Federal Law Enforcement official on both sides of the aisle. Hes undercutting anybody that gets in his way or calls his power into question, like when he tweeted earlier this month about former fbi director, jim comey, after years of comey running the fbi its reputation is in tatters. Something that those with actual knowledge of the fbi say simply is not true. When he repeatedly makes the claim that russia gate is nothing but a lie. Theres absolutely no collusion. I tornado madid not make a phon russia. It was a democratic hoax and an excuse for losing the election, and it never should have been this way. It begs the question whether trump will be successful in so duh sporting reality, that even if Robert Mueller finds evidence of collusion or obstruction of justice, trump and his supporters will declare it all fake news and find a way to avoid justice. Joining me now, my panelists. Sarah, i thought of you when i was on hardball the other night and asked by Chris Matthews for my assessment of what donald trump is doing with all of the attacks on federal Law Enforcement. This is what i had to say then, and i want to get your take since authoritarian states are your specialty. Step two, get your staterun media, or media to echo that into your base and whip them up into a frenzy against those investigating you, step three, get the state party n. This case the Republican Party to echo that from the seat of government, and then of course you have to add that last step, call for the prosecution of your political enemies, in this case, dredging up Hillary Clinton to again call to lock her up. Sarah, am i too am i being hysterical in equating what donald trump is doing in what the leaders of authoritarian states do . No, you are not being hysterical. Trump has been on the path whether its the persecution of ethic minorities, and wanting to use the government to enhance his familys personal wealth, and its only gotten worse as he has gotten into office and consolidated power. He has faced very little opposition from the republicans who should be serving the public and should be keeping people like trump in his cadre of, you know, other corrupt and criminal actors in check. No, you are absolutely right to react in the way that you have. Malcolm, you know, this week we saw members of congress, a coequal branch of government literally behaving as if they were the defense counsel for trump, and attacking the fbi and accusing them of being criminals. It was breathtaking to watch republicans do that, and they did it with such voracity. Are they part of president Trumps Administration or a coequal part of the government. And then the tax plan, and its as if trump and republicans are personally being even riched by the tax cuts and the policy of the administration and then they turn around and 100 back the leader . Funny you should mention that, i am writing a whole book about this. Tphr initially i thought trump is doing things for his own self worth and the valuation of his family stock and not doing it to benefit the United States, but not doing it with great malice, and hes doing it because he loves money, and now i think its done out of hatred for his enemies. He thinks he understands the levers of power, and his problem is democracy. Democracy is eating him alive right now. When he buts up against that, he goes to the Vladimir Putin playbook. Putin, when he came into power was in the anticorruption in the late 1990s, and join the skwrau swamp was the russian phrase. And then he got his friends to buy the news media and turned the news media, and that democracy against itself using democratic tools like elections. You think about it, and even down to things that we read in George Orwell novels, the idea of banning words themselves, and it turns out multiple agencies, they were told they were not allowed that the Trump Administration they should avoid using certain words or phrases being drafted for the budget, and do not use the word titlement, diversity and vulnerable. The cvc have been told they have cannot use certain words. The seven words banned words, vulnerable, entitlement, diversity, transgender, fetus, evidence based, and science based. The words that must not be spoken by members of the trump tkpwut. Its crazy. Joy, hes gone after the federal government and disassembled it. The only other target out there are the cities. At this point we have a barely f functioning federal government. I guarantee you, the next battle is going to be against the cities. They are going to pull back funding. They tried in the courts. Now you are going to see doj with sessions, and what is the authoritarian state or police state look like . Its going to look like the pd, they will have to prove to the federal government that is a u. S. Citizen. Thats going to be the next battle. Its not going to be the military, but a data call. Are you tracking the citizenship of the people getting aid whether its education or medical care, thats what they are going to push on. I think thats the battle. Its important they are trying to essentially force blue cities, people that are run by democrats, and want compassion for the poor, you cant do that. We will force you to adopt trump pa policy. He went to the fbi, and you police which is what he is doing, the regular beat cops against federal Law Enforcement, as if he wants to split them as two entities, one completely and totally supports