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Transcript: The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, 8/29/22

Guests: Bradley Moss, Sheldon Whitehouse, Gwen Keyes-Fleming

Summary

The GOP gives Trump political cover after the FBI search. According to the redacted affidavit of the Trump warrant, the FBI has not yet identified all potential criminal confederates. Unlike Lindsey Graham, New Hampshire`s Republican Governor Chris Sununu sometimes publicly disagrees with Donald Trump. Another big win for Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis. The judge ordered Georgia Governor Brian Kemp to testify to the district attorney`s investigation, while Lindsey Graham continues to fight a subpoena to Fani Willis`s grand jury. The January 6th Committee is planning to hold more public hearings next month.

Transcript

LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: Talking about that nuclear power plant situation. You know what I did when I when I bought the one house that I bought in this world, I kind of drove around the neighborhood looking for a nuclear power plant. I just wanted to make sure, just -- just wanted to make sure there wasn`t -- wasn`t one within walking distance anyway.

RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST, "TRMS": I mean the thing about nuclear power, right, is that you definitely -- there`s got some stuff going for it in terms of carbon emissions and greenhouse gases missions and everything like it`s great, but, you know what, when used as directed nuclear power plants produce nuclear waste, and we`re not always great at dealing with it.

And in a war zone or in a time of chaos or at a time of climate catastrophe or unpredictability, nuclear waste can become a mass casualty event really quickly, and in this Ukraine case, it`s a huge plant right in the middle of an active war zone and it`s a really scary situation.

O`DONNELL: Yeah, it brings uh this problem in a way that we haven`t quite been able to find a way to see it so clearly before. I mean, yeah, the nuclear waste lasts 300,000 years or something like that, and I always thought that was enough. I always thought, hey, you got me right there. I don`t know how to -- I don`t know how to solve that problem.

But this -- the notion that that these plants could be in effect in the line of fire in such dangerous ways or something that -- that we -- I was not really thinking about until this war.

MADDOW: They need uninterrupted sources of power and uninterrupted operation to avoid melting down and causing catastrophe, which has to happen no matter what else is going on in the world. Add to that munitions and the plants themselves getting shelled and it`s just -- you know, we`ve thought it`s we as humans have thought ourselves into a problem we can`t necessarily responsibly handle with these plants and it`s scary stuff.

O`DONNELL: And I only now have minutes to get people`s minds off the words catastrophe and meltdown so that they can sleep.

MADDOW: Also, I will recharge.

O`DONNELL: Thank you, Rachel.

Well, Lindsey Graham has hit rock bottom. Rock-bottom is the sad term the AA uses for the spot where people drink too much have to find themselves before they can help themselves or be helped. But there is no cure for what`s as sunk Lindsey Graham to his own very dangerous rock bottom.

Rock-bottom is dangerous for people addicted to drugs and alcohol, so dangerous that that`s where some of them die. But in Lindsey Graham`s rock- bottom, he is threatening the deaths of others. Senator Lindsey Graham did what no senator in our lifetimes is done. Senator Lindsey Graham said something this weekend that you have never heard another United States senator say.

Lindsey Graham said something that no other senator has ever said in the history of the United States Senate. Lindsey Graham actually said, if you prosecute a friend of mine, there will be riots in the streets. Those were his words. There will be riots in the streets.

After the TV interview that he was in wandered into other subjects, Lindsey Graham wanted to make sure we heard him correctly, so we came back to it, and he said, quote, there literally will be riots in the street.

No senator, no senator in history has ever predicted or threatened riots in the streets if a friend of that senator was prosecuted. The so-called friend in this case is Donald Trump who is an actual friend to no one as Lindsey Graham so tragically knows. No senator in history has ever -- if the most popular member of my party is prosecuted, there will be riots in the streets.

Lindsey Graham as what Winston Churchill would call a quisling.

[22:05:01]

It`s one of those words that you don`t need to find the first time you hear it because it`s a perfect word. It`s a word that sounds exactly what it means. The first time I heard that word as a kid, it was an Irish song "The Patriot Game", in the context of the lyric, and the very word itself told me what it meant -- a collaborator with an enemy of your country.

In elementary school, I thought it was taken from the name of some kind of weak, little already ways frightened bird. It was only a few years ago when I actually looked up that I discovered that the perfect word quisling comes from someone`s name.

