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Transcript: The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, 6/2/22

Guests: Barb Byrum, Katie Hobbs, Roland Gutierrez, Tony Plohetski, Guillermo Contreras, Dan Goldman

Summary

Politico has obtained a series of recordings of Republican meetings between the summer 2021 and May of this year that Politico says show Republicans are actively planning to steal the next election by targeting and potentially overturning votes in Democratic precincts. Over three years ago Donald Trump`s attorney general William Barr tried to please his boss by appointing federal prosecutor John Durham to investigate the origins of the FBI`s investigation of Russia`s connection to the first Trump presidential campaign. Tonight, President Joe Biden issued an address to call for action on gun violence in America. One week from tonight, the January 6th Select Committee will hold its first public televised hearing.

Transcript

LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Mehdi.

And that`s such a great story today about finally paying the interns. And one it does enable is that it does enable kids who live in Washington, D.C. now to actually take one of those internships and be able to financially survive while doing it. Maybe, you know, living with their mothers, and living with in arrangements there that work for them.

But your point historically, these internships, if you go back years, they were really the almost exclusive purview of big campaign contributors children, or grandchildren, or nephews, nieces. It was a highly connected operation. This is a great step.

MEHDI HASAN, MSNBC HOST: And, congratulations to the activists who have been pushing for this.

O`DONNELL: Yeah.

HASAN: At a congressional and executive-level for a long time.

And hats off to the Biden White House. It`s an amazing that a previous president not called Trump didn`t do this.

O`DONNELL: Well, it`s about time. Great news.

HASAN: Yes, it is.

O`DONNELL: Thanks, Mehdi.

HASAN: Thanks.

O`DONNELL: Thank you.

Well, President Biden began his address to the nation tonight on gun violence with the report on what he found in his visit to Uvalde.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Innocent victims, murdered in the classroom, that had been turned into a killing field. Standing there and that small town, like so many other communities across America, I couldn`t help but think, they are too many other schools, too many other everyday places, that have become killing fields, battlefields here in America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: Tonight, President Biden delivered the message to Congress, and to the country, that he heard in Uvalde.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: They had one message for all of us. Do something. Just do something. For god sake, do something! After Columbine, after Sandy Hook, after Charleston, after Orlando, after Las Vegas, after Parkland, nothing has been done!

This time, that can`t be true. This time, we must actually do something.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: The president was asking the country for support tonight. And in Washington, it was aiming the speech at ten Republicans.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: This time, it`s time for the Senate to do something. But, as we know, in order to do and get anything done in the senate, we need a minimum of ten Republican senators. I support the bipartisan efforts that include small group of Democrats and Republican senators trying to find a way. But my god, the fact that the majority of the Senate Republicans don`t want any of these proposals, even to be debated, or come up for a vote I find unconscionable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: The president asked Congress to reinstate the assault weapons ban that became law in 1994, for ten years, until Republicans and Congress and the White House refused to reauthorize that ban. The president also called for reinstating the ban on high capacity magazines for ammunition, expanding background checks, purchasing firearms, requiring the safe storage for firearms and expanding red flag laws that can contain the behavior of people exhibiting violent tendencies.

Facing the reality of Republicans` refusal to ban assault rifles, the president asked that at a minimum, Congress raised the legal age for purchasing mass murderers favorite weapon, to the age of 21.

At a House Judiciary Committee hearing today, Republican gun fetishism was on full display when a gun fanatic from Florida, who is a member of the committee, play with his guns while joining the hearing via Zoom.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. GREG STEUBE (R-FL): Right here in front of me, I have a Sig Sauer P226. It comes with a 21-round magazine. Here`s a Sig Sauer 320. Here`s a gun I carry every single day. This is an XL Sig Sauer P365.

REP. SHEILA JACKSON LEE (D-TX): I hope that gun is not loaded.

STEUBE: I`m in my house. I can do whatever I want with my guns.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: President Biden tonight, said it should be illegal, to do whatever you want, or whatever he wants to do with his guns in his home because a safe storage law should require that guns be locked in storage, whenever they are not in use.

