Summary
Interview Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington, chair of the House Progressive Caucus. Former President Trump`s lawyer Rudy Giuliani lost his license to practice law in the state of New York, a ruling that was made by a panel of judges in the appellate division of New York state court.
Transcript
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: And thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Very, very, very happy to have you here. Got a big show for you tonight.
We`re going to start, though, with my favorite movie. The original version, the black and white version of "The Manchurian Candidates "came out in 1962. And this is not exactly a spoiler, but the real villain in the story is Angela Lansbury.
Like I said, it`s not a spoiler. You figured it out soon when you`re watching it. But Angela Lansbury is the kind of a hidden from the public villain. She`s the power behind the throne. She`s the wife of an increasingly high-profile U.S. senator, but you soon learn that he`s just like a puppet. He`s a dolt, and she`s really the one pulling all the strings.
So here`s a clip. You can see Angela Lansbury here. You see her quiet, sort of evil satisfaction, while she is knowingly watching her husband, the senator, as he winds up and does his thing. And it`s such a brilliant scene.
I mean, it`s brilliant just in terms of the writing and in terms of what`s happening in the plot, but it`s so brilliant in terms of the way it`s shot because even though she`s in the room with him while he is causing this scene, she`s physically in the same space as him, you can see the way it`s shot, that she`s not actually looking at him in person. She`s paying attention to the screen, which you can also see in her field of vision.
On the screen, she can see what he looks like on camera, on live television, as he pulls off this stunt in a congressional hearing room with the secretary of defense. It is such a great scene. And yes, the guy you will sort of recognize halfway into it, is, in fact, Frank Sinatra, and he`s amazing in this movie. This has been my favorite movie since I was a teenager for a reason. Just watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Secretary, I have a question, sir.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who are you, sir?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am United States Senator John Yerkes Iselin. And I have a question so serious that the safety of our nation may well depend on your answer.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No evasions, Mr. Secretary. No evasions, if you please, sir.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What the hell are you talking about? What kind of foolishness is this?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Secretary, I`m new at this job, but I don`t think it`s good public relations to talk that way to a U.S. senator, even if he is an idiot.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I`m a United States Senator John Yerkes Iselin, and I have here a list of the names of 207 persons who are known by the secretary of defense as being members of the communist party.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who are still, nevertheless, working at shaping the policy of the Defense Department.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Senator who?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I demand an answer, Mr. Secretary. There will be no covering up.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There will be no covering up, sir.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No covering up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: See Angela Lansbury there in the foreground. She has no speaking role in the scene, right? But she`s watching how it`s playing on the scene, how it`s playing on the screen, right? She`s on paper, right, like in terms of the facial action of what`s happening in that scene, she`s totally just an observer, but you can see her sort of coolly nodding along with how well this is playing as the room erupts into chaos, as he makes this incredible allegation.
The target of his allegation has no idea what he`s talking about, maybe can`t hear him, doesn`t recognize him. Such a great scene.
And that in "The Manchurian Candidate" is how Angela Lansbury`s character gets her senator husband, Johnny Iselin, that`s how she starts him on this assent to becoming nationally famous and ultimately on track for the presidency. And the plot takes many, many, many turns from there. It`s just a fantastic movie, one of the greats.
And that character, not Angela Lansbury`s character of the scheming wife who is secretly controlling everything, but the senator, the loud senator with the amazing voice who has the list of communists known to the defense secretary but nevertheless still working at the Defense Department, whatever else was going on in that movie, that role, the senator, which is not Frank Sinatra. I don`t know why we`re showing Frank Sinatra here.
That role of Johnny Iselin, that senator, was very much based in reality. During the decade before "Manchurian Candidate" came out, it was real life Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin who really did stuff like that. That`s Joe McCarthy there at the microphone, the man sitting next to him in the previous still was a man named Roy Cohn.
On February 9th, Roy Cohn on the right, Joe McCarthy at the microphone, February 9th, 1950, Senator Joe McCarthy gave a speech to a local Republican Women`s Club in West Virginia. In which he really did wave around a piece of paper and say he had a list of communists on it. Local newspaper quoted him saying at that West Virginia meeting in 1950, quote, I have here in my hand a list of 205 State Department employees that were made known to the secretary of state as being members of the Communist Party, and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department.
He pulled that stunt. It was a hit. It really caused a sensation. He then kept doing it in all of his subsequent appearances, except Senator McCarthy could never keep total track of the supposed number of communists he had on his sheet of paper. Sometimes he would say it was 205 communists at the State Department. Sometimes he would say it was 81. Sometimes it was 57.