Vidkun Quisling was a Norwegian politician who collaborated with the Nazis when evaded his country in World War Two. The most prominent early use of the word quisling in the United States was when Britain`s Prime Minister Winston Churchill addressed a joint session of Congress after the United States joined the fighting in World War II, Churchill said: there burns the flame of anger against the brutal invader and still more firstly bring the fires of hatred and contempt for the filthy Quislings whom he has suborned.

No one has been more suborned by Donald Trump after Donald Trump`s invasion of the Republican Party than Lindsey Graham.

To understand how law Lindsey Graham`s rock-bottom is tonight, remember where Lindsey Graham stood when he was running against Donald Trump for president in 2016.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): He`s a race baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. He doesn`t represent my party.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: And even after Lindsey Graham dropped out of the presidential campaign before a single vote was cast in a single primary, he still attacked Donald Trump saying, if we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed and we will deserve it.

He doesn`t represent my party. If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed we will deserve it.

Trump was an invader in every classic sense of the Republican Party. Lindsey Graham was right that Donald Trump did not represent what the Republican Party had publicly represented before the Trump campaign. But Donald Trump crushed every Republican in his way, and there were no Republicans in his way because the last ones standing in his way, Senator Rafael Cruz and Senator Lindsey Graham lived in fear of Donald Trump`s power over their voters in their states. Senators like Lindsey Graham knew Donald Trump had the power to take their Senate seats away a backing Republican candidates run against them in their states.

The big difference and important difference between Lindsey Graham and Norway`s original Quisling is that Vidkun Quisling was a fascist long before the Nazis invaded his country. When Quisling was collaborating with the Nazis, he was a true believer. Would that Winston Churchill were still with us so we could prevail upon his wisdom to judge for us which is worse. Quisling the true believer or Lindsey Graham, the quisling?

And another speech in London during World War II, Churchill said I quisling, quote, fawn upon the conqueror to collaborate in his designs and to enforce his rule upon their fellow countrymen while groveling low themselves.

Lindsey Graham has been fawning upon the conqueror for over five years now. Lindsey Graham has been collaborating in his designs to the point that Lindsey Graham is now fighting a subpoena for his testimony to a grand jury in Atlanta about Donald Trump`s attempts to overthrow the presidential election in Georgia.

Lindsey Graham tried to enforce his rule on his fellow countryman by trying to help Donald Trump get reelected and then by trying to help Donald Trump overturn the results of the presidential election.

This is what Churchill meant by Quislings groveling all.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GRAHAM: And I`ll say this: if there`s a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information after the Clinton debacle which he presided over and did a hell of a good job, there`ll be riots in the streets.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[22:10:00]

O`DONNELL: There won`t be. Lindsey Graham is lying. Lindsey Graham is lying about a false equivalence between Hillary Clinton`s handling of classified information while she was in office as secretary of state and Donald Trump`s handling of classified information and other government records after he left office and took those records with him as a private citizen.

But Lindsey Graham is also lying about Trump supporters and he is insulting them. If Donald Trump is indicted, 74 million Trump supporters will do exactly what they did when Donald Trump lost the election. Nothing. The hundreds of them who might be inclined to write in the streets are spread out throughout the 50 states and it is possible that most of them will have already been convicted of rioting for Donald Trump at the Capitol of January six, and the ringleaders of that riot at the Capitol are all in prison.

There will not be rioting in the streets in this country of 330 million people if Donald Trump is charged with a crime. Not 1 million people have ever publicly gathered for Donald Trump anywhere for any reason. Seventy- four million Trump voters are law-abiding people with no criminal records and no criminal intent who have never rioted for anything and never will.

If you add up every rabid Trump supporter who has ever attended a Trump rally, it doesn`t come close to the number of people who marched in Washington, D.C. alone against Donald Trump on the day after Donald Trump`s inauguration. The largest protest in Washington, D.C. history was a protest against Donald Trump.

On that same day throughout the United States, the day after Donald Trump`s inauguration and throughout the world, the largest mass protest in the history of the human race occurred against Donald Trump. In every American city that had a protest against Donald Trump on that day after his inauguration, it was the largest protest in history of that city. They will not be coming out into the streets for Donald Trump if he is indicted.

There is a loaded phrase in the affidavit than an FBI agent submitted to a federal judge in Florida to obtain a search warrant for Donald Trump`s home. It`s a phrase that could explain what Lindsey Graham is really personally worried about when he talks about, perhaps hopes for rioting in the streets.