Governor officials in Texas continue to refuse to explain what happened in Robb Elementary School for 78 minutes when teachers and students were bleeding to death and police officers were doing absolutely nothing to stop the mass murder in the school, or rescue those wounded students and teachers.

Yesterday, a commander on the scene, in the school at the time, Chief Peter Arredondo, lied to a CNN reporter about why he is literally running away from all questions about what he did and did not do in the school. Chief Arredondo stole the grief of the families, of his community, and used their grief as a personal shield for him to lie about why he is not answering questions.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE ARREDONDO, UVALDE SCHOOL DISTRICT POLICE CHIEF: As you all know, obviously, we are not going to release anything. We have people in our community being buried. We`re going to be respectful.

REPORTER: I want your reaction to --

ARREDONDO: We are going to be --

REPORTER: -- Director McCraw saying that you are responsible for the decision to going to that room.

ARREDONDO: Right, we`re going to be --

REPORTER: How do you explain yourself to parents?

ARREDONDO: We`re going to be respectful to the families --

REPORTER: I understand that -- but you have an opportunity --

ARREDONDO: And sure we are going to --

REPORTER: -- to explain yourself to the parents?

ARREDONDO: And just so you know, we`re going to -- we`re going to do that eventually, obviously.

REPORTER: When?

ARREDONDO: And whenever this is done, with the families grieving, then we will do that obviously. Just so everybody, everybody knows --

REPORTER: Do you understand how the families feel?

ARREDONDO: -- we have been in contact with DPS every day, just so you all know every day.

REPORTER: They say you`re not -- they say that you`re not cooperating.

ARREDONDO: I`ve been on the phone with them every day.

REPORTER: They say you`re not cooperating. Just two seconds --

ARREDONDO: Just so you know, we`ve been talking to them every day. I appreciate your --

REPORTER: But what is -- what is your reaction to the --

ARREDONDO: Have a good day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: That is the face of lying, lying about the situation, in that school. He said, without a hint of grave himself, that he is going to answer questions when quote, the families quit grieving. Those were his words. The families are never going to quit grieving.

And it now seems very clear that Chief Arredondo is never going to take responsibility for what happens in that school under his command. If he wanted to be respectful to a grieving community, he would have resigned by now, for failing on the community needed him most. And he never would`ve allowed himself to be sworn in as a new city counselor in Uvalde on Tuesday, secretly sworn in. He would have resigned from that position also.

The district attorney in Uvalde is also irresponsibly refusing to answer any questions about what her office is doing, and is also literally running away from reporters.

Governor Greg Abbott is not demanding answers from Peter Arredondo or anyone else in Uvalde. Republican Senators John Cornyn and Rafael Cruz are not demanding answers from the good guy with a guns, surrounded by 18 other good guys with guns, who stood in that school for over an hour and did absolutely nothing. Senator Cruz is okay with that. Even though it destroys Senator Cruz`s argument that the only thing you need to stop a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun.

There is obviously an attempted cover-up underway right now tonight in Uvalde. It may be that Peter Arredondo`s only trying to cover up temporarily, knowing that it will all eventually unravel. But that in the meantime, every day that he can continue the cover-up, he can continue to collect as many paychecks as possible before being fired or forced to resign.

What we are seeing in Texas is a failure of government officials, and law enforcement officials, such as we have never seen in the aftermath of a shooting like this, anywhere in the country.

"The San Antonio Express News" is reporting, quote, to protect itself, the city has reached out to the Texas municipal league intergovernmental risk school for advice. The city hasn`t received notice of any lawsuits yet. But litigation could be costly and severely impact the city`s general fund for government operations, which was budgeted at about $11 million this year.

The one government official in Uvalde, who is actually trying to explain what happened in that school, is our first guest tonight -- Texas State Senator Roland Gutierrez who revealed more today about what happened when children in the school, during the shooting, we`re calling 911.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STATE SENATOR ROLAND GUTIERREZ (D), TEXAS: They do not -- the state authority does not know who Uvalde police was communicating the 911 calls to. What we do know is that the 911 calls were not being communicated to the so-called incident commander, Officer Arredondo. They were being communicated to our Uvalde police officer and the state agency that I have spoken to has not told me who that is.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[22:10:02]

O`DONNELL: Leading off our discussion tonight is Texas State Senator Roland Gutierrez, who represents Texas 19 district, which includes Uvalde.

