Morning Joe - Morning Joe 12/13/22

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

Mark Meadows exchanged texts with members of Congress about plans to overturn 2020 election: Report

A beautiful shot of Washington, D.C. this morning, six o'clock on the East Coast. Conspiracy theories, a plea for martial law and other plots to overturn the election. We are learning a lot more this morning about what dozens of Republican lawmakers were reportedly texting to Donald Trump's chief of staff in the days and weeks leading up to the January 6th insurrection. Meanwhile, the special counsel investigating former President Donald Trump at the Justice Department wants documents from election officials in Georgia and a handful of other states. Plus, Marjorie Taylor Greene downplays her latest comments about the insurrection as Republicans mostly stay silent about that. And on Capitol Hill, senators are trying to buy themselves some time to avoid a government shutdown. We'll have more on their stop gap plan. Also ahead this morning, Dr. Anthony Fauci joins us as he wraps up five decades of public service. A lot to talk with him about this morning. A lot of questions for him.

Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Tuesday, December 13th. Joe is off along with Willie and me. We have former White House communications director under President Obama, Jen Palmieri. She's co-host of Showtime's The Circus, the host of way too early White House bureau chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire. And MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle joins us this morning. And Willie, we start this morning with the Mark Meadows text messages. Boy, he was receiving a lot of them from members of Congress, the president's chief of staff. Yeah, shocking stuff here. Perhaps not surprising, but it remains shocking. Nearly two years after the January 6th insurrection, thousands of previously unseen text messages are revealing the lengths to which Republican lawmakers went in their efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Talking Points memo has obtained two thousand three hundred nineteen texts that were turned over to the House January 6th committee

earlier this year by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. They show Meadows in conversation with at least 34 Republican members of Congress, with many of those lawmakers sharing debunked conspiracy theories about a stolen election in order to help then President Donald Trump stay in office. In one text sent to Meadows just three days before Joe Biden's inauguration, South Carolina Congressman Ralph Norman writes, quote, Our last hope is invoking martial law. Please urge president to do so. It's unclear if Meadows responded to that message. He did, however, respond to a plan to overturn the election floated by Arizona Republican Andy Biggs. After Biggs raised debunked claims that a substantial number of illegal immigrants had cast ballots, Meadows responded, quote, I like it.

The text also show extensive efforts by Pennsylvania Congressman Scott Perry to have environmental lawyer Jeffrey Clark installed as attorney general in the final days of the Trump administration. You remember Clark was dismissed by the people at the Justice Department. If we have an oil spill, we'll let you know if we need you. After responding once to that, the text exchange shows Meadows ignored multiple messages from Perry included in those texts, a popular right wing conspiracy theory about an Italian defense contractor stealing the election for Democrats. These texts have not been verified by NBC News, may be missing some context. NBC has reached out to those involved in the messages for responses. Joining us now, investigative reporter for Talking Points Memo, Hunter Walker.

He's one of the reporters who reviewed those texts to Mark Meadows. Hunter, it's great to have you here with us this morning. So we just a couple of snapshots there from a couple of the members of Congress who are still there, by the way, and will hold real power in about a month or so. Can you just sort of give us a broad view of what these texts show beyond those snapshots? Is that representative of what most of these members of Congress were saying to Mark Meadows? Well, our story on the Meadows text is going to be a series that we roll out over the course of this week and perhaps beyond because there's just so much in there. And the main takeaway, and we were focused on members of Congress yesterday, but

Meadows was engaging with people in local government, with right wing activists, members of Congress, senators, House members. This was a broad plot at every level of government and really every level of the Republican Party. We see dark money groups. We see sort of street level activists like Amy Cramer. And they were all, you know, working together on various plans to overturn the election. The other big thing that I would point out here, and I think it's one of the most frightening thing about this message, this message, Cash, is this is the tip of the iceberg. There are hints in the messages that this log that Meadows provided to the select committee is incomplete, particularly in his exchanges with Scott Perry. He talks about moving over to Signal, an encrypted messaging app. There are also, you know, discussions that sort of seem

to pop up out of nowhere and blatantly lack context. And, you know, I'll break a little bit of news on Morning Joe this morning. I'm starting to become aware of multiple instances of things that should be in the log if it was complete that are not there. So what we're seeing is, you know, a broad plot, particularly involving members of Congress, deranged conspiracy theories, questionable legal logic and blatant authoritarianism. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. So it reads like crazy, except for the fact that it had a direct line into the White House. And you're talking about the chief of staff and Mark Meadows being receptive to some of it, at least in what we've seen, saying, I like it. We know based on the video we've seen, the testimony we've heard

during the January 6th select committee that he showed extreme cowardice that day, unwilling to stand up on January 6th to Donald Trump. So what was his posture to most of this? Was he open to all these conspiracy theories? Did he take some of it to the president based on what you've seen? He absolutely did. We're going to publish a story today that includes a specific instance where a conspiracy theory seems to have gone directly from Mark Meadows' phone to the Oval Office and Donald Trump's Twitter feed. But also one of the more chilling ones in the stories we dropped yesterday involved

