Morning Joe - Morning Joe 8/19/22

Episode Date: August 19, 2022

Judge may unseal Trump affidavit with redactions

Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe as you look at the sun just coming up over the United States Capitol on Friday, August 19th. And it is a busy Friday. That decision on whether to release the probable cause affidavit in the Mar-a-Lago search still up in the air this morning after a federal judge gave the government a week to redact the information it does not want made public. And for all of Donald Trump's bluster about releasing that affidavit, his legal team was noticeably silent during yesterday's hearing.

Why is he more willing to fight the case in the court of public opinion than an actual court of law? Plus, the former chief finance executive at the Trump Organization pleads guilty in a tax case that could have him testifying against the company in another trial that is expected to run up against the November elections. And speaking of the midterms, Mitch McConnell downplays now Republican chances of retaking the Senate, blaming the, quote, quality of his party's candidates. We'll have the new polling and reporting that shows McConnell's concerns may be well-founded. Some more polls in these critical Senate races across the country that show why Mitch McConnell might be a little concerned here in August. And word out of most Republican organizations around town, they've already given up on Pennsylvania.

They've already given up on Pennsylvania. They've already given up on Dr. Oz. They're going probably to focus more on Ohio and J.D. Vance, hoping that he has a chance. But we've got polls showing that this area, this this stretch of of of critical swing states in the upper Midwest, all breaking against the Republican candidates. And and, you know, for good reasons. We've got a lot to talk about today. But, Willie, first of all, I couldn't help but notice yesterday, and even Fox News hosts noticed it last night, you once again have Donald Trump and his minions blathering outside of a courthouse about the gross injustice and

what they want done and release the affidavit and this and that and the other. Then they go into the courthouse and they're strangely mute, not a word. So I think that's fascinating. Mitch is starting to realize what he actually has known all along. The candidates are really weak. But also, I just wanted to start off today, Willie, and we'll take it around the table here. We've got David Ignatius and Michael Still and Katie Kay. But but first, Willie, we yesterday I talked about how the Republicans were putting targets on the backs of IRS agents and lying about what supposedly in this this this bill that just became law. And they are all lies. And then that, of course, goes on top of what happened with FBI agents, who the FBI worried about unprecedented threats. And as I was saying that yesterday, I have a good friend who's an election official,

a Republican his whole life. I don't think he's ever voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in his life. Immediately texted me during the show. He goes, hey, what about election officials? We're all getting death threats if we don't buy into conspiracy theories. And sure enough, news out of Texas, three election officials have just said enough. We're tired of the death threats. We didn't sign up for this. We're quitting. overstatement to say that the Republican Party is putting in danger the lives of many great Americans who just want to serve their government. And these lies, especially about the IRS agents,

so reckless and irresponsible, well, just like the FBI agents. And I know Mitch McConnell understands that's part of the problem, too. He's got one of the most senior members in the United States Senate saying that the IRS is coming to homes in Iowa with AR-15s to kill middle class Americans. It's this is the this is, you know, it's like 11, 1130 and and Oklahoma City is it is at 12 o'clock. These people are are leading leading us to a very dangerous, dark place where federal employees and state employees and election employees are going to get killed if they don't stop with their rhetoric. Yeah, Joe, it's an unforgivable lie that people are telling it. No, is a lie because it's so easily disproven and has been. Obviously, there are 87000 new IRS agents.

There aren't 87000 new IRS agents, by the way. That's a whole thing we're going to get into later. That was a projection from the Treasury Department last year on something else. But they're certainly not the ones who are being hired. Certainly are not carrying AR-15s and kicking in the doors of small business owners and making them pay their taxes or worse, if you listen to some of these people. And you're right. They're laying the groundwork. It may get them ratings. It may win them a few votes. It may keep them in power in their district. But they're laying the groundwork. It may get them ratings. It may win them a few votes. It may keep them in power in their district. But they're setting the table for something terrible, for violence in this country. And they don't care. And they don't care. And when this day comes, and God forbid, I hope it doesn't, blood will be on their hands. There's just no question.

I know this all sounds melodramatic until you have the head of the FBI saying we're facing unprecedented threats. And people that I know, people that I've known my entire life are texting me and talking about replacing the U.S. government, talking about civil war. And you go, what's wrong with you? And they say the IRS agents are coming with AR-15s and they're coming to our doors and they're going to kill us. Or they're saying the FBI is coming to raid our house and take our guns away from us. These are the lies that have been spread, not by, this is what's so disturbing, not by Chuck Grassley. By Kevin McCarthy. By top news hosts at Fox News. This is not InfoWars.