And that phrase is criminal confederates. On page 30 of the affidavit, the FBI agent writes: I believe that sealing this document is necessary because the items and information to be seized are irrelevant to an ongoing investigation and the FBI has not yet identified all potential criminal confederates nor located all evidence related to its investigation. Premature disclosure of the contents of this affidavit and related documents may have a significant and negative impact on the continuing investigation and may severely jeopardize its effectiveness by allowing criminal parties an opportunity to flee, destroy evidence, stored electronically and otherwise, change patterns of behavior, and notify criminal confederates.

And one of his many trips to fawn upon Donald Trump at this Florida home, did Donald Trump ever show Lindsey Graham any documents that he took from the White House after he left the presidency? Was Lindsey Graham a criminal confederate of Donald Trump`s in trying to overturn the presidential election in Georgia? Is that why Lindsey Graham the first senator in the history of the United States to predict riots in the streets if his friend is indicted?

We don`t know. The only thing we do know now for sure about Lindsey Graham is that as long as he continues to live in the darkness of his own personal rock-bottom, he will surely continue as Churchill put it, to fawn upon his conqueror.

Leading off our discussion tonight is Andrew Weissmann, former FBI general counsel and former chief of the criminal division in the eastern district of New York. He`s a professor of practice at NYU law school. And Neal Katyal is with us, former acting U.S. solicitor general. They are both MSNBC legal analyst.

Also with us is Bradley Moss, a national security attorney.

Andrew Weissmann, let me begin with you and where the search warrant case stands this week. Why Donald Trump when apparently to shop for a judge other than the judge who`s been handling the case to try to get a special master appointed to review these documents? What will develop this week as that judge has ordered so far?

ANDREW WEISSMANN, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: Let me turn to what to expect because I think tomorrow could be a big day. We know from Attorney General Merrick Garland that he has said that the Department of Justice has is its policy is going to speak through its filings. Even in his press conference, we got very little information and we basically last Friday everyone in the press and the public that`s following a lot we`re waiting for the redacted affidavit to be unsealed.

Well, tomorrow is an opportunity for the department to show a little leg. To take your intro about Winston Churchill, there are a lot of lies and misstatements and omissions in the filing, actually the filings plural that have been made by Trump and -- through his counsel. The court has ordered the department to respond to the filing, the whole filing, not just to the request of a special master, and today, the Department of Justice said that he would like 40 pages to respond to both the legal and the factual arguments and statements in the brief. And the court agreed to that.

So, tomorrow, we`re obviously not going to learn about classified information or grand jury information or witnesses just to set everybody`s expectations. They are not going to do that. But there are a lot of statements that were made in the brief about how for instance how Trump was cooperating the whole time, or statements that I think are palpably implausible about what happened at the June meeting in Mar-a-Lago with the department of justice and FBI officials, about different statements that were made.

This is a golden opportunity for the department to be forward leading, to educate the judge and the public, and to do it through a court filing.

O`DONNELL: Neal Katyal, why is this being heard before a judge different from the judge who ordered the search warrant?

NEAL KATYAL, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: I have no idea, Lawrence, because that`s not the way things are done. Normally, the judge who wishes the search warrant, if you have a beef with that, you take it up for that judge or perhaps the presiding judge who was overseeing what this magistrate is doing.

Here, the Trump team obviously wanted to try to search for a different judge, a magistrate judge that authorized the search was somebody who was appointed in 2018 during President Trump`s tenure. This is not some lefty judge or something like that.

And I agree with Andrew entirely that this is a huge strategic miscalculation on Trump`s part to make this filing, to ask for the public justice response, because now the department will be able to speak publicly and explain what they are doing and why. With respect to this request tonight from the department for 40 pages to write the response, I used to be in charge of that decision. You ask a judge or set of judges for a larger number of pages to respond to something.

You only do so if you have a lot to say. The department takes it very seriously, and here I suspect there`s going to be a lot to say tomorrow. And at the end of this, this is all skirmish-ing about whether a special master should be appointed. That something is to sift through documents with attorney-client privilege.

That`s not going to delay, I don`t think, the ultimate the progress of this case. And if I were Trump, that probably just means that will be some documents protected by executive privilege that Trump doesn`t get back and just, they go to the Archives.

