Morning Joe - Morning Joe 7/25/23

Episode Date: July 25, 2023

Grand jury could vote Tuesday on whether to indict Trump

When I was a federal prosecutor, I would occasionally send out target letters. I would never send out a target letter to somebody that I did not intend to indict. They're not bluffs. They're not games. They're not make-believe. So here's what you ought to expect. If Mr. Trump really did receive a target letter, then he will be charged with federal crimes. If he really received a target letter, that will happen relatively soon. The question this morning is how soon we are back on indictment watch again for Donald Trump. All signs pointing to a second federal indictment for the former president.

We'll go through the possible timeline in just a moment. Also ahead, more partisan politics from the Republican-controlled House as Speaker Kevin McCarthy floats an impeachment inquiry for President Biden. We'll get into that. Plus, a live report from Israel on the fallout from a monumental vote by that country's parliament, limiting a key power of its Supreme Court and sparking massive protests across the country. Good morning. Welcome to Morning Joe. It is Tuesday, July 25th. With us this morning, MSNBC contributor, our good friend Mike Barnicle, former aide to the George W. Bush White House, the State Department's another of our good friends, Elise Jordan, the host of Way Too Early, White House bureau chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire. for it. I saw you needed it, John. So I put it in there. And Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, associate editor of The Washington Post. Boy, another of our dear friends on a summer morning, Eugene Robinson. Good morning to you all. So the grand jury convened by special counsel

Jack Smith will meet today in Washington to continue its work on the probe into Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election. It's possible the jury will vote today on whether to indict the former president. The panel normally meets on Thursdays as well, so it could be that day. Here is what former acting U.S. Solicitor General Neil Katyal had to say last night on MSNBC. And whether it's tomorrow or Thursday, as Andrew Weissman says, or possibly in two weeks, I think all indications are Donald Trump is going to get indicted. Jack Smith sent a target letter to Donald Trump last Sunday. You don't do that, particularly against a former president,

unless you're pretty sure that you've got the goods. Meanwhile, President, the former president continues to fundraise off of his legal trouble in a campaign email last night. The 2024 candidate proclaimed himself an innocent man, as you might expect, adding, quote, Our country could truly use your support right now. Send me some money subtext in another. He compared the United States under President Joe Biden to Stalinist Russia and Maoist China. Nowhere in those emails does it say that you will be donating directly to Trump's 2024 campaign. Why? Because, as The Washington Post reports, more than half of the money Donald Trump raised in the second quarter of this year went toward footing his legal bills, not the campaign

itself. Again, he says he's a billionaire asking his supporters to pay his legal bills. So, Jonathan Lemire, you are in Washington where everyone's waiting for the potential today. Maybe Thursday could be next week. We just don't know when this indictment could come down. Not really a question of if given the target letter, as Neil just pointed out, we saw last week. But when? Yeah, Willie, I'm in Washington all week and the capital city is abuzz. There is an anticipation. This is just a matter of days. As noted, the grand jury meets Tuesdays, Thursdays.

There has been certainly a lot of chatter here in the Beltway that today could be the day the grand jury votes to indict. Media trucks are lined up outside the courthouse where that grand jury has been meeting, where Jack Smith and his team have been moving in and out of for months now. What is a sprawling investigation, one that we've all sort of shorthanded as the January 6 investigation? And to be clear, former President Trump's actions that day, or should we say inaction that day, is a part of this, fueling that riot at the Capitol. There was some violence committed in his name, but it's more than just January 6th. It is the election interference

investigation, a probe into Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. It is a sprawling, massive one that is continuing. We know we're hearing about new people coming before the grand jury, but it does seem that we are now a matter of days before that indictment, a historic second federal indictment of a former president. And this one, Willie, that the nation is watching with bated breath because of the ramifications of the upcoming campaign and certainly on the history books. We've never been here before. And it seems like we're in the final hours of this probe. It really is an extraordinary moment, Mike Barnicle, in the history of the country. Just it already has been with two indictments, one federal, one here in New York City. We have a trial date for the previous indictment down in Florida for the Mar-a-Lago documents case

of May 24th of next year. That's on the docket. And now we may get a date coming up here in the next several weeks for another federal case that the former president could be facing while he's seeking to head back to the White House. You know, Jonathan said we've never been here before. And in a sense, that's obviously true. But in another sense, we have been here before. We've been here before when a former president of the United States was indicted a few months ago, he's been indicted how many times now? Two. Two, and then imminent third.