This is mainstream pro-Trump rhetoric. And they are deliberately trying to get Americans to a position of where they'll do harm to IRS agents. Can you imagine? Can you imagine? I just want to say, I just, I don't, do I have the quote here? I think I saved the quote in my iPad. Talk Grassley talking about the IRS having a strike force quote that goes in with AR-15s already loaded, ready to shoot some small business people. A top Fox News host saying that the IRS is coming to, quote, hunt down and kill middle class taxpayers. IRS coming to hunt down and kill middle class taxpayers. I want to get

to the affidavit. I want to get to the affidavit that we are talking about people who are deliberately trying to gen up a civil war and their followers are actually going along with it. And I know this because they're my family members and they're lifelong Republicans and they're people who used to be Reagan conservatives talking about civil war and a guy that you and I both have known for a long time. I'm not saying his name, telling me very, very smugly a couple of days ago. Well, you know, the U.S. government's not sacrosanct. The U.S. government can be replaced. It's incredible that we've gotten to this point. One of our two major parties is now an angry populist anti-government party.

Its members are aroused by the idea that the government is the enemy. They talk about FBI officers who serve in the line of fire as government gangsters. The Gestapo. The corrupt cops. These are the people who for generations, since I can remember the FBI, were defended primarily by Republicans. It was liberals who criticized the FBI. Now we have a party that that wants to take apart this administrative apparatus of our of our country. And it is scary because this this group, this this populist movement that's taken over the Republican Party seems to believe in physical intimidation. If we frighten you, we'll back you up. They've learned that through through their actions over the last

few years. The only hope you and I have talked about this so often on this show lies with sensible Republicans, people like the ones that we've seen in the January 6 hearings. The Republicans who stood up, former Attorney General Bill Barr, former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, whole list of other people who at considerable personal risk stood up and said what Trump is doing was not right. I couldn't I couldn't abide it. I won't abide it. The Republican state election officials around the country, the people in Georgia who were who were running this investigation, who said we won't do it, who stood up to the intimidators. If those people begin to buckle, then we're really in trouble. And that's that's our I think, Joe, our last best. Well, people like that when you start talking about violence and intimidation, that's fascism. And what I want to know is what I want to know is, Michael Steele, what would it cost?

Pat Toomey, what would it cost? Rob Portman? What would it cost? Mitt Romney to hold a press conference and to tamp down this rhetoric and to call out the rhetoric that's calling our law enforcement officers to Gestapo and spreading lies about the IRS that has now reached the mainstream of the Republican Party, that IRS agents are coming with AR-15s to households in middle America to shoot business owners. Nothing would stop them. Why aren't they doing it? Because they don't want the backlash. They don't want the noise inside the Republican caucus from from hotheads who will remind them, look, look, do they want Oklahoma City?

They don't believe Oklahoma City will happen. They've already had it. They've already had the possibility of it in Ohio. Oh, I know. I know. But that's that's the problem. They already had it on January. Look at the arc. Look at the arc, Joe. I mean, it's not just now. What about in the past? I mean, the problem is just now. What about in the past? I mean, the problem is this has been a narrative that's been a part of the Republican conversation on these issues since since Trump. They don't want to put themselves at risk, even though even while they're leaving office, even while they are stepping down from the job, they cannot in this moment go to a bank of microphones and say this is wrong. It is wrong for a Fox News host to say that the IRS is coming to, quote, hunt down and kill middle class taxpayers. Right. They can't say that, Caddy.

They can't. Too risky. When one of their colleagues talk about a strike force going in where they are, 15 is already loaded, ready to shoot some small business person in Iowa. They can't do a press conference and say that's reckless rhetoric. If we have issues with the IRS, we will take it up in committee. That's what we used to do. If we thought the FBI overstepped or didn't go far enough, we would have them go before the relevant committees and have hearings. And by the way, as Willie brought up yesterday, the IRS had gone since 1919. The IRS had guns when Donald Trump was president. They never said one damn thing.

I mean, you had Mike Pence come out in New Hampshire saying the attacks on the FBI agents have to stop. He did actually go as far as to say the MAGA crowd, he didn't use the term MAGA crowd, but he was speaking clearly to the MAGA crowd who've got riled up since the raid on the search of Mar-a-Lago. And he did come out. But you need a lot more senior Republicans to come out, if only to defend the agents and the IRS agents and the election workers who are now feeling under threat. I spent a day recently with an election worker, conservative woman in Georgia, who had had to move her vehicle from its parking place in the parking lot in front of her window because the FBI were warning her that she could be hit by a bomb

and the vehicle would stop the blast of the bomb from breaking her window and hurting her inside. Her husband was so frightened by the threat she was getting that he accompanied her to work on election days. That's what it's got to. She has worked there for 20 years, a God-fearing conservative Georgian woman. And she says one in five of her staff are just quitting. It's too scary for them to be a civil servant who monitors elections. I mean, how innocuous a job can that be? It's a low key job that anybody should feel safe doing. And volunteers at Willie volunteers, like, for instance, the two in Georgia whose lives were ruined when Rudy Giuliani and other people, people that I know, spread a lie around the Internet about them taking out suitcases of ballots.

