Fortitude, patience and hydration, but im hoping someday soon we get merit badges, too. Now its time for the last word with lawrence odonnell. Good evening, lawrence. Good evening, rachel. Do you know how we know you live in western massachusetts . Hmm . Its not your eastern accent, which really is noack se accent all. You call him richie neal because he is the local congressman up there in massachusetts. He is my congressman, he is. He has a large area in a very small state because there isnt very much of us in massachusetts. He is richie e. Neal but ive always known him as richie neal. Thats how ive always known him. There are questions among democrats who are saying, what is chairman neal doing . He has the right to demand these tax returns and he isnt doing it. You can see it is just a meticulously crafted piece. He has found exactly what tax returns and tax return information he wants, especially beyond the personal returns from the trump businesses. And that surely took quite a while to figure out exactly which trump businesses to go after. What do you make, lawrence, of the fact especially because youve known him for a long time. What do you make of the fact that hes not doing any interviews at all about this strategy or about this request hes now made of the irs . Not only did he not do any interviews leading up to it, but hes not doing any interviews on tv, doesnt appear to be doing any print interviews, either. He is the mother of house chairman. I think he understands the position hes in, i think he understands that he has a unique power. He has a superpower. He has a power that no other chairman in the house has. So i think hes respecting his power, and i think hes treating it as something that shouldnt be shouldnt appear to be a way that hes trying to get attention to himself. What is very, very clear is that the chairman of the ways and Means Committee is not guilty of trying to get attention for himself this year. Exactly. And i would follow him around with a microphone at home or abroad, but we know hes not talking. Its a fascinating day in the news, lawrence. It certainly is. We have two people joining us after the breaking news from the president s tax returns to the Mueller Report. Congressman adam schiff will be our first guest tonight. And congressman Lloyd Doggett is the seniormost member who is available to do an interview tonight about the Committee Chairmans decision to demand copies of Donald Trumps tax returns from the irs. The word powerful almost always comes before the word chairman in congress, but the chairman of the house ways and Means Committee and the chairman of the Senate Finance committee each have a superpower that no other chairmen have as leaders of the taxwriting committees. They have the unique power to demand any tax return they want to see from the irs. And chairman richard neal of the house ways and Means Committee is now exercising that unique power. He has demanded, in writing, President Trumps personal and business tax returns for the last six years, and this may be the single Biggest Development yet in the congressional investigations of the president this year. And it is also a really important moment in the president ial campaign. And thats what im going to talk about at the end of this hour, what the demand for the trump tax returns means for the democratic president ial candidates and how only a few of them were actually ready for this to happen today. And the way for a candidate to have been ready for this was to have released the candidates own tax returns already and most most of the Democratic Candidates for president have not done that yet. Maybe we shouldnt be surprised that the women have done a much, much better job than the men on this issue, the women candidates. And it tells us a lot about who is really ready for this president ial campaign. And i mean ready today. Ready today to deal with whatever was going to happen today. If youre a president ial candidate and you havent already released 10 years of your own tax returns, then you were not ready for what happens today. We will get to that at the end of this hour, the effect of the president s tax returns on the president ial campaign. But first some prosecutors believe that attorney general william barr misrepresented the Mueller Report. He summarized what the attorney general says are the Main Findings of the Mueller Report. The New York Times put it this way. Some of robert s. Muellers investigators have told associates that attorney general william barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than mr. Barr indicated. Now, many of us reading the attorney generals letter inferred that the findings of the Mueller Report were probably more troubling for the president. But the times has new details tonight about the Mueller Report in their story, did etails wev never known before. Quote, the special counsels investigators had already written multiple summaries of the report and some team members believe that mr. Barr should have included more of their material in the fourpage letter of march 24. The democrats have asked for the full report, and they have allowed jerry nadler to use subpoena power to obtain the full, unredacted Mueller Report. Heres jerry nadler this morning in that Judiciary Committee meeting. The constitution holds the president accountable for alleged official misconduct. That job allows for us to measure that for ourselves, not an attorney general summary, not the redacted report, but the full report and the underlying evidence. The attorney general proposes to redact four categories