Senate race is wrapping up tonight as we speak. And we are going to be covering this over the course of this the great state of alaska, the state division of elections certified the results of this years midterm elections in that state in alaska. One of the races that was certified today by the state is for a state legislative district, so a state House District. I think its in fairbanks. Its House District 1. And i believe we can put up on the screen the results of that state legislative race in alaska as certified by the state today. The republican, bart lebon, got 2,661 votes. The democrat, kathryn dodge, got 2,661 votes. Not a typo. The official state certified results in that house seat in alaska, its an exact tie. And that tied race is for a seat in the state legislature. And the state legislature is also tied. So not only would the shift of a single vote determine who wins that seat, the shift of a single vote could also determine which Party Controls the entire legislature. I love this story out of alaska so much, right . When they realized the democrat and the republican were tied, in the initial count, they did a machine recount of the ballots. It turns out its tied. After that, they did a recount by hand. After the hand recount, turns out, yeah, its tied. And then today it was certified as a tie. But here is the incredible drama in this one. This is from the Anchorage Daily News today. So, after the initial results shows a tie and the machine recount shows a tie and the hand recount shows a tie, and it becomes clear that this tie means that the whole legislature is tied, after all of that, they found a vote. What . They found one vote. Quote, a single ballot remains uncounted. Quote, that ballot was found in a gray secrecy sleeve on Election Night and was deposited in a ballot box normally used for absentee or questioned ballots. In conjunction with this story, the alaska daily news published this picture of the state review board considering this tied race in trying to figure out how to do a complete count of this race. I think in this picture in the foreground there, do you see the Little Hand Holding that ballot . I think theyre showing us the one lonely ballot here that they cant decide what to do with. You can see what it says there, from fairbanks precinct number 6. This ballot was found loose with the questioned ballot materials. There was no questioned ballot envelope to account i think this might be the actual one ballot in question. Alaska daily news reports that this one loose mysterious ballot is a vote for the democrat in the race, but because of the weird circumstances under which this one ballot was found, they still dont exactly know how or if theyre going to count it, according to the daily news, even though the vote has been counted and recounted and recounted again and now certified. That single ballot, which could decide the whole thing is still legally considered to be on the bubble because of the strange circumstances in which it was found. Its as yet uncounted, quote, pending further legal analysis. So that one house race and partisan control of that state Legislature Look likes it come down to a tie or maybe that one ballot mmm. And theyre not mmm if that doesnt inspire you to vote and that your vote could matter, i dont know what could inspire you, except for maybe the news that this is actually the second time this year that this has happened. At the beginning of this year in january, the exact same thing happened in virginia. Republicans had had a big majority in the house of delegates in virginia, but democrats had a really big year in the offyear elections in virginia in 2017. Democrats swept all the statewide races and made up all this ground in the legislature. Ultimately the question of which party would control the legislature came down to the last race that wasnt called in virginia. It was the 94th House District. They counted and recounted and double checked and it turned out that race was an absolute tie. The exact same number of votes cast for the republican and for the democrat. And the control of the state legislature riding on whether the democrat or the republican won. And the way they decided that one in virginia was by drawing straws. They pulled a piece of paper out of a bowl in a ceremony that would have been way more fun if they had, like, cut cards or flipped a coin or something. But if the news gods of civic participation do this to you, right, do this to your country twice in a year, right, where its not just your local representative but your representation in your state is decided by a margin of zero votes, and ultimately has to come down to maybe the luck of the draw, because its that close, or maybe one ballot that was put in the wrong box and nobody knows whether or not to count it, if you get that happening in your country twice in one year, those are signs from the news god heavens that your Voter Registration matters and your efforts to vote matter, and it may all come down to you. So tonight, at the bottom of the screen, you can see we are running this live ticker, as we get in the vote and watch the results of the last u. S. Senate race from this years elections. We are watching this unfold in mississippi, its a runoff between incumbent republican senator cindy hydesmith and upstart democrat mike espy, who is a former cabinet official in the Clinton Administration and a former mississippi congressman. This, of course, is bright red deeply republican mississippi. Cindy hydesmith should win this in a walk. She should not even have to contest this race, given the partisan balance of the state. She has made it a contest herself, in part, with her own stumbles, but mike espy has also made it a race by running a pretty good campaign. Joining us for a look at how this is all shaking out is the great Steve Kornacki. Rachel, thank you. Actually, two elections to tell you about tonight. One, mississippi, so, yeah, cindy hydesmith, the republican, she wins the runoff tonight. You can see nbc news now projecting it almost all the vote in there. 