Summary
Today, a Florida federal judge magistrate held a hearing on motions by some organizations to unseal the FBI affidavit that was presented to that same judge to convince him to authorize a search warrant of Donald Trump`s Florida home. The chief financial officer of Donald Trump`s company, who has been with Donald Trump throughout Donald Trump`s entire business career, has vowed to testify truthfully against Donald Trump`s business. Former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg pleads guilty in tax fraud case. Liz Cheney`s loss in the Wyoming Republican primary this week shows Republicans are America`s problem. In today`s "New York Times", Nicole Walker describes what it felt like on the day the Republican judges on the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade
Transcript
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: Alex, you`re kidding. You had more -- you had another segment you`re going to do?
ALEX WAGNER, MSNBC HOST, "ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT": It is a good one, an important one. Why leave it on the cutting room floor. Let`s give it to the people on the Internet.
O`DONNELL: Listen, if you need more time, just let me know. Just take as many of these minutes as you need.
WAGNER: Friday, Tuesday -- I appreciate the generosity.
O`DONNELL: Thank you, Alex.
WAGNER: Thanks, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: Thanks.
Well, Donald Trump`s life is a disaster zone now, a legal disaster zone. The toxic waste of his life in business and his life in the White House is drowning Donald Trump`s hope for happier days in the final chapter of his life.
Every day gets worse for Donald Trump. Every day is worse than the day before.
What happened to Donald Trump in a courtroom in Manhattan today would have been the worst thing that has happened in Donald Trump`s life if Donald Trump had never been president. Donald Trump`s accountant, Allen Weisselberg, the man who handled the money going in and going out of Donald Trump`s accounts pled guilty today for 15 felonies involving that money, 15 financial crimes. All of those crimes were committed to benefit Donald Trump in some way. Some indirect ways.
Nothing as bad as that has happened in Donald Trump`s business life, including Donald Trump`s multiple business bankruptcies. It obviously brings Donald Trump much closer to facing criminal charges for many of the same financial crimes. But Donald Trump`s legal life is so bad now that that is not our lead story tonight.
We will cover the Weisselberg guilty plea and what it means for Donald Trump in our next segment.
But we begin tonight with an even more important story of the federal criminal charges that Donald Trump could face under the Espionage Act. Today, a Florida federal judge magistrate held a hearing on motions by some of these organizations, including, according to "The New York Times" and NBC News, to unseal the FBI affidavit that was presented to that same judge to convince him to authorize a search warrant of Donald Trump`s Florida home. "The New York Times" asked the judge to release the entire FBI affidavit.
So, Donald Trump has publicly pretended to be in favor of releasing the entire affidavit but his lawyers did not file a motion with the judge asking the judge to release the affidavit. That is the truth, that is the truth of the Trump position, and that is the proof that Donald Trump knows that releasing any part of the affidavit will be very damaging to Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is playing a game here, he is pretending publicly that he wants every word of the affidavit released so that he can complain when it is not released or when there are redactions in the released affidavit. When that happens, Donald Trump will say it is a cover-up, about what is really going on here. These reductions are a cover-up. That the reductions are hiding what`s really involved in the FBI searching his home.
But Donald Trump has proved that he does not want anything about the search warrant or the affidavit released because Donald Trump has been able to release some of that information and he did not. He was in position of the search warrant for a full week until the court released last week and Donald Trump released that -- refused the entire week to make the search warrant public.
Donald Trump was also in possession of the inventory of material that the FBI took from his home. And he refused to make that public. He held it for one week. The inventory showed that Donald Trump had classified information removed from his home, and Donald Trump refused to make that public until the Justice Department asked the judge to make a public, along with the search warrant. That`s how it became public.
Donald Trump now claims to have surveillance video of the FBI search of his home. And he is refusing to release that video. Now, remember, it`s entirely possible that no video exists. Donald Trump is, and always has, been a pathological liar. So he could just be lying, and there is no video.
But, if, for just this moment, we take Donald Trump`s word that he has surveillance video of everything the FBI did in his home, the only reason Donald Trump has not released that video already is that that video will be very harmful to Donald Trump. And Donald Trump knows. It this program will not waste one second of your time playing the Trump game of pretending that Donald Trump wants the affidavit made public.
