Hello, everybody. Im chris cuomo. Its your lucky night. A double dose of prime time where don is off doing who know whats . Wouldnt you know it by now . Not to use your private email for government business. Its a lesson that Hillary Clinton sure learned the hard way. What will happen to ivanka trump . Shes now wrapped up in her own email mess. Whats it going to mean for the first daughter . Investigations and lock her up chants . Doubt it. President trump lashing out at the admiral who orchestrated the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. Does he think he could have found Osama Bin Laden sooner . Were going to take it up with the former chairman of the house intelligence committee. And the blue wave did not stretch all across america. Oneonone tonight with stacey abrams, who lost the race to be georgias governor. But she says shes not done fighting. Theres something that has to be changed. She says the politics in her state are rotten and rigged. Ready to make the case . Lets get after it. Georgia governors race is finally over. Stacey abrams did not win, but she did launch herself into the National Political spotlight. And while she admits that shes not going to be the next governor, she refuses to concede, but she concedes the election but not the bigger point, which is she believes that this election exposed issues that will lead to another fight, taking on the system itself. Here she is. Ms. Abrams, thank you very much for taking the opportunity. Thank you for having me. So first tell us what do you believe the lesson of your election to be . That if we want to have integrity in our systems, we have to work harder for it. I think for too often and for too long, weve taken for granted that the machinery of democracy will work. And i think my election and this years elections in our state demonstrated that in georgia, that machinery is broken, and we have to do something to repair it. Broken. Okay. A qualified term. We should discuss it. But let me ask you in terms of context, do you believe that you lost your election fair and square . No, i do not. You think you should have won . No. Im saying that we wont know because we had a secretary of state who served both as the player, the referee, and at the end of the game, the judge as well. And the challenge with that is you can never be certain. We do know that for eight years he systematically dismantled railed the machinery of democracy. He disenfranchised voters. He disinvested from counties, and he was grossly incompetent in the administration of his office. Because of those factors, we know that elections have been reset. In fact, theres one on december 4th because of a state representative, a republican, who had to go to court to force the secretary of States Office and his county to redo his election because they messed it up. What do you think this secretary of state did and the state by extension and also on its own what do you think that georgia did that made your election unfair . I would say that they made the elections overall unfair, and i want to be very clear. This isnt simply about my election. My election is part of a larger pattern of behavior, and thats why this is so important because republicans were harmed. Democrats were harmed. Independents were harmed. But most importantly, georgians were harmed. We had 4 1 2hour lines because of the disinvestment in machinery. We had machines that were flipping names because of the antiquated nature of our machines. We had people who were purged from the rolls unlawfully, including a 92yearold woman who had voted in the same Community Since 1968 because she was a civil rights leader. We had new citizens who were denied the right to register. We had thousands who were placed on hold. And thats just a short list of the ills and the sins that were committed in this election. And the problem is that unless we look at the entire pattern, it seems to be one complaint here and one complaint there. But we know that the corrosive nature of this behavior is that it has undermined the effectiveness of our democracy in the state of georgia, and that cannot stand. I understand that the goal is now an initiative called fair fight georgia. I want to talk to you about that. But one more step into the problem before we get what you perceive to be the solution. If you were to look at the votes, even if we take the a. P. Reckoning that 53,000 mostly black im reading it right from their own reckoning Voter Registration applications were on hold in georgia, if you take the numbers that number, and theres like two or three, do you believe there were enough numbers if everything had broken your way, that you would have won . You have to go back to the fact that he has purged more than 1. 5 million voters over the last eight years, voters who may not have been lawfully purged, including people who were active voters, who simply woke up to found their names taken from the rolls. Some. Some. But out of a universe of 1. 