Senator, thank you very much for joining us once again tonight. And this is not the only program you have been sharing information with. You have been by far the most available public official in Uvalde, representing Uvalde, communicating with us, and with your community.

Why haven`t we had another press conference, with another update similar to the false press conference that was filled with but seems to be details about the shooting the day after the shooting? Why hasn`t anyone come back to revisit all of that and go through everything?

GUTIERREZ: Well, thank you, Lawrence, and as it appears tonight, at 5:00, you probably are not going to get that press conference from the law enforcement authorities, from any of them, quite frankly, because the district attorney has suggested that she is taking over the investigation. And there might be at some point, some kind of grand jury, I suppose.

I`m not sure who would be indicted in this case. Certainly there was a lot of malfeasance. Certainly we saw a failure at every law enforcement, not just Arredondo, and that failure has been expressed by Colonel McCraw, and others, publicly.

So there is no doubt that there was system failure, that there was a human failure, and it ended up in this terrible and tragic loss of life.

O`DONNELL: While the district attorney taking over the investigation like this, would make a public announcement about that, face the cameras, answer questions as much as possible about that investigation. The only person who we know committed a crime in that school is dead, and was killed by police in the school. So, there is no murder investigation to conduct because there is no possible murder defendant to charge.

And so, this -- I have to say, from this distance, Senator, smells as a device that is uniquely designed to extend a cover up as long as possible. A district attorney saying that everybody has to shut up now because I am going to run a grand jury that has to operate in secrecy. That is just a formula as far as I can, tell from that local community, to completely shut off any inquiry and all questions.

GUTIERREZ: I like to agree with you, Lawrence, especially when the report that I was supposed to get tomorrow was the report that told me specifically where law enforcement was both in that hallway and in around the building. We know that from 12:03 to 12:48, little kids were calling 911, nine year olds and ten year olds. We know that 19 officers were in that building.

Last week, I was told that there was two DPS officers in the room. Today I was told, there was between two and 13 DPS officers at any given time.

Certainly, this failure that we have seen, it`s so tragic and so sad. It is my hope that law enforcement over the course of the next few days, finally decides to just pull the band-aid on this thing and tell us the truth. This community deserves to know the truth. And these parents deserve to know the truth.

O`DONNELL: Why isn`t government Greg Abbott demanding the truth, the public truth, from Arredondo and everyone else involved?

GUTIERREZ: You know, Lawrence, I think this is some bigger questions to be added here. The governor spends four billion dollars along the border in the last 9, 10 months. Four billion dollars, that is 40 times more than he spent on school hardening. And all of those officers that he had for the so-called border security crisis, 60 or 70 or more were at the site. And 60 or 70 officers alone -- look I respect law enforcement. But I didn`t sign up to be an officer.

At the end of the day, those officers abrogated their duties on active shooter protocols. Will we also uncover today, from a CSEC, which is the Commission on State Emergency Communications, was that the Uvalde police was managing the 911 calls, and certainly everybody had access to them.

So there is this tremendous cover-up, and then unwillingness to tell the truth. I think that it`s in part, partial because of this tremendous waste of money that is happening along the border. The officers are supposed to be down there, didn`t actually go and breach that door.

O`DONNELL: Texas State Senator Roland Gutierrez, thank you very much for joining our discussion tonight.

Thank you.

And joining us now, Tony Plohetski, investigator reporter for "The Austin American Statesman", and Guillermo Contreras, investigative reporter for "The San Antonio Express News".

[22:15:04]

Guillermo, it`s your reporting that we were reading tonight about the city of Uvalde now very worried about civil lawsuits wrongful deaths 21 of those wrongful deaths, have every right to be filed now as soon as possible. This can bankrupt all governing operations in that area.