Brian Babin. This is a Texas congressman. And I think one of the important things about all this, you know, these texts have come out a bit in trips and drabs. But some of the most shocking stuff was from members of Congress that the public really isn't that aware of. You know, guys like Brian Babin, Ralph Norman, Scott Perry, who were really at the center of this and in direct communication with the Trump White House and just are sort of off the radar of even people who've really watched the January 6th investigation play out. And in this exchange with Babin, he sends Meadows just a completely thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory, I think, about Pennsylvania. And Meadows says already

forwarded it to the DOJ. So there were official actions taking place based on these messages, which in the case of, for example, Paul Gosar, were being based on stuff from Infowars, Revolver, a site with a founder with white supremacist ties. And in the case of Gosar, I can't even say it on air, but a blog called Some Told Me. I mean, this is where members of Congress were drawing their information. So Hunter, as you went through these text messages from the asylum wing of the Republican Party, it struck me in looking through the first batch that you've put out that there are, as you just alluded to, many, many of the people involved are still members of Congress sitting in the House of Representatives. In the rearview mirror, as you look at what they did, they tiptoed up to

sedition. They were right there at the gate of sedition. What do they do now? What do they have to say now? Well, you know, you're making a really important point, Mike. And one thing that, should note here is some folks actually got promotions. I mean, we see Ted Budd, who's a House member now. He's moving on to the Senate. We see people suggesting this guy, John James, who was running for office in Michigan, should lead the challenge there. Right. And he lost a race in 2020 and just baselessly said the whole race in the state needed to be investigated. Well, guess what? Now he won. Right. So we're seeing this wing in some instances gain power. When I reached out to people, it was notable to me. I mean, I talked to Ralph Norman, who sent one of the most eye popping texts calling for martial law three days before Biden took office. And he sort of said, oh, that was two years ago. Send me the text and I'll get back to you. Of course, he didn't. As though you could forget calling essentially for troops to be sent into the streets. Right. But one thing that was really striking was a lot of the members,

including those that played a real leading role from what we saw in the text, Ted Cruz, Jody Heiss, Jim Jordan, just totally ghosted us. Right. The people who did respond were the few Republicans in the messages who were not among 147 that voted to object to the election. And they all just sort of pointed to that. But this also showed that, you know, in the period leading up to that vote on January 6th, they were playing with fire. Jen, Joe and I joke often about the Italian guy trying to influence the election. But here it is in the White House. I mean, it's I heard it around the time of the elections. A friend of mine, somebody I know and love said, hey, why aren't you guys looking at

the Italian satellite? A defense contractor living in Italy is alleged to have uploaded software to a satellite that changed votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. That was the theory. And we laugh about it, except here it is being pushed all the way to the White House. And by the way, don't forget Donald Trump had DOJ look into that conspiracy theory. I mean, that's the thing that there's a number of things that strike me in hearing about this reporting, Hunter. The first is as bad as we assume things were, when we get

a little glimpse into reality, it's actually worse than we assumed. And it is easy to laugh about these things, except, as you said, forwarding this to DOJ, becoming part of the, not just becoming part of the record, but having the Department of Justice actually act on these things. And we saw how it ended up. And when you, I know that there's more texts to come, but you do have a better glimpse than the rest of us about where this is going. And when you look at the totality of what you've read, can you give us a sense of what picture sort of emerges for you that may be different than, because in a couple of weeks or sometime before Christmas, right, we're going to see the Jan 6th committee report. We're going to see this more of this out in the open. What does it look like to you? You know, I think we're touching on something that is really

a central thing for me here. You know, I covered the're touching on something that is really a central thing for me here. You know, I covered the Trump White House, and I think a big question was how many people are in on the joke, so to speak, and how many people are true believers. Well, I first, you know, became familiar with the text log when I was working on my book, The Breach, which is about the January 6th investigation. And I co-wrote it with Denver Riggleman, who's a former Republican member of Congress, and he was a staffer on the committee. So he knows a lot of these people. And he was shocked when he first opened the text log.

