Summary
The most expensive protest in American history is over, and it did not occur on American soil; the United States has lost at least $300 million per day in international trade and economic activity with Canada during the closure of the Ambassador Bridge that connects Detroit to Canada. Donald Trump and Melania Trump are facing a deadline of tomorrow for filing personal income tax returns. And the accounting firm that was preparing those returns dropped Donald Trump and Melania Trump as clients last week, and they are now refusing to work on those tax returns.
Transcript
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Alex. I look forward to cooking Sunday too. I`ve been putting it off for decades now.
ALEX WAGNER, MSNBC HOST: America needs to see you in a chef`s toque, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: It should be televised. The first time I cook should be televised.
You know, Alex, we have Ezra Klein joining us tonight at the end of the hour. And he has a big think pieces in "The New York Times" that he`s written. Really big think. I`m struggling to keep up with him. He has provocative questions for Democrats and we will end the hour with Ezra Klein.
WAGNER: We love that. Every time Ezra thinks, the wall shakes.
O`DONNELL: That`s right. That is exactly right. So, you don`t want to miss this one.
WAGNER: I won`t. I won`t.
O`DONNELL: Okay. Thank you.
WAGNER: Have a great show.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
Well, the most expensive protest in American history is over. It did not occur on American soil. The United States has lost at least $300 million per day in international trade and economic activity with Canada during the closure of the Ambassador Bridge that connects Detroit to Canada.
The bridge was closed by a protest allegedly by Canadian truckers protesting vaccine requirements. But in fact, there were very few commercial trucks involved in the closure of that bridge. There were many more private pick up trucks blocking the bridge than commercial vehicles.
Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul and Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz cheered on the most expensive protest in American history. Senator Paul said, quote, I hope the truckers do come to America. Senator Paul urged American truckers to do the same thing. Senator Paul was hoping, really hoping, that American truckers would close down the Super Bowl yesterday in Los Angeles. So far, zero American truckers have followed Rand Paul`s advice.
Any American truckers using their vehicles to commit crimes, like closing a bridge or parking illegally in New York City or Washington D.C. run the risk of losing their license to operate trucks and permanently losing the insurance on their trucks. In other words, American truckers, if they follow Rand Paul`s advice, could lose their right to work as truckers for the rest of their lives if they commit the kinds of crimes with their trucks that we have seen.
Yesterday, Canadian authorities remove the protesters from the ambassador bridge. They made 30 arrests and had to tell only if you pick up trucks in order to clear all of the blocking vehicles off the bridge. The protesters represent a tiny sliver of Canadian truckers. Nearly 90 percent of truck drivers are fully vaccinated, and eligible to cross the border. And being prevented from doing that, they were being prevented from doing that, by other truckers, unvaccinated truckers.
The Teamsters Union, which represents drivers in Canada and the United States denounced the protests and issued a statement saying the real enemy for truckers as COVID-19.
Today, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada invoked the Emergencies Act of 1988 for the first time in Canadian history. The Emergencies Act grants the government temporary powers to restore public order, including overriding civil rights, banning public assemblies or restricting travel to and from specific areas.
Here is some of what Prime Minister Trudeau said today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JUSTIN TRUDEAU, CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER: This is not a peaceful protest. At the borders in different parts of the country, the blockades are harming our economy and endangering public safety. Critical supply chains have been disrupted. We cannot and will not allow illegal and dangerous activities to continue.
The federal government has invoked the Emergencies Act to supplement provincial and territorial capacity to address the blockades an occupation. The Emergencies Act will be used to strengthen and support law enforcement agencies at all levels across the country. This is about keeping Canadians safe, protecting people`s jobs, and restoring confidence in our institutions.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[22:05:07]
O`DONNELL: Steve Schmidt will join us in a minute to consider Rand Paul`s encouragement of these crimes.
But our first guest tonight predicted a version of this. In his book, "The Next Civil War", the Canadian author Stephen Marche imagined the next American civil war breaking out over a sort of incident at some American bridge which could then lead to a conflict between local law enforcement and federal law enforcement and powdered keg of right wing revoke against the government would explode and become a national phenomenon.
