Chris Hayes discusses the days top news. The close knit relatives. Three people charged today. The congressman, his son, and the wouldbe fatherinlaw. A number of people in this circle. And the security and Exchange Commission named some of them. The would be fatherinlaw, would be motherinlaw, and the fiance. As individuals just saw there, congressman said he did nothing wrong and acted to ethical and legal standards at all time. And wont be taking any questions. The behavior that is outlined in this indictment if true is shockingly brazen. This is a very bedrock principle
nominees through the Senate Quickly enough. So it wound up the individual chief judge in the Southern District pointed mr. Berman permanently. And quite clear that we follow the facts regardless of politics. If there is evidence that you vi violated the law, you will be prosecuted. Making frantic phone calls to his son, the allegations pretty amazing. Caught on tape. Thanks for joining me. I am joined by elizabeth
holtzman. This seems like a fairly clean case. I want to take a step back. We just came off the Chris Collins news conference. And you have in which he testified under oath about the Campaign Manager for the president of the United States in a Tax Evasion Case and talked about all the crimes they did together. All of the intentional actions they took to hide information from the government to defraud banks to increase the amount of money they had access to. And confessed on the stand to stealing from the man he worked for to a tune of a lot of money. Michael cohen has been raided by the fbi. Kind of being a wimp. We get this blow by blow. He is never going to go before mule toeller to talk. The president is a liar, systematic. Very dangerous for him to go forward. Told so many different stories about so many different things. And what it does is reminds me of watergate and we are getting to a very close intense time for him. Because they think i think giuliani that if the president doesnt come forward and testify, that mueller is going to give up. The subpoena is what triggered
the downfall of richard nixon. I dont know how the president can claim that he is innocent, if there is a subpoena, and refuse to come forward. What is he hiding. Why is he hiding . We have a president of the United States who is accused of obstructing justice. Not formally increased. But many people think he is involved with obstructing justice. And why dont he clear this up and come and talk to the special prosecute er. Refusal to do that is some indication that he has a lot to hide. And that is what happened in watergate. Nixon kept saying i am innocent. But ultimately, American People saw that when he didnt want to turn over the case, it was because it was incriminating
evidence on the tape. It is because he has got something serious if not criminal to hide. Do you think ultimately that you think they are trying to play out the string, that they hope mueller will give up. The president wants to testify or Talk To Mueller but his lawyers are afraid. He is the president of the United States and he cant make a decision. A president who cant be trusted to tell the truth under oath . Pretty serious. Seen a version of this show before. Sadly. Thank for joining us. With me now, is chuck rosenberg
former senior official. What do you make of the back and forth negotiation that is happening between the president s team and the muellers team over this interview. Elizabeth stated it well. The president keeps saying he wants to sit down and mueller and has nothing to hide. If you want to Talk To Mueller, Talk To Mueller. Nothing to hide, hide nothing. I dont know if it is a back and forth. Because mueller has not been commenting on it. Only seeing one side of this back and forth. In the end if bob mueller has permission to issue a subpoena, and he has the evidence, that is what he will do. Chris collins announcing. And these are places where the rules of law gets tested. Indict a sitting member of congress, first endorsing for the president of the United States. In that respect it seems like it is a Passing Grade for the rule of law. This was able to happen. This idea that they dont want to do anything within 90 days of the election. And that guided the timing today and i am curious your perspective of that. There is a general rule. Unwritten. General rule that you dont take action that will interfere with an election. And some people think of it as 30 days, some 60 days. The Southern District action today is well before that deadline however we characterize