GUILLERMO CONTRERAS, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, THE SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS NEWS: Yes, there is a potential, we have heard that there is a lot of, lawyers on the ground, as we speak, the sign of plans. I think that, some of the lawyers don`t realize that the entities that will probably go after is the manufacturer or the marketer of the gun that was used by the gunman, a rifle.

And so, you know, I expect you to possible -- possibly in the coming weeks here that there is some kind of litigation that would be filed.

O`DONNELL: Well, that is one of the challenges of these situations President Biden was addressing tonight, is that gun manufacturers have a complete blanket coverage shield from any kind of liability in cases like this. So, they`re going to have to find a way to aim, now anyway those lawsuits in a different direction.

Tony, this looks like a complete cover-up, coordinated cover-up in action. A grand jury investigation about a murderer who is dead, this district attorney now telling everyone to be quiet, and not answer any questions. Arredondo gets to stay on the payroll, as long as that silence is maintained.

Is there any possibility that Peter Arredondo is going to continue in the role of chief of police for that school system?

TONY PLOHETSKI, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, THE AUSTIN AMERICAN STATESMAN: Sure there is, I mean his boss is the superintendent of the school district there, as well as possibly the school board, certainly they have the ability as his employer to place him on some sort of administrative leave.

I want to point out, as someone who has covered high profile incidents involving law enforcement officers, that is pretty standard when they are the subject of an investigation. Even if they are presumed to not have done anything wrong, oftentimes, in fact usually, employers will simply take that person out of the role, to give them time to not be doing their jobs, and giving investigators times to collect all of the information.

And there has been no indication that the Uvalde school district has any intention of doing that, right now.

O`DONNELL: Tony Plohetski and Guillermo Contreras, thank you very much for joining our discussion again tonight. We always appreciate it.

PLOHETSKI: You bet.

O`DONNELL: And coming up, exactly one week from tonight at this very hour, we will know what`s the January 6th Committee knows, because it 8:00 p.m. next Thursday, in a public hearing, the January 6th Committee will present a summary of the evidence the committee has collected about Donald Trump, and a violent mob of Trump followers trying to overturn the presidential election. That`s next.

And later in this hour, new recordings obtained by politico reveal how Republicans are playing to steal the next election.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:22:44]

O`DONNELL: One week from tonight, the January 6th Select Committee will hold its first public televised hearing. In a statement announcing the hearing, the committee said they will, quote, present previously unseen material, documenting January 6th, receive witness testimony, preview additional hit hearings, and provide the American people a summary of its findings about the coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and prevent the transfer of power.

Text messages that were sent to and from former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, are expected to be a very important part of this committee`s presentation. Meadows turned over a text to the January 6 committee, before he then stopped cooperating with the committee. A batch of the Meadows text messages obtained by CNN highlights that, the people closest to Donald Trump believed that he had the ability to get the rioters to leave the Capitol.

Shortly after 2:00 p.m. on January 6th, Meadows begins receiving a flood of text messages from people begging him to get the president to call off his mob. At 2:28 p.m., Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene texted Mark Meadows: Mark, I was just told there is an active shooter on the first floor of the Capitol, please tell the president to calm people. This isn`t the way to solve anything.

At 2:32 p.m., Fox host Laura Ingraham texted: Hey, Mark, the president needs to tell people in the capital to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy, and plane into every stereotype. We lose all credibility against the Black Lives Matter, Antifa crowd of things go south.

At 2:45 p.m., journalist Jake Sherman texted Meadows: We are under siege in the Capitol, there`s an arms standoff in the House chamber door, we are all helpless.

According to former Republican Congressman Denver Riggleman, who worked with the January 6th Committee as a senior technical adviser, the Meadows texts were a key part of the committee`s investigation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DENVER RIGGLEMAN (R-VA), FORMER REPUBLICAN U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: My team was the first to actually see the Meadows text messages when we are able to link the numbers and names together after we got the text messages.

[22:25:00]

So, to look at it, it`s almost a roadmap to what happened. And a lot of the text having come out -- thankfully, I think the committee is going to do a great job of linking those text messages to the other interviews and data that they have. Starting November 3rd, November 4th and Meadows text messages, all the way to the end, it is a roadmap.