In the Atlantic, Stephen Marche writes, quote: My fantasy became reality recently, except not in a rural American county as I had envisioned, but in Windsor, Ontario. For five years, I have been studying American political rage, its sources, its abyssal depths, its vertiginous fracturing power.
I thought I was studying an external phenomenon at a distance, and I was. Now the rage has come for me. The anti-vax trucker convoy has made it up close and personal. Three weeks ago, truckers formed a convoy to protest the cross border COVID vaccine mandate.
Last weekend, they rolled into my Toronto neighborhood, near Bloor Street and Avenue Road. I went down to bear witness to the spectacle.
The scene was not surprising to me. The same sort of people I`d seen at Donald Trump rallies and prepper conventions were there with their hollowed out faces, intimate with pain and their perpetually misspelled signs and their sense of belonging to a community of the excluded.
Leading off our discussion tonight is Stephen Marche, author of "The Next Civil War: Dispatchers from the American Future".
Thank you very much for joining us tonight.
What is the situation tonight in your neighborhood?
STEPHAN MARCHE, AUTHOR: Oh, they`ve gone. I mean, they were only here very briefly. Even then, they were very small.
You know, these things can be quite exaggerated, especially by the American media. At most, Ottawa was 8,000 people. In Ottawa, it`s really down to, well under 1,000 people at this point. My neighborhood is calm.
On the other hand, emergency measures act has been put in place, which is a historical event for this country that we talked about for generations.
O`DONNELL: Talk about that. It`s in 1988 law, but it`s never been used before.
MARCHE: Well, Justin Trudeau`s father Pierre invoked the War Measures Act in 1970 in response to Quebec terrorist incidents.
It`s not been used since. I mean, it`s extremely severe. The government is going to suspend people`s accounts without court orders. They`re going to be able to use the military and it is a very dramatic moment where essentially the powers that be are saying the police and the ordinary course of democracy require backing up by the military.
That`s not something you ever want to see happen in your country.
O`DONNELL: Now you went out there and talked to protesters in your neighborhood. Where did you learn?
MARCHE: Well, I didn`t learn anything. They have basically no political program. It`s just disruption for its own sake. I mean, I think it is nothing more than a temper tantrum. I mean, their political goals are the end of all public health mandates in Canada, which, you know, it`s never going to happen and the resignation of Justin Trudeau.
So, I saw a lot of impotent rage. And, of course, it`s become very clear, recently, that a lot of this is just political spillover from the United States and the toxicity of American discourses sort of taken a foothold in Canada. It`s very ugly.
O`DONNELL: The polling on this indicates that Canadians are opposed to what the truckers are doing and actually would have preferred a stronger law enforcement response. Quicker, anyway.
MARCHE: If there were elections tomorrow, Justin Trudeau would win in a landslide. What`s become very clear recently as just how foreign this is.
So, you know, less than 30 percent of the funding for this has come from Canadian sources. The border guards have been turning away truckers from the United States that are coming in. A huge amount -- obviously the rhetoric is largely American.
So, I mean, it really did get to a point where you are seeing foreign interference in Canadian domestic politics and crippling economies. But also destroying the lives of ordinary citizens in neighborhoods in Ottawa, who`ve been able to unable to put their children to sleep for two weeks.
The Canadian people`s tolerance is over. The patience has worn thin. It`s over now.
O`DONNELL: And you make a point in your "Atlantic" piece that there is no real counterpart to Rand Paul and Ted Cruz in Canada.
[22:10:03]
There was no real official support for this as there is with these Republican members of the Senate.
MARCHE: The very few conservatives who sort of flirted with supporting the trucker convoy have all backed away. I mean, it is massively unpopular.
But also, I think that sort of unfair. I think Canadian conservatives have really kept their integrity and kept their decency and they do not want disorder for disorders sake. You know, certainly, it is definitely true that that Ted Cruz has way, way more into this than any Canadian conservative politician, certainly someone like Doug Ford in Ontario has taken very firm steps to disrupt the financial networks of this group.
So, yeah, I think it would be fair to say that Canadian conservatives are opposed to this, and in a broad sense. I think that`s something that actually is very important for our country, very important.
O`DONNELL: Steven Marche, thank you very much for joining us tonight and all the more important that you are coming from the center of that storm in Ottawa. Really appreciate it.