[22:20:07]

But the gravamen of what he`s being accused of here is not the contents of the documents, is that he stole federal documents in the first place which makes a special master inconsequential. Special master`s really about contents.

So, I don`t see this going anywhere. It`s a sideshow, but it`s one that`s going to give the department an enormous opportunity tomorrow.

O`DONNELL: Bradley Moss, with your experience in criminal cases like this, I want to go back to these phrases that appear in this heavily redacted version of the search warrant that we`ve had the weekend to study, and that is that that phrase criminal confederates, that is in the same line with including the opportunity to flee. The FBI is saying that some of these criminal confederates would have the opportunity to flee -- presumably it means flee the country uh to get out of federal jurisdiction. It`s not going to do you much good to get to Georgia.

And so, what are you -- what are you reading in that description of what the FBI said was at stake in this case?

BRADLEY MOSS, NATIONAL SECURITY ATTORNEY: Yes, so when I saw that part, what I infer from is that`s referring somewhat to the obstruction angle sort of what has brought this into a criminal matter in the first place because as many of us have said, if this had just been about recovering the documents in the end, it would have been no harm, no foul. If he had turned everything over, it wouldn`t have been a problem.

The reason there is an issue here is because of the obstruction with respect to these documents, particularly the classified documents. The efforts to relocate, to move about, to conceal those records, that is what`s going to get Donald Trump in trouble and it`s the people around him -- and this is where the issue of you know these various witnesses that have been interviewed and have provided interesting and informative information to the FBI, they have provided I`m sure context as to who was going through the documents.

What did they know, what instructions were they giving and why were documents being placed in other parts of Mar-a-Lago? Why did the FBI know that there were going to be records located in places like Donald Trump`s personal office at Mar-a-Lago, in his closet, in his bedroom where sure enough they found classified records?

Someone has provided them with this information and it`s the people around Donald Trump who were doing his bidding on that front to relocate it, they`re the ones who also face criminal exposure.

O`DONNELL: Andrew Weissmann, with your experience as a prosecutor and as counsel to the FBI, obviously, you`ve seen an awful lot of FBI affidavits like this, trying to establish the grounds probable cause for a search warrant. Is opportunity to flee just boilerplate, that the FBI throws in there every time?

WEISSMANN: Well, you know, I think it does appear to be fair. I do think it appears often. But there does have to be a factual predicate for it. So one of the reasons it appears often is because in a lot of these cases, that is exactly one of the concerns and again, it doesn`t mean, that it`s going to happen and it doesn`t have to be that the FBI believes it`s -- you know, proof beyond a reasonable doubt. But it is set forth as a reason to keep something under seal because one of the reasons you want to keep something under seal is so that you`re not alerting targets of an investigation as to all of your next steps.

And obviously, you`re facing a lot of criminal exposure. One of the things that people can do is decide that America has been a great place for them and it`s time to leave because they`d rather be, you know, living in you know Cyprus than living behind bars. So it does appear fairly often but there`s usually a reason for it.

O`DONNELL: And, Neil, what do you expect from this judge who was appointed by Donald Trump in terms of ruling in Donald Trump`s favor on trying to get someone called a master of some kind to look at these documents?

KATYAL: Well, first, Lawrence, I do want to push back on this whole notion that just because someone`s been appointed by a particular president, it means, you know, that we can predict how they`re going to act or something like that. I mean, up until President Trump became president and started label -- calling judges Obama judges and Trump judges, that`s not the way we think of the judiciary. And I hope that we can return to something more normal.

Here, I am a little concerned about this judge who is -- initially, she raised some questions akin to your first question to me, what is this case doing before me? It`s already before a different judge. Why are you filing this?

But now, it seems like she is growing comfortable with the exercise of her power and jurisdiction over this case. That isn`t something I think the department can likely let stand, even though they`re not worried about a special master, but I think they have to be worried about is in other cases that you shouldn`t be allowed to have defendants forum shop for a different judge if they don`t like the current one.

[22:25:00]

So I think that`s all going on right now, but at the end of the day, I suspect the judge is going to do the right thing here and say no special master or if there is a special master, it can`t delay these ongoing criminal proceedings.

O`DONNELL: Neal Katyal, Andrew Weissmann, Bradley Moss, thank you all for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it.

MOSS: Anytime.

KATYAL: Thank you.

