Morning Joe - Morning Joe 12/21/22

Episode Date: December 21, 2022

Zelenskyy to meet with Biden and address Congress in D.C., his first known trip outside Ukraine since Russia invaded

I will absolutely give my return, but I'm being audited now for two or three years, so I can't do it until the audit is finished, obviously. It's under audit. I'll release them when the audit's completed. My tax returns are very simple. They're under a minor audit, routine audit, as they have been for many years. Every year I get audited. At the appropriate time, I will release them. But right now I'm under routine audit. Nobody cares.

You know, the only one that cares about my tax returns are the reporters. You don't think the American public is concerned? No, I don't think so. I won. I mean, I became president. No, I don't think they care at all. No, he was not under audit. He was lying.

That was Donald Trump lying repeatedly, explaining why he could not or would not release his tax returns over the years. Now, Congress is expected to release them in the coming days. We will in his first known trip outside of Ukraine since the war began. The January 6th committee set to release its full report today. We'll explain what else we could learn. Also, Elon Musk says he will resign as head of Twitter after users voted for him to step down. But he's not giving up control completely. We'll have more on that. And a big acquisition by the New York Mets. Free agent Carlos Carrera is now headed to Queens after his contract with the Giants falls through. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It's Wednesday, December 21st. You guys know it's the first day of winter and it's just a few days till Christmas. So everybody needs to get ready. But first, we've got a lot of news to cover with us. We have MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle, columnist and associate editor for The Washington Post, David Ignatius and presidential historian John Meacham.

We begin with the developing news from overnight. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is en route to the U.S. He tweeted at 1 a.m. announcing he will attend meetings in D.C. today, meet with President Joe Biden and deliver a speech to Congress. While he's here, a senior Biden administration tells NBC News President Biden will announce the Patriot missile battery Ukraine has wanted for its defense will be included in a new aid package to the nation. That official says U.S. troops will train Ukrainian forces in another country before the Patriots are deployed in Ukraine, adding U.S. troops will not be involved at that point. The senior Biden administration official says this trip by Zelensky had been in the works for the past few days, with the president extending a formal invitation on the 14th. Zelensky accepted. And this past Sunday, while the U.S.

consulted with him on security parameters for the trip. The decision was made for him to come. Zelensky has not publicly left Ukraine for any reason since Russia invaded in February. David Ignatius, explain the significance of Zelensky coming to the United States of America. Mika, I think this will be a dramatic visit. It's rare to have somebody in the middle of a war, a brutal war, leave his country to explain to the United States and the world just what he's fighting for. And I think he'll be passionate in explaining that. I think the significance of the trip is that politically it should really lock in bipartisan support for continued U.S. military assistance to Ukraine. It should, I think, galvanize our NATO allies to work closely with the U.S. through what will be a difficult winter. I think most of all, this is just a defiant gesture towards Russia, which is pounding

Ukraine every day, trying to weaken the country's infrastructure, trying to break the will of its people, and to have their president, Zelensky, received in Washington, celebrated as the person who embodies the aspirations, I think, of the West for freedom, for standing up to bullying from Vladimir Putin in Russia will be dramatic, and will have a consequence that Ukraine's path through this difficult winter, I think, will be a little bit easier. The Ukrainian people, I think, will sense the support they have from the world. I was just in Kiev two weeks ago, Mika. it's a startling feeling to be amid people who show that kind of defiance, courage, refusal to buckle under what's mounting Russian pressure as they try to

break the heating and power systems throughout the country. So we'll get a chance to experience a little of that secondhand as we listen to Zelensky talk about his country, talk about his fight. And I'd be amazed if there are many Republicans who, after that speech, aren't seeking to identify themselves with Zelensky, aren't trying to support his war with the additional U.S. weapons that President Biden wants to send. Yeah, the impact on Republicans should be pretty powerful. I think also it's a chance for Volodymyr Zelensky to really show Americans and tell Americans personally from his heart that Ukrainians are fighting and dying for the safety of the world, ultimately. And John Meacham, your thoughts. Is this solidifying any Churchillian parallels here?