MARCHE: Oh, always a pleasure.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
Joining us now is Steve Schmidt, former Republican presidential campaign strategist and cofounder of the Lincoln Project.
And, Steve, I want to read for you what Rand Paul had to say, which was fully captured by the daily signal right-wing publication. I just want to read this and everything they reported on him.
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky is all for a trucker convoy is coming to the United States. The Republican senator discussed the Canadian freedom convoy during a Thursday interview with "The Daily Signal" that a similar trucker convoy may form for this weekend`s Super Bowl in Los Angeles and potentially come to Washington, D.C., for the State of the Union Address in early March.
I`m all for it, Paul said. Civil disobedience is a time honored tradition in our country, from slavery to civil rights, you name it. Peaceful protests, clog things up, make people think about the mandates.
I hope the truckers do come to America. I hope they clog up cities, the Kentucky Republican said of the truckers.
And so, Steve, possibly the biggest loser in Sunday`s Super Bowl was Rand Paul for not getting a single truck to move in the direction of the Super Bowl in any kind of aggressive way.
STEVE SCHMIDT, FORMER REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: No. Good evening, Lawrence.
But his meal (ph) in on his desire to vandalize the country, to incur economy damage should be noted here. Look, at the end of the day, this was not a peaceful protest, as the prime minister pointed out.
Canada is one of the most important countries in the world. It is an arctic power. We share the longest piece of long defended border in human history with Canada, across that border, a trillion dollars of trade flows every year.
So, what were these people trying to do? What did they want? What they wanted was to topple the democratic reelected government of Canada. That was their stated goal. That was their purpose.
Why are American politicians, like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, who suborned the insurrection in the United States trying to destabilize our northern neighbor? Again, one of the most democratic countries in the world.
And so, we will have an investigation, I`m sure, a parliamentary inquiry in Canada. We will see all the American money that has flowed.
The bottom line is this. There is a deeply connected, interconnected global fascist movement that is playing out as we see this recession in democracy, there was a reason that Farage was campaigning in Arizona, the architect of Brexit. There was a reason that Jason Miller was detained in Brazil.
And so, whether it`s the upcoming French elections, the fact that CPAC is going to Viktor Orban`s autocratic-ish Hungary, we are in a moment that we should be attentive to it. We should understand that the intimations of violence and chaos were just in the beginning of this.
This isn`t the end of the event. It may be a pause for a few days. Maybe de-escalating, but when you have that many political leaders rooting for chaos, that`s exactly what you will get.
O`DONNELL: Ted Cruz tweeted, God bless these Canadian truck drivers. They are defending Canada, America, and they`re standing up for freedom. The government does not have a right to force you to comply to their arbitrary mandates.
So there`s Ted Cruz celebrating crime, because what`s going on here was the commission of crimes. You know, you`ve parked illegally in New York City, and not only does your car get towed, but it gets impounded until you can pay to get it back.
[22:15:03]
Some people can`t afford to get it back and it ends up getting impounded forever.
SCHMIDT: You know, Lawrence, as someone who`s lived in New York for a long time, lived in Washington for a long time, we have both been caught up in protests. And when you`ve got some place to go, it can be extremely aggravating. That is part of the American fabric. People have a constitutional right, and sometimes you get inconvenienced by that.
This again was not a protest. When people come and they cease and occupy capital city of a country like Canada and demand the toppling of the government, that`s a form of insurrection. It may play out at as far as or short of kabuki theater or maybe a deer hole push (ph) type force, but in the end of the day, if we learned one thing movie these last couple years, is that we should take all of these people, particularly at the leadership level, literally, and seriously.
And again, you talk about a United States senator like Ted Cruz, instigating political instability and Canada. There`s just no words for it. At the exact our, literally, while we are waiting for the first Russian shell to potentially drop into the Kyiv metro area, just extraordinary malfeasance and dereliction of duty on this part.
O`DONNELL: Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman who has studied the economic damage inflicted by closing that bridge, also wrote, a recent events have confirmed what many suspected the right is perfectly fine indeed enthusiastic, about illegal actions and disorder as long as they serve right-wing ends.
Your reaction to that, Steve.
SCHMIDT: There`s no question that that`s true. And it`s all building. We had a plot last year where the governor of Michigan was very nearly kidnapped and executed in the woods.