Like it's it this is isn't even just civil service workers. These are volunteers, the type of people who I used to go shake hands on every election day and say, I know you don't have to be here. This is really important for American democracy. Thank you. Those people are now afraid and being warned of car bombs. Yeah, you're talking about Ruby Freeman and Shea Moss, who testified before the January 6th Select Committee. Election workers, volunteers in the state of Georgia who are doing exactly what you just described, trying to help. And Shea Moss testified that her grandmother, her elderly grandmother, got a knock on her door and two Trump supporters burst into the house saying they were there to

make a citizen's arrest of her daughter and her granddaughter because of what they'd heard about the suitcase, which, of course, turned out not to be true. That's what's going on. You could add school boards into that. It's happening at all these levels of people who are just trying to volunteer and help out locally. Let's bring into the conversation attorney and contributing columnist for The Washington Post, George Conway, and the host of Way Too Early, our good friend Jonathan Lemire. So, George, let's you get in on this conversation about the IRS. And as Joe said, it's not just these dark corners of the Internet anymore. This is the leadership of the Republican Party, Kevin McCarthy, Chuck Grassley, for God's sake, saying IRS agents with

AR-15s are going to kick in people's doors. Is there any shame left at all? No. I mean, we're clearly in the continuing stages of a downward spiral where the rhetoric keeps getting worse and worse. And in order to feed the beast that they've created, they double down on the rhetoric. And the problem is it's sort of like a practical joke that got out of hand. They're all taking it very, very seriously now. I mean, we used to use, you know, people are used to using fight rhetoric in politics. We use it all the time. But, you know, it's become more and more nefarious and more and more specific as time goes on to the point of just, you know, factual lies about how the government goes about its business. And when you start undermining the people who actually enforce the laws and the

people who actually help us decide who has gotten more votes, and you have people who are enforcing the law being threatened, you know, this is how democracies and republics fall. And we're seeing here, Joe, the continued evolution of what Donald Trump and his impact on the Republican Party. We know he has not been shy to promoting the use of violence, promoting the use of conspiracy theories. His whole political career is based on the conspiracy theory of birtherism. That's how it got started. And of course, we saw it only accelerate during his time in office, culminating in the big lie, which fueled the violence on January 6th. But he's always had a nod and a wink towards violence as being part of the acceptable political discourse. We remember him calling to

the Proud Boys from the debate stage. We know that he thought that it would be, quote, wild what would happen on January 6th. And this has only continued since he left office. It's being amplified by his fellow Republicans and also the conservative media, not the fringes of the media. The most popular primetime hosts on cable, right-leaning cable networks, are saying the same things. That's who's hearing it day after day. That's what's inspiring potential violence against FBI agents. We saw what happened in Cincinnati and connecting it to what we saw at the Mar-a-Lago search a week ago. That's part of the Trump plan here. They want that affidavit fully unsealed in part so they can get to the bottom of what witnesses are cooperating

against them, perhaps, but also to identify FBI agents who are involved to put their lives potentially in danger, too, where they can use the threat of violence and intimidation to achieve their political means. So those of us who who grew up with Ronald Reagan as one of our political heroes, we and Bill Buckley, we conservatives, we all remember a moment and we read about the moment where both of them separated themselves from the John Birch Society. They realized that unless they separated themselves from the extreme elements of the conservative movement at the time, that they could never reach the mainstream. Buckley did it and Reagan did it. And when they did it, well, Ronald Reagan began the conservative revolution and counter counterrevolution in 1966, the Reagan revolution. If they hadn't have done it, then Pat Brown would have beaten him in 1966 in California and

the world would have been completely different. That's what I don't understand about this, Michael Steele. I don't understand. Like Mitch McConnell, we're going to play these very illuminating thoughts by Mitch. And he's saying the truth out loud. Hey, bad. You know, we may not take the Senate back over. We should, but we may not because the candidates suck. He didn't say it that way. But the candidates that Donald Trump's put up there suck. And now he's got his most senior members going around saying things that could get government workers killed. And the people that keep apologizing for the terrorists on January the 6th, people he thinks are terrorists.

