Good evening from new york, im chris hayes. We have new revelations tonight about the ex president s coup plotting that contain some of the most incriminating evidence yet, ill explain. So in the weeks following the election with his defeat appearing one more certain trumps scheme to sustain power, as we have chronicled on the show, became increasingly desperate. And his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, had been spreading all sorts of conspiratorial nonsense about the Voting Machines for weeks. Falsely claiming that the Voting Machines rig the election for biden. Its way beyond what people think. Including a very very dangerous Foreign Company that says thats not american, thats far. A company that has close ties with venezuela and therefore china. And they were using venezuelans Company Software that was used to steal elections and other countries. I dont think people have an idea of the dimension of the National Security problem this dominion creates this Dominion Company is a radical left company, one of the people there is a big supporter of antifa. Just be clear, thats orderly false. Essentially invented. Its so false that giuliani got sued by dominion for defamation. But the Voting Machines, the idea that inside the black box there was some magical for and subversion coach, if that was something that giuliani was going off, we know this, because shortly after the election, the times reported that giuliani reached out to the Acting Deputy Security about seizing the machines to overturn the results of the election. And mr. Cuccinelli said that there is no authority that could assert control over the Voting Machines in the states. At the time, the New York Times reported since it was unclear whether mr. Trump facilitated the phone call. Well, a year later, we know the answer. As a new report in the New York Times details, six weeks after election day, trump wanted the department of Homeland Security to seize the Voting Machines. According to the paper, quote, trump directed his lawyer, rudolph giuliani, to make a remarkable call. Mr. Trump wanted to ask the department of Homeland Security if it could legally take control of Voting Machines in key swing states. Okay. Just step back and think about this. Because theres something important in all of this. Dumps president of the United States, he has a question about a matter of law. What he as the Chief Executive of the country is in charge of. The department of Homeland Security reports to him, hes the president. But he did want to make the call himself. How. His we are despite the sense about what could be in line with criminal liability appears to there is a concept called the errand boy. Someone who runs the money. So the bus can keep his hands clean. And trump appears to have realized that he needed a fall guy to do his dirty work for him. So he turned to Rudy Giuliani, the same bag man he used in ukraine. The guy who got him impeached the first time while he was trying to dig up dirt on the bidens. This little detail to me is profoundly revealing. Why doesnt the president call the guy a dhs . Why doesnt he go through normal liaisons at the white house . Because he knows its wrong. Hes gotta get his dirty tricks to do it. Because its evidence of Guilty Conscience and Corrupt Intent. If the president , ex president , thought when he was doing was legit, he couldve called the dhs himself, he was the president , but he knew, he knew seizing the Voting Machines was lawless possibly criminal. Something had no authority to, so he sent rudy. Go safe he can take care of that . His personal lawyer to take care of the dirty work. And while giuliani made the call even giuliani had his limits short of what trump swear. Quote, mr. Giuliani was vehemently opposed to the idea of the military taking part in the seizing seizure of machines. Yeah. I think that sounds like a bad idea to. You see some of the more conspiracy adult allies hatched a scheme by which the army would be the ones to, i dont know, rolled up to Voting Centers and roll up the supposedly corrupt Voting Machines which, that wouldve been great. In other words, full authoritarian rule in which the military in camo and their weapons go and grab Voting Machines. And the last bulwark of democracy was apparently Rudy Giuliani, of all people . At least in this one tiny incense . The man who is not particularly known for his Sound Judgment these days. And that thought is i salute the terrifying. I should just tell you in the past hour, the New York Times also reported that the Committee Investigating january six is looking into trumps role into the proposal to seize those machines. We also got an interesting revelation from the Washington Post today. I think its also kind of evidence of Corrupt Intent, a guilty mindset. And its about a particular habit of donald trump weve known for years that trump had the practice of hand shredding his documents. In fact, the government had employees on payroll taping trumps documents back together. You see, there is such a thing as the president s records act. And it requires that all the men must be preserved. And i can tell you people take this very seriously. Very seriously. And yet, apparently, in flagrant and in continuous violation of the law he would tear up the documents. The String