People didn`t really care about the specifics, it turned out, although it sounded good that he had a specific number, even if the specific number changed all the time. McCarthy rode that thing as long as he could, for about four years, it turned out. Destroying countless live said in the process, as McCarthy made wild accusations that played great in the press and got him lots of attention, without him ever really proving, for example, that there were any supposed communists at the State Department, let alone ones he had ferreted out or who had been knowingly employed as communists to affect State Department policy.
Senator Joe McCarthy got very famous. As I said, he rode this thing for about four years until finally the weight of it all collapsed on him. He tried the same trick he had been playing on the State Department and other agencies. He tried it on the actual U.S. Army, in 1954. Also around that time that a senator who had sort of been ensnared in McCarthy`s web committed suicide, a sitting U.S. senator committed suicide.
In any case, by the end of 1954, his fellow senators and lots of people around the country had decided they had enough. And Joe McCarthy was censured by the U.S. Senate, which is a very rare thing. He was censured, 67-22, for his ethical failures as a U.S. senator, for bringing the Senate into disrepute. The censure vote against him was held in December of 1954.
Two and a half years later, in May of 1957, Joe McCarthy was dead. Dead at the ripe old age of 47.
The legacy of Joe McCarthy is dark. And he died young. He was already gone by the time we were grappling with it sort of culturally in films like this one in the early 1960s. Films like "The Manchurian Candidate" in the early 1960s.
In Joe McCarthy`s absence, though, once he was gone from the scene, the one person from his crusades who remained infamous for them for decades was his top aide, the Joe McCarthy lawyer and staffer who was always at his side, who was considered to be sort of his grand inquisitor for his communist hunting stunts on Capitol Hill. It was that young lawyer I pointed out a few minutes ago named Roy Cohn.
As an even younger lawyer, Roy Cohn had played a role in the prosecution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg who were executed as spies. Cohn would later admit to having ex-parte communications with the judge in the case, during the trail when he was serving as part of the prosecution, which is a serious violation of trial ethics, but that admission, of course, came too late to save the Rosenbergs.
But after riding the McCarthyism wave with Joe McCarthy in the early 1950s, after Senator McCarthy himself was disgraced and censured and he died young, Roy Cohn went on to a very high profile life as sort of bottom of the barrel lawyer. He went on to become, for example, a trusted lawyer to the Italian mafia in New York. He became the lawyer for the Trump Organization, the Trump family business, in part because of his close personal relationship with Donald Trump, who was initially working for his father but who would go on to run the business himself after his father`s death.
When the U.S. Justice Department in the 1970s sued the Trump Organization for systemic and severe discrimination against African-American tenants, Trump credited Roy Cohn with coming up of the Trump Organization countersuing the U.S. Justice Department for $100 million. That will show them.
Around that time in his career, Roy Cohn found himself criminally indicted three separate times in the 1960s and the early 1970s, including for allegations that he paid a federal prosecutor a $50,000 bribe. Roy Cohn was criminally indicted three times, never convicted.
But then, 35 years ago today, on this date, June 24th, in 1986, Roy Cohn made front page news on a kind that even he must not even have liked.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A New York court has disbarred Roy Cohn for inexcusable professional conduct. The 59-year-old attorney is known for representing many rich and powerful clients. He rose to prominence in the 1950s when he was an aide to Senator Joseph McCarthy. The court ruled on four charges again Cohen and called his conduct unethical, unprofessional, and reprehensible.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: That was 35 years ago. Roy Cohn, among other things, Donald Trump`s lawyer, was disbarred in the state of New York 35 years ago today. On this date, 35 years ago, Roy Cohn gave the "New York post" a statement in response.
He said, quote, I feel about as concerned about this as if Hellman`s had called me to say that they had come out with a new brand of mayonnaise. I couldn`t care less. It doesn`t bother me in the least.
Among other things, the reason that Roy Cohn got disbarred is the court found he had taken for himself over $200,000 that was supposed to be held in escrow for victims of a fraud scheme. They found that he had, quote, borrowed $100,000 from another client, for nearly 20 years. At least he tried to say he borrowed and it had intended to pay it back.