So not only have we been here before, this in a sense, when you look at it and you think about it, and you think of everything we hear from all the extras we talk to, it's both predictable and yet enormously sad. A former president of the United States. I think we have to look at this as not simply an election process, an election campaign up until November 2024. The stakes are higher for Donald Trump. He is using the campaign platform to essentially fight these indictments and to stay out of legal trouble.

This has become more of a referendum on the future of American democracy. Will voters on either side accept the results of the next election when Donald Trump is telling his supporters that the election is rigged, that he was cheated in 2020? How is that going to get any better in 2024? Will they accept the fact that president former president United States could be about to go to trial? Right. And Gene Robinson, we're going to get into the story in just a moment. But yet another of the people that was sent to the Capitol, that went to the Capitol, that heard the lie that Jonathan Lemire wrote an

entire book about about the election is going to jail for more than four and a half years. We'll have details of that coming up next. But this does get at what Elise touched on, which is will this lie persist? Will if Donald Trump loses the 2024 presidential election, if he makes it that far to the general, will he say he won that one? And will people learn the lesson of that? Or is this now just a piece of the Republican politic, which is that if you lose an election, just say you won and see what happens? Well, I think we can answer that first question. If he makes it all the way, makes it through the primary, becomes the Republican candidate, makes it all the way to the election without being convicted and thrown in jail or having to step out of the race because of his legal troubles or whatever. Obviously, he's going to claim victory no

matter what happens. He can lose in a landslide. He's going to claim that he actually won, that it was rigged. We've heard it all before. The question is whether that has diminishing currency among voters, even when we get to that point. And you have to guess that there will be a core, a hard core of Trump supporters who will believe everything he says and believe he's being persecuted and that, by extension, that they are being persecuted because their leader is being persecuted. But will that hardcore shrink? And I think you have to guess that probably it will, but maybe it won't. We just don't know. We are in uncharted territory. I think you have to you have to guess that probably it will, but maybe it won't. We just don't know. We are in uncharted territory. So more on the lie that got Donald Trump into this trouble.

Former acting deputy attorney general Richard Donahue tells NBC News he has been interviewed by special counsel Jack Smith's office. He added he has not been called to testify before the grand jury investigating the 2020 election and January 6th. The former DOJ official told House lawmakers last year he repeatedly pushed back against baseless claims of a stolen election that were being peddled by Trump and his allies. Here is some of what Donahue testified to before the House January 6th committee about a conversation he had with then President Trump just days before the Capitol insurrection. Let's take a look at another one of your notes. You also noted that Mr. Rosen said to Mr. Trump, quote, DOJ can't and won't snap its fingers and change the outcome of the election. How did the president respond to that, sir? He responded very quickly and said, essentially, that's not what I'm asking you to do.

What I'm just asking you to do is just say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressman. That was June of last year before the January 6th committee. Donahue also said he threatened to resign during an Oval Office meeting in early January of 2021 when Trump came close to installing election denying environmental lawyer Jeffrey Clark as attorney general. Also, special counsel Jack Smith's office also now has thousands of pages of documents from an ally of Rudy Giuliani who failed to find evidence of voter fraud after the 2020 election. An attorney for former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik handed over the information on Sunday. In a post on social media.

Kerik wrote he had been subpoenaed several months ago and his lawyer, Tim Parlatori, recently received waivers from Donald Trump's team to release them. Parlatori, who resigned from Trump's legal team back in April, confirmed turning over the documents, adding he, quote, looks forward to sitting down with them in about two weeks to discuss. Let's bring into the conversation former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama and an MSNBC legal analyst, Joyce Vance. Joyce, good morning. Let's start with indictment watch here. What do you suspect is going on inside the grand jury room? What is going on in the special counsel's office?