it. And with respect to your comment about the rule of law, without talking to mr. Comments or this indictment, there is a public corruption section at the fbi. Prosecutors all over the country who handle public corruption cases. We have been doing this for years. Democrats, republicans, local, state, federal, years. So i dont see anything unusual about this. The Rule Of Law Didnt Pass Just today, it passes all the time. What do you make of the timing of Manafort Trial which i think is going to be a harder, obviously, that is out of the hands of the Special Counsel because he has chosen two different trials and going to try to wrap up the prosecution case by this window he can aeek. And that is going to spill over closer to the election. Mr. Manaforts second trial if he doesnt plead guilty or go away in other fashion, it is goi he was indicted well in advance of the election. Well within the parameters, the guidelines. So here, the timing is not of the governments choosing. At least not of the prosecutors choosing. Thank you for sharing that insight. Julia ainsley is here with the latest. What was it like in the court room today . Interesting. My colleague ken dilanian was there and he was saying the government was knocking it out of the park. Today the defense did an
entertaining cross examination, and they left this bombshell that lingered. They said to gates did you tell the Special Counsel that you had four and of course that did a lot to damage rick gates credibility which is a big goal of the defense of the case. I shared an elevator with manaforts lawyer and we were asking him how he thought the day went and seemed confident and made a joke on how the end of the day ended up on a lot of people could get sleepy. He said i am happy you said that, at least, my part of the show was entertaining. To him, it was a compliment. More entertaining part of the
day. Because then we got into taxes and charts and back and forth. And showed muellers style of being a tedious investigator and thorough. Did seem to kind of start putting a lull over the court room as we went back over transactions that we heard over the previous days. This is going back through them with the forensic accountant. What has the prosecution said about their timeline . They said they want eight more witnesses to come. But think they could wrap by the end of the week and then hear from the defense and then have closing arguments which is what the judge has said. He said he expected about three weeks sometimes chris, the judge is pushing this case to go quickly, we almost waste time
talking about how much time the prosecution could use. Today we took 30 minutes talking about how much time they would spend on one witness. Definitely pushing this forward but a fair criticism to say sometimes he may be putting his hand on the scale more than we hoped a judge would in a case like this. He seems quite active in how much he is managing this. He is. And for people who have covered judge ellis before, he pushes things quickly. And generally someone who is critical of defense. Today from what i saw, seemed more critical of the prosecution. He questioned everyone they brought up. Often interrupt their questioning. He himself would ask the question directly to the witness until it got an answer that might not have been what the
prosecution was going for. Yesterday he accused one of Robert Muellers lawyers of having tears in his eyes. And he has been hard on the prosecution. Sometimes it is a little hard to watch, actually. Nbcs julia ainsley, watches so we dont have to. Thank you. Still ahead, Mind Blowing Reporting about the three maralago members, a dr. , a lawyer and a ceo of marvel who have been running the department of veterans affairs. Plus seth meyers is here. Right here at this desk in just two minutes. Dont go anywhere. I get unlimited 1. 5 cash back. Its so simple, i dont even have to think about it. So i think about mouthfeel. I dont think about the ink card. I think about nitrogen ice cream in supermarkets all over the world. I think about the details. Fine, i obsess over the details. Think about every part of your business except the one part that works without a thought your ink card. Introducing Chase Ink Business unlimited with unlimited 1. 5 cash back on every purchase. Chase for business. Make more of whats yours. Whoooo. Tripadvisor makes finding your perfect hotel. Relaxing. Just enter your destination and dates. Tripadvisor searches over 200 Booking Sites to find the hotel you want for the lowest price. Dates. Deals. Done tripadvisor. Crisp leaves of lettuce. Freshly made dressing. Clean food that looks this good. Delivered to your desk. Now delivering to home or office. Panera. Food as it should be. One place doing an amazing job is Late Night With Seth Meyers and A Closer Look One Of The Best bits of political commentary. That is the president s deputy Campaign Manager saying yes, i committed crimes. Republicans what more do you need before you start taking it seriously. Trump can show up to a rally in a black mask with a bag of cash and republicans would be saying, maybe he just went skiing. I mean, for television, this great bit of you take news and headlines and jokes and put them together and how does that come together . Because as a fellow television person, it seems like a hard