The court also found in the words of "The Washington Post" summarized this part of the report I thought quite succinctly. The court found that Cohn had entered the Florida hospital room of a dying multimillionaire Lewis Rosenstiel, the founder of the Schenley Distillers empire. Cohen entered his hospital room while Rosenstiel age 84 was senile, semi-comatose and drugged. Cohen held Rosenstiel`s hand to sign a document naming Roy Cohn as a co-executor of Rosenstiel`s will, after falsely telling Rosenstiel that the document dealt with his divorce.
The guy was nearly comatose, senile, and drugged. Cohn showed up at his hospital room in the middle of the night and held his hand to try to forge his signature for him to sign over his estate to Roy Cohn. Nice guy, right?
The court held 27 days of hearings on Roy Cohn`s case, deciding whether or not he would be permanently disbarred. One of the people who appeared as a character witness on Mr. Cohn`s behalf was a man he had worked with and had a long relationship with at that point, Donald Trump. Trump appeared in person as a character witness for Roy Cohn before he was disbarred. Roy Cohn was still disbarred.
And Cohn said, of course, he didn`t care. He cared less about that than he would about a new brand of mayonnaise. But he was disbarred at the end of June in 1986. He was dead by the beginning of August that year at the age of 59.
Roy Cohn had been closeted his whole life, it`s believed he died of AIDS. He maintained to the end it couldn`t be AIDS. That`s something only homosexuals got. He said he had liver cancer instead, but that`s not likely what he died from.
Thirty-five years ago today, Donald Trump`s lawyer Roy Cohn was disbarred for dishonestly, fraud, deceit, and misrepresentation.
One of the weird sidebars of the Trump presidency and in fact the Russia investigation was that we learned a lot about how much Donald Trump as president used to wax rhapsodic about how much he missed Roy Cohn and how much he wished his current lawyers were more like Roy Cohn.
This, for example, was from the long sought congressional testimony of Trump`s White House counsel, Don McGahn, which happened finally in Congress just a couple of weeks ago.
Quote, did the president raise the issue of why you took notes during meetings? Answer, yes, yes, he did. He asked about, why do I take notes. What was your reaction to that? His side of the story is, what are these notes? Lawyers don`t take notes. Never had a lawyer take notes.
I said, look, I take notes because, you know, I`m a real lawyer. Real lawyers take notes. It`s way to keep track of things. He invoked, you know, Roy Cohn, apparently didn`t take notes.
Question, it was your understanding that he thought great lawyers like Roy Cohn did not take notes? Answer, he said that, yes. Not only did I think that, I heard him say that. Yes.
And this was not the first time that Roy Cohn has sort of the ghost of Roy had come into the Oval Office. So it didn`t seem to be a point worth responding to. And, you know, he`s the president. He gets the last word.
Question, what was your reaction to being compared to Roy Cohn? Answer, my reaction, well, this wasn`t the first time. You know, I really didn`t want to be compared with Roy Cohn.
Why not? I didn`t want to be compared to Roy Cohn in any way, shape, or form. I understand he was, you know, a brilliant lawyer in certain ways but he had some ethical trouble later in his career.
And by ethical trouble, do you mean he was ultimately disbarred for unethical conduct? Answer, yes, yes. You know, I may have mentioned at some point in some of these exchanges, I don`t recall specifically, but Roy Cohn was not really my role model. So saying, I was no Roy Cohn in a weird way, I thought that`s good. He doesn`t think I`m that sort of lawyer.
Question, the president was suggesting you should be more like Roy Cohn, who was a great lawyer, correct? Answer, well, you know, I think he had already made his point that he really had a fondness for Roy Cohn.
On this date 35 years ago, Roy Cohn was disbarred. Another one of President Trump`s personal lawyers, Michael Cohen, would, of course, go on after that to also be disbarred, in this case, a consequence of Mr. Cohen being convicted of multiple felonies, including a felony campaign finance hush money scheme that federal prosecutors say he was directed to commit by former President Trump, who they called individual one in that case.
So, President Trump`s personal lawyer in the Trump organization lawyer, Roy Cohn, disbarred. President Trump`s personal lawyer and Trump Organization lawyer Michael Cohen disbarred. Today, on the 35-year anniversary of Roy Cohn`s disbarment today, we have yet another personal attorney for Donald Trump being suspended -- suspended by the state of New York from the practice of law, pending a proceeding which will decide if he`s permanently disbarred.
Rudy Giuliani`s law license was suspended today by unanimous panel of judges in the appellate division of New York state court. They said, quote, we conclude there is uncontroverted evidence that respondent, meaning Giuliani, communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawyers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald Trump and the Trump campaign in connection with Trump`s failed effort at reelection in 2020.