O`DONNELL: Thank you.

And coming up, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse who serves on the Senate judiciary committee with Lindsey Graham will join us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:30:04]

O`DONNELL: Unlike Lindsey Graham, New Hampshire`s Republican Governor Chris Sununu sometimes publicly disagrees with Donald Trump. And here is how he deals with the FBI search of Donald Trump`s home as he campaigns for reelection as New Hampshire`s governor.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. CHRIS SUNUNU (R-NH): My biggest criticism and I think the concern of most of the country is where is the transparency, right? we want to see it.

And one thing I was very aggressive about was saying look, if you`re going to take unprecedented action and raid a former president`s house, well, you better have a strategy for unprecedented transparency.

You think this is a coincidence just happening a few months before the midterm elections and all that sort of thing?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: Joining us now is Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. He is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Finance Committee.

Senator, thank you very much for joining us tonight. The reason I showed Governor Sununu is if we have a moderate Republican left anywhere, he would come close to filling that definition. And he is willing to publicly disagree with Donald Trump from time to time.

But there he is actually saying, at least the transparency argument give me transparency, give me a justification for this. How would you respond to Governor Sununu on that?

SENATOR SHELDON WHITEHOUSE (D-RI): Well, I think there`s going to be a lot of transparency that is going to come out in time as Neal and Andrew said, when prosecutors go about this these cases, they speak through their filings.

And there are going to be a lot more filings and if Donald Trump continues to litigate this he`s also at risk in those proceedings of having to become a witness himself on civil matters that don`t relate to the actual criminal investigation.

So there`s going to be a lot of transparency but it`s going to happen in the proper order in which prosecutors proceed. And by the way, that`s for the benefit of the defendant. So that the prosecutors don`t get ahead of themselves, and don`t start, you know, smearing people.

So Donald Trump is actually the beneficiary of this. And if he had better lawyers, I think he wouldn`t be creating some of these predicaments for himself.

O`DONNELL: Now, no one follows the money better than Sheldon Whitehouse follows the money. You follow it into the darkest corners of politics where many of the rest of us can`t see it or understand it.

The story of the day in that regard, is $1.6 billion in one donation, moving into the Republican dark money world. The "New York Times" has unearthed the evidence of this. Whatever happened to the limits on campaign contributions?

WHITEHOUSE: Well, they got blown up by Citizens United. And weirdly, the court in Citizens United said that this was all going to be transparent, so we`d actually know who was going to be spending it.

And of course, we don`t know that. We are awash in dark money. Our TVs are filled with preposterous slimy advertisements from groups that nobody has ever heard of because they`re fake groups set up just to be the screen for the ad to hide whoever is really behind it. So we will see this $1.6 billion dollars go in to the dark money operation that the Republicans run. But when it comes out into TV ads and the campaigns and to campaigns of harassment. All of that is going to be anonymized, and you won`t know who any of it is.

And by the way, the guy who has this is a very clever rascal. He`s the guy who took $580 million and rebuilt the Supreme Court, captured it for the big special interests who gave them the $580 million.

So now we no longer have a Supreme Court we can trust thanks to this same problem of big money manipulated by the same individual.

So it`s like, you know, look wat he did with $600 million, wait until we get his hands on $1.6 billion.

O`DONNELL: Yes. So Barre Seid gave this money to Leonard Leo. Leonard Leo runs the Federalist Society. You have taught us well on what --

WHITEHOUSE: Used to, yes.

O`DONNELL: -- on what the Federalist Society has done to create a Supreme Court in the image that it wants and with the thinking that it wants, kind of uniformly.

And now is it your sense that Leonard Leo is ready to break out into the world of more general campaigning, instead of just campaigning for individual seats on the Supreme Court?

[22:34:52]

WHITEHOUSE: Yes, I`m pretty sure of that. If you look at what their candidates are doing, particularly the Senate candidates. Remember that all of Leonard Leo`s court capture work was done with Mitch McConnell, so he`s used to dealing with the Senate. He cares about the Senate. The Senate`s his target area.

And you look at what Mitch McConnell said about the quality of the Republican candidates. You know, you`ve Mehmet Oz, who is a crashing joke. You`ve got J.D. Vance who can`t get out of his own way. You have Herschel Walker who, I`m not even going to go there.

And they are petrified, looking around at candidates that just don`t measure up to the moment that have never done this before and they`re collapsing in plain view.