We are just a little bit over a year where we saw murderous insurrection, of course, in this country that investigation is ongoing. We have seen a rising tide of extremism, the intimations of violence, and work teetering on the edge of that. I think that it is both the embrace of lawlessness as Mr. Krugman points out, but also the intimation of violence that we have to be concerned about. It`s not just that they`re embracing lawlessness, they`re embracing a type of violence.
Newt Gingrich, when he talks about locking up political opponents or Jim Jordan talks about executing them, or Michael Flynn. As bizarre as this may sound to the ear we need to listen to it, we need to understand it. We need to listen carefully because all of these people keep telling us exactly what it is that they intend to do, and at least for the last couple years, they have, if nothing else, been good to their word when it comes to the type of damage they`ve inflicted on this country, and their total hostility to democracy, floral-ism, and equality under the law for everybody.
O`DONNELL: Steve Schmidt, thank you very much for joining our discussion tonight.
SCHMIDT: You bet. My pleasure to be with you, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
And coming up, good news for President Biden Supreme Court nominee today. The Mexico Senator Ben Ray Lujan who was recovering from a stroke announced that he will return to Washington interim to vote for President Biden`s Supreme Court nominee. We will consider the qualifications of one of the women on President Biden`s shortlist on tonight`s episode of supremely qualified.
And at the end of the hour, we will be joined by Ezra Klein who is new think piece in the New York Times is a big think piece that asked a provocative question about the future for Democrats, and offer some surprising answers.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:22:07]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BEN RAY LUJAN (D-NM): And I`ll be back on the floor of the United States Senate in just a few short weeks to vote on important legislation and to consider a Supreme Court nominee.
(END VIDEO CLPI)
O`DONNELL: That is today`s good news from Mexico`s Democratic Senator Ben Ray Lujan, who is recovering from a stroke, and who now says he will return to the Senate in time to vote for President Biden`s choice for the United States Supreme Court.
President Biden told Lester Holt last week that he has narrowed his shortlist to for NBC`s -- three of that names on that short list of the four are Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, of the U.S. Circuit Court of Washington DC., Judge Leondra Kruger of the California Supreme Court whose qualifications we considered last week in our first segment about the supremely qualified women President Biden is considering, and Federal Judge Michelle Childs, whose qualifications we will consider in tonight`s discussion of the supremely qualified.
Judge Child`s most influential supporter is Congressman James Clyburn, who made the case for Judge Childs as a member of the Supreme Court on this program.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JIM CLYBURN (D-SC): This young lady, not just a graduate of public college in Florida and public law school here in South Carolina, she served as a deputy director of our Labor Department. She is very astute in labor issues, and she was (AUDIO GAP) judge, (AUDIO GAP) issue.
Lindsey supports here, Tim Scott supports her. I`ve had discussions with both of them. I would`ve not of gone out as far as I did with her without talking to those two senators. And I`ve talked to them about Michelle, they respect her highly.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Congressman Clyburn and Senator Lindsey Graham met with South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott to strategize bipartisan support for Judge Childs. Senator Graham has said that there but could be at least ten Republican votes for Judge Childs. Here is Judge Childs in her Senate confirmation hearing, 12 years ago, for the federal judgeship that she now holds in South Carolina.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JUDGE MICHELLE CHILDS, U.S. DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF SOUTH CAROLINA: I have a high regard and sincere appreciation for our legal system, which is the form of order in our court, in our democracy. I believe that my record supports that I allow litigants to access the courts, and have their disputes adjudicated in a fair and impartial manner under a far fair and underpin and legal system. I approach all cases allowing litigants to have equal justice under the law, and to act in accordance with the rule of law.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Joining us now is retired South Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Toal, and Kiosha Dickey who served as a law clerk for Judge Childs while she was in the state circuit court.
[22:25:05]
Justice Toal, let me begin with you. If you were introducing Judge Childs to the Senate Judiciary Committee for her confirmation hearing, what would you want the committee to know about her?
JEAN TOAL, FORMER SOUTH CAROLINA SUPREMECOURT CHIEF JUSTICE: Certainly, I want the committee to know her extremely brilliant career as a student of the law. As well as her strong work ethic. And her demeanor and outreach to all the participated in the court system, the lawyers, the litigants, the court personnel.