And I would have to say this point, I think Mark Meadows is the MVP for the committee. I think they should pay him. The data that we got from there actually allowed us to really structure and effective investigation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: Joining us now, Daniel Goldman, the former House majority counsel for the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump. He`s almost also former U.S. district attorney for the Southern District of New York, he announced his candidacy this week running as a Democrat for New York`s tenth congressional district.

Daniel Goldman, this first hearing sounds like the opening statement in a criminal trial. It sounds like they are going to lay out everything they have, and then get into more detail about it all in the other hearings.

DANIEL GOLDMAN, FORMER HOUSE IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY MAJORITY COUNSEL: That`s exactly what I was going to say, Lawrence. This is an opening statement summarizing their findings of the investigation today, and what they expect the evidence to show. It`s a little bit different.

You have a book ended crime hearing, with four earrings in the middle. I would expect that this would be more of a high-level summary, as to their critical findings. It`s the first hearing, it`s the biggest one, it will get the most attention. So, they will put, I believe, the most serious and sensational evidence that they have found in this first hearing, and then no lay out what they are going to show in the other four daytime hearings.

And then I would expect that last hearing, and I hope that last hearing would indicate where things are today, because as I think you are going to cover later in the show, things are not getting any better after January 6th. In fact, there are more efforts on the Republican side to mess with the election in 2022, and pave the way to potentially steal the election in 2024.

O`DONNELL: So, would you -- it sounds like you`re saying their best evidence, the strongest evidence, you expect to be presented in that first hearing?

GOLDMAN: Yes. I think, generally with this series of hearings, and we saw this with the impeachment hearings as well. The first one gets the most attention. It will get the most focus, and then you get the most bang for your buck.

So they`ve done an exhaustive, aggressive, comprehensive investigation, and I think they`ve been chomping at the bit to show what they found. I think we will see the most powerful, persuasive evidence in this first hearing.

O`DONNELL: Apparently, William Barr, former attorney general, he`s had some conversation with the committee. He was seen leaving a conference room on used by the committee, that doesn`t tell us how much he was cooperating, or whether he was Cooperating, or whether he was listening to, questions and refusing to answer them.

But he has been a subject of their interest, at least.

GOLDMAN: Yeah, look, I wouldn`t be surprised if Bill Barr went in there, and read from his book, and nothing more, because, my guess is that he repeated what he said in his book, and probably was not much more cooperative than that. I wouldn`t expect a whole lot of forthcoming truth coming out of Bill Barr who only is engaged in reputation laundering, to distance himself from Donald Trump, after he spent 18 months as his personal consigliere.

O`DONNELL: Well, you know well the sleepless nights that the staff is going to have between now and a week from now, getting this presentation together. You`ve been there.

Daniel Goldman --

GOLDMAN: Many of them are sleepless already, so kudos.

O`DONNELL: That`s right. That`s right.

Daniel Goldman, thank you very much for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it.

GOLDMAN: Thanks, Lawrence.

O`DONNELL: And coming up, "Politico" has obtained recordings showing how Republicans are planning to steal the next election. Part of the plan is installing election wires in positions of authority, in the vote counting system, including the position of secretary of state in some states. Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:34:09]

LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: Politico has obtained a series of recordings of Republican meetings between the summer 2021 and May of this year that Politico says show Republicans are actively planning to steal the next election by targeting and potentially overturning votes in Democratic precincts.

Politico reports, quote, "The plan as outlined by a Republican National committee staffer in Michigan, includes utilizing rules designed to provide political balance among poll workers to install party trained volunteers prepared to challenge voters at Democratic majority polling places, developing a Web site to connect those workers to local lawyers and establishing a network of party-friendly district attorneys who could intervene to block vote counts at certain precincts."

[22:35:00]

Politico has not released those recordings, simply reporting on those recordings. Election watchdog groups tell Politico they are concerned that many of the recruits are answering the call for volunteers because they believe the big lie told by Donald Trump that there was fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

Nick Penniman, founder and CEO of Issue One, and election watchdog group told Politico, he believes the Republican strategy is designed to create enough dispute to open up the door for Republican-controlled state legislatures to intervene.

