children killed in the span of three weeks. >> we believe. it on that note, my friend, ayman, thank you for your time and thoughts and perspective on all this. evening.social now it is time for the last word, with lawrence o'donnell. good evening, lawrence. >> we're gonna be joined tonight by tennessee state representative justin pearson, who, as it happens, is a graduate of bowdoin college in maine. so he has been really struck by what happened in maine, and the mass murder there. lewiston, very close to bowdoin college. and he came to our attention because the school shooting in tennessee that he was trying to bring to the attention of the state legislature and that actually, as people recall, got him expelled. and he of course worked his way back in and got elected again, but he is here to consider what this means, what it feels like to him to have that hit close to his college all the way it hit close to home in tennessee. >> i'm eager to hear on justin pearson on this. when he has remarkably deep and wise thoughts for someone so young and a host of really complicated and distressing topics. >> yes he's a unique voice. we're lucky to have in front tonight. thank you alex. i have no understanding. those were the under oath words of donald trump jr. today when his temporary job title was -- 21. called to the witness stand by new york attorney general letitia james to testify against his father. donald trump jr. is a codefendant with his father in the case of because it's a civil case, the defendants can be forced to testify. there was a time when donald trump jr. was the least likely member of the family to go to work for his father and eventually become a codefendant with him. and a profile of donald trump's first three children, new york magazine in 2000, four in which they all cooperated with the reporter and were interviewed, there is this passage about donald trump's very messy and public divorce from their mother, who accused donald trump of violence against her in a book. the magazine article says, quote, johnny blame the divorce on his father. and that, perhaps, not exactly what it was. he says, a bit ultimately. but when you're living with your mother, it's easy to be manipulated. you get a one-sided perspective. he didn't speak to his dad for a year. in that article, donald trump jr., who didn't speak to his father for a year, made it very clear though he is the first born and has his father's name, he knows he is not his father's favorite child. most bat he, acknowledges, blood to his sister, ivanka. and the new york magazine article, their mother said is about donald trump. he's not the kind of father who would two, two, nuno, he would love them, he would kiss them, and hold them, but then he would give it to me because he had no idea what to do. give it to me. the new york magazine article gave the least attention to eric trump, something he is truly used to. eric trump, also a codefendant in the case and will be forced to testify, occupies revealing paragraph. and the newer gregson article, that just might be everything you need to know about eric trump. quote, eric, who seems the most inclined to look on the bright side, believes his parents breakup cemented a deeper bond between him and his siblings. donny, in a way, is like a mentor. he kept tabs on everything that my grandfather taught him over the years and that i was too young to appreciate. and i'm definitely closer to ivanka because of it. she took me under her wing and raised me, took me shopping, trying to make me cool. well, at least you tried. ivanka trump is described in new york magazine article as speaking, quote, in a madonna like european accent. and she is the most defensive about how easy their lives have been. we've all made peace with the fact that we will never be able to achieve any level of autonomy, says ivanka. no matter how different a career path we choose from our parents, people will always say we wouldn't have gotten there if it hadn't been for our name. a name cannot get you through medical school. we have to do the work. you have to do the work in high school in college, and to get to medical school it's gonna be more difficult than high school and college combined. the trump name would not have helped. if any of them have joined the military, which no one in the trump family as ever considered doing. there are many, many things the trump children could have done that would have left no one saying that they got that because of their name. but instead, they all chose the one thing that they could only get because of their name. they chose to go to work for their father. the father, who don trump jr. didn't speak to for a year because of a treatment of his mother, and because according to legal findings already made by the judge in the new york attorney's federal case against trump, the trump children's father was running a corrupt business, rife with corrupt and illegal business practices. they all dutifully played their part in their fathers corrupt enterprise. don trump jr. testimony in the case began and will continue tomorrow. the essence of his testimony on his first day on the witness stand was to blame others, the accountants, for the false valuations of trump assets. donald bender, the longtime counsel for the trump business, as testified that he used the valuations that the trumps gave him. today dole trump jr. blamed donald bender and his accounting firms team. don't trump junior said, he was an outside accountant that we relied heavily on me. don trump jr. also help claimed to have an understanding of generally accepted accounting principles. he said he remembered hearing in accounting college in class, and he said i know nothing about generally accepted accounting principles. biden trump junior's testimony, an expert witness testify the fraudulent information used by donald trump's business prevented banks from collecting $168 million in potential interest on loans. donald trump, who has theoretically come and gone from the courtroom, did not bother to be there today to support his first born son on the witness stand. trump jr.'s mother couldn't be there because she died