Summary
The January 6 investigators subpoena top Trump allies who publicly promoted false claims about 2020 election. Interview with Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), a member of the January 6 investigation. Interview with Minnesota Democratic U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar. A series called "A House Divided" will offer a range of thoughtful and educated guesses in response to the question, "Is a civil war ahead?"
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: And, Rachel, I`ll be watching the press conference in some version of recline. Probably at that hour, partial recline, and taking notes. That`s work, right, if you`re doing it at home, that comes at work?
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST, "TRMS": Did you just brag to me you`ll be in a recliner?
O`DONNELL: It`s going to be -- it will be -- by that time, it will be an actual sofa but --
MADDOW: Oh, wow. Even worse.
O`DONNELL: There won`t be a desk anywhere near me. Nothing that looks like a work environment, but I`ll be -- I`ll be working. I`ll be hanging on every word, I`ll be taking notes, I`ll be, you know?
MADDOW: Listen, it`s still COVID time. What is a work environment anymore, right? I haven`t worn public facing pants in two years now.
O`DONNELL: Yeah, and your pants prior to COVID were not --
(LAUGHTER)
O`DONNELL: You were not --
MADDOW: Touche.
O`DONNELL: You were not the "Vogue" idea of an anchorwoman. OK, "Vogue" was never coming by saying let`s do the Rachel work wardrobe.
MADDOW: I don`t know. I don`t know. I think you might under estimate how weird "Vogue" has gotten.
O`DONNELL: It`s their mistake if they don`t get around to that.
MADDOW: I think we should stop digging before we get into deeper into this hole, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: Yeah, we`re done. We`re done.
MADDOW: Bye. See you tomorrow.
O`DONNELL: Thank you, Rachel. Thank you.
MADDOW: Bye.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
Well, today an elderly man in New York City with no visible means of support who has publicly demonstrated strong symptoms of extreme cognitive decline was subpoenaed to tell what he knows about a conspiracy to overturn the results of the last presidential election. Rudolph Giuliani who was dropped from New York law firm in 2018 and is now and is now temporarily disbarred from practicing law in New York and Washington D.C. as he awaits the inevitable permanent disbarment in both places, received a subpoena from the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
Rudolph Giuliani has more than one reason to plead the Fifth Amendment to the committee and refusing to answer it`s questions. First, Rudolph Giuliani is currently the subject of a criminal investigation into New York City where the FBI raided his home last year to collect evidence, an event Giuliani described as, quote, completely illegal and unconstitutional, end quote, even though Giuliani himself had supervised such raids when he was the U.S. attorney in Manhattan in the 1980s.
That criminal investigation is about Rudolph Giuliani`s possible criminal activities in Ukraine on behalf of Donald Trump and himself. That is not something that the committee wants to ask Giuliani about, but the committee`s letter to Giuliani today covers several areas that could involve federal and state crimes.
The committee`s letter to Rudolph Giuliani says in part, quote, you publicly promoted claims the 2020 election was stolen and participated an attempt to disrupt or delay the certification of the election based on your allegations between mid November 2020 and January 6th, 2021, and thereafter, you actively promoted claims of election fraud on behalf of former President Trump and sought to convince state legislators to take steps to overturn the election results.
According to witness testimony and public reporting in December 2020, you urged President Trump to direct the seizure of voting machines around the country after being told that the Department of Homeland Security had no lawful authority to do so.
According to public reporting, on January 6th and in the days prior, you were in contact with then President Trump and members of Congress regarding strategies for delaying or overturning the results of the 2020 election.
Three other possible criminal co-conspirators received subpoenas from the committee today, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis and Boris Epshteyn. Attorney Sidney Powell has already been sanctioned and recommended for possible disbarment by Judge Linda Parker who ordered her to pay $175,000 in attorney`s fees to the state of Michigan for initiating a frivolous lawsuit about the presidential election in Michigan.
[22:05:11]
Sidney Powell raised millions of dollars by telling her fundraising victims the lie that she was working to reverse the outcome of the presidential election. Last fall, federal prosecutors subpoenaed the financial records of fundraising organizations that she created.
The committee`s letter to Powell says in part, quote, you urged President Trump to direct the seizure of voting machines around the country to find evidence that foreign adversaries hacked those machines and altered the results of the election.
Sidney Powell will no doubt seek the protection of the Fifth Amendment to refuse to answer questions about those possible crimes. In the committee`s letter to Attorney Jenna Ellis, the committee said in part, quote, you prepared and circulated two memos pro purporting to analyze the constitutional authority for the vice president to reject ordeal lay counting electoral votes from states that had submitted alternate slates of electors.