He led the phone team, and he said, you know, it was like looking into the mouth of madness. And even with that sort of introduction, when I started looking at it, I had a similar reaction. I mean, we're seeing adults, adults who are in government, not only engage in frighteningly undemocratic rhetoric, but, you know, their base intelligence, frankly, is called into question. I mean, you're talking about that wild Italian theory. People were taking it seriously. We see another instance that we're going to detail where someone has, you know, a bizarre theory from a Romanian YouTube video that any of us would know not to tweet based on stuff from 2005 that they somehow thought carried over to 2022. I mean, the information literacy of our members of Congress is called into question here. And that's part of why, you know, we thought it was so important to

present more of a totality of these texts than you've seen anywhere else before. And also our tech team worked very hard to make sure you can see them in a phone as they were received because the typos, the wild links, all of this is really important. And one last point I'll make, and this is really something that shouldn't be lost in this discussion. We see the pressure. We see it in real time in these texts that was on people like Doug Ducey, that was on people like Brad Raffensperger, that was on people like Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich.

I mean, Scott Perry, the same guy who's sending this Italian theory, is talking about, you know, lobbying to have Trump pressure the Italian government and Pennsylvania legislators. And, you know, I think one of the things we see is that if these people had given in to the pressure, all of this plotting just might have worked. So, Mika, the information flow following this is Scott Perry, United States congressman, hears about some video. Somebody sends it to him about an Italian guy changing votes.

He gets the video. He texts it to Mark Meadows. Mark Meadows brings it to the attention of the president of the United States. The president of the United States seeks the Department of Justice using their time and resources to look into a YouTube video Scott Perry's friend sent him somewhere along the line. It's just staggering. It would be a bad movie. The sad reality here is that it's not a movie. It's what happened during the Trump administration in January 6th. And Jonathan Lemire, this incredible reporting by Hunter Walker really lays out. I mean, this is the president's chief of staff. I'm just, is that

normal to be hearing from dozens of members of Congress, conspiracy theories, number one. And what do you make of this text by representative Ralph Norman about martial law? There are so many different ways to go here, but I'm just wondering what your thoughts in terms of covering the White House about the role of the chief of staff and what was going on here, what these text messages reveal. The chief of staff in a normal White House is a gatekeeper. So it's not unusual for him to be texting with members of Congress. It is unusual for me texting about conspiracy theories and Romanian YouTube links. That doesn't happen too often. What we're seeing here from Meadows is that he also,

as gatekeeper, allowed some of that stuff to get to Donald Trump. And that also goes to show this is the big lie. And it has spent months in the making ahead of the election and how after the election it accelerated with such force. That text you mentioned, Mika, from Congressman Ralph Norman of South Carolina talking about martial law. I'd like to flag the date on that. That's January 17th. That is after January 6th. The insurrection has already come and failed. There was already violence. Lives have been lost, and they're still talking about this martial law idea, one that Michael Flynn had floated a few weeks prior. Thankfully, it didn't come to be. Hunter,

just wanted to ask you as a final question and great work on the reporting. You mentioned, of course, this stuff has gotten the hands of the January 6th committee. But how about the Department of Justice? We know there's been some overlap and not always an agreement as to who gets what there. Do we believe the DOJ has this and what might they do with it? Could there be potential criminal charges stemming from what we're reading here? So reportedly, the DOJ has this and what might they do with it? Could there be potential criminal charges stemming from what we're reading here? So reportedly the DOJ does also have the Mark Meadows tax log. I think, you know, one of the million dollar questions, and John, I know, you know, we covered this together a bit, that hung over the entirety of the Trump administration is sort of what will

government do about some of, you know, the things that might be illegal? Right. People love to throw around on Twitter that something's a crime. Well, it's only a crime if it's charged. Right. And I think, you know, you can see legally potential for action. I mean, a lot of people have raised the idea the Norman text is sedition. But, you know, will the Justice Department be willing to take on members of Congress? Will the Justice Department be willing to take an aggressive approach with that? And is that even healthy for democracy? So that's the million dollar question. One thing I just want to point out, this was not just my reporting. We had a team of five reporters, Josh Kavinsky, Kayla Filo, Kate Riga and Aminah Ugel, who were working on

this with me for five weeks. And there is a lot more to come. This is the tip of the iceberg of what's in the logs, but it's also the tip of the iceberg of what we're putting out on TPM this week. So, you know, stay tuned. I think this is a really important story and it's not over yet. It's amazing reporting about your team. We know so much about the events around this election, but this just sheds even more light on it. Great work. Investigative reporter for Talking Points Memo, Hunter Walker. Hunter, thanks so much. Thanks for having me. Mika?