These false statements were made to improperly bolster respondent`s narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen from his client. We conclude that respondent`s conduct immediately threatens the public interest, and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law pending further proceedings.
Now, the pending further proceedings part there is important. Mr. Giuliani`s license to practice law is suspended. He`s not permanently disbarred, at least not at this point. He may yet have hearings before the court at which he can contest this decision and seek to have his law license reinstated.
But the court today went out of their way in this unanimous opinion to say they don`t think he`s going to prevail, even after there are hearings. They said, quote, we find that there is evidence of continuing misconduct. The underlying offense is incredibly serious, and the uncontroverted misconduct in itself will likely result in substantial permanent sanctions at the conclusion of these disciplinary proceedings. Substantial permanent sanctions, meaning this is an interim suspension, but ultimately when we get to the end of this, he`s likely to be disbarred.
I think what`s almost hard to wrap your head around, though, just in terms of history here, is the consistency over time. How much what Rudy Giuliani is today found to have done, what he lost his law license for today, how much of it is what Roy Cohn got famous for doing in the 1950s with Joe McCarthy, right?
I mean, go back to the movie. Go back to "Manchurian Candidate". There`s the Joe McCarthy stand-in in the movie. There`s Johnny Iselin in the movie. He`s actually kind of literally quoting Joe McCarthy from real life.
But you know, he`s talking about these supposed exact number of communists that he has ferreted out and he knows the truth about, and he`s demanding answers for, even if he couldn`t keep the numbers straight, since he had made them up. Still, it sounds good when you cite specific numbers. It sounds better when you can remember what the number was.
But still, it lands with a good effect. In Rudy Giuliani`s loss of his law license today, it`s actually the exact same thing. The court today found that he, for example, made up wildly different, inconsistent, and all fake numbers of supposedly dead people who supposedly voted in Philadelphia.
Quote, respondent repeatedly stated that dead people voted in Philadelphia in order to discredit the results of the vote in that city. He quantified the amount of dead people who voted at various times as 8,021. While also reporting the number as 30,000.
Mr. Giuliani, according to the court, also made up wildly divergent, totally different, very specific numbers of allegedly underage illegal voters in the state of Georgia. Quote, at various times, the respondent claims that 65,000 or 66,000 or 165,000 underage voters illegally voted in the Georgia 2020 election.
The Georgia office of the secretary of state undertook an investigation of this claim. It compared the list of all the people who voted in Georgia to their full birthdays. The audit revealed there were zero, zero underage voters in the 2020 election. While a small number of voters, four, had requested a ballot prior to turning 18, all four of them had turned 18 by the time the election was held in November 2020.
Mr. Giuliani also apparently made up specific but wildly divergent and all fake numbers of supposedly dead voters in Georgia. Quote, respondent stated that dead people voted in Georgia during the 2020 presidential election. He claimed that he had the names of 800 dead people who voted based upon the number of people who had passed away in 2020.
Respondent further stated that this number wasn`t 800. It was really in the thousands. At another point, he claimed that 6,000 people, 6,000 specifically, 6,000 dead people had voted.
On December 20 -- excuse me, December 22nd, 2020, during a war room podcast with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, respondent Giuliani stated that 6,000 dead people voted. Not a month later, on January 3rd, 2021, during an episode of something called uncovering the truth, respondent stated that the number of dead people who voted was 10,515.
Two days later, on January 5th, during another war room podcast with Steve Bannon, respondent stated that 800 dead people voted in the Georgia election. Imagine you`re Steve Bannon. In late December, it`s 6,000 dead people.
And then like a week or so later, on somebody else`s podcast, it`s 10,515 people. Whoa. And then he comes back to you two days after that and is like, it`s 800 people. I have in my hand a list of 207 known communists at the State Department -- 42 known communists. How many? How many am I supposed to say?
Four known communists. Rudy Giuliani, Rudy Giuliani at one point was the number three official in the United States Department of Justice. Rudy Giuliani was, of course, the mayor of New York City. He, of course, was U.S. attorney in the southern district of New York. He was the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan. He is now under federal criminal investigation by that office that he used to lead, and as of today, he`s no longer currently licensed to practice law in the state of New York.
This happens to everybody who gets into Trump`s orbit. You notice that? Former President Trump put out a statement in response to Giuliani`s law license suspension today, demanding his followers take back America. Take back America.