So how do you solve a collapsing candidate? You dump untold hundreds of millions of dollars into those states in anonymous dark money attack ads. And now he`s got the cleverness for that, he`s got the array of phony front groups for that. And he`s got the $1.6 billion to spend on that.

So yes, if you can`t predict that that`s going to come, you`re not a very good predictor.

O`DONNELL: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse -- a very good predictor, thank you very much for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it.

And coming up, another big win for district attorney Fani Willis. The judge ordered Georgia Governor Brian Kemp to testify to the district attorney`s investigation, while Lindsey Graham continues to fight a subpoena to Fani Willis`s grand jury. That is next.

[22:36:27]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O`DONNELL: Today Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis said this about her grand jury investigation of Donald Trump`s interference in the presidential election in Georgia.

FANI WILLIS, FULTON COUNTY, GEORGIA DISTRICT ATTORNEY: I think we are about 60 percent through of all of the people that we need to be brought up. I`m pleased with the pace that we are going. You know, there can`t be any predictions as you know.

Many people are unsuccessfully fighting our subpoenas. We will continue to fight to make sure that the grand jury and the public gets the truth. And I`m very hopeful that by the end of this year I`ll be able to send a grand jury on their way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: And today she won another subpoena fight. This one with Georgia`s Governor Brian Kemp who a judge ordered to testify before the grand jury. Senator Lindsey Graham continues to fight his subpoena to the grand jury.

In a court filing today, Fani Willis said this. "Even in a motion purportedly requesting partial quashing of the subpoena, Senator Graham insists that each and every possible topic of grand jury inquiry is forbidden."

Joining us now is Gwen Keyes-Fleming, former district attorney for Dekalb County, Georgia and co-author of the Brookings Institution report, " Fulton County Georgia`s Trump investigation".

Thank you very much for joining us tonight with your local experience there. It is incredibly helpful and knowing district attorney Fani Willis as you do and what she might do next.

On the Lindsey Graham subpoena, as we are seeing it, it`s taken a little bit longer than some of these local Georgia subpoenas for example, the governor`s subpoena to work it out through the federal court and state court.

What do you expect next in that?

GWEN KEYES-FLEMING, FORMER DISTRICT ATTORNEY, DEKALB COUNTY: Well, I think what we will have next is the district court judge will decide for a third time the extent to which Senator Graham will have to appear before the grand jury. And I say that because she ruled on the original motion to quash against Senator Graham. He asked for reconsideration. That also was denied.

He appealed to the 11th circuit who then sent it back to the same judge and son now the parties are briefing whether her first two orders were accurate.

And so we are waiting to see if this now will be a third denial and then ultimately seeing what the appellate courts do with that decision as well.

O`DONNELL: What do you make of the 11th circuit not getting involved yet?

KEYES-FLEMING: That was interesting. Many of us in the legal field kind of questioned, was this a signal to the district court judge to look more closely? Was it a signal to the parties to try to come to some agreement as to what might be safe bounds and I think the district attorney`s motion today is responding in kind to what Senator Graham offered in terms of he is still seeking full quash (INAUDIBLE), not identifying spaces that the law says would be outside of the bounds of the speech and debate clause. And so the DA responded in kind, that all of her requests is allowable under the law and under precedent.

And so the district court judge has a decision in front of her and we`ll see what happens with their next ruling.

O5; Is there anything -- I don`t see anything in Lindsey Graham`s filings that indicate that he agrees that there`s any circumstance in which a United States senator would ever have to testify to a grand jury, including as an actual specific suspect of a crime?

[22:44:52]

KEYES-FLEMING: I think that`s right. And again, I think the district attorney in her response motion made that point. That the request is so broad and in her view does not recognize the context, particularly some of the factual context that the senator, one, has spoken about this publicly, this call.

She already has testimony from Secretary Raffensperger about how he interpreted that call.

The call goes to questions of signatures in Georgia`s vote process, and the call happened on the same day that lawyers filed a lawsuit, alleging or challenging those same signatures, and also happened on a day where the former president tweeted about challenging those signatures.

So the DA is asking that all of this be taken into account, and again her grand jury charge is broad enough to look at all aspects of the investigation, not just the call of Senator Graham, and I think he would like to narrow the discussion.