So let's bring in NBC News justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Delaney. And Ken, of course, you're here also to talk about the grand jury subpoena to Brad Raffensperger, which we'll get into in just a moment. But this is so incredible. And Hunter's reporting and saying that this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what's to come with more information. If you could put into context, if you could, what these text messages and other revelations tell us about what the January 6th committee still can do or what still could surface through the DOJ in terms of what you what you glean from these messages. Mika, good morning. This is clearly something that the Justice Department is looking at as part of its January 6th investigation.

And, you know, remember that the January 6th committee aired a lot of this in the hearing where they had the top former DOJ officials discussing all the pressure that was brought to bear on them by Donald Trump and the people around him to investigate. Remember, he said, just say the election was corrupt and we'll do the rest. And they refused to do that. But and so at the end, that may have been the closest we came to a real catastrophe. Had those Justice Department officials gone along and raised questions of fraud with the official Justice Department seal behind them?

They didn't do that. So, look, it's not illegal for a member of Congress to pass along a wacky conspiracy theory and for even for Mark Meadows to pass that along to the Justice Department. But collectively, all of this behavior starts to look like a conspiracy to overturn the election. And that's the question. Even if you an unsuccessful illegal conspiracy is still an illegal conspiracy. And that's, I think, what the Justice Department is weighing now, along with all this other conduct, because this is just one slice of what we know happened as the January 6th committee laid out very well in those televised hearings. And as Hunter said, there's more to come. We'll be watching for that. To the Raffensperger subpoena, Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed to investigate former President Donald Trump at the Justice Department, has sent a grand jury subpoena to Georgia's Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger.

The subpoena was confirmed by Raffensperger's office, asking him to provide documents. Now, a source familiar with the matter tells NBC News it does not request him to testify in person. Trump called Raffensperger on January 2nd, 2021, demanding he, quote, find the votes to reverse President Joe Biden's win in the state. You remember that Georgia reaffirmed President Biden's victory several times after the election in November of 2020. NBC News has learned special counsel Smith has also issued subpoenas to election officials in Clark County, Nevada. That's in addition to state and local officials in the battleground states of Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. All of the states are central to Trump's failed plan to stay in power after the 2020 election. They're also among the first known subpoenas issued since Smith was named last month by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee Trump-related aspects of the investigation

into January 6th and the criminal probe of Trump's possible mishandling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. It's exhausting the number of questions this former president has raised about what happened, Ken, but give me a sense of what this signifies. Just the subpoena of Raffensperger to turn over documents that focus on him and these other states. I think this is a very important moment in this investigation, Mika, because until now, it hadn't been clear that the Justice Department was aggressively pursuing the conduct in Georgia, given the fact that there's a state investigation down there. And that was always a mystery, though, because if it was illegal in other states or potentially illegal, Georgia was the best

example, actually, with the best evidence. They have the president of the United States on tape pressuring, trying to pressure Brad Raffensperger to find 11,780 votes. And if you remember from that famous conversation, Trump also tried to suggest that they knew the election was corrupt and it was very risky for them not to act on that. And this is the guy that was in charge of the Justice Department at the time. So he was almost hinting that there was criminality there if they didn't do his bidding. And so it's really interesting. Jack Smith is still in the Netherlands, the special counsel, recovering from a bike accident where he hurt his leg.

But his influence is really being felt in this investigation. Andrew Weissman, our NBC News legal analyst, you know, who is known as a very aggressive prosecutor, said early on that Jack Smith is a golden retriever puppy compared to Andrew Weissman. And you're really seeing evidence of that, not only with this set of subpoenas to now a total of six states, but also with this secret battle going on in the grand jury where the DOJ was trying to hold the Trump team in contempt over Mar-a-Lago. He is really moving forward quickly and aggressively. And in terms of the subpoenas to the states, if you look at that subpoena, there's a list of people, almost everyone that we know of who was involved in this effort to overturn the election,