5446, the margin right now for hydesmith over espy. Put this in some perspective, you mentioned mississippi, obviously a deeply red state. Look at how this went, just in 2016. Hillary Clinton Donald trump in this state, an 18point race. Trump winning it by 18. Tonight, the margin eight. May actually be about seven when they count all the votes, given whats still outstanding. Look, 2012, obama got 44, that was sort of the High Water Mark in recent years for democrats in mississippi. 43 for obama in 2008. So, you see for democrats, this is pretty much as good as theyve done in mississippi in recent times here in a race for federal office. Mike espy getting 46 tonight. What happened here . I tell you, early in the night, there was a lot of there was some stirring here, sort of on politics twitter, folks watching this thing closely, because early in the night, what you saw here was something weve been seeing, part of a national story, Desoto County is big, suburban, fastgrowing. This is actually outside memphis, tennessee, its in mississippi, but its a memphis suburb. Look at the jump for mike espy. Hillary clinton only got 31 . A tenpoint jump for espy. Earlier, it was looking like it might be a bigger jump here. This is something we saw around the country in november. One of the reasons democrats did so well in congressional races, jumps in the suburbs. Well, mississippi does have some suburbs and they got a jump. A big one here in Desoto County. Also saw a jump in madison. Thats outside jackson a fivepoint jump for espy over what Hillary Clinton did. Heck, go into hinds county, you had a jump there, six points from Hillary Clintons performance. So, the democrat got strong black support, strong black turnout. They got some crossover votes in the suburbs, but then what happened . Basically, they ran out of suburbs. Mississippi is a heavily rural state, does not have a lot of metropolitan areas in it, and in the rural areas, the heavily white rural areas, particularly up here, sort of in the mountain country, the hill country of northeast mississippi, rural white voters turned out in big numbers for cindy hydesmith. Did not have any real slippage there. She did better than mitt romney in this part of the state. So, that is enough to save her. That is enough to give the republicans the victory here in mississippi tonight. This is i think this will be the closest race, the closest democrats have come to winning a senate race in mississippi, probably since 1988. Probably in 30 years. But the bottom line with the republican win here, it gives them a 5347 majority in the senate. All the senate races now, with this one in the books, they are now complete, 5347. On the house side, two elections to tell you about. The other one to tell you about, we have an outstanding race in the house. The story on the house, of course, democrats have a net gain of 39 seats in the house. Heres the outstanding one. The 21st district of california. This is the Central Valley part of the state. T. J. Cox, the democrat, remember, california, every night you get a batch of new votes. Last night, he took the lead over david valadao, republican incumbent, by 436 votes. We are we dont know exactly how many votes are left. We think it is somewhere between 1,000 and 5,000 votes left to be counted. California, theyre very suspenseful. Were not sure exactly how much, were not exactly where, but basically, that few, those few votes left, in cox hangs on and wins this and unseats valadao, that would be a net gain of 40 seats for democrats on the house side. Thats the last remaining seat left in congress. Over to you, rachel. All right, now, to the other major story weve been watching unfold over the course of this afternoon and this evening. As you know, President Trump fired Jeff Sessions and installed in his place a man named Matt Whitaker. Given whitakers Previous Report of highly critical statements about Robert Mueller and the russia investigation, and mr. Whitakers otherwise thin and sort of troubled resume that by no stretch of the imagination would make him a contender to be the attorney general of the United States in any other circumstances, because of all that, its been widely suspected since that appointment was first announced, that the whole reason whitaker was installed at justice was to squash the Mueller Investigation behind the scenes, with mueller now reporting with whitaker. The regulations that govern the special counsels office say that mueller has to run by whitaker any major decisions about the investigation. Including the decision to bring new indictments, stick a pin in that, also, any decision to make any sort of public report or any other major steps. Since whitaker was appointed, we have, in fact, seen no new indictments from mueller and his team. Now, if youre worried about the importance and the integrity of the Mueller Investigation, if youre worried about the possibility that it might be shut down behind the scenes, given the importance of what that investigation is into, its a little unsettling to recognize that if Matt Whitaker is throttling the Mueller Investigation within the Justice Department, if hes blocking new indictments, say, we wouldnt necessarily have any way to know that. I mean, if muellers team goes to the grand jury and gets the grand jury to issue an indictment and then mueller brings it to the Justice Department to whitaker, to whom he reports, for whitaker