time. We have a guy who has a Comedy Background and a News Background so rare hybrid of somebody who can sit down and piece together what we think is going to be the story that we want to talk about when taping rolls around. He has done an exceptional job of giving us The First Draft and we can add jokes. Today is another perfect of example of the Chris Collins thing. This sounds like Chris Collins was on the white house lawn and caught on camera. If you list 100 people,
surely the indictment would be one of the corrupt people we have met so far. And then they keep adding characters to a drama that needing to be Subtracting Charact character. I am not a financial expert and when you hear there is an indictment and the Security Exchange people are involved, today was so crazy because when they took out the flowchart of how it happened it was the easiest to follow flowchart. It was two rows. The flowchart they show kids to teach them how flowchart works. That is the other part of this is, when we watch people in this orbit commit crimes, it has not been incredibly sneaky stuff. It has been in broad daylight
activity. Never that scene from a movie where the detective has yarn going a hundred deferent ways. It is just one piece of yarn. And you get rick gates on the stand, that was an amazing moment. We did crimes together. There is something really sweet about saying it that way. Bonnie and collilyde, that c have been the poster, they did crimes together. There is this question like we saw with scott pruitt. It is the case that the newest thing will washout the old thing. Right. And that is why we started a Companion Piece to a closer
look. We have a check in which is once a week, to say, while this has been happening, here is what betsy devos has been doing. Or what Scott Pruitts replacement doing. It is crazy how much oxygen is taken up with Breaking News every day how did you find your way to the audience, this cultural moment, people want to talk about politics. Yeah. It is remarkable. Did you know that going into this . Did you find this . How did you discover that fact . I think we all discovered it the same way. From my time at snl, especially a president ial election where there is no incumbent. You have big fields on both sides, fun things to write about. So that started for all of us. And you know, that was the carnival that we all thought would eventually leave town like carnivals do. We learn during the campaign how to get ready for this. There is a seriousness to it too. That is the challenge that you guys have. Writing jokes about family separation. You try to button it. And you want to have an arc and a thesis and as many jokes as possible and we do it in front of a test audience. We cant find any purchase comedically we try to let go of it. Hopefully we make a point this matters. You have a test audience. We just gather up people from the building, we fully go down to nbc experience store and say do you want to see a rehearsal. And we get 40 people. A lot of people are tourists. Most of those people were from norway. For some reason it was not scanning. Here is the question i have. It always feels like it is getter more intense. I have this signal with the staff, banning adverbs. Do you have that feeling that we are hurdling towards something . I dont know. Like you say, that has also been this feeling from the beginning
of hurdling. We did a closer look about him fudging the facts on the carrier airconditioning. That was a thing that seemed like a real thing. Right. At that point it was like you dont just lie like that in public. Him lying about heating and cooling companies that was the dream. The show has been fantastic. Thanks. Doing great work. Shout out. We like the chris hayes tree. Thanks for coming by. Make sure to catch Late Night With Seth Meyers, 12 35 eastern on nbc. Coming up, three members of maralago working behind the scenes to basically run the va. The reporter who broke that
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states. Yeah. This is like how much health care for veterans should be provided by the government Run Va System versus how much should be done by private doctors. What should the va do to modernize. And these guys were all over it. Who should be the leadership of the va be. And the people who didnt get along with the maralago crowd got passed over or pushed out. Basically running personnel. Like a board of a company. And these are employees, they have to answer to them and if they dont like them, they are kaput. Like Board Of Directors pounding a ceo. Board of directors, these members of Corporate Board usually have some kind of expertise or knowledge or insight that they are providing,
experienced business people. But these guys dont have relevant experience for Veterans Health care. So all of these officials at the va are scratching their heads wondering who are these guys. And the answer is they have the president s ear. This doesnt happen. This isnt a thing that happens where president s come into power and they just say hey, i got buddies or members of my club who pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. They are going to go with you and whip you into shape. Listen to what they say. That is not a thing that normally happens. There is this