Summary
Pressure builds on Congress to act on voting rights as Senator Joe Manchin says he will only support narrow bill and won`t end filibuster. Democratic Congressman Colin Allred of Texas is interviewed. Bill Bratton says the murder of George Floyd was 100 percent a murder. Trump Organization CFO has no comment in grand jury investigation. Top Trump Organization executive faces grand jury. G7 agrees to global minimum tax.
Transcript
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Rachel.
And we have something special tonight since, you know, the Joe Manchin story has become what it is. And, you know, 200 years from now when the Biden musical is written, there`s bound to be a song -- how do you solve a problem like Joe Manchin, right? That`s going to be in there.
But here`s what we have, three people talking about Joe Manchin, who actually knew Robert Byrd, and that`s important because Robert Byrd is Joe Manchin`s predecessor from West Virginia, Robert Byrd was the parliamentary master of the Senate and Joe Manchin`s reference for the rules of the Senate is inherited from Robert Byrd, and three people who will be discussing Robert Byrd`s view of the rules actually know more about that than maybe Joe Manchin does and how he changed rules in the Senate when he felt it was necessary and it wasn`t working. So, that`s how we`re going to begin tonight.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST, "TRMS": Yeah. Well, it`s one thing to see you revere the rules of the Senate and you want to follow in somebody like Robert Byrd and so therefore, you won`t change the filibuster when one of the things that Robert Byrd did was change the filibuster to lower the threshold for number of votes it took. So, I`m looking forward to that, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: And, by the way, Rachel, one of the people who knew Robert Byrd is host of this program. So, it`s going to be fun.
MADDOW: I will say.
O`DONNELL: Also, Rachel, Boston accent warning, Bill Bratton is here. Bill Bratton graduated from Boston Police Academy the same year I graduated from high school in Boston. So, he`s going to join us, you know what that`s going to happen. You know what that`s going to sound like.
MADDOW: If you don`t turn on the accent for real, people are going to be disappointed. You have -- you must, you must.
O`DONNELL: We are both from Dorchester, so that can`t be stopped tonight. Thank you, Rachel.
MADDOW: Thanks, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: In op-ed piece written in West Virginia for West Virginia, Senator Joe Manchin wrote in "The Charleston Gazette Mail" yesterday, quote: I have always said, if I said I can`t go home and explain it, I can`t vote for it. And I can`t explain strictly partisan election reform or blowing up the Senate rules to expedite one party`s agenda.
That has created a small amount, I mean, small amount, of Democratic Party public backlash against Joe Manchin, some of it is wildly exaggerated, along the lines of comparing Joe Manchin to Mitch McConnell.
The important thing about the Democratic criticism is not one word of it comes from a Democratic senator, not one word. And that is because the 49 other Democratic senators who disagree with Joe Manchin on this all know that they would be in the minority in the Senate without Joe Manchin. They all know that Joe Manchin voted for Chuck Schumer to be majority leader instead of Mitch McConnell, and Joe Manchin voted for Democrats to be chairs of the Senate committees.
Without Joe Manchin casting those votes, governing in America would be absolutely hopeless today, probably wouldn`t have attorney general or secretary of state because Mitch McConnell controlled Senate would not have confirmed any of Joe Biden`s cabinet choices. A Mitch McConnell controlled Sante might not have confirmed any of Joe Biden`s nominated federal judges for entire four years. That`s what Mitch McConnell Senate would be.
Not one of those 49 Democratic senators think they know better than Joe Manchin about what a Democrat has to do and say to win a Senate seat in West Virginia in the 21st century. So there`s a few reasons why you`re hearing not a word of criticism at all from Democratic senators about Joe Manchin. First of all, know they`d be in the minority without him. Second, they have not given up hope. They have not given up hope that something useful can be done on voting rights, including the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act that Joe Manchin supports.
It is not a surprise to the 49 Democratic senators that Joe Manchin has come out in opposition to the For the People Act, the much more wide- ranging bill on voting rights that includes campaign finance reform and other issues because Joe Manchin was the only Democratic senator who was not already a cosponsor of that bill.