Mr. Trump is due to hold some sort of political rally in Lorraine County, Ohio, this weekend. We don`t know if he`s going to put some meat on the bones as to exactly what he wants his supporters to do to take back America.
Meanwhile, yesterday, we had the Republicans in the Michigan state Senate debunk all of the "Stop the Steal" conspiracy theories about how the election was stolen from Trump in Michigan. Meanwhile, just tonight, a judge in Georgia appears to have blocked efforts by Trump supporters to arrange some sort of Arizona-style recount in Georgia.
So, Michigan debunked. Georgia, not going to happen. Meanwhile, the pro- Trump conservative media outlet that is effectively the official broadcast sponsor of Arizona`s so-called audit, that sort of inquisition they`re running into the Arizona election results, the thing the president has hinged his hopes of being reinstated as president, that network has now aired a statement saying, after the results of that audit are known and the truth is revealed about how Trump had the election stolen from him, tens of thousands of Americans who participated in stealing that election from Donald Trump, they should all be lined up and executed as traitors -- mass executions, they`re now calling for, at One America News.
So on earth two, in which Donald Trump was a good president and all lawyers ought to be more like Roy Cohn, and Donald Trump ought to now stay leader of the Republican Party, and he didn`t even lose re-election, it was stolen from him, on earth two, today was a really bad day. And things are also, I think, not coincidentally, getting really, really radical, really, really fast.
On Earth One, where Joe Biden is president, because he beat Donald Trump in the last election, and Democrats control the House and the Senate, narrowly, and they want to get legislation done, on Earth One, Joe Biden`s president. Apparently, we got a multi-trillion dollar infrastructure deal coming. I mean, this is a landmark day for the distance our two worlds have diverged since the Trump era and the Republican Party.
I think, though, it`s also worth considering it is likely to be a radicalizing day in Trump world. Heads up, everybody. Heads up. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal joins us next. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MADDOW: Your eyes did not deceive you today. That really was the president of the United States, a Democratic president of the United States, standing in front of the White House, kind of like on the driveway, I guess, with five Democratic senators and five Republican senators. All of them smiling- ish. At least they`re all there. And they were there to announce that they were in agreement on something. All of them.
Now, that said, despite all the very, very excited beltway headlines today about the president and senators of both parties getting this major breakthrough bipartisan deal done on infrastructure today, there is nothing actually done about it. As they say, nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to. And this is one step on what promises to still be a long and windy road ahead.
I mean, for starters, let`s just do the kind of math that we can do on our hands without taking off our shoes. There were five Republican senators at that announcement today. You will recall that the magic number of Republican senators that Democrats need to join them to defeat a filibuster of any bill is not five. It`s ten.
Are there another five Republican senators who weren`t there today who will vote for this infrastructure bill? Maybe. But even if there are another five of them, even if there are ten Republicans, that math still only works if all 50 Democratic senators vote for it. And there are plenty of Democratic senators who have made it clear they think this scaled down compromise mini infrastructure bill is totally inadequate and not something they`re interested in working on.
So that`s one thing. The easy math question here. But to my eye, the really notable thing today, and I do actually think it`s an encouraging sign. The notable thing today that I saw is that there`s a remarkable group of people who do all now seem to be on the same side in terms of how this moves forward. I`m not talking about those five Republican senators who were standing there with Joe Biden.
I`m talking about all the Democrats. It`s no secret that Democrats are divided on the utility and wisdom of this bipartisan bill that`s been worked out with this small number of Republicans. But today, they do appear unified on the path forward, which is maybe even more important.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi started off the day saying that if the Senate passes this smallish bipartisan bill, she will only move it through the House if Senate Democrats also pass their own separate infrastructure bill, with lots more infrastructure spending on Democratic priorities, including addressing climate change. Democrats can pass such a bill on their own through the same budget trick they used for the COVID relief bill, even if no Republicans vote with them.
Pelosi said she`s happy to move on this little bipartisan thing they put together, but not until the Democrats pass the big bill by reconciliation. This afternoon, President Biden said he`s onboard with that plan, telling reporters he won`t sign the little bipartisan bill unless it is delivered to his desk along with the additional larger likely to be Democrats only package that is likely to only be able to be passed by reconciliation. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer says he`s onboard with that path, too.
Also apparently onboard with that path is conservative Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, who has reveled in being the one who says no to all Democratic plans. He`s been the one insisting on doing this bipartisan bill. He tell said NBC News` Frank Thorpe tonight that doing both bills today is inevitable, which means he`s on board with doing, yes, this infrastructure bill with Republicans that he worked on so hard. But also the larger potentially Democrat only bill for all the other stuff that Democrats want to do through reconciliation.