The committee`s letter to Boris Epstein who fired from the White House staff of Donald Trump in the first year of that administration says in part, quote, you participated in a press conference on November 19th, 2020 during which attorneys for the Trump campaign promoted claims of election fraud. Publish reports had placed you at meetings at the Willard Hotel in days leading up to January 6th and you are reported to have participated in a call with former President Trump on the morning of January 6th during which options were discussed to delay the certification of election results in light of Vice President Pence`s unwillingness to deny or delay certification.
Rudolph Giuliani and other witnesses subpoenaed today have to ask themselves how much do they want to spend in attorney`s fees starting today fighting the subpoenas? Rudy Giuliani has already complained about Donald Trump`s refusal to pay Giuliani`s legal bills.
The most expensive course of action for these witnesses is to try to go to court to fight the subpoenas that. The cheapest course of action is to show up at the date and time requested by the committee and plead the Fifth Amendment to virtually every question.
The subpoenas demand that each of the witnesses produce documents to the committee on February 1 and testify on February 8th.
Leading off our discussion tonight is Democratic Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren of California. She is chair of the House Administration Committee and a member of the select committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
Congresswoman Lofgren, thank you very much for joining us on this very important night for the January 6th Committee.
What -- do you have any indication at this point from any of these subpoenaed witnesses how they are going to respond?
REP. ZOE LOFGREN (D-CA): I do not, Lawrence. I would hope they would come forward and tell us everything they know if they`re proud of the activities they engaged in and should want to come in and tell the committee everything they did, the subpoenas that have been sent forward. We expect them to compile. Certainly the documents must be sent in. There is no Fifth Amendment privilege in the documents unless producing them themselves would be a crime and we hope they`ll come in and answer questions. We have a lot of questions.
O`DONNELL: There is obvious -- with Rudy Giuliani just to start with him, there is obviously a zone of Fifth Amendment protection that he would want in facing these questions. He`s already known to be the subject of a federal criminal investigation. He has already been temporarily disbarred for some of the conduct that you want to talk to him about.
And so I assume the committee in your discussions have anticipated the possibility that a witness like Mr. Giuliani might show up and take the Fifth Amendment for virtually every question after his name and address.
LOFGREN: Well, the state of law is if you think you would incriminate yourself criminally and want to be protected by the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, you have to come into the committee and assert that right question by question. The reason for that is then the committee has another decision to make, which is whether to seek use immunity from that claim.
If we decide that is wise and that decision has not yet been made, then you would be required to testify as to the matters and that testimony to the committee could not be used in your later prosecutions.
[22:10:05]
So that would be a subsequent decision that committee would have to sort through and case by case, question by question witness by witness.
O`DONNELL: The committee started on subpoenas that with Steve Bannon and since then, though, seems to have been working upward through the sort of pyramid of all of this.
Is this set of subpoenas what you would consider the top of the period just shy of the president and vice president?
LOFGREN: Not necessarily. You`re right. We have heard from hundreds of witnesses, you know, the news story is when someone high profile refuses to testify, meanwhile, hundreds of others are coming into the committee to answer our questions and we have received quite a bit of we`re piecing it together. These subpoenas that are to individuals who appear to be very involved in the plot to overturn the election. We want to ask them for questions about that but it`s not the end of the inquiry.
O`DONNELL: There is reporting tonight that the committee has subpoenaed the phone records of Eric Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle who is involved with Donald Trump Jr.
What can you tell us about that?
LOFGREN: Well, I think it`s important to note that there`s -- we haven`t sought the content of any records. The records that are being sought have to do with the location, the length of time, phone numbers that were called or where texts were sent, but not the actual content. But it will help answer some questions, fill in some holes from other testimony we`ve received, test whether the testimony we`ve received is reliable. So, it`s important.
O`DONNELL: So, in effect is a phone bill that you`re asking for, it`s what we see on phone bills.
LOFGREN: Right.
O`DONNELL: This call was placed at this time to this phone number or a text was sent at this time to this phone number. No content of the communication at all.
LOFGREN: That`s correct.
O`DONNELL: And from that you get to basically form questions, I assume, about the content. You see a communication going from this person to another person. What if you want to know that content? Is the only way to get it is to ask questions of the people involved in the content?
LOFGREN: Quite possibly.
But I will say as we`ve got over 50,000 documents that have been released to us and so if you can compare some of the documents to the records, you can put together a piece of information, may led to questions for other individuals or it may be putting together the pieces of testimony we`ve already received but I think it is important to note that at this point, it is just the data. It`s not the content.
O`DONNELL: Congresswoman Lofgren, the chair of your committee, Bennie Thompson, has said that the committee is going to go public. You`re going to have public hearings. It sounded like it could be in January. It could be this month.
What can you tell us about the public hearings schedule of the committee?
LOFGREN: I`m going to let the chairman make that announcement. But we are going to have hearings when we are ready with the full picture and probably will be a series of hearings, not just one. Some of what the timing relates to is how soon the court denies cert to the former president`s request unleashing we hope soon documents from the National Archives. We expect that will fill in a lot of questions and allow us to accelerate the speed.