In an editorial in "The New York Times" calls the For the People Act, quote, poorly matched to the moment. The legislation attempts to accomplish more than is currently feasible while failing to address some of the clearest threats to democracy, especially the prospect that state officials will seek to overturn the will of voters.
So, now, Joe Manchin will try to get ten Republicans to support the John Lewis voting rights bill which restores portions of the voting rights act struck down by the Supreme Court. So far only one Republican, Lisa Murkowski, supporting that bill.
Yesterday, Senator Manchin was asked an excellent strategic question about his insistence that Senate Democrats should not change the rule about the 60-vote threshold.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: First of all, you have made it clear, I`m not going to ask you again, said you oppose scrapping the filibuster. The question I have is, whether or not, and you say you hope that will bring the parties together, the question I have is whether or not you`re doing it exactly the wrong way. And hear me out on this.
If you were to keep the idea that maybe you would vote to kill the filibuster, wouldn`t that give Republicans incentive to actually negotiate because old Joe Manchin is out there, who knows what he`s going to do. By taking it off the table, haven`t you empowered Republicans to be obstructionist?
SEN. JOE MANCHIN (D-WV): I don`t think so, because we have seven brave Republicans who continue to vote for what they know is right and facts as they see them, not worrying about political consequences.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Well, seven isn`t ten. So, even if Joe Manchin gets all seven of them to support the John Lewis voting rights bill, he will not have the 60 votes necessary to pass that bill. Senator Manchin occupies the Senate seat that was held by Robert Byrd for 51 years, the longest serving senator in history.
Senator Manchin often mentions his devotion to Robert Byrd`s legacy as the Senate`s leading parliamentary expert. Robert Byrd was master of Senate rules but he was not religiously devoted to them. Robert Byrd did not believe that Senate rules were unchangeable.
Our first guest, Ari Shapiro, served on Robert Byrd`s Senate staff and in "New York Times" op-ed, Ari Shapiro writes that Senator Byrd might be inspiration to senators like Mr. Manchin as they consider the filibuster, but that inspiration should push against devotion to an outdated, often abused and damaging rule. The filibuster should not shape the workings of the Senate but other way around.
For Mr. Byrd and other senators of his era, the overriding goal was ensure not that certain rules were respected above all else but that the Senate could deliver for the nation even if it meant reforming rules like the filibuster.
And leading off our discussion tonight are, Ira Shapiro, former counsel for Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, a seat that`s currently occupied by Joe Manchin. Also with us, Norm Ornstein, congressional historian and scholar at American Enterprise Institute.
And, Ira Shapiro, let me begin with you, you were on the staff of Senator Byrd and Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia. So, you are tonight our expert on West Virginia politics even of an earlier time.
And I raise that because pretty much everything I hear Joe Manchin say publicly, virtually every word of it, I assume is being directed to West Virginia voters. Because he says things within a paragraph don`t make sense. Things that I think he knows aren`t completely accurate representations of the current situation, but does it sound to you like Joe Manchin believes anyway that he is serving the West Virginia politics he has to serve in order to hold on to his Senate seat?
AMB. IRA SHAPIRO, FORMER COUNSEL TO SEN. BYRD: Lawrence, good to be with you.
Look, Joe Manchin voted twice to remove the president on both impeachments, and Joe Manchin spent a great deal of time making sure we had a second coronavirus package. He worked on it for months.
So his politics are difficult but not impossible. He knows the state and the state will stand by him I think.
I raise the point that Senator Byrd evolved on the filibuster. He conducted one of the most shameful filibusters of all time against the `64 Civil Rights Act. But later he changed his attitude.
The nightmare for Byrd was the idea of a paralyzed Senate that couldn`t do the work of the country. So consequently, he voted to lower the threshold for cloture from 2/3 to 60 in 1965, and later, he moved against the post cloture filibuster. And it`s that paralyzed Senate that Byrd would not have stood for. I believe he would have attacked the problem years ago -- the partisan Senate of Mitch McConnell, the obstructionist Senate of Mitch McConnell.