After considering the Department of Justice argument today, to keep all the affidavits sealed, the judge said that he is inclined, that was his word, inclined, to release some of it and order the Justice Department to spend next week redacting information from the affidavit to make sure that public release of the affidavit will not harm the ongoing investigations where the Justice Department said today the investigation in Florida was in its early stages.
If the judge approves the redactions submitted by the Justice Department next Thursday, the judge could release the redacted version of the affidavit that.
Today, the judge released two more pages of documents concerning the search warrant including the cover page of the application for a search ward which indicated that the FBI believed that the execution of the search warrant would find evidence of a crime and find contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed. The application said, quote, the search is related to a violation of willful retention of national defense information, concealment or removal of government records, and obstruction of federal investigation.
Leading off hour discussion tonight, Andrew Weissmann, former FBI general counsel and former chief of the criminal division in the Eastern District of New York. He is professor of practice at NYU law school and an MSNBC legal analyst.
Also with us, Ben Rhodes, former deputy national security to President Obama, and MSNBC political analyst. He is the author of "After the Fall: Being American and the World We`ve Made".
And, Andrew, your assessment of what we have learned in this hearing today about the possible release of the affidavit and what you expect a week from now.
ANDREW WEISSMANN, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: I think the judge made the right call here. I think the weakness in the government`s position was that they only addressed the footnote, the issue of redaction. And they simply told the judge that their opinion, a redacted version of the affidavit would-be not helpful to the public, we would be virtually meaningless.
But, of course, this judge has actually seen the fully unredacted affidavit. So he was able to sort of take a look at bat and presumably came to the conclusion that the pieces of it that wouldn`t harm national security, wouldn`t harm the ongoing criminal investigation, and wouldn`t identify witnesses. I think those are categories that I think he`s still going to be very protective of, and I`m sure the government is going to propose redactions in those areas.
But having said, that that does leave other information that we still could learn such as, the back and forth between the Department of Justice and Donald Trump and his lawyers and representatives in trying to get the documents back. And I think that`s the kind of thing that the judge might be looking at saying, why should we get that? That certain something that Donald Trump and a lot of people know about, it doesn`t seem that sensitive.
So, it would be interesting to see, what exactly the government`s position is going to be. Are they going to sort of get their backup and think they should try to appeal this and not sort of accommodate the judge. I don`t think that`s what they are going to do, I`m not positive, but I think they are going to try to propose redactions that are strictly in those three areas.
[22:10:04]
And then I think we are going to see an unredacted portion -- unredacted portions of the affidavit.
O`DONNELL: And, Ben Rhodes, as we sit here tonight, since we discovered that there was an FBI search of Donald Trump`s home, and that it was for classified material, and that, indeed, classified material was obtained in that search, Donald Trump and his representatives have not said a single word about why that material was in his home.
BEN RHODES, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Yeah, Lawrence, I mean, that`s really the glaring question here. We have confirmed that he had highly sensitive, highly classified information that the top secret and top secret compartmented information level. This is the highest level of hesitation in the U.S. government.
We know, despite what Trump has said, that this information is still classified, or else we would not be talking about redaction and the government not wanting to release that information. What we don`t know is why on earth he felt necessary to pack up and take with him boxes of classified information, to keep it at Mar-a-Lago, which is not a secure location, and to not return it to the government, even after they ordered him to do so.
And so, we are left to wonder here, the why. Why keep this information? Just taking it is illegal. Just taking it is violating every protocol as it comes to the classified custody of classified information.
Was he seeking to have this for nostalgic purposes? Was he seeking to have this to show people who are coming over to Mar-a-Lago? Was he seeking to have it so he could profit off of it personally in some fashion? Was he seeking it so he could have some leverage over someone else?
Every one of those explanations doesn`t justify the illegality and the compromising of national security for him taking that information. So, this is the piece that has yet to be filled in, the motive that he had for taking and keeping this information even after he was instructed to return it.
O`DONNELL: And, Andrew, some of the crimes being investigated here do not seem to require or contain a motive component. There are certain things that are simply illegal to possess. And it doesn`t matter what your motivation is for possessing them. These documents, some of them, seemed to fall in that category.
WEISSMANN: Absolutely. Motive is not something that the Justice Department would be required to prove. And very often, you don`t know the motive, whether, as Ben said, it is to monetize, for power, or some other reason. And it could be a whole range of reasons, because there are a whole range of documents. It is also not require that the documents be classified.