last year. but her words hung in the air in the courtroom is a sort of explanation for donald trump's absence today. now he would give it to me because he had no idea what to do. now eric trump probably has no expectation of a loving, paternal i gazing at him across the courtroom when he takes the witness stand. but when donald trump's favorite child testifies, the one who don't trump junior jealously describes as, quote, daddy little girl, then, maybe. just maybe daddy will show up. leading off our discussion tonight is adam -- , senior legal correspondent for the messenger. he was in the courtroom today, as he is every day for the proceedings. and tim o'brien is with us, senior executive editor for bloomberg opinion and author of trump nation, the art of being the donald. he's a host of the bloomberg podcast, crash course in nbc political analyst. adam, you are our eyes and ears in the courtroom today. what were the high points, as you saw. new? >> that quote that you lead with, lawrence, the i had no understanding, that was followed by a rather tense pause and laughter that's one of those things it doesn't show up on the gold record. it's as you said with the gap generally accepted accounting principles that was one point that was part of what the attorney generals office led off with when the trial started on october 2nd, they showed a snippet of don jr. testifying, and basically denying detailed knowledge of generally accepted accounting principles, in that he basically said that he understood the acronym but beyond that it was basically accounting wonowon at wharton business school, and so he had a kind of tight rope to walk here. me he can't admit, really detailed knowledge of gently accepted accounting principles because the attorney generals office says that he was in charge of this essentially having the statements of financial condition, making sure that they conformed to them, and instead so when he had said that he was not, that he did not understand, generally accepted accounting principles, it was in line with where the child -- and later in the day it went on from there. >> and adam, donald trump jr., as well as most of the other witnesses, are already, as is very common in civil cases, on the record in video recorded depositions, which normally in trials like this, sound pretty much exactly like what they are going to say in court. not >> absolutely. this is something that happens very frequently, that they have added deposition, that's where we got a little preview of where things were going and where we basically saw attorney generals counsel lead off questioning with. so that wasn't unexpected. later on in the day we went into further details about his relationship with allen weisselberg, the cfo of the trump organization, and who he was in charge of essentially getting the statements of financial conditions, signing off on them for a large number of years. we got more insights, for example, into what happened during the early years of trump's presidency. your viewers may remember, at the beginning of trump's presidency, there's a lot of concern about the kind of thicket of conflicts of interest around the world. we learned today that five days before the end of trump's presidency, he had gone back to the trust that he had said that he would steered to his sons. he had planned five days before, going back into public life, to be the trustee for that trust. which goes to show that he wasn't planning in another term, he was planning on leaving the white house five days before his presidency expired. >> tim o'brien, you're the first to have experience litigating with donald trump over this very issue, which is to say, the value of his holdings, he sued you when you wrote that he was not nearly as rich as he claimed to be. you, of course, won that lawsuit. donald trump lost badly. but you had already seen the way this works. when donald trump and his business actually entered the under oath process, where the trump game can't be played. >> new discovery when you just put documents in front of the trump it actually turns banking records, other parties assessments of their wealth, they tie themselves in knots because they lie so frequently and so fluidly about everything, and they can't even be consistent about their lying. recently, after, i think, one of the shows i was on last, week one of trump's longtime advisers texted me and said, you, know the problem with donald isn't just that he lies, it's that he can't lie consistently. he said he's worth six billion two billion one billion. i'll say just a. 61 even sticks without story. the reality is, lying and dissembling is not a bug in the trump organization. it's a feature. and today donald trump jr. was exhibit a in how they roll around that. no trump jr., not knowing anything about dap, allows them to make up the numbers. and he tried to ponded off on his accountants and i can tell you because i can see these documents, it wasn't planned off on the accountants, because the accountants wouldn't sign off on the document. they said specifically because none of this comports with the standards that all the rest of us used to validate the numbers. we won't sign off on it. so the accountants never gave the blessing to this number. they simply said okay you've given it was, we don't agree with this, do what you all of this document. that was a statement of financial financial condition that they peddle to banks in the media forever. the other thing to keep very front of mind here about the children is that there is ignorant as their father. they are comically ill informed about everything under the sun, and that is another reason they dissemble. children's relationship to their father is a hostage video. all of them are beholden to him. they have been since they were children. don jr., like the prodigal son, as much as you try to distance himself from his father, inevitably got pulled back into his father's orbit. all three of the children, despite the conflicts about being in his presence, end up working for him, and now they have put themselves in harm's way because they're material witnesses against their father. if