Evidence is second nature. Well today we learned that some of trumps documents to the coup, the documents that he wanted to block the committee from accessing, included papers that had been shredded and needed to be taped back together. We dont know what specific documents were destroyed. That has not been made public, but as the Washington Post reports quote, legal records indicate that the documents over which trump sought to assert privilege included president ial diaries, appointments. Handwritten notes concerning the events of january six from white house chief stuff mark meadows, speeches, and more. But the specifics are not quite as important i think as just the general practice. Which speaks to the same thing that you can see in that instruction to dhs. The Corrupt Intent that is inherent in Donald Trumps actions. He did not want to make the call himself, he didnt want to leave a paper trail. As one staff told political, quote, he would rip up anything that happen to be on his desk that he was done with. He was always told doing so was illegal and its worth keeping in mind when it comes to the attempted coup, there are almost no contested facts here, okay . Think about this, we know all these things. A lot of it happened in the open. Rudy giuliani went on tv to talk about the Voting Machines, as i just played you. There are multiple written memos from trump allies outlining the strategy. We conclude this way, we could coup that way. Trump said that he wanted pence to do was overturn the election. That is trumps own phrase. So at some level, we all agree on what happened but. Trumps only remaining defense for his actions to drive a stake at the heart of but a mare can democracy, is that he was diluted, so fundamentally out of touch of reality that he sincerely believe the utterly ludicrous incoherent theory of injustice, that the election was somehow stolen from him from his byzantine, internally entered contradictory set of actions. So we acted out of good faith to rectify this injustice that he truly believed. But this evidence completely of this rates that notion, which of course was never that possible to begin with. If trump really believed he was not doing anything wrong, why did he not called the department of himself . But why is he ripping up pieces of paper to hide the trail . I think the answers pretty obvious. Is because he knew he was doing something wrong. And he wanted to keep his hands clean. Jacqueline alemany is the congressional correspondent, one of the early authors of the tutu newspaper. It is part of the team that broke the story that the documents had been ripped and taped back together. She joins me now. Would you like to tell me more about the state of these documents that were transmitted to the committee . Yeah, chris, were still trying to figure out more about these documents exactly because as you noted, the committee has not officially detail what was in this trench of 700 pages worth of records that was transmitted from the National Archives to the january six Committee Investigating the insurrection. So were not quite sure how valuable some of them had been shredded up and then taped back together might be, but we do have a number of clues including a review of Court Records which materials former President Trump sought to assert privilege in his unsuccessful efforts to prevent the transmission of these documents. And these potentially included some of the president ial findings concerning the seizure and security of the 2020 election and these Voting Machines. Were not quite sure if that included the memos that you just showed that the New York Times and politico has unearthed. And we dont know if those were specifically turnip and pissed back together, but the National Archives also told us that some of the documents today received from this past white house were shredded apart and not put back together. Its also unclear whether or not its possible for those to be recreated and once again decipherable. So there are still a number of unknown questions but i think this unusual became public in 2018, were now seeing the real world consequences why the president ial acts exist so that if there are serious investigations taking place, these interiors that really big long to the American Public are easily available and ready. And we should know the committee has been moving on a bunch of fronts and theyve been getting a lot of cooperation. They won this court case that got these documents. They also have been talking to some expensive people and i want to get your sense of this from the reporting youve been doing. We have two key figures in pence world. Marc short, last week spoke to the committee, of course hes someone who is very prominent in mike pences world. He was also there with pence string everything in january six. And today greg jacobs former Chief Counsel to for Vice President mike pence, was spotted leaving the committee after many, many hours of testimony. I think that Benny Thompson called immigrate patriot. Whats the significance of the extensive cooperation of those two individuals intense world . These are highly significant interviews and depositions that these two players who were around the former Vice President during the time when this Pressure Campaign to overturn these results of the