I mean, it is highly suspect, the claim that these were -- there was a standing order. I am sure that the government is going to get to the bottom of it. And I should say, the unredacted piece that we might get, something that I am curious about is, if Donald Trump`s defense is, oh, this was material that I declassified, you think he would have told that to the government when they said, please return the classified information. He would have said, wait a second, there was a standing order.
I am confident, I`m sure as we are all sitting here talking, that that did not happen. Because his defense at the time was, I don`t have classified information, I returned everything. That was the problem, that he completely lied about what he had. And said he returned it all.
So, he has got a very difficult case. And I personally think, the more he sort of trot out these sorts of defenses, the better it is for the government trial.
O`DONNELL: Ben, with your experience national security, what sort of things in material documents -- including, by the way, one document referred to as, information about the president of France. That is one thing we saw on the FBI inventory. What are your biggest concerns about what you have learned about what was found at Donald Trump`s home?
RHODES: The biggest concerns I have is the level of classification being top secret and top secret SCI because this means that that is information that is derived from sensitive intelligence collection or national defense information of the U.S. government. So what do I mean by that? It means it is not just state report, that you are describing with the intelligence community is happening somewhere. It is a report that makes reference to or was derived from very sensitive methods of intelligence collection.
So, sources -- human sources -- could be involved in the gathering of information, in those documents. Technical sources of collection could be involved in the gathering of information for those documents. Movements of the United States military intelligence assets could be in those documents.
This is also part of the reason why these declassification argument is so laughable on its face. First of all, it`s contradictory. He said famously that the FBI might have planted some information, but if they did, I declassified it. It doesn`t make any sense. Typical Trump gaslighting -- but he clearly did not notify, or any process to notify the director of national intelligence, or the CIA director. There is no record of him declassifying this information.
And it`s not as simple as him, I am declassifying boxes, because the documents in those boxes, make reference, presumably, the sensitive national intelligence collection or sensitive defense information of the United States government. So, he`s not just the classifying talking about declassify boxes, he`s talking about, are we going to notify the people running those sources of information, or human sources, or people involved in military movements?
The declassification argument doesn`t really hold any water, except for Trump to have some talking point to make. And what I am talking concerned about is, again, not even motive, just having that degree of lack of security around information that could make reference to how the U.S. government conducts national events or intelligence operations. There is a reason why you don`t let this information leave secure government facilities. And there is a very strict protocol amount around managing this information. There is a reason, Lawrence, all of those documents are stamped top secret on every single page. This is not something you could make a mistake and not know that the document is sensitive.
O`DONNELL: Andrew Weissmann, we didn`t learn much in this hearing, it wasn`t designed for us to learn much. But one thing we did learn is this phrase that the federal prosecutors used, saying that the investigation involving that evidence that Donald Trump`s home is in its early stages. That was the phrase they used, in its early stages.
What did that mean to you?
WEISSMANN: So, it means two things. I think, from a national securities perspective, that is, the part of the investigation that is going to be checking to see, how they recovered everything and tried to determine, and has it been disseminated in any way to anyone outside of Mar-a-Lago -- that that is something that really is starting, now that they have the documents back, from a criminal perspective, I also think that they are going to trace all of these ludicrous defenses, because if you are going to bring a case, you want to make sure you can track that down -- high on my list would be Kash Patel, who is claiming that he was there for this.
To me, that is like raising your hand for a grand jury subpoena, so that you can now testify under oath. And they can hear that story and assess it. And they can hear so, I think there are a lot of witnesses that are going to be talking to in light of the documents they have seen, and a lot to do. I am not sure infancy might be -- I was a little surprised by that. I think it is probably a bit further than that. But I think that just is right.
O`DONNELL: Ben Rhodes, thank you for sharing your national security perspective on this story tonight, thanks for joining us.
And, Andrew Weissmann, we are going to need you to stick around for the next legal story about Donald Trump. And that is coming up.
And that is, what is next for Donald Trump now that the chief financial officer of Donald Trump`s company, who has been with Donald Trump throughout Donald Trump`s entire business career, he`s now, as of today, a convicted felon who is going to testify -- has vowed to testify truthfully -- against Donald Trump`s business. That`s next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:23:24]
O`DONNELL: And so today, Donald Trump`s accountant`s life of crime ended in a courtroom in Manhattan when he said one word, yes.