Rudy Giuliani, Cleta Mitchell, John Eastman, Bill Sepien, Boris Epstein, people who work for the Trump campaign. The DOJ wants communications between those people and these state and local election officials, and they're vacuuming them up right now. And then that map we just had up there shows the reach of Jack Smith and all the states where he's looking. Another story for you, Ken, a busy legal morning. A federal judge has dismissed former President Donald Trump's lawsuit challenging the government's access to material seized from his Mar-a-Lago home and club. Judge Eileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who you'll remember originally appointed the special master to the case and had to dismiss the case herself. The order came after Trump chose not to appeal a higher court ruling that stopped the special

master from reviewing the materials taken in the FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago, ending Trump's months long legal battle. So bottom line, Ken, here at the special master, after all that is over. It's over and gone. And the DOJ has all the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago. And it was really a humiliating moment for that federal judge down in Florida who made such a show of creating this special master, which most legal experts thought was not warranted. And the 11th Circuit Appeals Court, including two Trump appointed judges and another, a third Republican judge, Republican appointed judge, slapped her down and

said, this is ridiculous. We don't have a special rules for a former president. Criminal defendants are not entitled to a special master unless there's evidence that the Justice Department violated their rights. And there was no evidence in this case. And so, you know, we spent a lot of time talking about this. But you know what, Willie, we did learn some things from that protracted litigation and the appointment special master. We learned that Donald Trump's lawyers were unwilling to say in court that Donald Trump had declassified those documents, even though Trump had been saying that in public. They were unwilling to make that argument. And we also learned that they may try to exert executive privilege over some of these documents if this case ever goes to trial,

but that there doesn't seem to be much of a basis for that. So it allowed the public to get a better view of kind of what was seized at Mar-a-Lago. So in that respect, it wasn't for us anyway, it wasn't a total loss. But legally, this will be remembered as a footnote. And again, you know, action by a federal judge that appeared to have no basis in law. But a footnote, Ken Delaney, and that bought Donald Trump time. And some would argue that's another thing that his team was trying to do was just drag things out. Now that the special master

is out of the way, what does it open the door to? How does this progress forward? And what's the timeline? I've been asking all my sources the same question. The timeline for Mar-a-Lago is certainly more accelerated than it is for January 6th. Nobody thinks we're going to see charges before, for example, the holidays, but no one would be surprised if they decide to charge this case that it could happen in the first part of the year. But this recent back and forth that all happened in secret in front of the grand jury in Washington, D.C., where the DOJ tried to, as far as our reporting tells us, they tried to get the judge to hold the office of the former

president in contempt and they were unsuccessful. That, to me, hinted it was a bit of a caution flag there. It showed that it suggested to me that the DOJ was not able to connect Donald Trump personally with the alleged obstruction of justice because they weren't trying to hold him personally in contempt. And that may signal a problem in at least that part of the case. But again, many legal experts have looked at the evidence we've already seen, say, in terms of the mishandling of classified documents, almost anyone else would have been charged by now. And it really comes down to whether the Justice Department wants to bring just that case or whether they continue to pursue these

potential obstruction of justice allegations. NBC News justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Delaney. And thank you very much. A lot going on there still ahead on Morning Joe. What Biden administration officials are saying about the ongoing effort to bring Paul Whelan home from Russia on the heels of Brittany Griner's release. Plus, we'll be joined by Dr. Anthony Fauci this morning as coronavirus cases ramp up across the country, along with the flu and RSV. Also ahead, the man who was known as the king of crypto has been arrested in the Bahamas. We'll take a look at the new criminal charges he's facing. And later this morning, award winning actor Ed Norton joins us for the look at his new film,

Glass Onion, a Knives Out mystery. The movie has been nominated for a Golden Globe in the best motion picture, musical or comedy category. You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. Past the hour, here's a follow up on a story we were covering yesterday. The White House and Democratic lawmakers are condemning comments from Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene about the attack on the Capitol. Greene spoke Saturday night at a dinner hosted by the New York Young Republican Club. She bragged that if she and Steve Bannon had planned the January 6th insurrection, it would have been different. Then January 6th happens, and next thing you know, I organize the whole thing along with Steve Bannon here. different. In a statement, the Biden White House called Greene's remarks, quote, a slap in the face to law enforcement, writing, quote,

It goes against our fundamental values as a country for a member of Congress to wish that the carnage of January 6th had an even worse and to boast that she would have succeeded in an armed insurrection against the United States government. Green responded with a statement of her own, claiming her comments were sarcasm about an insurrection. So far, minority leader Kevin McCarthy has not said anything publicly about her speech. And Jen Palmieri, you've spent some time with her, covered her for the circus. And I mean, I will just say, I don't know how you can joke about an insurrection where people died and where our Capitol building was defaced and our lawmakers, including our vice president and speaker of the House, were put in extreme danger. But maybe I'm just not funny. I don't know. I have learned, though, over the course of the past six years that as it pertains to Donald Trump, 99, maybe 100 percent

of all joking is true. When he says something, it's worth believing him as the same goes for, I believe, Trumpy Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene. What do you make of her comments and then her walk back? So, I mean, first of all, you know, once part of the context here is that the day before she made these remarks, a Capitol Police sergeant resigned from the force saying that that the stress from January 6th had pushed him out of his job. And when he testified about January 6th, he said, you know, he had the thought, this is how I'm going to die. This is the day I'm going to die. This is how I'm going to die.