How soon might we expect an announcement of what most people believe will be an indictment of the former president? So I think that's obviously the question that we're all fixated on. You know, what's the real timeline here? And unfortunately for us as observers, it's awfully tough to say at this point. On the one hand, sending the target letter, telling the former president if his retelling is truthful, that he had four days to respond and appear in front of the grand jury. Well, that made it look like we would see an indictment even as early as last week, which we know didn't happen. But pushing back against that fast timeline is this notion that the special counsel is still talking with witnesses, still engaging in interviews. So, Willie, I think the answer is that while we could see an indictment any day,

it's possible that there could be a strategy, for instance, to indict Trump alone and to continue to work on the rest of the case. That seems a little bit far fetched to me. This is a case where you want to play everything by the books. You want to treat this indictment like you would any other case. Prepare it against any and all of the defendants you're looking at. We're told that there's a conspiracy charge. That means that Trump would not be a standalone defendant. He would need to have some co-defendants. Looks like DOJ is tying up the last few things that they need in terms of details and that they will

indict at some point in the next couple of weeks, perhaps as early as this week. I think a little bit more likely a couple of weeks out. Joyce, obviously, we have no sense of the complete folder that Jack Smith has put together and his people have put together. But from basically what we've read, what we know from reporting thus far, would you be comfortable in trying to prove intent to deceive the federal government and the people of the United States of America on the fact that he claims that he won the election? Would you be comfortable in going forward and trying to prove intent right now? Based on the publicly known evidence, DOJ special counsel's office will have a strong folder of evidence that will help them establish to a jury that Trump knew he lost the election. If he didn't actually know, it's only because he was willfully blind to that

fact. And there's a legal doctrine, willful blindness, that says you can't just stick your head in the sand and be an ostrich once something becomes obvious. You know, we learned this morning that Rich Donahue, the former deputy attorney general, that he has now sat down with the special counsel's office and his testimony is chilling. He takes notes of these late December calls and then an in-person meeting with Trump where they tell Trump, the acting attorney general, Jeff Rosen says, I'm not going to snap my fingers. DOJ can't change the outcome of the election, the election that you lost. And then the former president says, according to

Donahue's notes, no, no, you don't need to go that far. Just announce that there's an investigation into fraud and I'll take it from there. That exchange alone is chilling evidence in that regard, Mike. So one of the January 6th rioters, a man who carried out one of the most appalling attacks, the most appalling moments of that terrible day, is now going to jail. He beat a police officer with a flagpole while the officer was being dragged down the Capitol steps. The man now will serve more than four years in federal prison. His name is Peter Stager. He was sentenced yesterday. He claims he thought the officer was a member of Antifa that didn't hold up in court. Prosecutors asked he gets six years in prison, citing Steger's, quote, chilling motivation and the brutality of the assault that you're watching here, beating a police officer with an American flag.

But a judge lowered the sentence a bit, citing Steger's horrible upbringing. More than 1,000 people have been charged so far in connection to the January 6th attack. More than 300 have been sentenced to serve time in prison. And Elise will say it again, and Joe would say it if he was here, that there are consequences to this. Donald Trump thought he could send these people out. He could ask them for money. He could call them heroes. He could create a chorus and a choir of January 6th rioters who are now

in jail. But there are an awful lot of them sitting in jail because of what not just Donald Trump, but a lot of people told them was true and the actions they carried out that day because of it. Well, and that's a pretty easy case, cut and dry, right and wrong, beating a policeman with a pole. You're going to end up with some prison time. That's not exactly a case you look at and say, oh, that's political persecution there. Joyce, I want to ask you, what is it going to take when it comes to what the crimes are against Donald Trump for any of those allegations to actually stick? Conspiratorial charges, charges of directing violence, of inciting violence,

it just doesn't play the same way when it comes to the political optics of the courtroom and American public sentiment. That's right, Elise. And I think we'll see that reflected in the charging decisions that Jack Smith will make. He will not stretch the evidence further than it goes when it's presented to a jury.

So I think we'll see a focus on a conspiracy to interfere with the functioning of government, to interfere with the certification of the Electoral College vote, perhaps to interfere with the transfer of power. That's the sort of intimation that we get from what we've learned about this target letter, that it will focus on the conspiracies with the lawyers trying to convince Trump after he's been told you lost the election, after judges, including judges that he put on the bench, have ruled against him in court over and over and over. And the narrative seems to be that he becomes more desperate. He loses in court. He latches on to this utterly inane scheme to create slates of fake electors in seven different states and to use those fake slates of electors to change the outcome of the vote. They are changing the outcome of the vote nationwide.