Allen Weisselberg said yes to the question of changing his plea from not guilty to guilty. After the judge in the case had guided Allen Weisselberg through each count of the 15 fell needs that Allen Weisselberg had agreed to plead guilty to in exchange for leniency sentence of less than six months.
After the judge made sure that Allen Weisselberg understood all of the legal implications of a guilty plea, the clerk of the court spoke to directly to the defendant saying, Allen Weisselberg, do you now withdraw your previously entered plea of not guilty, and now plead guilty to count one, scheme to defraud, count two, conspiracy, count, three grand larceny, count four, five, and six, criminal tax fraud, count seven, criminal tax fraud, count nine -- eight, nine, ten, and 11 offering of false -- count 15, falsifying business records. To which Allen Westbrook said, yes.
The prosecution agreed to accept Allen Weisselberg`s guilty plea with the condition, quote, the defendant must agree to testify truthfully at the trial of the Trump Organization.
The judge went over this point repeatedly with Alan Weisselberg saying, you have agreed to testify truthfully at the trial of the Trump Organization, to which Weisselberg said, "That is correct."
[22:25:07]
Before accepting Allen Weisselberg`s guilty plea, the judge came back to that point, more emphatically, saying this time, if you violate a condition of this plea agreement, I will not permit you to withdraw your plea and I will be at liberty to impose any lawful sentence, which in this case would include a period of imprisonment up to 5 to 15 years. For example, if you fail to testify truthfully at the upcoming trial of the Trump Organization, I would then not be bound by my sentence promise, I would not permit you to withdraw your plea of guilty, and I would be at liberty to impose any lawful sentence, which again, in your case, would include imprisonment up to 5 to 15 years. Do you understand?
The defendant, I do.
Andrew Weissmann is back with, us and joining us is Tim O`Brien. He is senior executive editor for "Bloomberg Opinion" and author of Trump nation. He is an MSNBC political analyst.
Andrew, let me begin with you, and one of the mistakes that has quickly floated out there about, this and the fact that "The New York Times" fell for it in their reporting, and that is the notion that Andrew -- that Weisselberg has reached an agreement with prosecutors, that he will tell the truth about the Trump Organization, and that is, it nothing, more he will not testify one word against Donald Trump. As if that is within Weisselberg`s power, to not honestly answer questions about Donald Trump.
Clarify this for us, please?
WEISSMANN: Yes, I think the times got that a little bit wrong. I think what is true is that Allen Weisselberg is not required to give the government information about facts unrelated to the current indictment against him and against the Trump Organization. But he is required to testify truthfully, if called as a witness, of the Trump organization trial, scheduled for October 24th. And that date is highly unlikely to move.
At that trial, the judge, as you noted, repeatedly said, you have to testify truthfully. So it is going to be difficult, not impossible, but difficult for Allen Weisselberg to come up with a story that doesn`t mention the T word. This is a small organization. And, we are talking about a 15-year scheme.
He would have to say, under oath, that this payroll scheme happened but Donald Trump never knew anything about it. That all the people involved deliberately kept it from him. Why would even do that? Because he`s the beneficiary of it. I mean, this is something you actually -- he might actually like and be proud of the fact that you figured out scheme to save him money.
But it seems like that`s the conundrum if he is going to go down the root of trying to not implicate Donald Trump. The final point I would like to make his, the lawyers here for Allen Weisselberg, they are real lawyers. These are people who are representing Allen Weisselberg and just him.
So I am confident that before he testifies, there are going to be stressing to him the need to just tell the truth and the ramifications if he doesn`t.
O`DONNELL: Tim O`Brien, I think I first heard the words Allen Weisselberg from you because you know more about the Trump business than other reporters out there. You know more than most. So you`ve been reporting on this for years. You know these players, you know Donald Trump, you know the Weisselberg relationship to the whole entity.
What are the chances that Allen Weisselberg never once, never once, had a conversation with Donald Trump about any one of these 15 felonies?
TIM O`BRIEN, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: I think zero, Lawrence, absolutely zero. There were no financial decisions of substance made in the Trump organization whether they pertain to deals or compensation or anything else that involved money going out the door that Donald Trump did not sign off of, in word if not on paper.
And there were only two people in that organizations outside of the children who Donald Trump would say make sure both of them have signed off on this before I do it. One was Allen Weisselberg, the other was Jason Greenblatt.