trump and the other doesnt, or the other is working towards justice. If he does that, and the people he introduced over at the department of homeland security, its scary. You are creating your own instruments within your will. My husband and i went to cuba, and you have the police and the guys in the green military uniforms that police the police. They are two separate agencies that are watching each other in a way that one can intimidate the other. I want to go on this, its not just russia, and egypt and governments throughout the world that operate as a family running a country and as autocracies, where you dont have freedom of speech and anybody considered to be an enemy of the state is purged out of the government. This is out of the epa, one of the agencies the republicans wanted to get rid of, an epa contractor spent the last year scouring the agency for antitrump officials. The Environmental Protection agency is hired to help with media affairs, they have been critical of the Trump Administration, roars show. You have ever heard of an american add machine administration purging federal agencies for ideological consent. I cant overstate how terrifying this is. The cdc and hhs does so much work for Womens Health and aids and how can we not use words as evidence based, and the word Climate Change is already disappearing as we speak, and the fake presidency and administration cannot deal with fact. It keeps going on. It goes on. Lets talk about it and i will come to you on this, donald trump popularized the term fake news, and that term has become popular among autocrats. And this is in the new york times. In a country where press freedom is restricted including russia and turkey, libya, poland, thailand, somalia and others, political leaders invoked fake news as the justification of beating back scrutiny. One of the legal challenges he faces, he asked james comey to take a loyalty pledge to him. At what point will it go down to the poor person as a dogcatcher in some town. Its the same thing with media. He doesnt want independent investigative reporting, he wants to release what he wants to release and thats it. He has a squad of people on the far ride, roger stone on down, who are hunting, and trying to bait media to discred discredit journalist, and rinse the media of anybody who dissents from donald trump, so all that is left is those that admire him. We dont have to look too far to see whose playbook hes following. Look at the political leaders he admires around the world. They are dictators. And the things that he admires about them is because he has no appreciation for democracy. Hes running a khrep talk raw see. He would love to run a country like putin, no press freedom or checks and balances on peoples powers, and he would like to do the way they did in the philippines, and its crazy to me and it comes down to and blows my mind, how this man, the president of the United States, is he not a patriot . He believes the kremlin over u. S. Intelligence. We know he admires putin. The three guys he most admires, xi jinping of china, and putin. We have known for almost a year now that he was putting people to test your ideological purity to donald trump, and not to the constitution or the defense of the nation. The constitution is under attack. American democracy as it existed since 1783 when they ratified the constitution is under attack. If i was in one of these administrations, and somebody comes into my office and says, hey, we will have to talk about your attitude towards things politically, i would dime that person out. You stand you swear an oath and i swore an oath and we protect and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We dont sarah, you were tweeting i think you tweeted about this yesterday. Donald trump has even invoked the idea, continuing the russia gate investigation, he said people will die, the artificial hit job gets in the way and thats a shame because people will die because of it and its a pure it job. Do you know what he was talking about when he said that . No, the transcript is unclear. It could regard north korea or syria, and we know theres been a lot of collaboration and a lot of off the books collaboration, and he sought Nuclear Partnerships with russia since the 1980s when he was not involved in government. When a president casually says, a number of people will die and thats too pwaobad, and thats disturbing. His attitude towards veterans, i dont think he has any respect not just for the constitution or country but for the sanctity of human life itself, and its alarming very few people followed up on that. What do you mean by that . Thats something somebody should be following up on that. We will take a quick commercial break because we have to pay for the airtime and bring all of my guest back on the other side. Coming up, donald trump is very upset that somebody wants his emails. Irony is dead. Well be back. My experience with usaa has been excellent. They always refer to me as master sergeant. They really appreciate the military family, and it really shows. Weve got auto insurance, homeowners insurance. Had an accident with a vehicle, i actually called usaa before we called the police. Usaa was there handson very quick very prompt. I feel like were being handled as people that actually have a genuine need. Were the webber family and we are usaa members for life. 