Quote, "Come election day you create massive failure of certification in Democratic precincts," Penniman said. "The real hope is that you can throw the choosing of electors to state legislatures.

Joining us now is Arizona secretary of state, Katie Hobbs. She is the Democratic candidate for governor of Arizona. Also with us Barb Byrum, county clerk for Ingham County, Michigan.

And Barb Byrum, let me begin with you at the county level, and what this reporting means to you.

BARB BYRUM, COUNTY CLERK -- INGHAM COUNTY, MICHIGAN: Well, it`s disheartening. Quite frankly. But it`s exactly what we expected. These are the same people that were banging on the glass at the TCS Center demanding that precinct workers stop counting ballots.

So it`s expected, but it is very disheartening to see it as it is being reported.

O`DONNELL: And Secretary Hobbs, what can be done to defend against this kind of interference?

KATIE HOBBS (D), ARIZONA GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: Well look, as Barb said, these are the same folks who have been attacking our elections since the 2020 election. And they`re going to continue, they`re trying what other strategy they can to sow chaos and doubt and undermine confidence. And this is just another one of their strategies.

But there is a process, there`s procedures in place and these folks can`t just march into polling places and do whatever they want. The poll workers that are selected to work by our counties are trained, and they have procedures to follow. And we`re going to be ready to intervene if these folks just go rogue like this.

O`DONNELL: Barb Byrum is Michigan particularly vulnerable in the way its systems are run? Vulnerable to this kind of subversion?

BYRUM: Absolutely not. Michigan has some of the strongest and most secure elections in the country. We see and ready working in partnership with law enforcement to make sure that any precinct worker who is operating in bad faith who is intentionally slowing down the process of the day of election, or have a voter moving through the process, they will be held accountable and we will continue to run a smooth election.

O`DONNELL: So Brad Raffensperger, Secretary of state of Georgia won against the Trump candidate. He won 52 to 33. There were other candidates in the race splitting the rest of the vote -- 52 to 33, not even close.

Donald Trump says that is a fraudulent election and those results can`t be trusted. He says the same about governor -- Republican Governor Brian Kemp in his primary who got 73.7 percent of the vote. And Donald Trump`s candidate David Perdue got 21 percent of the vote. And Donald Trump is saying that Brian Kemp stole that election. That the candidate with 73 percent of the vote didn`t actually win the election.

So, Secretary Hobbs, that tells you there really is absolutely no limit to the size of the lies Donald Trump and his supporters are willing to tell.

HOBBS: No, I mean this is -- this speaks to the hypocrisy and those Republicans who are getting elected on these same ballots, Trump Republicans who think their election`s just fine. But they can`t pick and choose the elections that they are challenging. Either the elections are good or they`re not.

It`s the same elections and the same people administering and overseeing them. So it just undermines their arguments and it does show you the lines that they`ll go to, but I think it also underscores that we are not out of the woods in terms of the attacks on our democracy. That`s, I guess why we are still talking about the 2020 election now and what they are going to do in the future.

But it shows you also what is at stake on the ballot in 2022 because until we get all these election deniers out of the process, we are going to continue to have these conversations.

It is happening in Arizona with Kari Lake, the frontrunner in the Republican primary who has been endorsed by Trump and continues to call for decertifying the 2020 election.

[22:39:57]

And it`s why I am running for governor. I need folks to join me in that at KatieHobbs.org.

O`DONNELL: Katie Hobbs and Barb Byrum, thank you both very much for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it.

HOBBS: Thank you so much.

BYRUM: Thank you so much.

O`DONNELL: And coming up, three years ago, Donald Trump`s attorney general William Barr appointed special prosecutor John Durham to investigate the FBI in order to prove that the FBI should never have conducted an investigation of the Trump campaign`s Russian connections.

In those three years, the prosecutor assigned to help Donald Trump has proved nothing, just lost his latest case in court. But Attorney General Merrick Garland has not fired the prosecutor who was hired to help Donald Trump.