O`DONNELL: Ira, if Joe Manchin could get Robert Byrd on the phone tonight, what is do you think Senator Byrd would advise him about this situation?
SHAPIRO: Lawrence, well, with three experts who all knew Senator Byrd at one time or another, but I think Senator Byrd would say you have to work for something that`s bipartisan, work for something that can get broad support, that you believe is the right legislation. But ultimately, voting rights and election integrity are so fundamentally important that you have to, I believe, support the president and get this done. If it means changing the filibuster rule, I would favor doing that.
O`DONNELL: Norm Ornstein, you knew Senator Byrd rather well. And what is your sense of how Joe Manchin now lines up with Senator Byrd or what he might miss in Senator Byrd`s legacy?
NORM ORNSTEIN, CONGRESSIONAL HISTORIAN: I think he misses very much what Robert Byrd was all about. He thinks that Byrd was a dead set against any change in Senate rules and dead set in keeping the filibuster as it was. I knew him pretty well and talked to him about these issues many, many times, and my sense of this is, to follow on what Ira said, he cared deeply about the integrity of the Senate and norms of the Senate. There were times I talked to him, he would be just furious about for example a Democrat, conservative one, James Allen of Alabama, who was using every tactic he could, violating norms, to accomplish his ends, and Byrd was frustrated at that.
I think that Robert Byrd would look at McConnell and say he`s not a guardian of the Senate. He`s not an institutionalist. What he`s done is to denigrate the Senate because it can`t act.
And as Ira said, as majority leader, he saw the Senate as deliberating but ultimately had to act and act on policies. And I think that if Robert Byrd were here today, he would say all right, we don`t need to eliminate the filibuster but we can alter it to give the opportunity for the Senate to act. We need to flip the numbers or change the numbers so that the minority has the burden to bear, and that ultimately the Senate can act.
If it took the tactic called the nuclear option to do it, I think he would say if that`s the only way to keep obstruction from taking place, let`s go ahead and do it.
O`DONNELL: Norm, I saw it tweet a story about Senator Byrd and Mitch McConnell today. That I think is meaningful tonight. Tell the audience that story.
ORNSTEIN: So you know, when Byrd was almost literally on his deathbed, the Senate was considering the Affordable Care Act. And McConnell insisted that all 60 Democrats had to be there to overcome the filibuster to move it along.
He didn`t say as protector of senators would do, look we`re not going to rustle him out of the hospital bed to come here, we`ll find a Republican who will vote that way just so that we can, you know, let happen what would have happened otherwise. And instead, Byrd was forced to come in, in a wheelchair, in a very feeble state, and every senator got up and applauded, standing ovation, which was hypocrisy to the max, and what Robert Byrd did was say, shouting as best he could, shame, shame, and he was aiming that at Mitch McConnell.
He knew what Mitch McConnell was doing and that was a violation of what he believed was the integrity and norms and decency of the Senate. He wouldn`t be standing for this, I`m 100 percent convinced.
O`DONNELL: And I can tell you that in the 1990s, that Senator Byrd and Senator McConnell had a perfectly cordial relationship at all times when Senator McConnell was one of what was considered reasonable Republican in the Senate.
And, Ira, there`s a very important story I think in Senator Byrd`s view of reconciliation rules, because of his notions of reconciliation was not you were not supposed to introduce new legislation, new programs in reconciliation. That`s one of the little noticed pieces he tried to protect. To the point in first chairman`s meeting in 1993 during the Clinton presidency, Chairman Byrd, then of the appropriations committee, announced to all in the room that he personally would not allow the Clinton health care bill to be done in reconciliation. He would not do it.
So we instantly gave up. Like there was no -- George Mitchell, majority leader, didn`t think oh, well, let me try to talk him into it, everybody instantly gave up on reconciliation on that.