So Joe Manchin, so President Biden is on board, Nancy Pelosi is on board, Chuck Schumer is on board, conservative senator Joe Manchin is on board, and even the chair of the House Progressive Caucus, Pramila Jayapal, who is about as far on the other side of the Democratic Party as you can get from Joe Manchin, Congresswoman Jayapal, put out a careful and I think important statement today, appearing to support this plan to only pass both bills together.
Obviously, progressives are much more interested in what can be done in the big bill, the reconciliation bill, the one they don`t need Republican votes for. But this bipartisan thing, you want to do that, you can do that. We`re going to do the big reconciliation bill, too. They have to go together. That`s the strategy.
And yes, it`s congressional process. That`s not anybody running through the tape at the end of this race. It`s how they move forward. But to have all elements of the Democratic side, the progressives and the conservatives and the White House and the leadership in both Houses of Congress all pulling in the same direction, all on the same terms, in terms of how they`re going to get this done and what they have agreed to in terms of moving forward, I think that`s a bigger deal than having five Republican senators standing on the White House driveway today.
Joining us now is Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of the great state of Washington. She`s chair of the House Progressive Caucus.
Congresswoman Jayapal, thank you so much for your time tonight. I really appreciate your being here.
REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL (D-WA): It`s so great to see you, Rachel.
MADDOW: So I don`t spend a lot of time talking about the arcane twists and turns of congressional procedure. But in this case, I feel like this emerging plan that there is this little bipartisan thing that senators have worked on amongst themselves which may or way not pass with some number of Republicans and this larger bill that Democrats may have to do on their own through reconciliation, those two things moving together in tandem does to me at least seem like a plan everyone is onboard with. Is that fair?
JAYAPAL: It`s a really big deal. And you`re absolutely right to call it out. And let me just call out why we got to where we are, and just take a little credit for the progressive movement`s work in organizing.
For weeks, we have been saying directly to the speaker, to the Senate majority leader, to the White House, we will not move a smaller infrastructure bill, bipartisan, whatever, unless we have simultaneously a big reconciliation bill that has all of our priorities, particularly the five progressive priorities that the Progressive Caucus has identified, that is robust child care, Medicare expansion, bold climate action, it`s immigration for essential workers, and it`s housing. Those were the five priorities we had identified a month and a half ago.
And so, we have been very clear about our message, and in fact, last week, Rachel, one of the things we did just to really emphasize the point, let`s say, in the nicest way possible, is we polled our numbers, our 95 members in the Progressive Caucus and said, well, what do you think? Will you support just a regular old infrastructure package if it`s bipartisan and small, or will you say, we are not going to vote for any such package unless there has been a reconciliation package that has been passed that includes these priorities?
And we got overwhelming support, which I was then able to share with the speaker, with the Senate majority leader, with others. Of course, in the Senate, progressives were doing the same thing.
So, I think this is a real victory for the progressive movement at large, and for the country at large, of course, because this is about delivering for real people. And to have the president of the United States, the speaker of the House, the Senate majority leader saying what progressives have been saying for three weeks has been frankly an organizing campaign. And one that we feel very good about, and we now feel like there`s a lot of steps to go forward, but we feel like this is a new day, it`s a new place, because we are now focused on what that hopefully $6 trillion or more package can be for reconciliation that has all of our priorities.
MADDOW: It`s such a key point in terms of getting here. I think it is worth stepping back from this as you just described, to see that the kind of strategy that everybody is now agreeing to in terms of how this is going to move forward really is what progressives were demanding from sort of outside the box as recently as three weeks ago, and it now has become what everybody has agreed to in terms of how this is moving forward.
I sort of had a feeling that it might be going this direction last night. We had Senator Elizabeth Warren here live, and she articulated the same strategy that now everybody has agreed to today, that you and your colleagues were pushing for these last few weeks, which is, yeah, a bipartisan bill that they worked out with some Republican senators. It`s okay. But we`re not going to do that in place of the larger reconciliation bill. They have to go together. And now that seems where we are.
I do have to ask you, though, are there trip wires you`re worried about? Is there potentially Lucy and the football moment? Is there a thing that you think everybody has agreed to that could fall apart in the end? Particularly as Democrats are trying to get this done with some Republican votes?