election was taking place. We reported a few months ago, i believe, and november, that greg jacobs, in particular, was having a number of exchanges with john eastman while they were even under siege in the capital in hiding as insurrectionists had breached the Capitol Security and were shouting and chanting, hang mike pence. That, mike pence had time and the chance to do the right thing. Those emails extended even as late as 8 pm i believe, i might have to refresh our reporting, of john eastman emailing craig jacobs that mike pence could employ some constitutional loophole that pences legal team have already found pretty questionable in order to ultimately send the slate of electors back to the states. But mark short and greg jacobs were, again, key witnesses to all of these different players and these outside legal teams that were trying to convince the former Vice President to go along with President Trumps plan to overturn the election. All right jacqueline alemany, thank you very much, i appreciate it. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is a democrat from rhode island. He is a member of the Judiciary Committee and he joins me now. Senator, i wanted to get your thoughts as someone who has been around the law, most of your adult life, and your former prosecutor. The significance of the revelation that you have Rudy Giuliani being asked by the president as a kind of cut out to call his own sub cabinet officials of the department of Homeland Security to investigate the seizure of machines. What that says to you deep down . I think it would certainly add color to any prosecution, the hand ripping of documents and the weird giuliani election machine errand. But i suspect that at the heart of any case will likely be down in georgia. Where the effort by the Fulton County grandeur really will be proceeded. And to which the jeffrey clark, the doj guy who wrote the letter to georgia, whatever is being looked at or suspected up points down to georgia. And you have these electors who fall filed false electoral ballots which is a pretty straightforward, i think, 18 usc false statement violation. So you have a lot of people who might quickly become cooperators once the presented with whether chances are in that criminal proceeding. And all of that adds together, i think, into a pretty rich mix of evidence and witnesses who are a lot more credible than Rudy Giuliani. I want to ask you about Mitch Mcconnell who is i think, attempting to sort of straddle the line between a forthright defense of American Democratic institutions and a party that is controlled by donald trump. He was asked about trump floating the notion of pardons over the weekend for some of the folks that engaged in the insurrection. And this was his response. Take a listen. Well we saw here on January The 6th was an effort to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to another. 165 have pleaded guilty to criminal behavior. My view is, i will not be in favor of shortening any of the sentences for any other people who pleaded guilty to crimes when you think of that . I think hes right. And i think hes trying to create some distance between himself and trump. Mitch tends to play the long game and i dont think he wants to bind himself to trump. In such a way that when, as, and if trump collapses, mitch goes down with him. And its pretty clear from the film and from what we all experienced on that day that these lies and this behavior out of trump with pardons and all that is simply unacceptable. And you can be as partisan and cynical as Mitch Mcconnell and still feel that way. So thats a pretty strong benchmark. We kind of are in a process of discovering where the lines are. I thought that giuliani saying you cant send in the military while trump sort of ideding on it is an interesting example of finding where peoples lines are. One of the channels through which they pursued this was in the courts where they had zero success. And i think thats you know, thats a point in favor not zero success. They had clyde burn laughed out of court and in some cases lost law license isnt were sanctioned for their behavior. So its as bad as it gets. Of course, there is a pending there will be a pending vacancy in the Judiciary Committee. The president is now considering of various nominees. What is your expectation about this process . Its interesting, so far in all of the contested Supreme Court proceedings, mitch is going to the mattresses to make sure that the federalists i. D. S was able to pick out the judges and they got through come hell or high water. The whole garland episode, all of that. Its interesting though, now hes packed a 6 to 3 court. And its not clear to me what Mitch Mcconnell wants is a lot of controversy and attention around the court. Hes got the court he wanted. Its a 6 to 3 Federalists Society a majority. Its already starting to just walk deliver for the donors. So creating a raucous around it is like drawing attention to the house in which youve got your burglars operating. Its not clear [laughs] that might not be in your best interest. A court brought to you by the holy trinity of Mitch Mcconnell and leonard leo and donald trump together in wielding their power. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, thank you very much. Thank you. Ken Members Of C