Then you cut to Obamacare getting through the United States Senate and Robert Byrd goes along with the idea you can split it and pass some through reconciliation, some of it over the 60-vote threshold, that`s something Robert Byrd never would have done in the early 1990s. In that very specific possibly complex version of this, I was fascinated to watch his evolution on that kind of use of reconciliation itself.
SHAPIRO: Well, look, you lived through it, Lawrence, you saw it more closely than I did. But it`s also true that the Senate got 60 votes for the Affordable Care Act and only used reconciliation when it came back because they had to do it and they did it the way you said.
But, look, one of my arguments here is more practical one. I believe that a 50 or 51-vote Senate empowers the bipartisan dealmakers on both sides. Their votes are decisive and they`re the legislators and they come forward. A 60-vote Senate empowers the obstructionists.
You`re handing the keys to the castle to Mitch McConnell, Mitch McConnell has told us he`s going to oppose Biden agenda the same way he opposed the Obama agenda and I take him at his word on that. But I don`t think he should be allowed to do it. That`s basically my other concern.
And look, anyone who has legislated -- you`ve done a lot of it, Finance and Environment -- legislating is bone-crushingly difficult. But the key to it is people coming forward and engaging in good faith to try to work on the problem. You got to be good faith political players.
And we don`t have that in Mitch McConnell. We may have that in some group of Republicans, seven or eight or nine. That remains to be seen. And this legislation isn`t done yet. So we may see this process play out.
But what I would argue is it`s hard enough to pass important legislation with the president, the House and the Senate with 50 or 51 votes, 60-vote supermajority is an unacceptable burden, we shouldn`t live with it.
O`DONNELL: We`re going to have to break there. Ira Shapiro and Norm Ornstein, friends of Robert Byrd, friends of the United States Senate, friends of democracy -- thank you very much for joining us. Really appreciate it.
ORNSTEIN: Thanks, Lawrence.
SHAPIRO: Thank you.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
And coming up, Colin Allred is a voting rights attorney who has worked with attorney Marc Elias, who is -- Marc Elias is currently challenging all these voter suppression laws in the country. Colin has been there, too. He`s now a Democratic congressman from Texas and he will join us next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VDIEO CLIP)
SEN. RAPHAEL WARNOCK (D-GA): We need the John Lewis Voting Rights Act because it has the powerful tool called preclearance which will protect future elections. We got to find a way to protect the assault on democracy that`s happening right now. And John Lewis alone will not do it. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act is an important tool, but it will not do a thing to push back against what Georgia just did with SB-202.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Colin Allred of Texas. He`s a former voting rights attorney.
Thank you very much for joining us on this subject once again tonight.
So, it looks like the best you`re going to be able to get out of the Senate is a version of the John Lewis bill, if that because it seems like they`re not going to get to 60 votes on that either, but let`s just concentrate on that bill for the moment. What does that bill do and what does it not do that the For the People Act does do?
REP. COLIN ALLRED (D-TX): Yeah, well, first of all, your previous segment was fascinating, Lawrence.
But, you know, HR-4 is a great bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. And I want to stress that because when we`re talking about the For the People Act and HR-1 that we`ve already passed in House, and that looks like its passage is going to be difficult in the Senate, we need -- HR-4 is still really important, because it restores the Voting Rights Act and improves it from what was done to it in 2013 when the Supreme Court struck down the coverage formula.
And so, they said the coverage formula was based on the past practices and did not apply to current things that were happening and for that reason, it was unconstitutional. And they struck down that coverage formula. And so states like my state, Texas, no longer were under preclearance regime, or they had voting changes cleared by Department of Justice.
HR-4 would re-establish that coverage formula but have a national coverage formula that could apply to any states that had voting rights violations in last 25 years, they met a certain threshold, they would then be in preclearance.
And add some other great things too, like practice based preclearance, meaning that certain to elections would have to be precleared no matter where they occurred and would also require a reasonable notice to voters ahead of time of voting changes. These are all great things.
What it wouldn`t do is deal with laws already passed. So, like what happened in Georgia, or if the Texas bill passes before they pass HR-4, it is about preclearance and laws that are being made and passed in real time. It doesn`t apply to past bills that have already become law.