She is a real standout in any of the judges that I have supervised in the many years I was chief justice of South Carolina.
O`DONNELL: Kiosha Dickey, clerks, law clerks have a unique perspective on judges. What did you learn about Judge Childs in that position that she would want the Senate to know?
KIOSHA DICKEY, FORMER LAW CLERK FOR JUDGE MICHELLE CHILDS: Well, what I want the Senate to know that she is very deliberate in her decision-making. She is meticulous. When we had our arguments at the state court level, she made sure to take written notes, and they would go into her case file. And she made sure before she signed any order that she put her hands on every single piece of paper in that case file.
She is a high-level thinker. And she also just really wants litigants, like she had said, to have the opportunity to have their time in court. Whether you are a pro state plaintiff, or whether you`re a defendant with a team of lawyers behind you. Each party is going to have it equal time in front of her.
O`DONNELL: Justice Toal, why do you think explains Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Republican Senator Tim Scott`s support for Judge Childs?
TOAL: I think they know her well. They know how balanced a thinker she is, and how fair a judge she is. I also think they know what`s across the board strength she has, and the people who know her best are here in South Carolina.
For someone to have both the support of the president of the South Carolina AFL-CIO, and his organization who fought strongly endorse her, and President Biden, and at the same time, enjoy the support of many in the business community speaks to a person and a judge who is not just appears fairer, but is fair, to everyone who appears before her. And I think that`s what they`re looking for, someone that strikes that broad base of confidence.
O`DONNELL: "The Washington Post" had this description of the highlights of some of her rulings. In 2014, and she ruled that a South Carolina couples out of state same-sex marriage must be recognized in the state, a full year before this U.S. Supreme Court legalize the practice nationwide in 2020. She ruled against a South Carolina requirement that absentee voters have their ballot signed by a witness, citing the pandemic.
Last year, Childs rejected a request by employees at a power company to invalidate a mandate that they get a coronavirus vaccine.
And, Kiosha Dickey, having worked with Judge Childs on some of her opinions, what else do you expect to be cited in her confirmation hearing both by her supporters and by people who work be criticizing her judgments?
DICKEY: Well, Lawrence, I can`t really speak to any specific cases that may be cited, but I know that her supporters and even anyone can really tell you that no matter what cases said before her, she`s going to have the facts, she`s going to have the law of the land as it is at that moment. And she`s going to apply the law to the facts.
There is no grandstanding, there is no extraneous opinions that may come into play, like Justice Toal said. She is fair and she has practical. And she is going to take, what`s like I said, whatever fact she has in the law that`s in place and apply those laws to the facts.
[22:29:37]
O`DONNELL: And, Justice Toal, we don`t often see any judges go from the district court all the way up to the Supreme Court. They`re usually coming from the Circuit Court of Appeals, specifically the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals seems to supply most of them.
What is your sense of Judge Childs` readiness to go from the trial court all the way to the top of the United States Supreme Court?
TOAL: Well, I don`t think there`s any question she`s ready. But you know, we should remember that the last president of the United States who did not have an Ivy League background before President Biden was to Ronald Reagan.
And then his second run for the presidency for reelection, he promised that if he were reelected he would appoint a woman to the United States Supreme Court. He reached down to the intermediate appellate court of Arizona to pick Sandra Day O`Connor, and she was strongly backed by her senator, one of his principal supporters, Senator Barry Goldwater. She dispelled the idea that there`s only one track and only one kind of education that fits you for a place on the United States Supreme Court. And she ended up being not only the first of her gender, but one of the consummate peacemakers and -- her ability to get along and bring people together on that court and build consensus is unparalleled in the history of our United States Supreme Court. Actually Michelle fits that kind of profile.
O`DONNELL: Former South Carolina Supreme Court Justice Jean Toal and Kiosha Dickey, thank you both very much for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it.
KIOSHA DICKEY, ATTORNEY, OGLETREE DEAKINS LAW FIRM: Thank you so much.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
And coming up, breaking news on a very bad day for Defendant Trump. Donald Trump`s accounting firm is dropping him as a client and refusing to do his next tax return, because of unanswered questions about the mysterious Matthew Calamari, Jr. And Rudy Giuliani might be cooperating with the January 6th committee. That`s next.