(CROSSTALK)

O`DONNELL: Just to clarify for the audience. The call we`re talking about here is Lindsey Graham`s own call to the secretary of state, not the infamous Donald Trump call that we`ve all heard the recording of.

Gwen Keyes-Fleming, thank you very much you`re your invaluable guidance on this case, we really appreciate it.

KEYES-FLEMING: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

O`DONNELL: Thank you.

And coming up, with the January 6th Select Committee getting ready now for more public hearings in September, we now know a bit more of what their focus will be. That`s next.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL): It was all about just raising money, and people were abused that way.

REP. ZOE LOFGREN (D-CA): The big lie was also a big rip off.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[22:46:37]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O`DONNELL: The January 6th Committee is planning to hold more public hearings next month.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KINZINGER: I think, one of the more intriguing thing is going to be some of the financing, right? Some of the fundraising. The fact that, you know, a vast majority of this money was raised under, quote-unquote, "Stop the Steal", with no intention of doing anything to so-called stop the steal. It was all about just raising money, and people wear abused that way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: And joining us now is Ben Rhodes, the former deputy national security adviser for Barack Obama and an MSNBC political analyst. He is the author of "After the Fall: Being American in the World We Have Made".

Ben, thank you very much for joining us tonight. With all of this, this has become a search warrant month, which we thought was going to be, maybe the sort of quiet month before more January 6th Committee hearings.

But how do you see these two things coming together? As a story you would tell and as the story that the world is now watching about this country?

BEN RHODES, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think at the center of it you have in Donald Trump somebody who puts his own personal interest ahead of democracy or national security or any other public good. And that`s the common factor between these two stories.

Because at Mar-a-Lago, what you have is a president who, for some reason, presumably a reason that was entirely about his own personal providence, his personal interest, decided to endanger national security to take these hundreds of classified documents with him down to his residence in Florida in a deeply unsafe and irresponsible and illegal way.

And on January six you had a president who was seeking to subvert democracy for his personal interest and as Adam Kinzinger pointed out, along the way he`s been on a massive grift because he`s raising money off the very same disinformation that he`s spewing to his followers.

I think the common connecting thread between these things is that you have a leader of the Republican Party in Donald Trump who consistently is just about himself. And he`s willing to tear everything down along the way and whether that`s our democracy or that`s our national security.

O`DONNELL: One of the people who will not be at Lindsey Graham`s riot in the streets if Donald Trump gets indicted is Joshua Pruitt who was sentenced today to four and a half years in prison for his role on January 6th. He was one of the so-called Proud Boy organizers of this.

And then, as we see those people being sent away now for significant prison sentences, while Lindsey Graham is trying to rally whoever of them are still not in prison somewhere, to show up for his riot that he wants to lead, I guess.

This is a condition that we`ve never had to deal with before. A United States senator trying to rally people into rioting for Donald Trump if Donald Trump gets indicted.

RHODES: Yes. And Lawrence, be clear about this, the Proud Boys are terrorists. Their domestic extremists, the Canadians have actually labeled them a terrorist organization. They have all the characteristics of a terrorist organization. They stockpile weapons. They engage in acts of violence for a political purpose. And we know that they listen to leadership.

[22:54:52]

RHODES: This is not unsubtle. This is not subtle. Donald Trump in a debate said to the Proud Boys stand down and stand by, famously, and that`s exactly what they did. They stood down for a period of time, and then there they were on January 6th, engaging in acts of violence and seeking to overturn democracy.

It`s particularly disgusting and disgraceful coming from somebody like Lindsey Graham who -- Lawrence, you`ve been around the block like I have -- who has demagogued the issue of terrorism and extremism for a very long time.

I mean I don`t know how many times when we were in office in the Obama years we`re weak on terrorism, we don`t care about national security. He`s the tough guy because he wants to keep Guantanamo open or something.

This same guy is giving aid and comfort and appealing to domestic terrorists, domestic extremists. The stakes are that high. These are armed people that don`t believe in democracy, and who have been willing to act on that belief. And it`s incredibly reckless and irresponsible and dangerous for anyone to engage in that kind of rhetoric.

O`DONNELL: Ben Rhodes gets the LAST WORD on Lindsey Graham tonight. Ben Rhodes, thank you very much for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it.

RHODES: Thanks.

O`DONNELL: Thank you. We`ll be right back.

[22:56:00]

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O`DONNELL: Tonight`s LAST WORD is quizzling.

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