So that's sort of the sober backdrop for this. And it was one of the things I find telling about, you know, she, my takeaway from having spent some time with her is she wants to be liked. She wants to be more accepted into sort of the mainstream than she has been. And she's clever about how she plays things. So what she was trying to do in those comments was distance herself from the January 6th planning, right? Now, she sent text messages to Mark Bendis as well on January 6th. She may have an inkling about what other text messages are out there. And she's trying to say, well, if I was actually I'm not really in charge, I was actually in charge. It would have worked out better for my side.

But she is trying to distance herself. But then also she tries, as always, to, you know, to to pull to the base. And this is why she has so much power in the party. You know, she she was the fifth most prolific fundraiser for the party. And when she was stripped of her committee assignments and made her martyr for the Trump base. And, you know, the only energy in the Republican Party right now is in this sort of destructive wing of the party.

Right. She's she's one of the people supporting Kevin McCarthy, trying to get him over the finish line. Meanwhile, you have people like Matt Gaetz that are trying to push back on McCarthy and prevent him from becoming speaker. The fight is it's not even a proxy fight for Trump. It's just a fight with the people who are trying to bring the party further down these rabbit holes. And it's a little window into what McCarthy's life is going to be like, because this is the second time since the election that McCarthy is having to answer for something Marjorie Taylor Greene said. And, you know, it's like this is if he does become speaker, this is what his speakership is going to have to be like in terms of refereeing these the people that want to, you know, that live in the that live in the rabbit hole.

Jen mentioned Sergeant Aquilino Ganel of the United States Capitol Police, injured physically and mentally on that day on January 6th as he stood in the door. Let's remind people here's some of his testimony before the January 6th committee. The writers call me traitor. The rioters called me a traitor, a disgrace, and shouted that I, I, an Army veteran and a police officer, should be executed. But the physical violence we experienced was horrific and devastating. My fellow officers and I were punched, kicked, shoved, sprayed with chemical irritants, and even blinded with eye-damaging lasers. I, too, was being crushed by the rioters. I could feel myself losing oxygen and recall thinking to myself, this is how I'm going to die, defending this entrance. So Mike, as Jen said, Sergeant Ganel announced yesterday in a letter that he's going to retire at the end of this week on the advice of his doctors,

his orthopedic doctors, that his body just isn't up to the task and his psychiatrist as well about his own mental health. These are the kind of people who stood in the doorway that Marjorie Taylor Greene is joking about. She just wished that they had brought weapons on January 6th. Yeah, some joke. You know, we all know we live in an age of accelerated pace of events. Something happens and it's forgotten two or three days from now. Something horrific could be forgotten in two or three days. And that takes our attention span as a people, as a culture, as a nation, way, way down. People don't have our attention span as a people, as a culture, as a nation, way, way down. People don't have the attention span that we used to have. So the events that we've been talking about this morning, the text messages from sitting members

of Congress urging sedition right up until the point of almost noontime on January 20th, when Joe Biden was sworn in as president. The January 6th insurrection, Capitol Police officers fearing for their lives and being attacked by supposedly law and order people. We have all of that. And yet, if someone mentions Harry and Meghan, we go right there and talk about that instead of focusing on the real dangers that still exist because they injected a poison into our system. The asylum wing of the Republican Party injected that poison into our system, and it still flows through our circulatory

system as a nation. You still have a huge percentage of Republicans sitting in office today in the House of Representatives, largely, who refuse to believe that Joe Biden is legitimately elected president of the United States. And I would submit that's the most important among the most important issues we face as a nation. And we don't pay enough attention to it today. And we can not just sitting in office, but as Jen said, having real power and influence over Speaker McCarthy, if he does become the speaker, because he needs every one of those votes to become the speaker. So he'll be in debt to Marjorie Taylor Greene and Andy Biggs and the rest of these guys. These people making fun of a day, Marjorie Taylor Greene making fun of a day. It's really

it's good that we showed the testimony of Officer Gunnell again to remember and understand what they barely survived. These people, they're not taking our democracy. They're not serious and they're not taking our democracy or their job seriously. And that's going to be the question for voters moving forward on every level, on every level, at every election that we face coming up. And coming up on Morning Joe, Senate lawmakers are still working to finalize a deal to avoid a government shutdown before Friday's deadline. We'll get an update on the negotiations from a member of the Democratic leadership in the upper chamber, Senator Debbie Stabenow, plus a look at the efforts by the administration to track U.S.