[22:32:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O`DONNELL: In today`s breaking news about Defendant Trump, we learned that Donald Trump and Melania Trump are facing a deadline of tomorrow for filing personal income tax returns. And the accounting firm that was preparing those returns dropped Donald Trump and Melania Trump as clients last week, and they are now refusing to work on those tax returns.
That is how afraid the Mazars Accounting Firm is afraid of handling another Trump document of any kind.
New York State Attorney General Letitia James in a court filing today revealed that last Wednesday the Mazars Accounting Firm sent a letter to the Trump Organization, dropping the Trump Organization and all Trumps as clients, saying that the firm now has quote, "a non waivable conflict of interest with the Trump Organization". That conflict of interest has arisen in the investigation being conducted by the New York state attorney general.
The Mazars` letter says that that investigation along with the firm`s own investigation means that the statements of financial condition for Donald J. Trump for the last ten years, quote, "should no longer be relied upon and you should inform any recipients thereof who are currently relying upon one or more of those documents, that those documents should not be relied upon."
The letter specifies that the Donald Trump personal tax return that needs to be filed tomorrow was missing necessary information as of last week. The letter says quote, "We believe the only information left to complete those returns is the information regarding the Matt Calamari Jr. apartment. As you know, Donald Bender has been asking for this information for several months but has not received it."
That apartment is the focus of a criminal investigation of Donald Trump and his business by the Manhattan district attorney.
In other defendant Trump news, it appears Rudy Giuliani does not want to become a defendant again by defying a congressional subpoena to testify to the January 6th committee.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL): What I can tell you is he`s been subpoenaed. Our expectation is he is going to cooperate because that is the law, and that is the requirement, same as if somebody subpoenaed to court. There may be some changes in dates and moments here as, you know, lawyers do their back and forth, but we fully expect that in accordance with the law we will hear from Rudy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Rudy Giuliani is now a 77 year old New Yorker with no visible means of support since he has been temporarily disbarred as he awaits possible permanent disbarment for the lies he told in court about the presidential election. Rudy Giuliani is a defendant being sued by the Dominion voting machine company for more money than Rudy Giuliani has earned in his lifetime. Since all of Rudy Giuliani`s lies about the Dominion voting machines are on video, the likelihood of Dominion bankrupting Rudy Giuliani is high.
In fact, Rudy Giuliani`s lawyers fees could bankrupt him before Dominion is able to win a judgment against him. Defying a congressional subpoena in court, could involve attorneys fees that Rudy Giuliani might not be able to pay.
Joining us now Tim O`Brien, senior columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. He is the author of the book "Trump Nation".
[2239 Tim, you literally wrote the book about the Trump businesses. So to see in this letter from the Trump accountants today, the name Matt Calamari Jr., and the apartment that was gifted to him, apparently by Donald Trump.
[22:39:55]
O`DONNELL: That is the stumbling point that they have been trying to get answers to for months and at the same time the prosecutors are trying to get answers about that apartment.
TIM O`BRIEN, SENIOR COLUMNIST, "BLOOMBERG OPINION": And what Mazars is saying is they don`t believe they`re going to get that answer. And they -- I think what we can infer from that is that they believe that Trump is either willingly misleading them or is lying to them. But whatever the case may be they no longer want to represent him.
These issues of free apartments to employees of the Trump Organization was front and center with Allen Weisselberg`s indictment and some other things investigators were looking at there. The Weisselberg children also got freebies from the Trump Organization.
This is relatively small beer I think in the larger scheme of things. But it`s enough to put people in the crosshairs it`s enough to potentially cause some of these people to flip against Trump and provide further evidence and it`s clearly enough for his accounting firm to head for the exits.
What`s interesting to me is what took Mazars so long. And as you noted in the book, these same issues were in play when Trump and I litigated. Trump during that litigation put forth one of these Mazar documents, the ones they`re walking away from now. They said at the time that they had been passed the Smith test in terms of meeting accounting principles but they would stand behind them.
They now today say they no longer are, 15 years later, they`re no longer going to stand behind these, because the difference was they were talking to a journalist back then. Now they`re talking to a state attorney general.
And I think the firm is worried about its own criminal exposure and civil exposure in these investigations and they`re not going to go down with Donald Trump if it comes to that.