I mean, his speech on January the 6th and his actions on January 6th, very notable. But it's having an impact. And this is what I don't understand. I'll say it again. Trump lost the White House. He lost the House, went out of his way, did yeoman's work to lose the Senate for Republicans. First guy since Herbert Hoover to lose all three in one four year term. And it's happening again. Look at this poll from Arizona. I mean, let's just face it. I mean, Mark Kelly has underperformed politically in many ways. He underperformed in the 2020 election. He didn't raise as much money as people originally thought. He was lagging behind in the

polls six months ago. Now look at this in Arizona. It's not close. We can see the same thing in Wisconsin. We saw a Ron Johnson poll where Ron Johnson was ahead before. Now in this Fox News poll that came out yesterday, he's down four points. In the Marquette poll, which is sort of the gold standard for that state. He's down by even more points. And in Pennsylvania, you know, Dave McCormick, Dave McCormick would be like walking through walking through the Hart Senate office building going, I wonder what office I should pick up right now. A Republican that was running against Dr. Oz. McCormick would be, you know, he seriously would already be picking out his office. And Democrats would have given up on Pennsylvania to get Dr. Oz.

And so now Republicans literally said yesterday, basically said the word, we're giving up on Pennsylvania. That's right. We're going to put it all in Ohio. Oz, I guess crudité thing was the end of it. I don't know. He choked on his crudité. He choked on his crudité. Never speak French in an American election. John Kerry could have told you. You remember that Monty Python saying

philosophy, is that a sport? That's what I said about crudité. Crudité, is that a sport? That's what I said about Crudite. Is that a sport? So all of this has an impact. And then you add the hate speech on top of that. You add the rhetoric where Republicans, senior Republicans are saying they're going to have a strike force that goes in with AR-15s already loaded, ready to shoot small business people in Iowa. G.D. it is all I'll say. This has an impact. And if you're a Republican, you should be as outraged as me. Even if you are a cold hearted political beast, you should be as angry as me because this is going to beat Mitch McConnell and the Republican Party.

So why aren't they speaking out like Reagan did, like like Buckley did against the extremists in their midst that are going to have them lose yet another election? Because they are not Reagan. They're cowards. They're cowards. They're not Reagan. They're cowards. They're cowards. They're not Reagan. They're scared. They're intimidated. They have been scared.

They've been intimidated. They've been bullied. When you can stand on a debate stage with Donald Trump, who at that point in time in 2016 is at 5%, 6%, 7% approval, and he calls out your wife. He calls out your daddy. He calls out your mama. And you say nothing. You've already seen the seedbed laid for how this is going to play out. There is not one among them who wear pants who will stand up to him. That's the Liz Cheney problem Republicans have because she did. She showed herself to be better, stronger, more resilient and more resistant to the Trump infection than the men who are in leadership. So much so that they pushed her out of leadership. So we sit here and we go,

well, why are they doing this? Look at what they've done. Right. I mean, I'm not. It doesn't surprise me. You understand that they're not saying anything about this is a whole new level, though. They are they are leading us straight into another Oklahoma City. Of course. And they have and they will do this when it happens about civil war. And they will do this when it happens. And they will blame Joe Biden. They will blame Hunter Biden and they will blame anybody else and everybody else but themselves, which is why you, me and other Republicans and former Republicans have to make it very clear. This is on your hands. This is what you are creating because you're not taking advantage of this moment in that John Birch moment that you refer to to stand up and say and do something about it.

And what's incredible is 2022 should just be a walk in the park for Republicans. This should be the easy. This should look like the year I got in in 1994. I mean, this should this would have been so easy. But it's not. On every front, they are making it difficult for themselves, whether it's on social issues like abortion, whether it's on the candidates they are choosing, whether it's on the violent rhetoric. I mean, you know, just ask the Democrats how well defund X goes. Doesn't go so well with suburban voters, right? That's why Democrats got hammered. Defund the FBI.

Defund the FBI. One of the worst Republican slogans of our time. so well with suburban voters, right? That's why Democrats got hammered. Defund the FBI. Defund the FBI. I'm just talking to a Democrat. By the way, who investigates Islamic terrorism in America? In the suburbs? The FBI.

Who investigates and chases down terror threats across America while you're sleeping in the suburbs of Atlanta. The FBI who chases down people that run human trafficking rings and want to snatch your children out of malls in the suburbs of Atlanta and Charlotte and Philadelphia. The FBI. And you want to defund the FBI. You want to turn these agencies, people that keep America safe every day from the greatest threats, from the drug cartels. You want to defund them? And then they say they want to break them up. I said, what are you going to break the FBI up into? What are you going to? So to the point of your friend, I think it's important to note, he said U.S. government can be replaced. He or she said that. Yeah. They realize, of course, that our founders made it

very clear that we the people are the government. Right. It's not an institution. It's not a building. That's what sets us apart from every other Republican democracy. Elections every two years. He's saying the people can be replaced. He doesn't like the fact. And we're going to go to break here because I could go all day.

And I just may. But they used to always say, oh, it's Ted Kennedy and his radical schemes. He's a murderer and he's coming after you next. And then it was who is the next boogeyman? They they would go from what it's Jesse Jackson. Jesse Jackson wants to blah, blah, blah. And then, you know, in recent years, it's Nancy Pelosi, San Francisco liberal.