Absolutely. With a great sense of theater and a great commitment to the hard, hard, hard work, unimaginable work for most of us of defending your country from a superior power. Zelensky is very much acting in the Churchillian tradition. Churchill didn't come to the United States during World War II until December 1941, after both Pearl Harbor and Hitler's declaration of war on the United States. It was at that point that FDR said to him, we're all in the same boat now. And it was a boat that, like Zelensky, Churchill had been in largely alone since the spring of 1940. And we had been fighting this battle that we're fighting again. I think this is the thing to think about today and tomorrow as people watch these events. This is one of our oldest and most difficult battles in the United States. It's between engagement in the world and isolationism. The false sense that because of the gift of geography of the United States of America, that somehow we are, to paraphrase Churchill,

not involved in the agonies and the triumphs of the old world. But we are. And I think President Biden has led with immense skill throughout this crisis. It's reminiscent of the senior President Bush during the first Gulf War and then back to the great World War II leadership. And I say that without, people can mock that perhaps, but David can check me on it. The way he's managing these alliances, the way he is trying to enable America to project power without going too far and yet without falling short. And that's in many ways, of course, the great test of diplomacy. And I think that will bring all of this top of mind in the next 24 hours.

Yeah, this is going to be an incredible 24 hours. We're going to have a lot more on this major development in just a moment. Jonathan Lemire is going to join us with his new reporting on how this visit came to be and exactly what is at stake. Our other top story this morning shows something that a lot of folks have been waiting for for a long time. It proves that Hillary, Hillary Clinton was right all along. Nancy Pelosi was right all along. Chuck Schumer was right all along. The Democrats were right all along. Reporting from the New York Times was right all along. The Washington Post, too, was 100 percent correct all along. Donald Trump was not under audit. Donald Trump was lying. He was desperate to hide

the truth from Americans, that truth that far from being a shrewd businessman, he was in fact the biggest loser out of the 300 million Americans who filed their taxes with the IRS. The man lost more money than any other American. At a time he was writing the art of the deal, this was happening. And worse than that is the fact that his own Treasury Department, under the bumbling hands of Steve Mnuchin, refused to even audit the president after Trump got into the White House. That's usually done. So that lie continued and continued and continued until last night, after a six-year battle to keep his record shielded from the same scrutiny that every president has faced since the 1970s. House Democrats have voted to publicly release

former President Donald Trump's tax returns. Members of the House Ways and Means Committee cast their votes along party lines last night following a four hour closed door hearing on the matter. Although the full documents are not expected to be released for several days, the committee is already out with a 39-page summary of its findings. Here are some of the takeaways. In four of the six years reviewed, Trump reported a negative income to the IRS. His income was in the green in 2018 after his first full year as president. And again in 2019, before falling back into the red in 2020. In three of the six years reviewed, Trump paid $750 or less in federal income taxes.

That includes 2020, where he paid zero. The committee also raises questions about IRS scrutiny of a substantial number of declarations made on the former president's returns. Despite claiming millions of dollars in deductions from charitable donations, the committee writes that the IRS made no efforts to verify the legitimacy of Trump's claims, quote, even when no supporting documents were provided. Those and other alleged failures by the IRS to scrutinize Trump's returns are outlined in another new report from the committee. There, lawmakers write that the IRS only conducted an audit of Trump's tax returns once, despite it being mandatory every year for sitting presidents. Only after the committee launched its investigation into Trump's returns did the IRS take any steps to look further into the filings. In an internal memo, the agency claimed it did not have enough

resources to examine all the potential issues in Trump's returns. That's one thing that's definitely true. There are issues, a lot of issues here. Let's bring in Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and Washington correspondent for The New York Times, Charlie Savage. Charlie, what are we learning so far? I know we have a 39 page summary. We'll learn a lot more soon. But is it perhaps the biggest thing he was hiding is that he was the biggest loser in terms of people who file taxes? Or is it more? Is it sources of income that we're looking at? Well, we only have some top line numbers from those tax years starting at 2016 that the committee provided in this report. But this is very preliminary. The raw documents are going to be put out sometime today or tomorrow. And I think there's going to be a big hive mind effort to make sense of it.