of information from the Mueller Report. Congress is entitled to all of the evidence. This isnt just my opinion, it is also a matter of law. Chairman nadler has now been empowered a Party Line Vote in the committee to issue a subpoena for the full Mueller Report when and if chairman nadler decides that that is necessary. Chairman nadler was asked if there was any room for compromise. Are you willing to negotiate any middle ground in terms of redactions of the no. The committee must see everything. This morning on this network, congressman adam schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, says he expects Robert Mueller to have to testify to congress. Are you going to call bob mueller to testify . I think its inevitable bob mueller is going to have to testify before congress. I would think that he will probablien needed before more than one committee. Earlier today the New York Times reported the House Intelligence Committee has asked one of the top contractors to President Trumps inaugural to provide it with documents about the event, a person familiar with the situation said on wednesday, opening up a new line of inquiry into the planning and financing of the ceremonies. The committee asked for documents from an interview with Stephanie Winston wolcoff who had been a close friend of the first lady, melania trump, and who had helped plan the celebrations and parties around the inaugural, the person said. Leading off our discussion tonight is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, democratic congressman adam schiff of california. Chairman schiff, thank you very much for joining us on this important night. I know this is not an easy night to make time for this. Can we work backwards from what i just referred to in the New York Times about your committees interest in the Trump Inaugural Committee . What can you tell us about that . Again, our interest is really from a counterintelligence point of view, and that is were foreign parties trying to use the Inauguration Committee as a way of exerting influence over the incoming administration. We know already that foreign contributions which are prohibited were funneled in part to this committee through a straw man. Sam patton has already pled guilty to an offense related to that, a 50,000 contribution to buy tickets to the inauguration on behalf of a russian and a ukranian. And so were deeply interested to know whether this committee, which raised unprecedented sums, tried to raise that money to exert influence. There are other committees like the oversight committee, i think, that may be interested in other issues such as whether the trump Family Organization used the inaugural committee to enrich itself by charging abovemarket rate for hotel rentals or ballroom rentals or whatnot during the inauguration, but our interest is the counterintelligence concern. Let me take you to the breaking news report of the night in the New York Times which seems to be saying that there are at least some members of the mueller team who are telling associates that they believe that attorney general barr and what he has written to congress about the report has, in effect, misrepresented the weight of the report. Well, its been my assumption, and we wont know until we get it and i find it remarkable here we are almost two weeks out and barr is still keeping this report buried. Its been my assumption that a 400page report has an executive summary already. So of course it begged the question why did barr feel the need to release his own summary . This is obviously someone who was hired for the purpose of squelch ing an obstruction of justice that upset the president. Why didnt he release a summary, bob mueller himself, rather than trying to shape it in his own words . It is concerning. The best remedy, of course, is transparency. Let the American People see all of it, and ultimately, thats whats going to happen. Were going to fight this in any way we can, in any way we need to to make sure that the American People get to see the product of bob muellers work without the filter of mr. Trumps handpicked attorney general. Will your committee you also have an interest in seeing the full Mueller Report within your committee. Will your Committee Also subpoena the report, if necessary . Well, there are two investigations that were going on simultaneously, the counterintelligence investigation, which is how this all began. That is an investigation into whether the president or people around him were witting or unwitting agents of russian influence, and then the criminal investigation. It looks like the Mueller Report is predominantly focused on the criminal investigation. Here is who we charged, here is who we didnt charge and heres why. It may not discuss the counterintelligence findings. If it doesnt, of course, thats what were going to be pursuing in the Intelligence Committee, and well use whatever means necessary. Very analogous to chairman neal who is a statutory power to get the tax returns. We have a statutory power in the Intelligence Committee to gain any findings, and were going to tell the fbi to live up to that requirement. Let me ask you something that rachel asked me about, and that is why has the ways and Means Committee remained so publicly quiet and like yourself not doing any interviews about the work hes doing in this committee, particularly this work about trying to obtain the president s tax returns . Have you had any conversation with chairman neal about why hes avoiding interview situations about this . I certainly had conversations with chairman neal on the