to sign off on it and whitaker says, nope, ill take that and stuffs it in a desk drawer, how would we know . Its not like anything has to make an announcement about that. How would we know if thats whats been happening since Matt Whitaker arrived three weeks ago tomorrow . Thats why it is all the more interesting that tonight, we are getting a first look at what might be Robert Muellers notebook. His sort of working file. Because tonight, nbc news has obtained a draft criminal information, which is the kind its basically an indictment when you agree to plead instead of having a trial. Also, a draft plea agreement, also a draft statement of the offense. All these documents appear to have been created by the special counsels office, though we have no way of verifying that directly. The documents were reportedly created by Robert Muellers office and sent by mueller to a man named jerome corsi, a longtime conservative writer who has been getting a lot of press recently for telling anyone and everyone that he believes he is about to be indicted by mueller. I will declare my bias. I am not inclined to believe anything that jerome corsi says at face value. After all, he is one of the worlds leading proponents of the fabulous Conspiracy Theory that president barack obama was secretly foreign and not born in this country. He was therefore secretly never really president , says jerome corsi. Because of that past and Everything Else he is known for, jerome corsi says thing is no evidence to me that thing exists or is worth writing down, just as a general mathematical principle. But what nbc news has now obtained are apparently Court Documents that were prepared about mr. Corsi by the special counsels office to show him the way in which he was going to be criminally charged and the plea deal he could choose to sign on to if he wished in order to avoid more serious charges or potentially even any jail time. So these are the documents. They were obtained by nbc News ReporterAnna Schechter tonight who is a superstar. Because weve got these documents, i can tell you, this is a draft of the charge, the criminal charge that the special counsels office was offering jerome corsi as the one count he could plead guilty to in order to avoid further criminal exposure. The draft shows they were considering bringing the charges in Federal District court in washington, d. C. You see there on the left, United States of america versus jerome corsi, defendant. The charge here would be one count of false statement. Quote, on september 10th, 2018, defendant jerome corsi did willfully and knowingly make materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statements in a matter within the jurisdiction of the executive branch of the government of the United States. To wit, the defendant falsely stated and represented to the special counsels office, including special agents of the fbi, that he denied an associates request to get in touch with an organization that he understood to be in possession of stolen emails and other documents pertaining to the 2016 u. S. President ial election. The associate excuse me. Corsi also denied that the associate never asked him to have another person try to get in touch with the organization and that he did not provide the associate with any information about what materials the organization possessed or what it might do with those materials. So, again, those are the false statements as outlined in this potential criminal charge. This is from the draft criminal information that apparently was provided to jerome corsi from the special counsels office. Again, a draft, not filed with the court, but given to corsi. Here whats we want to charge you with. Here whats your plea agreement would look like. If you want to boil down all the nonspecific nouns there that make it sort of hard to read out loud, what this charge says is that jerome corsi lied to the special counsels office and he lied to the fbi when they questioned him about his contact with wikileaks. Wikileaks had started to brag that they had information that had been hacked from Hillary Clinton and democratic sources. Roger stone, who was associated with the Trump Campaign, although he never formally had a staff position on the campaign as far as we know, special counsels office says that roger stone told his friend jerome corsi that he needed to get in touch with wikileaks about those stolen clinton documents. When the special counsels office asked jerome corsi about that, what theyre saying now in this draft charge is that corsi lied to them when he told them that he turned roger stone down. He said, no, no, i wont get in touch with wikileaks, that would get us all in trouble. Special counsels office is saying in fact that is not at all the way it went down. Corsi lied to them. We get more detail in this document, which is the draft statement of the offense, which has also been sent to jerome corsi, which was also obtained by nbc News ReporterAnna Scheckter here tonight. So i can tell you what it says here. And i will tell you, thanks to nbc news reporting about the context of this case, im able to swap in some of the specific identifying information that will make this make more sense as i read it. So, just so you know, the code here is organization one, thats wikileaks. Person one, thats roger stone. Et cetera. Quote, on or about september 67th, 2018, the defendant, jerome corsi, was interviewed voluntaily by special counsels office, including Justice Department prosecutors and agents of the fbi. At the time of the interview, the special counsels office was investigating the russian governments efforts to interfere in the 2016 president ial election, including, a, the theft of campaignrelated emails and other document