weapons in Ukraine, including the possibility of sending additional American troops to the region. NBC's Courtney Kuby will join us with her new reporting. We'll be right back. I'm out. The house. Forty four past the hour live look at New York City as the sun has yet to come up. Time to go to work. Russian President Vladimir Putin will not hold his annual end of the year press conference for the first time in a decade. A spokesman for the Kremlin did not say why the event will not take place, but suggested that it may be rescheduled for the new year. It has historically been one of the few times a year that reporters outside the Kremlin pool, including foreign correspondents, can ask Putin questions. Jonathan Lemire, I'm hearing from some contacts high up in the administration that they're noticing some changes with Vladimir Putin. What are you what does this signify to you and what are you hearing? Well, first of all, let's note his annual December news conference not only

is a chance for foreign reporters to ask questions, but it tends to go two, three, four hours long. There are these marathon sessions that's sort of exhaustive and usually filled with lies. So it is curious that he's not having one this year, particularly on the heels of a week where he was out in public quite a bit. He rode across the rebuilt Crimean Bridge. He met with mothers of those who have been deployed to this war. He was drinking champagne and talking to officials and assuring them that everything was going just fine with the invasion of Ukraine. We know, of course, that is not true. And that is what American officials are zeroing in on, that there's a sense

here that in recent weeks, there's a change with Putin. They believe he's getting better intelligence. In the first few months of the war, that he was getting a rosy picture of how things were going. Now he knows how badly things are going. And there's a sense there that he doesn't want to have to take questions about the failures of his military. And, of course, there has been unproven speculation. We've talked about it on the show that he might be suffering from some health ailments. But U.S. officials say there's no evidence of that. It's just chatter in the intelligence world.

So that could be a contributing factor, too. But it seems most likely, Mika, that Putin simply doesn't want to face tough questions about something that had a war that is going so poorly on the battlefield and devastated Russia's economy. And that war in Ukraine was a central issue in yesterday's virtual meeting among G7 leaders with a focus on reconstruction and how the G7 nations plan to support Ukraine in its efforts to rebuild. The nations also agreed to elements of a new donor system designed to fund Ukraine in the short and long term as winter weather slows the war. Ukrainian President Zelensky addressed the meeting, thanking the G7 nations for support while reminding them

the financing of weapons remains critical for his country. Meanwhile, NBC News has exclusive new reporting on efforts by the United States Department of Defense to better track weapon shipments sent to Ukraine and whether that might involve sending troops, American troops to the region. Joining us now is one of the reporters behind that story, NBC News national security and military correspondent Courtney Kuby. Courtney, good morning. So flesh this out a little bit for us, if you would. I think when people hear American troops to the region, they kind of sit up straight in the morning. What more can you tell us? Yeah, that's right. And we need to put this in very important context.

So there actually is already a very small group of U.S. troops who are in Ukraine on this accountability mission. There's a couple dozen total U.S. military in the country. Now, that includes the defense attache, some security forces, and a very small group doing this accountability mission. So what we learned, that's Carol Lee and I, our colleague Carol Lee and I, is that the Department of Defense, U.S. military leaders are looking at shoring up that very small group because so far they've only been able to visit a handful of locations outside of Kyiv to check on these weapons stockpiles and just see exactly how the Ukrainian stockpiles, making sure that everything is getting to them and getting to the front lines.

So the U.S. military leaders are now looking to shore that up with a very small number of additional troops. We're talking single digits here. So it's less about this being some large influx of troops. That's not the case at all. And in fact, they wouldn't be going anywhere near the front lines. But it's more about the fact that the Pentagon is cognizant of the fact that in January, there's going to be a new, the Republicans are going to be in charge of the House of Representatives. And there's a real concern that there are going to be a lot of questions about weapon accountability in Ukraine. You'll remember that at the beginning of this war, right after the invasion, the U.S. started flowing in billions and billions of dollars of weapons. There was concern at the time that there wasn't a whole lot of tracking of those weapons once they crossed

the border into Ukraine and got into the hands of those Ukrainians. There's a real effort now to try to change that in advance of Republicans taking over the House. And this is one of those ways that they're trying to do it. Now, again, one of the concerns is of sending more troops or any U.S. citizens or civilians or personnel there is security, of course. But in addition to that, you have to remember what the conditions are like in Kiev. There's not always reliable electricity. There's not always reliable water or basic supplies. So some in the administration are concerned about that. They want to make sure that they have the personnel there for this mission, but they're not taxing the embassy or putting people in unnecessary harm's way to do this, Willie.