But I`ll tell you, we`re working very hard. There are depositions that begin early, practically every morning, multiple depositions. The members of the committee participate in them every day. The committee meets at least once, sometimes twice a week, going through what we found in the next step.
So it very active piece of work. It`s one of the most intense endeavors I`ve been involved in my years in Congress.
O`DONNELL: Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, thank you very much for starting off our discussion tonight. Thank you.
LOFGREN: Thank you.
O`DONNELL: And thanks to the congresswoman for that perfect segue to Neal Katyal, law professor at Georgetown University and former acting U.S. solicitor general.
[22:15:08]
He is an MSNBC legal analyst.
And, Neal, with that setup, we have to go straight to you for the Supreme Court`s schedule on the question about Donald Trump`s documents.
NEAL KATYAL, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: Yeah, they can act at any time, Lawrence. Indeed, I think there is even documents that will be released tomorrow by the archives unless the Supreme Court acts. You know, I think all indications from court watchers are -- Supreme Court is not going to side with Trump on this. These are bogus executive privilege claims.
And so, you know, ordinarily, you might expect the court to hear it because it`s a grave matter but here, because the arguments advanced by team Trump were so bad, I think the thinking is they probably won`t even hear them.
O`DONNELL: Neal, what is your reading of these subpoenas that that the committee issued today?
KATYAL: Very, very important, Lawrence. You know, some legal teams win buckets of jury verdicts and others like Donald Trumps win buckets of subpoenas. And I`m glad to see the committee do this. It`s honoring truth- seeking function.
It`s a really rare thing to subpoena a lawyer. And honestly, I would be uncomfortable if these folks were acting truly as lawyers. But a law degree doesn`t shield your inquiry if you`re a co-conspirator or co-plotter or you have on going criminal activity.
And so, I think for these lawyers, you know, like Rudy Giuliani, this attorney client privilege they`re starting to advance now is a double edged sword because on the one hand, these four folks hope to keep their shield their actions from public scrutiny but on the other, they`re going to have to defend what they were doing as bona fide legal advice, and if you have any doubt about how hard that`s going to be, just Google the words Sidney Powell disbarment and you will see just how hard that claim is going to be.
O`DONNELL: Yeah, and so, Neal, this seems to be legitimate Fifth Amendment claims available to some possibly all of these witnesses especially Rudy Giuliani.
KATYAL: Sure. I mean, you know, there is potential criminal activities here. The letter that you read, Lawrence, that Congress wrote to him today I think, you know, starts to refer to that and so you`re going to have executive privilege being litigated and probably something about the fifth amendment, too.
And ordinarily, I would worry, Lawrence, because that amount of delay in getting this information allows these four, you know, attorneys to get their story straight, but I do think that gives them too much credit. These four couldn`t figure out how to have a press conference at the Four Seasons. So I`m not sure they could really get their story straight.
O`DONNELL: Yes. Neal Katyal, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
KATYAL: Thank you.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
And coming up, Kyrsten Sinema phoned it in but Joe Manchin showed up. And our next guest, Senator Amy Klobuchar was in the room when Senate Democrats discussed changing the Senate`s 60 vote rule today. That`s next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:22:18]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN): Does it really seem like the dreamers of our Constitution envision the system where a minority of senators can stand in the way of legislation and stop it altogether, stop the vote, stop the consideration, throw a wrench into a process, take it off the rails and just walk out the door and go home? That is not what they envisioned.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: That was some of what Senator Amy Klobuchar had to say in today`s debate in the Senate about voting rights legislation. The legislation has to clear a 60-vote threshold just allow the Senate to then actually vote on the legislation. That means ten Republicans would have to vote with the Democrats to allow a vote on voting rights legislation.
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer expects no Republican support to advance the bill to a vote. So, today, Leader Schumer said this today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): If the Senate cannot protect the right to vote, which is the cornerstone of our democracy, then the Senate rules must be reformed, must be reformed. If the Republicans block cloture on the legislation before us, I will put forward a proposal to change the rules, to allow for a talking filibuster on this legislation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: And here is what Senator Elizabeth Warren said an hour ago in the Senate floor about the current Senate rule.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): Today`s filibuster doesn`t encourage debate. It promotes cowardice. Senators can torpedo bills without saying a single word in public or even stepping to the floor of the United States Senate. This is not how a so-called deliberative body should operate.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Democratic senators gathered for a meeting today to try to convince two of the Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to support a rule change so the Senate would be allowed to have a vote. Senator Sinema did not attend the meeting but joined by phone.
Before the meeting began, Senator Manchin said this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
Original post:
Transcript: The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, 1/18/22 - MSNBC