5 million, we know that a number of them were unlawfully purged. We know that people who were lawfully allowed to register to vote showed up and were told they couldnt be given a provisional ballot because they had to save paper. We know that people had to leave the lines because of fourhour waits because in the state of georgia, you are not allowed to be paid for time while youre voting. You dont get some states allow you to take time off and go vote. Georgia does not do that. You can take time off, but its unpaid. And if youve got to get that paycheck, you cant wait in line for half of a workday. So we do not know how many voters were turned away, were disenfranchised, and who didnt bother because they applied for absentee ballots that didnt arrive until election day, and they live out of state and did not have time to return those ballot. You have the argument of whether these problems are endemic or de minimis. Thats part of what youre trying to do with fair fight georgia, and i want to talk to you about that. Somebody gave me a good idea the other day. What we should do is we should couple veterans day with elections day and make it a National Holiday and put it in the middle of the week on a wednesday. So you get off. Its in a place where you cant just stretch it into a long weekend, right, because then people wont vote anyway. And you encourage involvement in the process, respect for the veterans. You had a National Holiday so everybody is off. So were all thinking about remedies. That one struck me as interesting. You have a different remedy, which is a pursuit of changes to the law. Fair fate georgia. How would that fix it . So we are filing a lawsuit, a major federal lawsuit that looks at the series of gross mismanagement, incompetence, and bad behavior that has allowed the erosion of democracy in the state of georgia. And our complaint is actually going to try to find several legal remedies. In fact, we already had four different federal judges who in the span of ten days, agreed with us that the administration of the elections in the state of georgia were so flawed that they forced better behavior. What i want us to do is understand all those flaws and fix the systemic issue. If you only attack one piece or another piece, then youre missing the whole problem. The whole problem is when people are disenfranchised, if its one person or another person, then they feel theyre alone in the problem. But if that aloneness is aggregated, if we can see the full picture, then we can tackle the entirety of the issue. This isnt just about my election. Its about the next election. We have municipal elections coming up in 2019, mayors, city council members. They need to know they have a fair fight. 2020 is coming. Now that georgia is a swing state, we need to make sure the elections in that year are the right ones and that people can trust the results. I want to give you a chance to explain something that a lot of people have a hard time with. The idea of showing i. D. To vote makes a lot of sense to people. Why wouldnt you . You know, so many people this is the argument. So many people have i. D. , you know, all kinds of legal i. D. You use it in so many other phases of life. Why shouldnt we . If voting matters so much, why shouldnt we show i. D. . Whats your counter . So identification has always been part of the process. The issue is the type of identification that is now being required because the type of identification thats being required is often difficult for certain folks to get access to. If you dont drive, if you dont live near the communities where dmvs are available because in the state of georgia, you cant just walk into any place and get a license. If you cant afford it because its too expensive, if you grew up in a community where you didnt have a birth certificate and that is true for a lot of elderly people in the deep south, there are lots of impediments. And what has happened is that people who are eligible to vote before because identification has always been a part of the process. But whats happened is theyve constrained the level of i. D. Thats allowed, and we watched that happen in north dakota, where they took away the right to vote for native americans by putting in place what sounds normal to anyone else. Oh, its just a street address. But if you live on a reservation, that is not normal, and it was intentionally designed to disenfranchise communities. Its not that identification is wrong. Its the type of identification and the hurdles required to achieve that identification that constitutes voter suppression. And this is not a new issue. It is not. There are plenty of studies done on it. There is a lot of Research Done on it people can read if theyre actually curious. Absolutely. Stacey abrams, good luck with the fight. Anything that makes the process more fair is good. Well be watching your efforts and see what they lead to. Thank you and the best to you and yours for thanksgiving. Thank you so much. And you have a wonderful holiday as well. And i mean it. The system has to be made better. When efforts are in effect, we have to follow it. The media can help in that way. We will. The commander in chief is again trying to divide where most americans unite. The raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. Mike rogers knows a lot about the mission. Surely a heck of a lot more than i do. Whats his take on this type of criticism . The republican and former house intel chair graces us with his presence. Hes as good as mashed potatoes on thanksgiving, next. Once i started looking for it was a nobrainer. I switched to geico and saved hundreds. Thats a win. But its not the only reason i switched. The geico app makes it easy to manage my policy. I can pay my bill, add a new driver, or even file a claim. Woo, hey now thats a winwin. Thank you switch to geico®. Its a winwin. The whole worlds coming together now amazons black friday sale is on now with deals in every department, low prices and Free Shipping on millions of items. The amazon black friday sale. On now in them therr hills on your guarantevacation. Find gold but we can guarantee the best price on this rental cabin. Or any accomodation from hotels to yurts. Booking. Com, booking. 