But the the early cut at these numbers do show, as you just showed on the screen, that of his four years in office, he basically paid no taxes for the first and fourth year. He did have some income in 2018 that allowed him to pay about a million dollars in taxes because he had sold off some properties and had some capital gains taxes. Throughout that period, he was reporting making large charitable donations in cash. And the committee is flagging whether there is substantial support to show he actually made those contributions or whether he was just putting numbers on the page and wanting the IRS to look at that. I think a larger takeaway here, though, is the other part of what you were getting into, which is the IRS has rules that say that sitting presidents and vice presidents must be

audited every year. The IRS, under the Trump administration's control, did not do that in 2017, did not do that in 2018, and only started looking at the first of his tax returns in April 2019, the very same day that House Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee sent a request to the Treasury Department for data about his taxes and any associated audits. So there's clearly deep dysfunction at a minimum at the IRS in this auditing program. And one of the reasons that's important is because committee Democrats had said they were looking for these taxes because they needed to assess

whether that program was strong enough, whether it needed to be strengthened, whether it was doing its job. And all along, Trump's lawyers and Republicans said that was just a pretext. It turns out there was something big there that they discovered. So, Charlie, dysfunction is one thing,

but could you explain the tenure of Charles Reddick, a California tax lawyer who Donald Trump appointed to head the IRS? He recently left the position. Maybe he was forced out of the position, whatever. But could you explain his role, his potential role in this, if any? So we don't know. We talked last night to the commissioner of the IRS in 2017, who was running the agency, when they should have done their first audit of Trump's taxes, because he was the sitting president in 2017. And he disclaimed knowledge. I didn't know about that program or I wasn't involved. Could not explain why there was no audit that year.

Then the gentleman you just mentioned took over in 2018. He had written an opinion column in 2016 as a tax lawyer in California, defending Trump's refusal to make public his tax returns as a presidential candidate, which broke with modern precedents or post-Watergate norms. All major party presidential candidates released their finances. All sitting presidents do. Trump famously wouldn't. This guy said, oh, that's great. He shouldn't have to. And then Trump put him in charge of the IRS.

So he certainly is going to probably face some questions from the Senate. I doubt that House Republicans, when they take over the chamber, will be interested in calling him starting next month. Washington correspondent for The New York Times, Charlie Savage. Thank you very much. We'll have much more on this ahead. Just real quickly, Dave Ignatius. I mean, Republicans have definitely laid their bed. I mean, they they stand some of them by Donald Trump through dinners with Kanye West and white nationalists and stolen documents and saying the Constitution should be whatever, redacted, gotten rid of. It doesn't matter. But he was lying. It does prove he was

lying from the get go. Will it move the meter? So, Mika, those bland statements over and over in 2017, 2018. I can't release my taxes. I'm being audited. I'm being audited to see now that that was, as you said sharply earlier on, that that was a complete lie. And not only that, that there's reason to ask whether the IRS was being pressured not to audit him, not to do what they normally would have done, I think brings us back into sharp focus. More generally, you just feel week by week the air going out of the balloon that is Donald Trump. His arguments don't hold up, whether it comes to Mar-a-Lago documents, whether it comes to events of January 6th, whether it comes to Mar-a-Lago documents, whether it comes to events of January 6th,

whether it comes to issues about his taxes, how he ran his business in New York. You just have a feeling of this edifice crumbling brick by brick. And also, I'm struck by the way in which Republicans really finally are beginning to back away from defending him. I didn't hear people on the committee, the Ways and Means Committee yesterday, rushing to Trump's defense. No, they're going to put out the returns. They're going to tell the American people what people actually demand to know. He is not different from anybody else who took that office. So how this plays into the larger story of Trump's political future, as he hopes to be a candidate in 2024, is too early to say. But you do have this sense that all around him, the pillars he's rested on, the lies that he's rested on, have begun to fall away.

Yeah, it's been a pretty brutal week for Donald Trump with the four criminal referrals and now this. We're going to return to our major stories in just a moment. But we want to tell you about a major winter storm that is threatening to impact travel across a wide swath of the country as millions of Americans are set to travel for the coming days for the holidays. Let's go straight to meteorologist Angie Lassman for the forecast. Angie, what do we got? Mika, we've got a whole lot to deal with, and we're going to start in the Midwest and parts of the Great Lakes where we go to Minneapolis.