O`DONNELL: Let`s go to this issue that "The New York Times" has raised, which is inadequacy in both bills, that is neither do anything about how votes are counted and what the states are going to do after the polls close because Georgia has rewritten that, Texas is trying to rewrite that, and rewrite it in a way that makes it look like it might be possible for certain states to actaully overturn the will of voters and declare the loser the winner.
ALLRED: Yeah, this is probably the most dangerous thing that we`ve seen, Lawrence. In this entire spate of laws passing, there are so many terrible things, like in Texas trying to get rid of Sunday morning voting, trying to stop Souls to the Polls, specifically trying to stop black voters from going to vote Sunday morning.
But this idea we might have partisan legislature overturning will of the people and deciding who really won the election just based on who they wanted to win it is so dangerous. And it`s true that HR-4 doesn`t have anything to address that, the John Lewis Voting Rights bill, specifically. And that even HR-1, the For the People Act, doesn`t have anything to address that specifically.
It can still be challenged. I want to stress that, Lawrence. I could still see that challenged in court. And so, it`s possible that maybe under Section Two of Voting Rights Act claim, we could get those provisions thrown out.
But this is -- the moment any that legislature in this country overturns an election is the moment that our democracy may be irreparably damaged.
O`DONNELL: Is anyone now -- I mean, one reason why there`s nothing in either bill about this is we hadn`t seen it, it didn`t exist as a concept. We first saw it in Georgia when they wrote that in middle of the night and suddenly, you know, there it is in law. And so the bills we`re talking about had already been written.
Is there any attempt now in Congress to try to catch up with this and figure out legislative approach to it from the federal level?
ALLRED: Yeah, there is. And I`ve already had conversations around this. And, you know, we`ll see if legislation comes out of it.
I certainly think we have to address it. But you`re right, Lawrence, I mean, we never thought that we might legislatures think that they can overturn elections. And, you know, this is all part of the idea still dealing with from January 6th. President Trump may think he can be reinstated or senators reinstated and election will be thrown out. This is all incredibly dangerous to American democracy.
What we`re talking about here is a coup. That`s what happens when you overturn elections when someone is democratically elected and has taken office and you remove them from office.
And, of course, there was attempt at insurrection on January 6th, I was there. I was on the House floor. I saw the insurrectionists.
So, what we need basically in legislation at the federal level is three things. Make sure that we allow Americans to register to vote. Make sure they can vote early by mail and on Election Day without interference and make sure the votes are counted and protected and not diluted, Lawrence, through gerrymandering, which I know you care about a lot as well.
O`DONNELL: Congressman Colin Allred, thank you very much for joining us again tonight. Your expertise on this subject is invaluable. Really appreciate it.
ALLRED: Thank you, Lawrence, and thank you for covering this. This is most important thing happening I think right now.
O`DONNELL: It is. Thank you very much, Congressman.
Up next, no one in the history of American law enforcement has the experience in police work that Bill Bratton does, from patrol officer, all the way up through the ranks to commissioner of three of the biggest police departments in America -- Boston, New York and Los Angeles. Bill Bratton joins us next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O`DONNELL: Bill Bratton and I grew up in the city with the oldest police department in America. We both grew up in the Dorchester section of Boston, which was home to many members of the Boston Police Department in those days, including my father who was a Boston Police patrolman. And so it came as nothing less than a shock to me to read in Bill Bratton`s new book about policing called The Profession. This fact of his childhood, "I didn`t know any cops. No one in my family was a cop."
I didn`t know anyone who didn`t know any cops. But Bill Bratton is the only cop I know whose ambition to wear the badge began with a book, a 1956 picture book called Your Police, which was a child`s history of the New York Police Department, the biggest police department in America, the Department that little Billy Bratton would grow up to run twice, two different tours of duty for two different New York City Mayors. The first New York City Mayor who Bill Bratton served is now someone he does not recognize named Rudolph Giuliani.