[22:29:40]
And it`s still strange to me that Jason Greenblatt`s name hasn`t surfaced in all this. He`s a general counsel at the Trump Organization. Donald would always turn to Allen and Jason, or to -- get a stamp of approval on anything.
I think Jeff McConney (ph) and Matthew Calamari`s names will also come up in the future. Having said all of this, I think that, you know, as Andrew pointed out, the idea that Allen Weisselberg is not cooperating is true only in the narrowest sense.
He now has to go to trial with this sort of sword hanging over his head that if he is found to be lying he`d get 15 -- as much as 15 years in prison. So he`s over the coals now. And there might as well be a cooperation agreement in place because he is now going to, I think, be a material witness against the Trump Organization.
The other thing to remember is that the Trump organization has been in financial trouble over the last two years. It has an enormous amount of debt hanging over the company. It`s been battered by the COVID lockdowns. It`s in the worst businesses you could imagine being in during COVID. Urban real estate and essentially tourism and entertainment.
And Trump has had every reason to try to dodge corners financially. I think there`s a real possibility that the Manhattan D.A.`s investigation combined with the New York state attorney general`s civil investigation could put the Trump Organization out of business.
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: So, Tim, the new risk that Weisselberg faces, if he wants to somehow protect Donald Trump, would be the risk of perjury. Is Weisselberg, at age 75, prepared to risk perjury, which would then cost him a few years in prison, at minimum?
O`BRIEN: Well, predicating this with, you know, I cannot get into his head, so I don`t know for sure. But anyone who has spent any time around Donald Trump knows that loyalty is a one-way street in his universe. He demands extreme loyalty from everyone around him. But it never goes in the other direction.
And I can`t imagine that Allen Weisselberg, at this stage in his life, is going to want to wind up in an orange jumpsuit to show that he is loyal to Donald Trump. I just don`t see that happening.
O`DONNELL: Tim O`Brien and Andrew Weissmann, thank you both very much for joining us tonight. We really appreciate it.
O`BRIEN: Thank you, Lawrence.
ANDREW WEISSMANN, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: You`re welcome.
O`DONNELL: And coming up, the title of Charles Blow`s new column for the "New York Times" is, "Republicans are America`s problem". Charles Blow joins us next.
[22:32:35]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O`DONNELL: Our next guest, Charles Blow`s new column for the "New York Times", says that Liz Cheney`s loss in the Wyoming Republican primary this week shows, as the title of his piece says, Republicans are America`s problem.
Charles Blow writes, "Her loss does crystalize something for us that many had already known. That the bar to clear in the modern Republican Party isn`t being sufficiently conservative, but rather being sufficiently obedient to Donald Trump and his quest to deny and destroy democracy. We must stop thinking it hyperbolic to say that the Republican Party itself is now a threat to our democracy.
I understand the queasiness about labeling many of our fellow Americans in that way. I understand that it sounds extreme and overreaching. But how else are we to describe what we are seeing?"
Joining our discussion now is Charles Blow, columnist for the "New York Times", and an MSNBC political analyst. Charles, thank you very much for joining us again tonight.
You have said what has been clear for a very long time, the problem is the voters. They are the people who delivered Donald Trump to the electoral college victory. They are the people who believe his lies. They are the people who have gone beyond his lies, into wilder beliefs in the QAnon space that even Donald Trump doesn`t advocate.
But there is a news convention -- and I think it is beyond the convention, I think it is built into the very mindset of so many people in the news business -- that you must never even think that the voters are a problem. It has to be something else. It cannot be them.
CHARLES BLOW, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Absolutely. And you know, I am the first to say that propaganda is big and misinformation is big. They are real things. And they do lead some people a stray.
But this is not what is happening here with conservatism in this country, and particularly in this moment. Conservatism in this country has always been against democracy. They have never wanted full democracy and always pushed against it.
We never even had anything approaching real democracy until 1870, with the passage of the 15th Amendment, which finally gave black men the right to vote -- but women in general still didn`t have the right to vote. That didn`t happen until 1920, with the passage of the 19th Amendment, right?
[22:39:50]
BLOW: But by that time, Jim Crow is already raging and black people were basically disenfranchised in the American South where most of them live. So, you didn`t get back to something that approached democracy until 1965, with the passage of the Voting Rights Act. 48 years later the Supreme Court goes in and guts that, right.