You can see it's still dark and early there. We're going to eventually start to see snow falling in that area, and blizzard conditions will be widespread. Here's the storm we're dealing with. The snow is going to stretch from the Rockies to the Midwest through the day today, eventually moving into parts of the Great Lakes where we could see anywhere from maybe a foot to two feet of snow in blizzard conditions long lasting. How about the Northeast? Rain, Washington, Washington, D.C. to New York and Boston. It's mainly going to be a rainfall forecast, but still the flooding potential is there. And then we have a quick dip in temperatures that could lead to some flash freezing. We know with a lot of travel, people on the roads, there's going to be problems when it comes to getting out there in that ice forming in a hurry. There's the snowfall forecast. You can

see the blizzard conditions that were expected downwind of the lake. If you're headed to Detroit, Chicago, all of those locations are going to see major travel impacts. And there's the rainfall accumulations. Oh, by the way, the coastal flooding that we'll deal with along basically anywhere from parts of Virginia up to Boston is going to be immense. We'll see a storm surge with those strong winds and the strong winds going to be problematic, too, when it comes to power outages, not what you want to see when we're heading out for the holidays, maybe gathering at homes, we will see winds anywhere from 54 miles per hour in Detroit, 48 miles per hour in New York. Buffalo gusting up to 58 miles per hour.

So widespread power outages expected that on top of, of course, all the travel trouble. And when we have the power outages, temperatures dipping into the subzero conditions is not going to be great, even as far as 34 degrees in New York by Sunday. My goodness, Angie, thank you very much. And still ahead on Morning Joe, more on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's visit to Washington today, including a look at what he plans, what he wants to achieve from his meeting with President Biden. Plus, the latest from the southern border as the White House fights to end pandemic-related immigration restrictions. Also ahead, the House Select Committee investigating January 6th is set to release its full report today. We'll talk about the legal implications of that and what it means

for the Justice Department moving forward. You're watching Morning Joe. We will be right back. As the hour Elon Musk says he will resign as the CEO of Twitter as soon as he finds a replacement. This after Musk asked Twitter in a poll if he should step down. More than 57 percent of the respondents on Twitter said yes, he should. Yesterday, Musk replied to the results saying he will resign once he finds, quote, someone foolish enough to take the job. Still, Musk plans to keep control of the software and servers teams at the social media company, key areas that will allow him to control product decisions and perhaps tweet. Sam Bankman Freed is set to fly to the U.S. where he faces multiple criminal charges

tied to the collapse of his bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Prison officials tell NBC News he signed extradition papers in the Bahamas yesterday and is expected to be returned to the states today. According to The New York Times, his lawyer told reporters that his client had agreed to, including wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering charges. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 115 years in prison if convicted on all counts. parade in Argentina's capital to celebrate the World Cup champions was cut short yesterday as millions of people poured onto thoroughfares, highways and overpasses in a chaotic attempt to catch a glimpse of the national team. So many fans swarmed the city that the players had to abandon the open top bus transporting them and board helicopters for a capital flyover that the government billed as an aerial parade. That is excitement. And

Jonathan Lemire, you have news of a stunning turn of events in MLB free agency news. Yeah, an absolute bombshell this morning. Carlos Correa will no longer be joining the San Francisco Giants. The star shortstop has instead reportedly reached an overnight deal with the New York Mets on a 12-year, $315 million contract. Correa, last week, just last week, had agreed to terms on a historic 13-year, $350 million deal to play in the Bay Area. The Giants were scheduled to announce his signing in a news conference yesterday. However, the team's post-poly announcement over what the Associated Press reported was an undisclosed medical concern.

Apparently not a concern to the New York Mets, who then swooped in and snagged the free agent prize. So, Mike Barnicle, this is huge news. We thought the Giants had, they missed out on Aaron Judge. We thought they had signed the next face of their franchise. Instead, Correa goes to the Mets, who are on a spending spree. And I believe, to my calculations, their payroll approximately $1.2 trillion right now. What do you think about this move? This is a stunning move. And it's going to have to take, I think, preoccupy the attention of Major League Baseball today, because Carlos Correa, we don't know all the details of this, but Carlos Correa underwent a physical. A flag was raised by the Giants