Tim O`Brien and David Corn will join us next on the endless crusade of the prosecutor working for Donald Trump in the Biden Justice Department. That is next.

[22:40:49]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O`DONNELL: Over three years ago Donald Trump`s attorney general William Barr tried to please his boss by appointing federal prosecutor John Durham to investigate the origins of the FBI`s investigation of Russia`s connection to the first Trump presidential campaign.

There was no reason to do this. There was no reason to do it at all because the jurisdiction for doing this was in the Justice Department`s inspector general`s office who investigated exactly the same thing and found that the investigation of the Trump campaign`s Russian connections was completely legitimate.

William Barr quit his job as attorney general in the final weeks of the Trump presidency when he could see that Donald Trump`s attempts to change the outcome of the presidential election was becoming a fully developed criminal enterprise.

John Durham did not quite. His top deputy -- John Durham`s top deputy quit the Durham investigation two years earlier in what appeared to be a principal resignation in September 2020 over how to or whether to proceed with an investigation that has uncovered nothing.

President Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland have had the power to fire John Durham since inauguration day but they have allowed him to continue his investigation because they don`t want to appear political in choosing to end an investigation that was started by Republicans.

The latest chapter in this unprecedented waste of federal investigative resources is a not guilty redirect delivered quickly in Washington D.C. by a jury whose forewoman said the case prosecuted by Durham`s staff never should have been brought to court.

Attorney Michael Sussman was found not guilty of lying to the FBI about possible Trump campaign connections with Russians. The forewoman of the jury told the "Washington Post, "Personally, I don`t think it should have been prosecuted," saying, "the government could have spent our time more wisely."

Joining us now David Corn Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones and Tim O`Brien senior columnist for "Bloomberg Opinion" and author of "Trump Nation". Both are MSNBC political analysts.

And David, what are we to make of this latest chapter in the Durham investigation, this not guilty verdict?

DAVID CORN, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Let me put a good new spin on this in the whole Durham investigation. As you noted, it was basically a hit job set up by Bill Barr to try to prove Donald Trump`s defense, that the whole Russian investigation was a hoax.

It wasn`t a hoax, Russia attacked, his campaign aided and abetted the attack by denying it. He lied about his Russian business connections. He tried to impede the investigation when he was president.

I mean there is so much there that is really there they keep trying to deny. So here is Durham appointed to show this was all a big ruse. It was all a witch hunt in the deep state.

Well here we now see that he has nothing. Two and a half years ago he said publicly, John Durham, that he believed the FBI investigation wasn`t started up properly echoing what Bill Barr said in defense of Trump.

Well, he has had two and a half years, I think that`s longer now than what Robert Mueller spent on the case, to provide some information regarding that. And he has struck out.

so in some ways, I think this is a very valuable service he`s performing by showing us there is absolutely no case for the whole Trump hoax witch hunt argument. And that`s what, you know, he came up empty this week.

He has two other cases. One that was pleaded out and another that is going to trial in October. And none of them have anything to do with the origins of the Russian investigation and the whole hoax allegation.

O`DONNELL: Tim O`Brien, I`m going to ask you the toughest guess what Trump would do, question ever. What would Donald Trump do if there was a Democratic special prosecutor left in the Justice Department when he was sworn in on inauguration day and that that prosecutor was there to help Democrats specifically? How long would that version of that prosecutor last on inauguration afternoon?

[22:49:51]

O`BRIEN: You are making this way too easy for me Lawrence. It would take about 15 seconds. And in the first 14 seconds of those 15 seconds, Trump would be saying that it was a political plan. That it was a witch hunt. That this was all left in place in order to undermine his presidency and the legitimacy of his office.

You know, I guess since David has put the good news spin on this, it leads me a little bit with the bad news spin on this.

I do think I agree with David completely. This thing was a distraction. It`s good that Durham and Barr got embarrassed in court. But as David has noted, as well, they have given a lot of fodder to conspiracy theorists in Trump`s corner, who can now say, that all of the Russian investigation was baseless and that it was filled with unfortunate, illegitimate prosecutions.