So all along conservatism always wanted Americans` electoral system to be less than democratic. What we have now, though, in the last, you know, 20 - - 30 years is people casting about, looking for another vehicle that says that I can latch onto and give that my anti-democratic fervor.
And for a long time, there were (INAUDIBLE) people who said you have to be more moderate. They have latched on to the Reagans and the Bushes.
But Donald Trump comes along and says, you can actually do your anti- democratic thing without having to moderate, that you can go headfirst into it and be your full self. And unapologetically say that you do not want to be a democracy, and that is ok.
And that is what we are seeing now. And right now, the Conservative Party is the Republican Party. And that is what they have become, the threat to democracy.
I don`t really care if people are squeamish about it. I don`t care if they think it is hyperbolic to say that. I don`t care if people say, well, you are pushing us toward civil war if you say half the country is problematic.
Well, they are. If you were answering on a poll that you don`t believe that someone who won the election who actually did, and you don`t believe that Donald Trump created a problem with the insurrection and what have you, you are a problem. If you are electing people who want to overturn a legitimate election, and are actually saying -- basically saying that they are not into democracy anymore, then you are the problem.
You can`t put that off on somebody else. You can`t say, oh, I listen to Fox News. I can`t listen to QAnon. It`s you.
O`DONNELL: Yes, and registered Republicans are not half the country. They are a small minority of the country.
BLOW: Absolutely.
O5; And the Republican Party and Republican presidential candidates from Donald Trump forward now, have no plan, no hope, no strategy of winning the most votes for the presidency. That isn`t the plan.
That was what Mitt Romney was trying to do. He was trying to win the most votes and the Electoral College. Now the plan is nothing other than how do we win the Electoral College, because we know -- we know -- we can never get more votes than the Democratic candidate. And one way to win the Electoral College is to rig it. It`s to put our new secretaries of state in the key states that will give us the Electoral College.
BLOW: Right. First of all, isn`t it quaint that people use the (INAUDIBLE) with the majority of the votes.
But also, they are not just attacking it on the secretary of state level. They are attacking on every single level possible. They are attacking the people who work at the election -- the ballot offices, and work elections. And now they don`t want to do the job, right.
So, that is all the way from the bottom, all the way up to the Supreme Court gutting the civil rights act, on every single level. And now you have the Supreme Court about to take up a case about whether or not you can shift the responsibility for calling an election away from secretaries of state altogether, and give it to state legislatures, which are the epitome of political bodies and are the ones who are instituting, in many cases, the restrictive and oppressive voting laws.
So, on every single level, Republicans are trying to set up a system where they can have minority rule.
O`DONNELL: Charles Blow, thank you for saying it so clearly once again, as you always do. Thank you very much for joining us tonight.
BLOW: Thank you for having me.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
And coming up, writer Nicole Walker`s new op-ed piece in the "New York Times" is titled, "My Abortion At 11 Wasn`t A Choice; It Was My Life". Nicole Walker will join us next.
[22:44:24]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O`DONNELL: In today`s "New York Times", Nicole Walker describes what it felt like on the day the Republican judges on the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
She writes, "The world changed on June 24th, 2022. On that day, I understood the extent of what we were losing. On June 24th, I felt the prison gates fall around me, around my daughter, around everyone with a uterus."
The title of Nicole Walker`s essay in the "New York Times" is, "My Abortion At 11 Wasn`t A Choice. It Was My Life". She describes being impregnated by a 14-year-old boy who was her babysitter when she was 11 years old.
[22:49:43]
O`DONNELL: Nicole Walker writes, "I did not feel lucky to get an abortion. I felt like garbage. The babysitter did not have to go to the clinic. The babysitter was not shunned and censured by our community. Most people didn`t even know what he had done, though they seemed to know something bad had happened to me, or perhaps that I had done something wrong.
Only my mom and I were subject to the shame of entering that special building for that special procedure. Although no one in the neighborhood or at school talked to me about it, I could feel the electric gossip surge around me.
The freedom to choose wasn`t what I experienced in 1983. My abortion wasn`t a choice. It was my life. If I had been forced to give birth, I would not be texting my mom from my home in the beautiful mountain town. I wouldn`t teach at the nearby university. I wouldn`t be working on a book about climate change and how to shatter predetermined destinies. I wouldn`t be married to my husband or have my two children.