She's a radical. And then it was AOC, a backbencher. It's AOC. She's running the government. And then it's Kamala Harris. She's coming after you. It's Bernie Sanders. He's a liberal.

They now are willing to throw away the greatest experiment in the history of humankind. As they are. Over a moderate, over a moderate from Delaware, whose biggest knock against him, but this isn't his own party party was he was too close to credit card companies. They have defined radicalism down so much that it is just preposterous. Willie, Willie, I'm James Brown. I'm going to fall on the floor. I need somebody to put a rope around me and get me up to Godfather. It's OK, because I just can't stop myself. The good part about the the good part about the cape, though, Joe, is he always comes back when you think he's done. You put the cape on, he throws it off and does another song.

So we'll look forward to that. I want to read a quote from Congressman Dan Crenshaw from Texas, Republican from Texas. He says this. I'm impressed Democrats finally got us to say defund the FBI. That just makes us look unserious when we start talking like that. Obviously, I don't know that it was the Democrats that made him do it. But the point is, Republicans are now saying defund the FBI. To your point, I would add in here, Joe, just this week, the FBI rescued 200 people from a sex trafficking ring, including 84 children. So and these are not imaginary people being sex trapped in a pizza shop in Washington, like QAnon and conspiracy theorists say.

These were actual human beings who were rescued by the FBI. The agency, some Republicans anyway, now say they want to defund. Well, and again, here's the thing. Trump and I've always said this, he boils it down. He's boiled it down to his 40% base, now 35% of the country. There are a hell of a lot of Republicans. There are a hell of a lot of independents who understand that. And when they start talking about defunding the FBI, defunding people who go after child traffickers, defunding people who go

after drug cartels, defunding people who want to blow up, have the next 9-11. You get swing voters who understand that. And it doesn't end up costing Democrats. It ends up costing Republicans. Republicans, please, for the sake of this country and for the sake of your party. Get these people in line. Save lives now while you can. When we come back, we're going to be talking about the judge that gave a gave a surprising decision in the Mar-a-Lago search case. We'll talk about it with people much smarter than me when we return. New Orleans! New Orleans! Detroit City! Detroit City!

Dallas! Dallas! Pittsburgh, VA! Pittsburgh, VA! New York City! New York City! Kansas City! Kansas City! Atlanta! Atlanta! Chicago, and LA. New York City, Kansas City, New York City, Kansas City, Atlanta, Atlanta, Chicago, and LA. Beautiful live picture of the White House on a summer Friday at 634 in the morning. The federal judge deciding whether to unseal the affidavit in the unprecedented search of Mar-a-Lago appeared to stake out the middle ground yesterday, saying he is inclined to unseal that affidavit. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart gave the Justice Department until next Thursday to submit redactions. In a written ruling,

the judge said, quote, the government has not met its burden of showing that the entire affidavit should remain sealed. The judge said he would review the proposed redactions and then decide if he agrees with them. He did not give a timeline beyond next Thursday, saying, quote, this is going to be a considered careful process. The government argued against unsealing the affidavit, claiming it would jeopardize its investigation and because it contains, quote, substantial grand jury information with national security overtones. The Justice Department also indicated for the first time yesterday that more than one person inside Trump's orbit could be working with the government, stating,

quote, the court is aware of what several witnesses said. Only certain people would have that knowledge. Trump again yesterday called for the full affidavit to be released without redactions, but his legal team did not file anything in the case or even participate in the hearing. One of his attorneys, Christina Bob, was in court but said she was just there to watch. She was pressed about that last night on Fox News. I'm wondering, are you not concerned that because you didn't join any of these motions for, again, the full release of this affidavit, that you're then waiving possible objections to the way redactions are being done by the Justice Department later on? Because you didn't speak in court today, nor did you join any of these motions. They're going to redact all this stuff.

And I'm not sure what grounds you're going to have at this point, having waived your right to file those motions. Well, we would maintain that we haven't waived our right and that that still is maintained. You know, we need to wait and see. I can't be certain at this point because we haven't seen the affidavit. And we certainly haven't seen the redactions and how it's going to play out. But, you know, we'll be making that decision as it comes out. We, you know, we got to see it. We haven't seen it. It has been under seal. So I don't know. We can't say. So, Joe, Donald Trump's attorney is literally silent in court yesterday. What is that? Literally. What is that literally what is that what is that

you know what that is you know poor laura ingram it's like a t-ball coach and says okay you get the bat and what you do is you don't go what you you swing through like that and you want like it's every night laura's having going okay so know, if you don't object to that, you may waive your right to the objections for the. And what was it the other day that she was I forget what she was saying. But every night this lawyer comes on and it's just it's it's it's crazy. I mean, oh, oh, yeah. And then they're talking about leaking the names. But, George, maybe there is some sanity in this madness.