Barr himself, in the wake of Durham`s defeat in court went on TV, and in as lawless a fashion as Bill Barr has demonstrated himself to be even as attorney general, said well yes we lost in court but this still shows in fact that agents of Hillary Clinton pursued Donald Trump and tarred him with these unfair allegations which was exactly what the court process disproved.

I think the other thing that is unfortunate here is that there is a lot left unexplored about Donald Trump`s financial relationship with Russia. Robert Mueller left that on the table, prosecutors in New York have left that on the table.

Voters should understand how material this remains because Donald Trump is a clear and present danger, and a national security threat because of it. Money from eastern Europe flowed through his businesses for years. He didn`t fetishized Putin, simply because he fetishizes fascists, which he does. But it`s also because he had money in his eyes.

And he saw Russia as a place that he could do business at and it is important that we know about that and we may never get to that, especially if Trump is going to run again because of all of this deterrence and distraction that Barr and his minions have thrown into the process.

O`DONNELL: David, consider the politics of this for a second. I mean you know, Biden -- Joe Biden, Merrick Garland -- they knew going in that the Durham investigation was nonsense. That it was established just to please Donald Trump. And yet they took that old fashioned ethical position of we don`t want to fire him because then we will look political firing the Republican appointed special prosecutor.

And the trouble with that now -- I mean I understand that way of thinking in that 1990s. But the trouble with that now is -- is there a single voter on the Trump side of the world who respects Joe Biden or Merrick Garland because they did not fire Durham?

CORN: Of course not and they are in a damned if you do and damned if you don`t position, right. I mean Tim is right to say that the conspiracy theorists of the right and the Trump cult have been given ammunition from - - by Durham and by Barr and comments that Barr made this week.

But the same time, if they fire Durham, they`d have a different type of ammunition. I mean from the get go. From 2016, before he got elected. Trump has been spinning conspiracy theories about the deep state to deflect from his complicity in the Russian attack on American democracy.

Now, I`m not saying there was direct collusion but he was out there throughout 2016 saying this attack was not happening. When it was and when his own people, Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump, Jr. had been told in emails that Russians wanted to help the Trump campaign secretly.

So from the very start they have been denying this and they have been affected within the Koch world of deflecting it with all sorts of other things. Complaining (INAUDIBLE), complaining about the Sussmann meeting, these are all deflections and distractions and they found a few things that the FBI did wrong that actually are, you know, that we`re wrong -- they are diversions to take away from the big picture.

So I think no matter what happened, they will stick to this, they will keep spinning their deep state conspiracy theories. And they will do it through 2024 and onward.

So I mean I think Durham has s demonstrated that he has nothing. And you know, maybe even because of that he can be fired at this stage. I don`t think it matters much to that side, whether he -- for conspiracy purposes, whether he is there or not. He has done the work that they are already I guess adopted this as theology in terms of the Trump world.

[22:54:53]

O`DONNELL: Tim O`Brien, three years on the job and John Durham has not undone one word of the 500 pages or so of the Mueller report.

O`BRIEN: And the Mueller report had prosecutable evidence in it. The Mueller report laid out a robust fact pattern of obstruction of justice and collusion, by various members of the Trump administration and the Trump campaign team.

And nothing ultimately was done to bring Donald Trump to heel for that. The Durham -- you know, the Durham investigation is just a charade in comparison to what Mueller did.

And let`s not forget about all of the shenanigans around Michael Flynn that also got deflated this week. It`s a couple of big losses for team Trump this week on both of those issues.

O`DONNELL: Tim O`Brien and David Corn, thank you both for joining us.

CORN: Sure thing.

O`BRIEN: Thanks Lawrence.

O`DONNELL: And tonight`s LAST WORD is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[23:00:01]

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I have been in this fight for a long time. I know how hard it is. But I`ll never give up. And if congress fails, I believe this time a majority of American people won`t give up either.

I believe the majority of you will act to turn your outrage into making this issue central to your vote.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: President Biden gets tonight`s LAST WORD.

"THE 11TH HOUR WITH STEPHANIE RUHLE" starts now.