And when that looks like it's designed to fail, he ultimately becomes focused on not interrupting the riot that's going on in the Capitol, sitting there for a couple of hours while violence is ongoing as people tell him that he can stop it. And he refuses to do that. And why Jack Smith might ask a jury, would the former president refuse to stop the violence? Well, you can infer from that that he intended it to continue to its logical outcome. He still wanted to interfere with governmental processes. At the end of the day, it's that sort of dry sounding crime that prosecutors will take to a jury. But the facts are not dry. We all watch them unfold in front of us. And that's the thing.

There's video of all of it. We will wait together and we'll call you right back as soon as we get any news on this. Former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance. Joyce, thanks so much. Jonathan, going back to the man who attacked the police officer on the Capitol steps, got just over four years in prison. One of the reasons he got prison time was because of his motive. And we should be specific about what he said. He was captured on video that day saying, quote, every single one of those Capitol law enforcement officers, death is the remedy. That is the only remedy they get. That man talking about police officers defending the Capitol against an attack. There's a pattern here, John, that we're seeing. I mean, you can pick up the newspaper almost any place you live. This man was from Arkansas. You can

read about it here in New York or all over the country, where somebody who went to the Capitol based on something they'd heard from Donald Trump, based on something they'd heard on the news that they watch or the websites they read, Dick carried out a crime. And then immediately when they realized, oh, this is a crime and that we're not here on some holy mission, they're going to jail. And he had that moment, apparently. And if you read the court records, he called his wife and said, I've done something terrible. I'm going to turn myself in when I get back home to Arkansas. But the crime is a crime. Doesn't matter if you feel bad about it. Again, a lot of them, they're responsible for

their actions that day, but driven there by the lie you wrote about in your book. Yeah. Death is the remedy. That's going to be that's a hard thing to hear. Yes, that is absolutely right, Willie. And it was a lie that was months and, frankly, years in the making, that Donald Trump, from his candidacy in 2016, started planting the seeds of little significance to some of the most important tenets of our democracy. Nothing was out of bounds for his lies. And he focused in on, of course, this election and conditioned his supporters, encouraged his supporters to not trust their own eyes, to not trust the government, to only trust his conspiracy theories, and then to commit violence in his name, Eugene Robinson. And we've been asking for months now, as we saw these rioters, these protesters start to be tried and convicted and sentenced,

when would the person who sent them there be held accountable? And it now seems like we're on the eve of that happening. It seems like it, and it has to happen. I mean, you can't punish, you know, try and punish all the foot soldiers, all the people who carried out this violence, and not work your way up the chain, and especially not investigate and, if appropriate, indict the person who inspired it all, the person who riled them up and sent them off to the Capitol to disrupt the certification of a free and fair presidential election that that person lost. And that was Donald Trump.

You know, what's really fascinating, that man just sentenced to believe that the only remedy for the Capitol Police officers was death. It will be fascinating years from now when historians look back and I wonder, what was the precondition in American society? What was the sickness that Donald Trump was able to exploit? He didn't start. He couldn't have started all this from scratch. There was something there that was waiting to be triggered by a completely unscrupulous political figure like Donald Trump. And he did it. He continues to do it. He continues to have these adherents. And you just wonder what what was the rot sort of at the at the heart of American society that allowed this to happen.

And the bill comes due. More than a thousand people have been charged with federal crimes around the Capitol attack. More than 600 of them have pled guilty, 600 receiving sentences, hundreds of them now serving jail time because of that lie and because of their actions that day. We're going to come back to that story in just a moment. A major story developing this morning overseas. Israel's parliament passed a measure that limits the power of the country's judiciary system. New York Times describing it as one that will strip Israel's Supreme Court of the power to overturn government actions and appointments it deems unreasonable. Yesterday's vote capped a months-long process that drew thousands of protesters to the streets and sparked intense debate within the Israeli parliament.