JAYAPAL: Well, I think there`s two things. One is what is the bipartisan infrastructure package? I mean, we`re not going to agree to something that we really don`t like. And so we still have to see the contours of that deal.
You know, I don`t know what private/public partnerships mean. I don`t know how much of the pay-fors are money that we have already allocated in COVID relief for things we still feel like need to be funded, that is now being taken and put over into this.
So we do have to look at those details. And you know, I think that`s going to be important. It`s not like we`re seeing, okay, great, you came to a decision. We have to evaluate it.
But at the same time, I think the big focus for us, Rachel, is on this package. If we do a $6 trillion package, I just want to say, that is significant, and it is actually also kind of a drop in the bucket as far as GDP, right? It`s $6 trillion. If you take out $3 trillion that could be paid for by making the tax system fair, making the wealthiest pay their fair share, then you`re really only talking about $3 trillion, which is 1.3 percent of GDP.
What do we get for that? We get health care, we get education for people, we get bold action on climate, we get real housing assistance. We make a difference for people`s everyday lives.
And that is what progressives are about. That`s what we have been saying as Democrats we have to do is deliver for the people. And that is really exciting. This once in a generation investment that the president has been talking about, and that we have been pushing, that`s going to be work to get there.
But we have already identified our priorities. And if we can unite around them as we did to get to this point, I feel like there is real hope in this world. What did you call it, world one? At least in this world, I feel like there is real hope for us to get something real done that is significant.
MADDOW: Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which is at this point is wielding itself like a crowbar to pry open windows and doors that had previously been shut -- thank you so much for your time, Congresswoman. It`s always great to have you here. It`s great to have your insight.
JAYAPAL: Thank you, Rachel.
MADDOW: All right. The point that the congresswoman is making there in terms of the way the sort of window shifted over time in terms of what was going to happen here on infrastructure, the progressives do deserve a lot of credit. What they were calling for is now what everybody in all parts of the Democratic Party is agreed to. They ought to get more credit for that stuff.
We`ll be right back. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MADDOW: Today, when former President Trump`s lawyer Rudy Giuliani lost his license to practice law in the state of New York, that ruling was made by a panel of judges in the appellate division of New York state court.
The entity that asked the judges to act in the court is something called the Attorney Grievance Committee. They reviewed the evidence, referred their findings to the court for their decision today.
Daniel J Alonso has joined us before to bring us his experience as the number two official -- the former number two official in the New York prosecutor`s office in Manhattan, also as a former federal prosecutor, but Mr. Alonso has also served on that Attorney Grievance Committee, which today brought this devastating ruling against the former president`s attorney.
Joining us now is former federal and New York state prosecutor Dan Alonso.
Dan, thank you so much for being with us. It`s really good to see you.
DAN ALONSO, FORMER NEW YORK STATE PROSECUTOR: Thanks for having me, Rachel. You, too.
MADDOW: What is the Attorney Grievance Committee?
ALONSO: It`s a committee of lawyers that are picked by the judges of the appellate division. The judge of the appellate division is the intermediate appellate court. It`s sort of the second highest set of courts in New York state, and they`re in charge of attorney registration and attorney discipline.
And so, they supervise these committees which are mainly made up of lawyers but also have laypeople on them, and the committees decide, you know, lower levels of discipline, whether to dismiss cases and also whether to authorize the filing of charges in cases.
MADDOW: Now, in this case, reading this ruling, they seemed -- the judges seemed to indicate it`s a serious and rare act to agree to an interim suspension of a law license, to suspend somebody`s ability to practice law, even before the process is done. In this case, Giuliani has not personally appeared at a hearing as far as I understand it, in terms of this case.
Is that a fair way to understand it?
ALONSO: Yeah. It is a pretty rare step. It`s generally done for in cases of attorneys suffering from mental illness who, unfortunately, pose a threat to the public interest, or attorneys who basically can`t be trusted with client funds. They have stolen and the committee needs to step in, the court needs to step in to stop that.
So it`s relatively rare for it to be anything else. I have never heard of it happening in a case of false statements under these various rules, but the court ruled but the record they made is pretty strong. It`s a very serious set of charges. And they made pretty clear that they believe that there`s an ongoing threat to the public interest. Because frankly, during the pendency of this exact motion when his lawyers were litigating it, he was making statements on his radio program and elsewhere that were similar to the very statements that he is now being suspended for.
So they basically got fed up. They didn`t trust him not to continue to do this.