they project them selves on the stand, they're gonna be in trouble. we don junior and eric are subject to the same penalties their fathers, being exxon from the new york business community, for being able to do work new york state, and possibly paying very hefty fines. that's what their allegiance to their father has one for them in the state of new york. and this weird kind of psycho drama that's playing out in the courtroom now is going to get hacked at the end of the week by ivanka's testimony. we all know donald trump is a has a unsettling relationship with his daughter. he talked about having wanting to date her. he caesars a trophy he can parade around, is emblematic of his good deeds and arrival in the world. but what's gonna happen this next friday's her siblings and her father's testimony will proceed hers. she's gonna have to be very careful that the prosecutors don't carve her up like not a turkey if she dissembles and lies about how the trump presented their financial statements to banks, insurance companies, and other third-party. >> tim o'brien, adam klasfeld, thank you both very much for starting our discussions tonight. coming up, the judges in both of the federal criminal prosecutions on don't trump issued rulings today about how classified information can be handled in those cases. that's next. that's next. my daddy's a cowboy, i'm a cowboy and i'm raising a cowgirl. and discovering that my family come from farmers for generations. this life is in our blood. give the gift of family heritage with ancestry. woman: who's that, who is that? cole: this 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(smelling) ew. gotta get rid of this. ♪tell me why♪ because it stinks. ♪have you tried downy rinse and refresh♪ it helps remove odors 3x better than detergent alone. it worked guys! ♪yeahhhh♪ downy rinse and refresh. shingles. some describe it as an intense burning sensation or an unbearable itch. this painful, blistering rash can disrupt your life for weeks. it could make your workday feel impossible. the virus that causes shingles is likely already inside of you. if you're 50 years or older, ask your doctor or pharmacist about shingles. >> trump appointed federal judge amy mercedes cannon indicated today she might delay the trial in the case of them trump's possession of classified documents because it could collide with the election interference case the jack smith is prosecuting against on trump in washington d.c., which is set to begin in march, as of now. judge cannon listened to doldrums lawyers to try to delay the trial, raising concerns about having enough time to review the luminous evidence as they described it, to prepare for both of the upcoming trials. judge cannon seemed to acknowledge those concerns, saying, i'm having a hard time seeing, realistically, how this work can be accomplished in this compressed time period. the washington post reports, prosecutor jay brat argued that whatever the deadlines may be in other cases, those could all change. so it did not make sense to alter the trial date in the florida case. cannon sounded skeptical. i'm not quite seeing in your position and understanding of these realities. cannon told brett. the judge said she would rule on the schedule is soon as possible. yesterday donald trump was in miami with his criminal defense lawyers to review classified evidence in a secure facility. today, judge cannon and judge tanya chutkan, overseeing the case of the 2020 election washington d.c., each issue about donald trump's access to classified evidence. classified evidence is a minor component of the election case in washington d.c., and it is the essence of the case judge cannon is presiding over in florida. to consider the details of those two rulings on classified evidence, we're joined by bradley moss, a national security attorney, who represents people who work in the intelligence community. also glenn kershner, former federal prosecutor, most of the justice matters podcast. bradley moss, let me begin with you and these two rulings on how to handle classified information in two cases. this is one of those cases, i think the second time it is happened here in a legal proceedings, where i understand the rulings but i can't explain them. i was sitting there going to write the script leading into this thought, you know what, i will let bradley moss explain it. these two different rulings by these two different judges. what do they mean? >> instances of experience and expertise. also a confusing factor here in how jack smith's team approach this between the two cases, in the d.c. case the file was known as a section for motion, under the classified information procedures act, which, is this is the classified information that would be discoverable, we would ordinarily turn over to a defendant, because it's classified discern sensitivity. we want permission under the statute to provide, basically, unclassified substitutions. not the actual document, but here's the unclassified summary substitutions. they provided that to judge chutkan. judge chutkan reviewed everything under seal, in-camera, by herself. she had ex parte by her own hearing with trump's lawyers, just to be safe. but she concluded, no, i'm good with the government submission, you can give the substitution discoverable information to trump. in florida it was under section three, which is not the same thing. it's about that proactive motion to delete. as talking about the larger overall protective order, and then became this debate over the scope of the provision, and if it could apply to these defendants. it's not even talking about trump. it's talking about de oliveira and nauta. it became confusing to what the extent that was applicable. i think this will get cleared out with section four motions, before judge cannon in florida. but it was a very odd set of coincidences to have these two different rulings, with two different types of motions. >> and judge cannon said, she's ready to hear a section four version of this, which was not what she was hearing today. >> correct. again, i don't know why jack smith's team approached that way. it certainly was probably stra