The measure passed by a vote of 64 to zero after all of the opposition members walked out of the Knesset. Joining us now live from Tel Aviv, NBC News foreign correspondent Raf Sanchez. So, Raf, what does it look like there today? Well, Willie, Israelis woke up this morning to a divided nation, a nation potentially more divided than at any other point in its 75-year history. Willie, this is what all the major Israeli newspaper front pages look like today. All black. And it says there in the bottom in Hebrew, a dark day for democracy. And that is the feeling among the protesters today. A lot of people very, very worried about the future of this country.

One woman we spoke to yesterday who was protesting outside of parliament had tears in her eyes, and she said she did not know what she was going to tell her children about Israel's future. A lot of concern for Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank, for the rights of women, for the LGBTQ community, and for the secular half of Israel. Just to give you a sense of what they're worried about, just hours after that bill went through, weakening the Supreme Court's ability to be a check on the government, one of Netanyahu's religious allies introduced a bill that would put religious study, studying the Torah, on par with national military service. Now, it's not clear if that bill is actually going to make it into law or not, but that is the kind

of thing that secular Israelis are worried about in terms of where their country is headed. There is, of course, another side to this, Willie. Netanyahu would tell you that this was a necessary reform to curb the power of unelected judges who for too long had been standing in the way of the policy preferences of what does appear to be a growing right wing majority of Israelis in this country. the nation last night on primetime, calling for unity, saying that what he did was restoring democracy, not setting it back. In terms of where we go from here, you saw very extreme protests continuing overnight all over the country, major highways blocked, police using water cannon against demonstrators. Today, the doctors are on strike. It is almost impossible to get non-emergency doctors' appointments today in Israel because the doctors' union is on strike in protest of this bill going through. And, Willie, we are kind of entering uncharted constitutional waters here. The Israeli Bar Association has this morning filed a petition in front of the Supreme Court

asking the judges to strike down this law to weaken the Supreme Court. Now, if the judges do so, we really don't know what comes next. Neither constitutional scholars nor Netanyahu nor the protesters on the streets can tell you what happens after that. One of the other big questions here is what impact this is having on an institution that is supposed to be above politics, and that is the Israeli military. Thousands of Israeli military reservists have said they will stop showing up for duty because of this. And Willie, that is having an especially severe impact on the Air Force, where many of the most experienced pilots are reservists rather than active duty. Well, it's an extraordinary moment in Israeli history. And Rafa, people watching this

may wonder why people are so upset in the streets and why this is such an extraordinary moment in history. And can you explain the system a little bit, which is here we have two chambers of Congress. Here we have a written constitution. You don't really have that in Israel. So the Supreme Court was, in fact, the check on the prime minister, was, in fact, the check on the majority in that country. And with this new legislation, that goes away. Yeah, Willie, that's exactly right. So in terms of the separation of powers, you basically in Israel have the executive and the legislative essentially fused, right? The executive is the government.

The government has a majority in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, which as you said, only has one chamber. So if you have a 61-seat majority in parliament, which Netanyahu does, there is pretty much nothing inside of the legislature that can stop you from moving ahead with laws that you want, which leaves basically only the Supreme Court as a check. Now, the law that went through yesterday means that the Supreme Court can no longer rule government actions unreasonable. Now, Netanyahu would say unreasonable is an overly vague standard, but I'll give you one example of how it's been used. In the last year, the judges said it was unreasonable when Netanyahu tried to appoint a man with multiple convictions for tax fraud to a senior cabinet position.

Going forward, it seems like moves like that by the government will be able to happen because the Supreme Court no longer has that standard of unreasonableness to work on. It is unclear what happens with the rest of Netanyahu's proposed judicial overhaul. One of the other third rail elements is he is proposing to give the government more control over the committee, which actually appoints judges to the Supreme Court. Willie. And V.C.'s Raf Sanchez live from Tel Aviv. Raf, we'll be checking in with you throughout the week. Thanks so much.