When Bill Bratton returned from military service in Vietnam, he joined the Boston Police Department in 1970. He rose to the top of that Department and served as Boston`s Police Commissioner before serving as the NYPD Commissioner, and then the Chief of Police in Los Angeles. No one in the history of American law enforcement has run three of our biggest police departments.
No one in the history of American law enforcement. has the experience in police work that Bill Bratton does from Patrol Officer all the way up through the ranks to Commissioner of three departments. Bill Bratton had a right to think that he had seen it all, but then he saw the video of Derek Chauvin`s knee on George Floyd`s neck.
In The Profession Bill Bratton writes, "George Floyd`s murder, and it was 100 percent a murder, was one of the worst things I have ever seen done to a person by a police officer. At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, when most of the nation was shut indoors, fearful alone, in need of human contact, and reexamining the actual functioning of society, it seemed to encapsulate all that was wrong with the way America was being ruled, and the people who were ruling it.
It showed a bad cop doing a terrible thing." The terrible death of George Floyd brought the awareness of systemic racism to the surface. A month earlier, you would have been hard pressed to find more than one Senator or network anchor or elected official willing to say it out loud, let alone go on camera and admit to its existence.
And joining us now is Bill Bratton, his new book is The Profession, A Memoir of Community, Race, And The Arc Of Policing In America. Commissioner, thank you very much for joining us tonight. I want to go to that passage in your book about George Floyd and ask what did it feel like, what was your gut when you`re watching that nine-minute video for the first time?
BILL BRATTON, FMR NYPD COMMISSIONER: I was incredulous, dismayed, like most of America, I couldn`t believe what I was watching. But there it was. And it went on and on and on. And the image of that officer`s face as he looked at all those people that were yelling at him, pleading with him, I don`t think any of us will ever get over that, that facial expression that never changed. And it just said, why are you bothering me, leave me alone. Again, I`ll never forget it.
O`DONNELL: You make a point in your book repeatedly that I made in a book back when you were still patrolling the streets of Boston, I wrote a book called Deadly Force.
BRATTON: Deadly Force.
O`DONNELL: You know?
BRATTON: I know it very well.
O`DONNELL: And I quoted a Chicago patrolman at the time, this is 1980 when he told me this, and he said this. This is Howard Saffold, a Chicago patrolman said to me, "Cops can do things in a minute or a second that will sour a community for a generation." And you and I in the country have been seeing that happen repeatedly, and this, the George Floyd case, is the latest and biggest version of that, is the way it sours a community and sours police relations with a community, not just for that year, not just for the year that people are marching, but for the next 20 years of the life experience of the people who see that.
BRATTON: What he soured, the relationship, was not just a community, Minneapolis, but in a nation. And, indeed, when you look at the demonstrations around the world, around the world, incredible, but I have a mantra that I talk about in the book that I first used in LA in 2003, cops count, police matter. I tell my cops that the individual action of a cop counts, the action of a Department matters.
In the case of George Floyd, his actions really did count in such a negative way, and it just painted with such a broad brush a negative image of police profession around the world. Incredible the actions of one man, and it was not in a moment or a minute. It was eight, almost nine minutes that that action occurred.
O`DONNELL: I want to get your reaction to a federal court judge`s ruling in California because you served as the LA Police Chief and you served in a state that had an assault weapons ban, it still does. This federal judge just overturned it, San Diego Federal Judge in his first sentence of his opinion is this, like the Swiss Army Knife the popular AR-15 rifle is a perfect combination of home defense weapon and Homeland Defense equipment. That`s from Judge Robert Benitez. What is your reaction to that?
BRATTON: He`s an idiot. The idea of using language like that, comparing a Swiss Army knife to what is basically a machine gun that many people possess in this country, hundreds of thousands of these weapons, compared to a Swiss Army knife, he`s out of his mind.
O`DONNELL: I want to take a look at your graduation photo from the Police Academy in 1970, which we had up on the screen for a moment. Because, you know it looks a lot like my father`s graduation photo from 20 years earlier from the Academy, and both of those pictures my father`s and yours, it`s basically all white. It is a very different Police Department than what those Academy graduation photos look like now. What are the most important changes you have seen since you graduated from the Academy in police work and in the composition of who is doing our police work now?