I'm going to talk to David Ignatius in a second about this, but he's been doing reporting. And and chances are good that while they would like to know the names of now to possibly two people inside calling, you know, the call coming in from inside the house. Maybe there are two people now inside of Moralaga or inside of Trump World informing on him. David Ignatius is done reporting this week and has been looking and thinking contents probably really bad. And it's something that that Trump people don't read. Donald Trump will do what Rudy does outside of courtrooms and howl and make a scene. But go inside that courtroom and stay silent because absolutely what Republicans in Washington, D.C. know.

And I had friends tell me a couple of days ago, it's one of the reasons this IRS conspiracies theory started is when they figured out how bad this is going to be for Trump. Yeah, they're they're trying to change the subject. They're they're trying to have it three ways. They're being three mendaciously three faced about it. First of all, they themselves would like to see the affidavit because, you know, Tony Soprano wants to know if Pussy Bum Pancero is the rat and they want to they want to see who's who's thinking on them. That's one. Two is they don't want us to see the affidavit because it's bad. OK, it's a long

affidavit and it's going to have a lot of information about a lot of people saying a lot of bad things about the bad things that the president of the former president of the United States did and how he squirreled away these documents and refused to give them back when he was repeatedly told he had to give them back and was subpoenaed to get to return them. And then third, they want an issue, a BS issue, so they can send out their fundraising grift emails to raise money and say, oh, they're hiding the they're hiding the affidavit from us. So those are the three things that are going on. And so actually, I I there's there is a method to this to this madness. It's all very dishonest and disgraceful. But that's what that's par for the

course. David Ignatius, dishonest and disgraceful. Not the first time those words have been used to describe Trump world and their handling of things like this. As Joe just hinted, you've been doing some reporting around the issue. Give us what you've learned and what is the current state of the investigation? So, Jonathan, simply put, the government's affidavit is, by its own description, so detailed, so full of the evidence that they've got that they're pursuing, that they're arguing as strenuous as they can, none of this can be disclosed. This is a roadmap to our future investigation. The fact that it's being led by the head of counterintelligence prosecutions at the Justice Department should tell us something.

This is the most serious kind of prosecution. One of the statutes that was invoked before the judge to get the search warrant was the Espionage Act. We don't know what that means. What we do know is that this is at a level of seriousness beyond anything that I've watched in terms of Trump investigations. You know, where is this going? There'll be a battle next week over whether any of this affidavit can be shown to the public that the judge, Judge Reinhart, says he thinks he can come up with a version. If you read the justifier pleadings, they say there is nothing beyond,

when you redact all the crucial information, there's nothing left here. It's so rich with detail that might compromise their investigation. The thing that's become clearest to me in my reporting is that this is about classified material that Trump took to Mar-a-Lago that is beyond any of the things that have been stated, asserted about Russiagate. This is about secrets that are so sensitive that their disclosure in government parlance could cause grave harm to the United States. And there's reason to believe that the Trump team simply wasn't honest about what they had. So the next chapter of this, however much that Trump, you know, bashed the IRS people are excited about it, I don't think is going to have, I think it's going

to turn off more people than it excites. It's going to be more shock. Yeah. I mean, in order to have an impact, certainly in Trump world, but even with people who may have voted for Trump are now a little bit fed up with him. The findings that the FBI took out of Mar-a-Lago, I think, would have to be enormous, because what you're hearing from people who support Donald Trump at the moment is January 6th, Blair didn't even really listen to it. All of this is just one more investigation. And I think it gets kind of lost in a jumble of investigations that they don't really care about because that is all of the deep state trying to get their guy. It seems to me politically in November, Michael,

the stuff that is almost more important is what Joe was talking about. It's this ginning up of violence against FBI agents. It's the extremism, perhaps, of Roe v. Wade. It's that that is moving people politically because they're not really tuning in to the nitty gritty. The January 6th hearings have been masterful as a class in narrative building, but I'm not sure how much they're tuning into that or into the details of investigations and the Mar-a-Lago stuff. If it's not super explosive what the FBI has found, it will just be seen as government overreach in attacking their guy. I'll agree with some of that up to a point. I will push back a little bit on how the American people are digesting this. I think people have

paid a lot more attention to this than we may realize in the end. I think it's reflective in where we're seeing to Joe's point about the importance of the Senate, the nervousness of Mitch McConnell. Their internal numbers are showing an enormous weakness in races that they should be winning, not just in the Senate, but in the House as well. The House was, oh, yeah, we got a red wave coming. It's now it's like, well, you know, if we get a good sprinkler system that can just shoot some targeted areas, we'll win. So I'm not sure that the American people, I think I'm more sure the American people have paid more attention to a lot of this.