We appreciate it. Obviously, at least this is front page news on newspapers across the country this morning. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal all have it on the front page. Kind of an extraordinary moment, really, in Israeli history, isn't that? No, it's huge. And the fact that this was definitely something the Biden administration and many governments that are allied with Israel did not want it to move away from a secular democracy and towards a religious autocracy. And President Biden has been

careful not to link our aid to Israel to their actions. But it does make you wonder if the three point three billion or so that we're giving to Israel this year for four. Exactly. If perhaps that needs to be leveraged on strong support of democracy within the country. And you also wonder, really looking at these pictures, these scenes and how the Israeli government and the Israeli people got to the point where they are this morning. Are we looking at a potential this is us in this country? I mean, the similarities between Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu and the fact that both men seem to think that they are larger than their country, that everything is about them rather than their country is frightening. The White House put out a measured criticism of Israel and of this vote yesterday.

We'll be back to this in just a bit. And still ahead on Morning Joe, Republican Senator Mitt Romney calling on Republican donors to endorse the candidate with the best odds of beating Donald Trump. We'll read from Romney's new op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, explaining how he expects to pull that off. Plus, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy weighs in on the Republican-led investigations into the Biden family's business dealings, raising the possibility of an impeachment inquiry. We'll show you those new remarks.

Also ahead, Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee pressing Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to end Republican Tommy Tuberville's blockade on military promotions. Yes, that's still going on. One of the Democrats, Senator Tammy Duckworth, will be our guest. You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. It's a beautiful live picture on a Tuesday morning of the United States Capitol at 634 a.m. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is raising the possibility of an impeachment inquiry against President Biden. He made the remarks during an interview on Fox News last night while weighing in on the Republican led investigations into the Biden family's business dealings. When President Biden was running for office, he told the American public that he's never talked about business.

He said his family has never received a dollar from China, which we now prove is not true. We've only followed where the information has taken us. But, Hannity, this is rising to the level of impeachment inquiry, which provides Congress the strongest power to get the rest of the knowledge and information needed, because this president has also used something we have not seen since Richard Nixon, used the weaponization of government to benefit his family and deny Congress the ability to have the oversight.

I believe we will follow this all the way to the end. And this is going to rise to an impeachment inquiry the way the Constitution tells us to do this. And we have to get the answers to these questions. The White House spokesman for oversight and investigations, Ian Sams, later responded, writing, quote, instead of focusing on the real issues Americans want us to address, like continuing to lower inflation or create jobs, this is what the White House GOP, excuse me, the House GOP wants to prioritize. Their eagerness to go after the president, regardless of the truth, is seemingly bottomless. Jonathan Lemire, it strikes you listening to Speaker McCarthy there that other than that one phone call, private phone call on January 6th, 2021,

we have not heard that level of outrage, that depth of criticism from Kevin McCarthy about Donald Trump attempting to lead a coup against the United States government around the 2020 election, taking classified information about nuclear secrets and war plans back to Mar-a-Lago. He's held that for President Biden and his son. Yeah, and let's fact check him right off the top. They haven't proven that there was any wrong doing here, despite what he said last night. And the House GOP is kicking up whistleblower after whistleblower, alleging wrongdoing, but have yet to provide any concrete evidence. Did they ever find the fugitive guy, Lemire? Have they found him yet? The guy with the, was it the guy with the one arm? The arms dealer.

Yeah, yeah. No, he's been missing. There's another guy who's, I believe, under indictment, in federal indictment because of his wrongdoings and this matter. And look, they had a couple members of the IRS came up last week and did testify that they felt like this should have been a matter that should have been prosecuted further about Hunter Biden. And then under oath, they also acknowledged that, well, actually, superiors disagree with us quite

a bit. It's actually pretty common for it not to happen. So, Eugene Robinson, people that I've talked to say that the House is hell bent on some sort of impeachment. They think Attorney General Merrick Garland might be more likely candidate than President Biden. But certainly they're not ruling out the president. And I just if that what sort of if they do go there for an impeachment inquiry for President Biden, I just ask you, like, where are we heading now? Are we in a moment where impeachment, which was supposed to be rare and almost sacred, is just being tossed around like another political ploy? Is every president going forward going to face some sort of impeachment inquiry? A short answer. It looks

like yes. I mean, it looks like that this is kind of the default position. And this much of this Republican Party in the House, at least, seems to believe or want to make people think they believe that the impeachments of President Trump were illegal, were totally political. And so they believe they have a constituency that wants to see them strike back in the same way at Joe Biden. And I think Kevin McCarthy is responding to that constituency. And so we may be in that situation that you described. We may be in a situation where impeachment just becomes kind of a phase of a presidency. You know, Elise, there's a comic aspect to watching Kevin McCarthy speak like that.