because of the physical, something within the physical. In the interim, he had not yet signed the contract. He had agreed verbally to go with the Giants. In the interim, his agent, super agent Scott Boris, who represented a number of major league stars in this offseason free agency and made over $65 million for his company in representing these major league baseball players. In the interim, Scott Boris went to the Mets and they agreed to sign Carlos Correa as probably their third baseman instead of their shortstop. But the development of this, the way it happened, I would think that Major League Baseball is going to ask a few questions. I would think so, too. The Mets will be fun on the field, Correa playing next to Lindor on the left side of the infield. And I say this not just because our Red Sox are refusing to sign anybody,

but I just think it's fun as I get it from Mets fans. They were so close to the World Series last year. Just me as a baseball fan, I don't think it's great when one team spends that much more than everyone else. It was the Yankees first. Do you know what their payroll is? Tell me what it is. It's over $300 million. Yeah, it's record setting.

It's $350 million. It wasn't good for the game when the Yankees did it. It wasn't great for the game when the Dodgers did it. I don't think it's great for the game when the Mets do it. I know it's within the rules, but it's something to watch. Don't you wish the Red Sox did it? I'd like to spend anybody. They could spend $315 and I would take it. Mika, we're disappointed here. I know Joe is too. Back to you. Yes. And still ahead, what we might learn from a full report on the Capitol attack investigation expected to be released by the January 6th committee today. Plus, we'll be joined by two members of the House Ways and Means Committee that voted yesterday to publicly release Donald Trump's tax returns.

He was never being audited. Morning Joe, we will be right back. Welcome back to Morning Joe. A beautiful sunrise in Washington. Gorgeous look at Reagan National Airport, of all places. And a lot of cars moving, people headed to work. Welcome back to Morning Joe. Joining us now, Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter with Reuters, Steve Steklow. Steve's been looking into billions of dollars worth of computer and other electronic components that have flowed into Russia despite a Western blockade of the items.

So as we have Volodymyr Zelensky with his high stakes, high risk trip to the U.S., you have reporting, Steve, on how Russia is finding ways to get around the sanctions. What are they getting and who's helping them? Great to be with you, Mika. Reuters has been looking at this since, you know, after the invasion in February, when the White House on the day of the invasion itself announced that it was going to cut off Russia from in the West, particularly in the United States, like Intel, Texas Instruments, others, all announced that they were going to stop all shipments to Russia. We've been looking for months at Russian customs records and found that, in fact, despite all these export restrictions, the flow of chips to Russia has continued. And the reason this is important is the Russians are very reliant on Western technology for its weapons systems, like cruise missiles, drones, other systems that are being used in Ukraine right now. So what we found, for example, between April 1st and October 31st, $777 million worth of Western components, computer components, chips, have all flowed into Russia despite the restrictions.

David Ignatius. So, Steve, I just want to ask you what lies ahead. The promise when sanctions were imposed on Russia was that these would be crippling and that the Russian war machine would be exhausted and unable to continue to fight this war, certainly come the end of this year. And that doesn't seem to be happening. Where is this stuff coming from? And are there ways in which the U.S., if it was tougher about enforcement, could make the crippling sanctions actually crippling? Well, what we found was a galaxy of obscure companies in places like Hong Kong, Turkey, elsewhere, that sprang into action after the invasion. I mean, we found companies that, for example, were like registered in April,

and suddenly there was one in Russia that was set up in April, and suddenly it's importing over $100 million worth of chips, mostly from the West. We found a company in Germany that stopped, that had been exporting Western chips into Russia, stopped, set up a company. The same person was running it, sets up a company in Istanbul, and within a few weeks is sending millions of dollars worth of chips into Russia. You know, I've looked at sanctions for years, beginning with Iraq and then with Iran. And there's a whole cottage industry of companies that immediately, you know, exist to get around it because so much money is to be made. And the Russians have had a procurement network in place, including in the United States, for years. So to me, it's not surprising. It's kind of a

whack-a-ball thing that once you sanction one company or one individual, immediately someone else springs up and starts doing it. How you avoid that, I really don't know. Global investigative reporter at Reuters, Steve Steklow, thank you very much for your reporting this morning. And coming up, we're going to speak with National Security Council spokesman, retired Rear Admiral John Kirby, ahead of the visit by President Volodymyr Zelensky. Plus, from the January 6th committee's final report to years of the former president's tax returns, we have a lot of Trump-related headlines to get to. A bad week for Donald Trump straight ahead on Morning Joe.