The other thing that's very interesting, and it goes to what David touches on, and certainly what George has laid out, is how does suburbia take all this in at the end? And this is not a good narrative for a lot of suburban voters out there, particularly the attacks on the irs the attacks on the fbi they're sick and tired of people being attacked right as as willie pointed out you know you're we're reporting stories of the fbi saving women and children and these and these folks down in dc want to defund the fbi so all these narratives now interwoven i think begin to dynamically change how voters are looking at this November, which is why the generic ballot is working against Republicans, which is why the Senate seats that they were so confident about are slipping away. And now the House looks a little bit less strong in its in its potential takeover. So I think there's a lot there. So, David, how do you see these pieces fitting at the end of the day as we get into September?

Because I think we're just going to get a bunch of redacted pages. It's going to be a lot of black. So I'd be surprised if this if this case plays out fully before the midterm elections. I think Merrick Garland has been husbanding his resources very carefully. So I wouldn't expect a quick resolution. Garland has said from the beginning that he's going to build this carefully with investigations in every state in the country. Every FBI office in the country has been working on the broad issue of insurrection. On these documents, they have been trying to do this politely. You know, we can do this easily or we can do this the hard way.

And so they've been trying to do it easily since January and they were unsuccessful. And so they finally came to this search warrant and carting out the 11 sets of classified documents. Prosecution, as I said, being run by the head of counterintelligence. The quiet on the Trump side about this investigation tells you something, that they're that they're worried. They don't they don't really know what it is either. But I think the one thing we learned about Merrick Garland is that he's very, very careful. He will not shoot this gun until he's ready. And it's, you know, until he really has something.

Yeah. And, you know, really, we're talking about the political environment, how the Republicans 2022 should be an incredible year for the Republicans. But they've had problems. We've talked about a lot of different things, a radical talk, the hate speech, the the summoning of people to commit acts of violence by saying the government's coming to get them. I just I just want to go back, though, to an issue that Katie brought up. And and that was the extremism on a lot of these abortion stories that are coming out from different states, from Ohio to Florida, a lot of swing states. consider themselves to be pro-life their entire lives, being shocked by the radicalism of these cases that we're hearing. Ten-year-old girls that are chased from the state of Ohio who have been raped and have to go to another state because they know Ohio will have a forced birth. Story out of Florida where I just don't even get into the details.

It's just it is shocking, again, even to pro-life people. And I just want to go back to a focus group. We need to do more focus groups because we remember back 2016 to the Halperin Heilman focus group where that one working class woman said of Donald Trump, he's one of us. And that was like a shock. I go back to the focus group we had in Georgia that Elise Jordan had of the Trumpers, big Trump supporters, and they were following him down every path of every conspiracy theory, especially that guy, I think from the suburbs of Atlanta. And he said, what do you think about Roe v. Wade? Goes, none of my business. I'm a man.

Why does a man have any say on what a woman does with her body? And this guy suddenly goes from being, you know, far right Trumper to where a hell of a lot of independents are, which is the state shouldn't force people to do what they're forcing young girls to do after they're raped. Or, my God, you know, you have a candidate running for governor who's the Republican nominee in Michigan saying a 14 year old girl being raped by her uncle is a perfect example of why we need to force her to have a forced birth of the rapist's baby. This is having a massive impact on a lot of people. Yeah, there's no question. I mean, even if you're pro-life and purely believe that, and so many people in our country do, it is extreme to force a 16-year-old to have a baby in the state of Florida because the stated reason is she's not mature enough to make the decision to have an abortion, but she's mature enough to have and raise a child.

You just have to marinate in that for just a moment. And Katty K, look at what happened in Kansas, a red state where people came out, including Republicans, by the way, and said, no, we're not going to strike this out of our Constitution that there's a right to an abortion. We may believe there shouldn't be abortion and that that's our right to believe that. But we don't think that should come down from the state in that way. So I guess the question is, are Republicans and the more extreme ones who are talking about things like Joe just laid out in question is, are Republicans and the more extreme ones who are talking about things like Joe just laid out in those cases, are they overplaying their hand here? They got the grass ring. Roe versus Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court.

But some of these things we're talking about, some of these cases are just objectively extreme, no matter what your belief is on abortion. Yeah, I mean, you know, one in four American women have had an abortion, and that means that quite a lot of men know women that have had one. And there's probably more sympathy for people that have had them and an understanding of why women have abortions and the very difficult circumstances that lead to abortions than one might expect around the country. And then you've got on top of that cases of women who are going through miscarriages who need the DNC procedure to save their lives or to save their health because they're going through terrible medical complications around a miscarriage. And the doctor has to say to them, I'm sorry, I'm not sure I can do that because in this state this procedure is banned. So the unintended, you know, perhaps the Supreme Court didn't think this through.