There's obviously a political aspect, but there's also a tragic aspect to it in the sense that is we watching a democracy collapse in full public view, in plain view with these people like Kevin McCarthy getting on talking about impeaching Joe Biden, rather than don't look over there, don't look at Donald Trump. And if any of them were asked, could you tell us how you feel about Peter Strager? They wouldn't know what I was talking about, or they wouldn't know the origin of that question. Peter Strager, who we just mentioned earlier in the news, sentenced to four years for beating a police officer at the request,

basically there in the capital of Donald J. Trump. They wouldn't know him. They don't care about him. And they don't care about the country, I would say. Well, I think there also would be confusion over what exactly will Biden be impeached over this go around his son's shady business dealings. How is that connected to his presidency? What is that? You can say it's untoward. You can say it really looks terrible.

You can say it reeks of corruption. But if the president is not connected, how do you go forward with an impeachment? And I guess they're alleging that the IRS didn't go hard enough at the president's son. That just doesn't seem to rise to the level when think of how many one percenters get away with so much every year from the IRS. It only furthers the argument we need more agents and we should actually get taxes from people who should be paying taxes. We should remind our viewers, those former IRS agents that testified last week before the Oversight Committee raised their concerns to the Trump Justice Department, who didn't make much of them at all. And as we've said many times in the show, Hunter Biden committed a crime.

Show the evidence, convict him if he's guilty. But they have not proven, as John points out, a connection yet to President Biden himself. Coming up, we'll get an update on the fighting in Ukraine and with the war now in its 17th month. A new book is examining the events that led to Russia's invasion. We'll be joined by the author next on Morning Joe.

The officials are reporting its forces were able to shoot down several drones launched into Kiev overnight by Russia. Those drone attacks come less than a day after Russia accused Ukraine of sending drones into Moscow and promised retaliation. Russia also struck a Ukrainian port in the Danube River near Romania, destroying a grain hanger in the process. Join us now here in the studio, Mikhail Zygar.

He is a Russian journalist who fled the country rather than risk imprisonment as Moscow clamped down on independent media within its borders. He's out with a new book titled War and Punishment, Putin, Zelensky and the Path to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine. Mikhail, it's great to have you with us. Glad you're out safely and here talking to me. So you kind of trace the history of this invasion, which for some people, they might think it goes back to 2014 or pick your date. You say you have to go back really to 1996 to begin this story. Yeah, I go back to, I would say, the three centuries ago.

Well, that too. Yeah, because, you know, this war, Putin is trying to justify this war because of very recent history. And Russia is poisoned with historical myths. And I think that we need, my mission was to debunk all those historical myths created by Russian propaganda. Because most of Russian historians, unfortunately, were propagandists for all those years. And unfortunately, historians in the West sometimes followed that imperialist historical narrative. So we need to start writing some truthful historical narrative, non-imperialist people's history of Russia. So what is the big myth at the center of this invasion? historical narrative, non-imperialist, people's history of Russia.

So what is the big myth at the center of this invasion? Russians and Ukrainians are the same people. Ukrainian language is not the real language, but as Putin believes, it's like wrong Russian. Another ridiculous myth that Putin keeps on repeating is that Ukraine was invented by Lenin. And it's really funny. But he thinks that there was no Ukraine before the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. And there are different myths and they are really deeply rooted in today's political situation. There were a lot of speculations, for example, in Russia, that there is the concept of Ukrainian betrayal

rooted back to the legendary figure in Ukrainian history, Ivan Mazepa. And the continuing story that Ukrainians were betraying Russians for so many years. And Putin believes in that. Vladimir Putin. So three years ago, four years ago, if you had asked someone knowledgeable as you are within Russia about Russian politics, if you had asked them, who does Putin talk to? Who is close to Putin? You might have come up with Lavrov, a couple of other people, who knows. But today,

the question is, how isolated is Vladimir Putin? Who does he talk to? And how has his isolation affected his conduct of the war in Ukraine? That's a very good question. And he has become very isolated since COVID. And probably the closest person to him is the only Russian oligarch, whose name is Yuri Kovalchuk. He's his all-time fan. And they, too, spent together the lockdown of 2022. 2020. Yeah. And it's important that Kovalchuk's father was a well-known Soviet historian,

academician, and he was specializing on the history of Crimea and Sebastopol. So most of Putin's prejudice and historical stereotypes are coming from the father of his closest friend. And yeah, Kovalchuk is probably the person who literally owns the presidential administration. So he is important. Pergozan attempted to make a run on Putin, but nothing really happened to him in the aftermath.