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Fools. The president should know it wasnt mcravens responsibility to find Osama Bin Laden. It was the cias. Lets bring in mike rogers. Lets be honest. The president doesnt know what hes talking about with any of this, but the idea of mcraven says that you shouldnt mock mcraven, hes a Hillary Clinton supporter, and they should have caught Osama Bin Laden faster. Your response . All of thats wrong. I think this should be an embarrassing moment for the president. Im not sure it will be. You know, i was brought up. I served in the United States military that, you know, the officers always eat last, and you never blame your subordinates to your superiors. You take responsibility. He has mastered none of that. This is a gentleman who has served 37 years admirably. He happened to be the commander at the time when the raid was both planned and conducted, and he did it admirably. You remember i was the chairman at the time, chris. So i saw all of the development of the intel package back in about january. The raid happened in may. You know, i started getting very close to this back in january. So we watched all of the development of the intel up to the point where the decision was made to go. And ill tell you, in january, it didnt look very good. There was not a high degree of certainty. So some notion that should they have found him seriously through other intelligence means . Maybe. Very difficult target. Really hard to do. Everybody that leant their talent and intellectual and their Service Capability to this effort should be thanked, not insulted, i think. Right. Two points of perspective here. First, you know, the head of isis, still out there. The current head of al qaeda, still out there. So if the president , you know, wants to show how quickly things can get done, hes got ample opportunity. But also what do you want people to know, mike, about how hard it was to identify and locate Osama Bin Laden . Yeah. This thing was really an incredibly difficult task. Talk about operational security. This was it. And so he practiced everything that if you didnt want to ever get caught you would do and didnt really make any mistakes. Im talking about Osama Bin Laden at this point. He was on a compound. The compound was alive and well with activity of families surrounding his activity there but not related to his activity there. So i mean everything that they could do to cover his position and by the way, never used any electronics to communicate. It was all written communications, and this was what was brilliant about this whole episode, which i wish the president would just take a minutes and try to understand the immense effort to get a small, little piece of intelligence that ended up to Osama Bin Ladens undoing. They actually found a brief snippet of an intercept, a communication intercept, where somebody was talking about the great one and their service to the great one, and they would have to leave for some period of months. Now, in a vast collection of intelligence, youd think, yeah, that doesnt mean all that much. But a very smart analyst looked at that and said, you know, the long and short of that i think this guy could be working for Osama Bin Laden. Then they set up surveillance and a long process to catch that person actually showing up at the compound on one day. And if it werent that particular day, this he would have missed the whole thing for, who knows, another two years. Those couriers, by the way, changed frequently. It was really solid, hard intelligence work that got us to the fact where people decided on whole, by the way, with some congressional oversight, that said, yeah, that sure is Osama Bin Laden. By the way, if youre going to risk invading another country to go after somebody that went after us at 9 11, this would be the time to do it. All of that, theres so much behind it. I guess what irritates me is the president had no notion of that history. Right. Where not only he attacked owl that effort but also attacked the man who helped design and, you know, showed great leadership and inspiration to the people who had to go do this work. Of course as we learn time and time again, the president does it out of convenience. It worked for him in the moment. You criticize me. Mike rogers, what does he know about intelligence . That guy, he should be two inches taller. Thats how it works. Thats how it works all too often. Let me ask you something while i have you. I havent gotten a chance to talk to you about this, mike. Yeah. The acting a. G. Is matthew whitaker, and the democrats are trying to figure out whether or not he should recuse himself, whether they should hold hearings about him. Do you believe that is the right use of oversight energy . You know, heres the interesting thing about that, chris, if i can here for a minute. I dont think his public comments, especially as a cnn commentator, should ever, you know, preclude him from serving in government because he had some opinion at some time. I just dont believe thats right because the weight of the office, the oath of the office will, i think, trump any of those other activities or your pontificating what you think should or shouldnt happen. I dont think thats the issue. This is an interesting legal matter because its not really settled. Its not as clear, black and white. Its not binary as i think people are saying. Either way, because of his appointment, because he was confirmed before as a u. S. Attorney, because he was a senior official, and because hes not fulltime means he doesnt have the weight and authority. Its an interesting legal question. You know, i dont know. Listen, i think theyre going to spend a lot of time on something they think he is going to do. He hasnt done it yet. So i think with all the investigation thats done, if i were providing advice and counsel, id say, listen, let the thing wrap up. If this guy comes in and says its over, guess what . You have all the oversight capability you will need to get access to all of that investigative material. That will do far more damage, i would guess, than you trying to spend all this time and energy trying to get rid of the guy on something you think he might do based on a comment when he was not in government nor brie