subject of the tax returns, but im not going to go into those conversations. I havent talked with him about how public facing he wants to be. But i will tell you this looking at the chairmans letter and knowing something about the chairman. This letter, this request, is very carefully written. It presents the strongest possible grounds to obtain those returns, and i think he wants to rely on what that letter says, because he knows thats on the strongest legal footing. And he knows the president is likely to fight this tooth and nail. But this leaves no wiggle room, no discretion for the irs. Theyre going to have to comply. It is squarely within the chairmans authority to ask for these returns, and i think that out of a bbundance of caution a mindful that the president will seek to litigate this, the chairman is probably working conservatively with the advice of the house general counsel to maximize our chances of success. Do you want to see the president these same tax returns in your committee . You know, im deeply concerned with, you know, what the tax returns might shed light on in terms of any conflict of interest, particularly visavis foreign parties. So if the president has investments abroad that are tilting u. S. Policy toward saudi arabia or against other countries or towards turkey because hes got a moscow trump tower there, or any other elicit or financial purpose, then that is a counterintelligence concern for our committee. But that is a different issue than the one that chairman neal is raising, and i will defer to chairman neal on the basis he is seeking the returns, but, of course, that is the concern that we have in our committee. And chairman neal has specified in his written statement about this that he has no intention of sharing the tax returns with any other committees. But there is, within the law, a house process for that if the house passed a resolution authorizing your committee to obtain the tax returns, which is to say, authorizing you. You then could see these tax returns. Is that something you would anticipate asking Speaker Pelosi to put resolutions you would be asking her to pass so you could get a look at these tax returns . Im going to defer to chairman neal on that question because i think hes in the best position to be able to respond to what latitude he may have in terms of release of the tax returns beyond his committee. Ill defer to him on that. I can only speak for the interests of my committee, which is to make sure that u. S. Policy is not driven by some elicit foreign purpose. Now, i do want to say also that what chairman neal is doing is helping to reinforce what had been an inviable norm for decades, and that is that president ial candidates release their returns so the American People can understand whether there are conflicts of interest, and i think the American People have every right to know, for example, did the president push certain provisions for Real Estate Developers in the tax cut bill because it would earn him tens of millions of dollars on his taxes . Or any other issue that is pertinent to the American Peoples interest in a transparent government and knowing that the president is working for them and not on behalf of his own narrow financial interest. And chairman, we now have a whistleblower telling us about the way the security clearance process was overruled within the trump white house, and apparently now, specifically to the benefit of jared kushner. Whats your reaction to those reports . We are supporting the work that chairman cummings is doing to try to get to the bottom of this and find out why there was so many aberrations here, why there was so many overrulings of the professionals in terms of the security clearance process. We also have our own deep interest in this. Jared kushner has probably the broadest possible portfolio of anyone connected to the administration. Hes supposed to develop a mideast peace plan. Hes got jurisdiction over criminal Justice Reform and god knows what else. And hes also entered this administration with buildings that were deeply in debt, like that 666 property. And if he was seeking foreign financing, if foreign parties or sovereign wealth funds or other countries felt like he could be levered because of his financial indebtedness or other reasons, thats of deep concern to us. If those were the considerations that went into the denial or the attempt to deny him a security clearance, then they were overruled because of nepotistic interests of the president , then we want to know about that in the Intelligence Committee. Chairman, we also saw this Security Breach of sorts, im not sure how you would describe it, this weekend with the arrest in florida of someone who gets into the president s basically his weekend home which he also runs as a business. And she gets in there using two chinese passports as her identification. It turns out the secret service, on second thought, ends up arresting her because they believed she was there with malicious intent and, in fact, was in possession of Malicious Software and some of the computer hardware that she had with her. Your reaction to that and what we know about it so far. A couple reactions. First is a concern over the security protocols that she got as far as she did. Second is the concern over the number of cell phones over the thumb drive. We dont know what kind of malware this is. Was there an intention to place the malware in a system in maralago. But a concern that this person looked like they were an amateur for whatever reason. The broader concern, though, is she was a guest or sh