregnated at nine years old.
Joining us now is Democratic Congresswoman Cori Bush of Missouri. She is a member of the Oversight Committee, and the Pro-Choice Caucus.
Congresswoman Bush, what does this story tell us about what Republican governing has done to abortion law in this country?
REP. CORI BUSH (D-MO): First of all it makes me absolutely sick to my stomach. I think about when I had my abortion and I was sitting in the abortion clinic across from a 13-year-old who did not even want to look up, did not want to raise her head.
You know, I don`t know what was going on in her mind, but I remember thinking to myself, like how did she get here? How can people help her? You know, we are faced like in my own state of Missouri, we are faced with these governors and attorney generals, and state officials, even federal officials who believe more about who can be the most conservative, who can out Trump who?
And it`s more political. It`s about politics. It`s not about actually saving lives. It`s not about actually caring for people. It`s not about making sure that people have the rights to their own bodies. It`s not about -- and it`s not about babies. It`s not about babies. It`s about control
And when we have to -- when there is this attack on a ten year old child, where -- why does a ten-year-old child has to be -- why is that situation politicized to where you know, she can`t even deal with -- she`s dealing with you know, a tough decision, at ten years old.
She got pregnant at nine years old most likely. You know, at nine years old, I was still playing with baby dolls. I can`t imagine if my child, my 21-year-old daughter, if she had to face something like this.
And our government had the nerve to try to say that it didn`t happen -- our government won`t put the protections in place to keep her safe. How dare this society. How dare this government. How dare the Republicans that actually support this kind of -- this kind of heinous, heinous disregard for people. How dare they say that they are for life.
O`DONNELL: And Republicans want to keep everyone looking away from cases like this -- the rape and incest cases -- and suggest that that is really a very, very tiny number of cases, as if there is some tiny acceptable number of these cases.
BUSH: Exactly. What is acceptable? Rape is rape. Sexual assault is sexual assault. But we have seen it over and over again when we have people who get to enter elected office who are -- who have a history of sexual violence and sexual assault. We get to see it when we have people who -- we had a president who would make remarks, and had allegations against him and was able to actually become the president of the United States.
We see it over and over again. In my own state, we have someone running for U.S. Senate who should not in any way be able to run for U.S. Senate.
[22:54:56]
BUSH: And someone actually running for U.S. Congress in our state, who should not be able to do that due to allegations of sexual violence and sexual assault.
Let me say this. Until we speak up as a full nation, and speak out and start going after those who are those perpetrators, of rape and sexual assault, until we start normalizing it as something that happened or something that didn`t happen, or could not have happened. Or maybe it didn`t happen.
Then I can speak to this personally, as somebody who is a survivor. Some days, I feel like a victim still. I can speak to that because I think about all of the times our folks tried to question me. What were you wearing? Are you sure that that is the way it happened? It actually happens. And it happens more than people know, because for situations like this, because we are not believed. But this is a ten year old. A ten-year-old.
O`DONNELL: Representative Cori Bush, thank you very much for sharing your invaluable perspective on this urgent subject. Thank you very much.
BUSH: Thank you. Thank you.
O`DONNELL: We`ll be right back.
[22:56:04]
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O`DONNELL: Congresswoman Cori Bush gets tonight`s LAST WORD.
THE 11TH HOUR WITH STEPHANIE RUHLE" starts now.