BRATTON: That class, there were about 158 of us, one of the largest classes in the history of the Department, there were three minorities in the class. In a Department of 2800 Officers, there were 55 blacks, I think, who were all actually for a while assigned to one unit called the soul patrol, if you can imagine. The book is all about the idea of the reforms that have occurred, I use the expression from (inaudible) always be selling.
Policing is like the medical profession, it`s always going to be reforming, always going to be changing. And I write about the reforms of the last 50 years and we`ve come so far where we were, where we are, and where we need to be. And we don`t get enough credit for those reforms.
In fact, I can describe what happened after Floyd as the edges sketch (ph) moment, where all the reforms that we had accomplished, including minority, majority police departments in Los Angeles, New York, Washington is almost there, in the space of 50 years, we changed more than America changed in many respects that we led the way in terms of acceptance of gays, eventually, women (inaudible) business in the 70s, and we don`t get any credit for that. We don`t get credit for the tremendous reduction in use of force by police organizations over those 50 years.
In New York City, cops were shooting at people 900 times a year in the seventies, in response to 12 of them being killed every year. And last year, there were about 26 gun battle incidents in the City of New York, 35,000 cops, city of 8 million people, 25 or 26 incidents. In the United States, there are almost 700,000 cops in the country. On an average year, they fire their weapons 3000 times, 3000 times in 10 million arrested situations in 70 million encounters. They don`t get credit for the good that has occurred. In New York City, we reduced significantly the numbers of arrests, reduced the jail population that`s resulted in a reduction in the state prison population.
So, what I tried to do in the book is present a balanced perspective that we need so much more reform, but we have reformed much more than we were given credit for.
O`DONNELL: Bill Bratton we`re out of time. As you know, I could go on and on. And we`re going to have to do this another time. Bill Bratton, I really appreciate it. The book is The Profession, A Memoir of Community, Race, And The Arc Of Policing In America, and it comes complete with a baby photo of Bill Bratton, which I`m going to try to sneak it, there it is, there it is. That`s the very first photo--
BRATTON: Cute little kid.
O`DONNELL: Yes. That was a surprise in a serious book about policing in America. There`s the baby photo. Thank you very much for joining us tonight, Commissioner. I really appreciate it.
BRATTON: All the best.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
Coming up, Allen Weisselberg speaks. We actually heard his voice today as New York prosecutors close in on the Trump businesses, Allen Weisselberg was asked by an NBC reporter today if he is feeling pressure from Donald Trump. That`s next in tonight`s episode of Defendant Trump with the expert legal guidance of Andrew Weissmann.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O`DONNELL: Donald Trump`s longtime accountant who now has the title of Chief Financial Officer, Allen Weisselberg proved today not everyone around Donald Trump is incapable of following good legal advice. When asked today by NBC News about the Manhattan criminal grand jury investigation that is closing in on his activities, Allen Weisselberg said exactly what his criminal defense attorneys have told him to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Do you feel pressure from Mr Trump?
ALLEN WEISSELBERG, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, THE TRUMP ORGANIZATION: I have no comment. Sir, I have no comment. I am going to pick up my grandchild from the school right now. I have no comment.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Thank you sir.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: The New York Times reports that the Manhattan District Attorney`s Office issued a grand jury subpoena to another Trump company executive, Jeffrey McConney, who would have knowledge of the financial workings of the company The New York Times reports the decision to subpoena Mr. McConney, who has worked at the company for nearly 35 years suggests that the examination of Mr. Weisselberg`s conduct has reached a new phase with the grand jury hearing evidence about him. Donald Trump`s former so called fixer Michael Cohen told Chris Hayes earlier tonight about what pressure from prosecutors must feel like for his old friend Allen Weisselberg.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICHAEL COHEN, FORMER PERSONAL ATTORNEY TO DONALD TRUMP: They come with so much pressure, they come with so much force that no matter who you are, it makes no difference. You can oppose it. And that`s exactly the pressure that they`re going to put on Weisselberg. So when people say, oh, Allen`s not going to flip, Allen`s not - this isn`t about flipping, folks, this is about telling the truth.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Joining our discussion now, Andrew Weissmann, who served as FBI General Counsel and Chief of the Criminal Division in the Eastern District of New York. He`s an MSNBC legal analyst.