My life would not have been my own. I would be a prisoner, subject to a body`s whims, and not my body`s whims but the whims of a teenage boy who, as best I can tell, experienced no consequences for inflicting what his body wanted upon my own."
Joining us now is author Nicole Walker. She teaches creative writing at Northern Arizona University. Thank you very much for joining us tonight. We really appreciate it.
NICOLE WALKER, AUTHOR: Thank you so much for having me, Lawrence, I am grateful to be here.
O`DONNELL: You begin your essay in "The Times" asking people to look at this, acknowledging that it is difficult. It is -- there are graphic passages in your piece that you want people to look at and consider because you believe that this subject needs to be discussed in this kind of detail.
What have you found in your own approach to talking about it is the most effective way of making people understand this?
WALKER: You know, I mean I feel like what is coming clear and coming more available, since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, is using the word "abortion".
I have friends on Twitter who are like, Sarah just -- is proud to have had on abortion, last name, you know. People are using this word and using being able to describe the experiences they have had, because I think there was a lot of, well, we are going to get by with the abortion system as we have it, and keep it really hush hush.
But it was not until that day, June 24th -- to me, my eyes were just wide open. I was suddenly -- it was suddenly clear to me what the difference between having control over your body and not having control over your body was.
And it was automatic and immediate. And that sense of being able to then talk about it, or that the idea of having to talk about it became abundantly clear.
I have written about what happened to me when I was a kid, obliquely, in the books I have written. I have written about it in different magazines articles. But it`s always sort of under the cover, under the guise of something else.
And I finally realized this is the time where we need to speak up and tell our stories. I want to encourage everyone to tell their stories.
You know, mine is an extreme example. What happens to me is one of those special cases that people are like, oh, yes, if we can we should make exceptions for rape or incest. But my argument is, I think, a little bit more complex, which is, you do not have your own body autonomy if you cannot decide what happens to your body. What does it even mean to be a person? It strips us, I think, of our humanity. And I feel that really deeply.
O5; You are the second woman who`s written an op-ed piece like this for the "New York Times", about having an abortion at that age. The other has joined us on this program. And I know it is a difficult subject to write about and to discuss here.
And so I want to do this with the utmost respect for how difficult it is. You make the point in your piece -- and this is something that I have seen, I`ve seen some commentary, some comment to this effect. That some abortion rights supporters worry that devoting too much energy to the stories of young children who need abortions narrows the cause. What is your reaction to that?
WALKER: Right. I mean to some degree, I agree that it does narrow the cause. Again, it says that, oh, well, there are these exceptions.
[22:54:50]
WALKER: The fact is that, if you look at the comments on my "Times" article today, you will see so many stories of so many young people becoming impregnated at such a young age. And that inability to imagine not accessing -- to be able to access abortion -- I don`t want to use, necessarily, this story to say that it is only for those particular cases.
But to me, the point of the article is really to say that pregnancy, for anybody, changes your life. And you are right, I cannot predict exactly what would have happened if I had been forced to give birth at age 11. But I cannot imagine that life.
And there is a stripping of the imagination that I think happens when you are forced down paths that you have no control over. And even if you are a 25-year-old woman who is in the middle of college and are on your way to graduate, it`s to me your body and your ability to decide what path you get to go on.
And you know, as a kid, it is different, right? Obviously, I did not have control over the situation. I did not have control over even just making my -- I could not explain why what happened to me has happened to me. I still have a hard time explaining what had happened to me.
But to imagine that our lives are supposed to be purely set based on what our bodies do naturally, and what our choices are limited by what our government says, it has become very striking to me and very different world that we are living in.
O`DONNELL: Nicole Walker, I am very sorry for what you suffered that brought you to this point into the show tonight. But I thank you very much for sharing your feelings about all of this with us tonight.
WALKER: Thank you so much, Lawrence. I`m really grateful to be here and I just, you know, in the book I`m writing, I really am encouraging more people to tell their stories. So, I hope this opportunity comes for other people as well.
O`DONNELL: Thank you very much.
WALKER: Thank you.
O`DONNELL: We will be right back.
[22:57:14]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O`DONNELL: Nicole Walker gets tonight`s LAST WORD.
"THE 11TH HOUR WITH STEPHANIE RUHLE" starts now.