I speculated earlier off camera, is he dead? You said that he seems to probably be alive still, which it's amazing that he still lives. How weakened is Putin by that incident? And is the war at a point, given the offensive, given all the weapons that have come to the Ukrainians in recent months from the allies, are Ukrainians in the best position? Is this their best shot to actually have as much of a win as possible and get to a reasonable space to negotiate? No, it's tricky. Yes, he is weakened. Yes, within the Russian elite, it was exposed that the emperor is naked, that he used to be considered as a guarantor of stability.

And now it's obvious that he cannot control his inner circle. But at the same time, is he losing the war? I think I know that he's pretty much confident about that. He thinks that the time is on his side and he should wait for the American presidential election. That's obviously his strategy. He wants to appeal to American conservatives. Probably you've heard that yesterday he signed the outrageous law that bans any gender changes in Russia. And like he outlawed all transgender people. And that's not the kind of issue that Russian people are worried about. He tries to speak to American conservatives.

And that's obviously the idea that came up for American consumption, not for Russians. And he's expecting Donald Trump to be back in the White House, and according to his, to put his calculations, then next year, all international support for Ukraine should stop because of Donald Trump. Gene Robinson has a question for you, Gene.

Mikhail, last night, apparently Putin bombed a grain warehouse on the Danube, a Ukrainian grain warehouse. He's pulled out of the deal that allowed Ukrainian grain to pass through the Black Sea to reach markets. Is this a deliberate move to try to create a famine, to create a shortage of grain in the world and perhaps in that way destabilize the coalition of countries that are resisting this invasion? Yes, actually, that has been Putin's strategy for many years. He is creating the chaos, and that's his idea. And at the same time, you know, I have some doubts about the word coalition, because what we see in reality, Russian oil and gas are being exported from Russia. And actually, even European countries, Western countries are buying Russian oil and gas via

the third parties, Turkey, Arab countries. So it's still possible. And Russia is not that isolated. So yes, Putin is trying to split the West and to find some partners he can deal with. So he's not happy with the grain deal. And he's trying to create chaos on the grain market as well. So Mikhail, is it your sense as someone who understands Putin so well that he has been stunned over the last year and a half about the resistance put up by Ukraine, about the rallying of the West to the side of Ukraine? In other words,

he thought he was going to roll into Kiev and raise the Russian flag very quickly and have a parade through the streets of the city. Has he been surprised by that? And if so, how has that changed his strategy? You said something that a lot of people believe to be true, which is that he's going to wait until next year's presidential election. If he gets Donald Trump back in, that's a good thing for him, he thinks. So that's now you're talking about another year and a half almost. So how does this end for a man who the only claim of victory he wants is to take that land and make it a part of Russia again? You know, interesting thing about Vladimir Putin is that he's not a strategic player. He doesn't have a strategy and he has never had any kind of strategy.

So he doesn't have a plan B for his Ukrainian invasion. He was really confident that the Ukrainians would greet Russian soldiers with flowers. Once it didn't happen, he doesn't have plan B. He has to wait. He's not a chess player. He's a surfer. He is reacting to anything what's happening.

And he always waits for the circumstances to change. So he always thinks that he's got the time to wait. And he has always been very lucky with that. Because the Western leaders are changing, they're coming and going. And he remains in Kremlin. Probably this is the first time when he might be wrong. Because actually, internally, domestically, the time is not on his side. And it's obvious that Russian elites are shaken by this war.

So probably he's not going to be lucky this time. Vladimir Putin as a surfer. There's an image on the new book. On a bear. Yes, exactly. The book is War and Punishment, Putin's Zelensky and the Path to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine. Russian journalist Mikhail Zagar. Thank you so much. And congratulations on the book. Nice to see you.