And Andrew, I was watching Allen Weisselberg today in that video saying no comment, as instructed, by his criminal defense attorneys, presumably. You literally got to see the man under pressure. And in this instance, the pressure is actually being applied by the news media in that situation, but it`s representative of the kind of pressure that surrounds a person like this in a high profile, high pressure case like this.
ANDREW WEISSMANN, FBI FORMER GENERAL COUNSEL & MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: Well, the fact that it`s such a high profile matter is something that really can hurt the prosecution. Because when you`re trying to get the cooperation and gain the truthful testimony of somebody, they have a long way to fall because they have to admit not only to themselves and their family, but they`re going to have to admit to a large public audience, what they did.
So, the fact that this is playing out on that kind of stage, as we saw the special counsel investigation, we saw when I was working on the Enron investigation, it makes it actually that much harder for a prosecutor to get someone to actually fess up and own up to what they did in that kind of glare of media attention.
O`DONNELL: It`s interesting for me at this stage of my professional observation of the Trump businesses from this standpoint, to be discovering a new name, a new name, in and around the money of the company, as we did with this subpoena to Mr. McConney, what does that tell you about where the prosecutors are going?
WEISSMANN: So, I think it`s great that you`re covering this because I think this is not getting enough attention. Everyone is talking about, rightly about Allen Weisselberg, the Chief Financial Officer, and whether he will flip. But now you have the government putting in the grand jury the Controller. The Controller, like the Chief Financial Officer, is aware of the accounting and the finances of an organization, in this case, The Trump Organization and putting him in the grand jury suggests that he is cooperating because otherwise he is afforded immunity just by going into the grand jury.
So this to me is a really large step, and it may be that what the Manhattan District Attorney`s Office is bound is a different insider. While we`re all looking at Allen Weisselberg, they actually found somebody else who knows where the bodies are buried. So, I think this is a huge step. It is critically important to have an insider and this may be the person, and we may - this is a name to remember.
O`DONNELL: Andrew Weissmann, thank you very much for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it.
WEISSMANN: You`re welcome.
O`DONNELL: Tonight`s Last Word is next, and it`s actually two words, historic achievement.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O`DONNELL: Time for tonight`s Last Word.
Donald Trump`s Treasury Secretary failed completely, and I mean, completely, and he then walked away from negotiations with the G7 countries about establishing a minimum corporate tax rate so that countries could not undercut each other on corporate taxes to lure businesses away from the United States. After 131 days in office, Joe Biden`s Treasury Secretary got that job done.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JANET YELLEN, TREASURY SECRETARY: This negotiation has been going on for, I believe, eight years. It stalled under the Trump administration. And so I really consider this an historic achievement.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Historic achievement indeed. On Saturday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and the finance ministers of the G7 announced they had reached an agreement that will require multinational corporations to pay a minimum corporate tax rate of 15 percent.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
YELLEN: There has been a global race to the bottom in corporate taxes, where countries compete by lowering their tax rates instead of the well- being of their citizens and natural environments. The G7 has taken significant steps this weekend to end the existing harmful dynamic, making commitments today that provide tremendous momentum towards achieving a robust global minimum tax at a rate of at least 15 percent.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: The Biden administration now projects that this new international tax structure could bring in $500 billion to the US Treasury. Janet Yellen gets tonight`s LAST WORD. "THE 11TH HOUR" with Brian Williams starts now.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
BRIAN WILLIAMS, MSNBC HOST: Well, good evening once again.
Day 139 of the Biden administration, the opening of a week in which both the President and Vice President are making their global debut with their first respective foreign trips--