But the consequences of what has happened because of that ruling have sent shockwaves around the country, not just amongst women, but amongst men. And as we saw in Kansas, where you had counties that had voted solidly for Donald Trump had actually voted to keep a constitutional right to the abortion in Kansas. So it is having an impact. Women particularly feel that come November, it's going to have an impact in midterm elections, again, in those kind of suburban areas of the country. But it's not just that issue. It is this sense of extremism writ large. I mean, you put that we're in this kind of perfect storm moment

where it looks like you have a part of the Republican Party and some of the organs of government in the U.S. that are out of step with the mainstream of America, whether it comes to guns, whether it comes to abortion and now whether it comes to violence against the operation of the state, the FBI, the people that are meant to keep Americans safe. It all just looks too out of step where with what polls tell us where the most Americans are. That's a that's a problem for the party. It is.

Attacks against members of the American government and using that to fundraise. So, George Conaway, I want to talk to you about what happened in New York, Ellen Weisberg, but before I do that, I just can't help but look at a parallel on Roe v. Wade. As Katty said, the brass ring that Republicans have been chasing since 1973, the conservatives have been chasing since 1973. It reminds me of the end of the Cold War.

We Republicans, Reagan, Bush, won the Cold War. Christmas Day, 1991. War is over, baby. We were right all along. The leftists were wrong. We're going to be in the White House for, oh, wait, Bill Clinton. And we lose. It's like the very thing that shaped, at least my family went from being Democratic to Republican.

We were called warriors. All right? And then we win the Cold cold war and everybody's sort of and suddenly a guy like bill clinton bill clinton can be no we can't he can't control the nuclear because the soviets and then oh wait you don't have that argument anymore bill clinton wins a year after the soviet union like collapses And I'm just looking at Roe. The dog caught the car. That's a bad thing for the dog,

because the dog was getting treats thrown at it while he was still chasing the car. The dog caught the car, and suddenly everybody's looking at it and realizing how bad that is for American society. Well, absolutely right, because the dog dog doesn't know what to do with the car. I mean, polls have always showed that if people if you codified what people actually believe should happen with abortion, when should when it should be allowed, they were much more conservative, if you will,

or pro-life than what Roe versus Wade constitutionally mandated. And that was the source of a lot of the political opposition. The court went too far too quickly. Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that. The problem is the same difficulty works the other way. When the Supreme Court in one fell swoop overrules 50 years of a constitutional right that has been exercised by, as Cady pointed out, a quarter of American women. I mean, that's a shock to the system. And the other way, and there's going to be the pendulum is going to switch switch back. I mean, somewhere in the middle is, you know, between what Roe mandated and these absurd, you know, attempts to ban ban all abortion, regardless of circumstance, is what people would if they had to work it out and think about these things, which they don't really like to do because it's very hard and very unpleasant. That's where they would come out. And that's, you know, at least the one thing that's positive about what's coming, about what's happening now, is that that process is occurring. People are actually thinking it through, including Republicans, and they don't want, you know, they

want a reasonable, you know, they want reasonable leeway for women to get, you know, the help they need when they have medical problems or if they have an unwanted pregnancy. If you have the 10 year old, I mean, that's it's common sense and people are looking for that solution. Right. And again, you look what happened in Ohio with a 10 year old girl. You look what a Republican nominee with a 10 year old girl. You look what a Republican nominee for governor is saying in Michigan. You look at what the Texas Republicans are saying about fighting Joe Biden's efforts to save women, mothers on an operating table from death. Yeah, it did. Those aren't 80 20 issues. They're they're they're in the wrong. They're going in the wrong direction there. And really, it's it's really not that much of a

mystery where Americans are. If you look at the polls on this on this issue, it is very complicated issue. But right now, something like a plurality, like 45 percent agreed with John Roberts. John Roberts said in one overturn row, he said, let's just again, let's be incremental. Let's go where Mississippi is 15, 16 weeks through there and then a ban. And, you know, about 45 percent of Americans support that. That still, of course, wouldn't be enough for people on both sides. But if you want to know where Americans are, it sure as hell isn't Dobbs. No, it's not Dobbs. And the Republicans are playing in the extremes on so many issues going up to today with the FBI and the IRS, which we're going to talk about in just a moment. We're

also going to talk about Allen Weisselberg, Donald Trump's longtime right hand and chief financial officer, pleading guilty to a laundry list of charges yesterday. Also, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg gives an ultimatum to the airline industry as it struggles to meet travel demand. That NBC exclusive interview is just ahead. Plus, an update from Ukraine on a concerning situation around Europe's largest nuclear power plant. We'll be right back.