And I think this is a very pivotal moment, because even of these prosecutions don`t play out, this is a real threat to the well-being of the business. If the Trumps can`t get accountants to sign off on their financial statements, there is no bank that is going to be willing to do business with them. At least domestically.
O`DONNELL: So what the accountants are going through is simply saying to Donald Trump look, we`ve discovered this free apartment stuff and we discover it, they say, possibly through public reports of it, the criminal investigation, their own investigation. They need to account for it.
And it may be that the Trump company has been deducting the apartment, writing it off as some kind of expense, or it may be that they did not account for it in tax documents at all.
And if it is a gift from Donald Trump, it must be accounted for. It`s over $15,000. It has to be accounted for in a gift tax reporting document that these accountants would have to file.
So they want to know and they`ve wanted to know for months, which way do you want to do this? Are we filling out the gift tax form? What are we doing? And they are not getting any answer on it, because Donald Trump obviously as of last week, doesn`t know how to answer that question.
O`BRIEN: And they`re not going to take the fall for it. And they`re not going to expose themselves to any more legal harm than they already are. They finally have had enough.
But I think this is just the tip of the iceberg in all of it.
O`DONNELL: And you know, when we say it`s a relatively small point, well sure, compared to overthrowing the presidential election and other possible crime of Donald Trump. But as we always have to remind ourselves, they didn`t get Al Capone on murder, they got him on this stuff. They got him on tax documents and falsely filed tax documents.
O`BRIEN: And these are the -- these are the kind of wedges that open the door. A crime is a crime regardless of the amount of money involved in it. And I think that they have to be running in circles right now inside the Trump Organization, given what occurred today. This is going to I think end up being one of those pivotal days if we look back on these investigations, that they end up getting the kind of traction that causes the company to go out of business, or winds up with any of the Trumps in jail. It`s going to be moments like this that are going to be part of that narrative.
O`DONNELL: Yes, and good luck getting an accounting firm that is ready to file that tax return for him tomorrow.
Tim O`Brien, thank you very much for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it.
O`BRIEN: Thank you, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: And coming up, Ezra Klein will join us next with the big question for Democrats that he poses in his new essay in the "New York Times". And Ezra is not the kind of guy who asks a tough question without trying to answer it himself, which he will do when he joins us next.
[22:44:35]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O`DONNELL: Our next guest Ezra Klein asks a provocative question in the opening lines of his latest think piece in the "New York Times", under the title, "Can Democrats see what`s coming?"
If you had to distill the ambitions of the Democratic Party down to a single word, you might well choose Denmark. But France would also work, or Germany. Any western European nation really with the social insurance options many of us envy, universal health care and affordable childcare, to name but a few.
Much of modern American liberalism is designed to close those gaps, to build here what already exist there. I hope to close those gaps too, but what about building here what does not already exist there?
Joining us now is Ezra Klein, opinion columnist for the "New York Times" where he hosts a podcast, "The Ezra Klein Show".
Ezra, thank you very much for joining us tonight. When I was reading this I was so eager to see if you`d be available to talk about it here.
So, let`s go to that first question, which is what about building here what does not already exist there, what might that be?
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EZRA KLEIN, OPINION COLUMNIST, "NEW YORK TIMES": The broad point of the piece is that we have a social insurance-focused liberalism, which we should. Which we should. You know me, Lawrence, I`ve been working on things like health care for a very long time.
What we lack across the ideological movement of American liberalism, but also across the (INAUDIBLE) government as structured is a technological vision of how the future can be better than the past, and how can government can make that so.
There are a lot of problems that we actually need new things to solve. Climate change being a big and obvious one, but not just climate change. If we`re going to have a future not just of less climate warming through efficiency, but actual energy abundance, you need to invent new things.
And I think we`ve had a real remarkable example of that throughout the pandemic. It is amazing what our social insurance did to ease suffering, but what really protected life were the vaccines, which were technological marvels.
And so, the argument I`m posing in the piece is that we need to begin looking again for government to shape challenges, and organize resources domestically to meet big technological challenges, to change the nature of the future and make it better.