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Find new roads at your local chevy dealer. I call on my republican colleagues to join me in calling for the firing Robert Mueller. This is unaccountable bias and theres no way that cannot affect a persons work. Fplt i think the Publics Trust in this whole thing is gone. We are better understanding the magnitude of the insider bias on mr. Muellers team. While Congressional Republicans continue to push their pretext for President Donald Trump to fire special counsel mueller, the resistance is making its own resistance to push back. Moveon. Org is organizing a strategy to convene protests within hours of an announcement mueller has been fired. The former director of the u. S. Office of government ethics sounded his own call to resist. He said make a plan, folks, be ready to take to the streets. Joining us again is our guests. Thank you for making time for us. There are two separate stories i want you to unpack so people can make the difference between them. You reported on friday that the department of justice is saying the release of the private Text Messages, selected Text Messages between two fbi agents on the Hillary Clinton email probe, that was not authorized. Explain. So the oig is investigating these Text Messages, and they expressed a lot of disdain for trump not just trump. They did not like a lot of people. Right, bernie sanders, or eric holder. What is interesting about this, he did not authorize eyd, these were actually leaked to certain members of the media, and those were very vague characterizations of the emails, and that led the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to put pressure on the Justice Department saying he was going to subpoena them for the Text Messages. They were then pressured to release the text, and they were under investigation. This was another attempt to kind of muddy the waters and undermine muellers probe. Do we know whether or not the release of the Text Messages came from the top of the department of justice, meaning Jeff Sessions is recused, and devin nunez is recused, and how do those Text Messages end up in the hands of nunez . We dont know. It was an unauthorized leak. It give ammunition to say its a biassed investigation, and it did help him with that narrative. We dont know who authorized the release of the text mess edges to the press, and we are trying to figure out who that was. Lets go to story number two. This is bob mueller, he has obtained emails that have to do with the transition, the trump transition into office. Lets explain that. Access reported last night the Transition Team was using government email servers to conduct its business over the period, over the course of the transition, and the gsa, which is the organization that overseas the Transition Team and its emails, actually because gave those emails to bob mueller, and bob mueller is a Government Authority and he has the ability to send a letter and say, hey, can i see these emails, and without a subpoena. Its a basic process. And then trumps lawyers went and sent a congress by passing mueller entirely trying to bring this into the court of Public Opinion saying what mueller did was unlawful because he went around the Transition Team, and the reason is because he did not trust them to hand over all of the relevant emails and he thought some would be deleted because thats what that the Transition Team with the lawyers would have done and they would have sorted out you mean the way Hillary Clinton sorted out what was private emails that were the source of trump saying lock her up. Thats what they wanted to do. How interesting. And they are upset their emails have been districted. Lots of irony as well. I want to read the response of mueller responding to the reuters story. When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we secured either the account owners consent or appropriate criminal process. They did not have their consent. That says to me that obtaining those emails were part of their appropriate criminal process. It was a government to government request. Mueller is a Government Authority and they were using private email servers and the government email servers, one of the top attorneys said if they read the fine print they would realize theres no expectation of privacy. And for those that dont understand, its not an antitrump, its who allowed him to have the its an Administrative Agency of the United States. Lots of irony. Lets start with the release of the Text Messages. You worked and you were an fbi double agent and you worked with these people. The idea an agent inside the fbi would have the personal Text Messages released, your thoughts. It goes back, we are losing sight of the context. This harkens back to a few months ago, where the republicans were trying to frame this idea that there was intelligence that unmasked trump officials, and that was somehow biassed against trump. There was an improper, and as donald trump said, his wires were tapped. Its completely taking things out of context. You are allowed to have a personal opinion and you are allowed to vote for a republican. At the worst, what a person did was yeah. But that doesnt mean they are not objective professional individuals who are able to do their jobs. We should make a point at the time he was not investigating donald trump, this was during the campaign. He was investigating Hillary Clinton. So thats important. Lets go to t