MADDOW: Because some of the false statements that they pinned on him today were false statements, false representations he made to the court, sort of as a non-lawyer, to me, as just an observer, it raised the question of why he wasn`t facing sanction. Why instead of this kind of a license action, why he hasn`t faced sanction in any of the courts he made misrepresentations to?
ALONSO: Well, usually, sanctions come with a motion from an opposing lawyer. And I mean, not to get too into the details, but the main sanctions rule in federal court requires you to give the lawyer a chance to fix what they did, in 21 days or else then you can file the motion. And so in this case, it was dismissed pretty quickly, and it was something that happened in front of the court anyway. The court could have probably sanctioned him there, but typically, they wait for a motion, and that doesn`t happen in cases of short duration.
MADDOW: Former federal prosecutor, former New York state prosecutor, Dan Alonso -- Mr. Alonso, I want to apologize. I think I misstated your middle initial. You`re Daniel R. Alonso. I made up a J. as your middle initial, didn`t I?
ALONSO: Hopefully, my mom is not watching. No problem.
MADDOW: Take full responsibility. I have no idea why I did that. I`m very sorry. Daniel R. Alonso, thank you very much for joining us, Dan.
ALONSO: Thank you, Rachel.
MADDOW: Take care.
We`ll be right back.
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MADDOW: The raid came at dawn, 500 police officers entered this office last week. This office belongs to a newspaper called "Apple Daily". Police rifled through notebooks and their computers. They disconnected all the computer monitors. And then they already arrested five of the newspaper`s executives. They just frog marched them right out the front doors of the paper`s offices.
"Apple Daily" is a independent, pro-democracy newspaper in Hong Kong, the only one still operating in the city of Hong Kong following escalating crack down on independent journalism by the pro-Chinese government.
"Apple Daily" says that after that raid last week, authorities froze the newspaper`s assets. Police arrested another "Apple Daily" employee yesterday. They arrested a columnist.
So, "Apple Daily" announced yesterday they shut themselves down, the last remaining pro-democracy publication in Hong Kong, with no assets, no way to pay people to fund their operations, with their employees being thrown in jail now, how are they supposed to keep going?
They announced they were shutting down the paper right away effective last night at midnight. And then look what happened. This is outside the "Apple Daily" offices late last night, on the final day of publication, more than a hundred people bravely gathering holding outside in the rain to show their support to those journalists inside, for doing the work of their free and fair press. They held their cellphones, flashlights in the air. They waved at the journalists inside.
The staff of "Apple Daily" waved back through the office windows. Others went up to the balcony and shined their lights on their cellphone too. It was ultimately from that vantage point, this vantage point that a photographer was able to snap the cover photo of the front page of "Apple Daily`s" final print edition. The headline there reads, "Hong Kongers bid a painful farewell in the rain, we support Apple Daily".
This is a line in Hong Kong this morning to buy a copy of the last edition of "Apple Daily" people got in line before the sun came up. On a normal day, "Apple Daily" prints about 80,000 copies of their newspaper. For their final issue, they printed a million copies and by 8:00 this morning, they were sold out, a million copies.
Today, President Biden issued a statement condemning the crack down on the free press in Hong Kong. He said, quote, independent media play an invaluable role in resilient and prosperous societies. Journalists are truth tellers who held leaders accountable and keep information flowing freely. That`s needed now more than ever in Hong Kong and in places around the world where democracy is under threat.
Beijing must stop targeting the independent press and release the journalists and media executives that have been detained. The act of journalism is not a crime.
Right now, it`s just before 10:00 a.m. in Hong Kong. It`s the first morning in Hong Kong without a free independent pro-democracy newspaper sitting on the newsstands.
We`ll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MADDOW: The news is busy right now. Heads up that tomorrow, former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin is going to be sentenced. Chauvin was convicted in April on three charges of murder and manslaughter for kneeling on George Floyd`s neck for more than nine minutes. The judge tomorrow is expected to consider sentence for Chauvin as high as 30 years in prison. Chauvin`s attorney, on the other hand, is asking of a sentence for probation with no jail time at all. So, we`re going to be watching that. It will be interesting and consequential.
In response to whatever the sentence is, tomorrow night, we`re going to have as our exclusive guest, the man who is -- was in charge of the prosecution of Chauvin, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is going to be here with us live exclusive tomorrow night. I`ll see you right here then.
Now it`s time for "THE LAST WORD WITH LAWRENCE O`DONNELL."
Good evening, Lawrence.