And of course, a lot of that is because Russia is targeting infrastructure and the power grids in major cities across Ukraine. So, Courtney, you mentioned Republicans coming in. Some of them have said, we'll see if they follow through. We should stop having a blank check to Ukraine, maybe pull back on some of our support. It's enough for the American taxpayers now. How concerned is the Department of Defense and the Biden administration? How concerned are they that, yes, it may be a completely different world come early January? So right now, they believe that they'll be able to maintain this mission and for at least the next six to nine months is what they're looking at. When you ask when you ask very directly, are they worried that the Republicans are going to stop funding? Most of the officials who I'm speaking with are saying,

look, at the end of the day, there is bipartisan support for continuing to help the Ukrainians in this fight against Russia. But they're worried that there'll be more scrutiny with things like this accountability. They're also concerned that there's going to be more and more calls for sending Ukraine some of these weapons that the Biden administration has been a little bit reticent to do over the last several months. A couple that they're looking at right now are ATAKOMs, these longer range systems. Some people are talking about fighter jets like F-16s, armed drones. Those are things that the administration has been talking about for weeks now. I will say they're not shutting the door to some of those more advanced systems. But I ask every day, the officials who I'm speaking with

are saying they're just not there yet. And it's not just the fact that there's concerns about this being escalatory or provocative with the Russians. There is a belief that it's not that some of these longer range systems that some on the Hill are calling for just aren't really necessary right now. But everyone needs to watch this space because some of these longer range systems that some on the Hill are calling for just aren't really necessary right now. But everyone needs to watch this space because some of these systems, particularly things like F-16s, longer range or fighter jets, they take a lot of training. So if the U.S. is looking to send some of these things in the coming weeks, perhaps before Republicans take the House and they want to get these kinds of things through, they need to make those decisions pretty quickly because there's going to have to be a long lead up time for the

training, not just on using these systems, but also on maintaining them before the Ukrainians would even be able to get them and get them into the fight. So I would keep an eye on this issue specifically over the next several weeks before Republicans take the House. It's possible if they're going to make decisions about some of these more advanced systems and more packages of money, we'll hear that and we'll see that before the change in leadership. NBC's Courtney Kuby, thank you very much for your reporting this morning. And still ahead, we'll have a look at the stories making front page headlines across the country, plus more chaos at Twitter. Elon Musk is relaunching a subscription service while dismissing a group tasked with overseeing online safety.

We'll have more on all strung out on homemade speed. And we shared a bed in which I could. A few minutes before the top of the hour, and we just have a few minutes left with Jen Palmieri. And I just want to ask you, Jen, what in normal times when we don't have conspiracy theories flying and these destructive instincts that we've seen on the part of Trump Republicans, what Republicans and Democrats would be doing? I mean, my first thought would be that if these were normal times, but things that had happened had actually happened, they'd be doing a bipartisan look into the January 6th insurrection. Right. They're doing a bipartisan look into the insurrection. They'd be doing a bipartisan look into into covid. And in the lame duck session that we're at, we're having that we're having

right now, I think they would be looking to be as productive as possible. Sometimes lame ducks. It could be that's where Obama got the Defense of Marriage Act passed in 2010 after having lost the Congress. Sometimes you find that where neither party is politically incentivized to be destructive, they are that you can get stuff done. And, you know, we'll see. I know you're hearing from Stabenow soon about about that, whether Mitch McConnell is sort of incentivized to do that before the asylum wing, as Mike tells talks about it, takes takes over. So when do you think they can purge the poison, if ever? I mean, I don't know if, you know, because there is a scenario where, you know, Republicans did win some tough races in this very destructive midterms. Right. They went in Ohio. They went

to North Carolina. They went to Wisconsin statewide Senate races. You could see a scenario where leaders in those states come forward and say, hey, here's how we won, got the Trump base out, but also were able to get moderate, appeal to moderate voters. And this is what, and those people would be challenging Ronna McDaniel for the RNC chair. Those people would be challenging Kevin McCarthy for speaker. But you don't see that. Instead, it's the more destructive people that are coming forward because there's just, you know, Trump sort of broke the party and there's still not anything underneath it. Jen Palmieri and Mike Barnicle, thank you both for filling out this hour for us.