O`DONNELL: Yes, and this discussion is not being led unless we consider your piece, the opening round of the discussion. Un the article you say, most liberals can list the programs they want the government to create or expand. Fewer can name the five technologies they want the government to finance or the five scientific challenges they want to see mobilized to solve.
That suggests some kind of thoughtful, longer range, congressional hearings in some of the possibly appropriation committees. It`s hard -- there`s no real committee that has this jurisdiction really to say this, to bring people in, to consider. What are the important technologies, what 5 technology should we be focusing on that we want to move to? And why would it be those?
KLEIN: So I`ll give a couple examples here. But I also want to give a little bit more credit to Congress. Which is one, I think the big exception to this, the seam I`m tracing here, is that there is an exception in how the Biden administration is looking at this and how Congress is, at least most Democrats in congress and that`s climate tech.
I think there`s a broad understanding that you are not going to solve climate change, at least not in the way that you wish you could, if you do not accelerate a huge range of technologies. And there, unlike in most other places, the government is willing to get specific -- nuclear energy, wind and solar, geothermal.
I`d like to see us go further than that. I`d like to see a lot more funding of things like direct air capture, various forms of carbon containment which I think we`re at least going to need to explore -- you do probably need to have ultimately technologies that are carbon negative, that help you get what we are producing out of the air and into some kind of storage.
I would like to see massive, massive vaccine platforms. Look, we`ve seen -- we`ve had this object lesson -- when there is a pandemic even sometimes before you want to get huge vaccination programs into play in a matter of weeks.
Right now, we are within a matter of years probably from having a pan coronavirus -- I`m a pan corona vaccine -- a vaccine that can manage basically all coronaviruses of which there have been many, SARS, MERS, et cetera.
We`re not doing nearly enough to accelerate that. I`ve been talking to people involved in that race. There`s so much more we can do to have an actual Manhattan Project there.
In health care, I think you`ll see a lot of this. And in particular something that I`ve not mentioned, you actually need a politics to support this. One of the problems right now, is basically all technological advancements, if it`s not done by the defense department is run according to market logic. Vaccines for coronavirus were a pretty unusual example to the contrary there.
And so one thing that I would like to see happening as we fund things like new drugs and new drug development, is that you actually have equity built in from the beginning, because the government is funding these things.
So if you have amazing new drugs being built which even now a lot of the drugs that have come to market are built off of basic research funded by the taxpayer. They are produced in a way where people can actually afford them. Or they`re given out to people who need them.
O`DONNELL: Ezra, as you know the conservative answer to the questions you are asking is, let the market do it.
KLEIN: Yes, how is that working out for everybody? So there are a couple of issues there. But you`re right, this is a huge problem. Beside yes, the government shouldn`t pick winners and losers. They say in the piece that it`s become (INAUDIBLE) -- that the government funded Solyndra under the Obama administration and that failed.
Nobody ever talks about the fact that the same program threw a lifeline to a then very small electric car maker named Tesla. You are not talking about that all that often anymore. But it very much happened.
So one thing happening here is I think Democrats have been in a defensive posture because of Republican attacks on this course for a long time. They don`t want to suggest that government is getting in the way and interfering in the market, or diluting science.
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KLEIN: I talked with Congressman Ro Khanna in the piece and he`s helped shepherd through, as by the way, Senate Majority Leader Schumer have been a huge champion on this, a bill called -- in the senate it`s called the Compete Act, which is a huge bill spending between $250 billion on the Senate side, $350 billion on the House side, on technology although structured sort of around anti-China concerns.
And he said like the big concern in getting that through was not believing science. They should be excited to do things like that where there`s a public vision behind science.
O`DONNELL: Ezra Klein, thank you very much for joining us once again tonight.
KLEIN: Thank you.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
Tonight`s LAST WORD is next.
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O`DONNELL: Time for tonight`s LAST WORD.
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MERRICK GARLAND, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: The Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6 perpetrators at any level accountable under law, whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy. We will follow the facts wherever they lead big.
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O`DONNELL: We can only hope that that is not Merrick Garland`s LAST WORD about January 6th. It has been 62 days since the House of Representatives referred Mark Meadows to the Justice Department for prosecution for contempt of Congress. And the Merrick Garland Justice Department has so far taken no action against Mark Meadows.
That is tonight`s LAST WORD.
"THE 11TH HOUR" starts now.