Transcript of Maddow: Trump Cabinet confirmation process already falling apart

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Thanks, Juna, for joining us this hour. Really happy to have you here. I'm going to speak a little bit bluntly this evening, and I hope you will understand where this is coming from. But I think it is worth being blunt about the fact that it would be hard to run a presidential transition that could be worse than the last one. The last presidential transition was the worst one in American history by a long mile. The last one included the outgoing president inciting his followers to riot and storm the Capitol to try to keep him in power. That's a bad transition, right? I mean, the last inauguration had to have thousands of National Guard troops on hand to protect the proceedings from the threat of more violence from his followers. At the last presidential transition, the outgoing president didn't even show up for his successors swearing in. That's a bad transition. The last transition Donald Trump was part of was the worst presidential transition in the history of the country. Given how monstrously he performed in that last transition, you have to just assume that this one inherently will be better. It has to be, right?

But I think it is worth being blunt about the fact that it might be close because this, too, is a Terrible, terrible presidential transition. I think it ought to be more central to the way that we are talking about what's going on in politics and in our country and in government at this moment. Because this is the transition where the President-elect, throughout the presidential transition period, has continued to sell his junk, his self-branded watches and sneakers and Bibles. He put out a new inauguration Day edition of his special branded Bible. He's still selling boots. Now, he's selling Trump boots and his new crypto, whatever it is, and his commemorative coins and his commemorative guitars. He's selling this stuff while he is the President-elect. Nothing like that has ever happened before. Nothing that classless and tacky has ever happened to the US presidency before. This is the transition where he said at a press conference that it might have been Hezbollah that did the January sixth attack. Really? Hezbollah did it. He also said at that same press conference that he's going to pardon the people who did the January sixth attack. Well, I'm sure Hezbollah will be delighted.

This is the transition where he made unprovoked threats to seize territory from three other nations, three other nations with whom we are allied. That is, of course, inexplicable to those countries. It's inexplicable to most Americans, but it's also equally very exciting to the dictators of Russia and China who actually have been either seizing territory from other countries or planning to. Now, Now, whether or not Trump actually follows through on these weird threats, those two dictators will have Trump's words during the transition to throw back at the United States of America if the US ever again bothers to object to big countries like theirs stomping on small countries and seizing their land. Welcome back to the 19th century. Sorry, no, there's no penicillin. This is the presidential transition where the President-elect officially became a 34 times convicted felon 10 days before he was sworn in. This is the presidential transition when that same president-elect named a convicted felon, one of his relatives, to be ambassador to France. This is the transition where he picked his son's ex-girlfriend to be ambassador to Greece, and he insisted that his other son's wife should be made a US Senator until that effort embarrassingly collapsed.

This is the transition where he picked his son-in-law's college roommate to be the hostages envoy for the United States. That same son-in-law then announced that he'd received another one and a half billion dollars from government-controlled funds in Qatar and Abu Dhabi, on top of the billions of dollars he already got from government-controlled funds in Saudi Arabia. Because you know how Republicans are very sensitive to the ethics of any presidential son doing any international business. This is the transition where the president-elect appears to have just randomly picked people off the TV for almost every imaginable government job. He picked a syndicated daytime TV doctor to run Medicare. The one who says your horoscope is very important to understanding your health. Like, literally, what's your sign, baby? That determines your health. He picked Fox News contributors or Fox news hosts or their relatives for Secretary of Transportation, National Security Advisor, FDA Commissioner, counterterrorism Director, ambassador to Israel, Surgeon General, ambassador to the Dominican Republic, border Tsar, Ukraine envoy, and did I mention Defense Secretary, All of those people, he just picked off the TV. He just picked them off of Fox News. He tried to pick someone for attorney general who was actively under investigation for statutory rape and prostitution.

That one had to collapse because, of course it did, but not before he and the vice president-elect went so far out on a limb for that guy that they made multiple Republican senators publicly promise to vote for that guy despite the statutory rape and prostitution investigation and all the rest of it. Those Republican senators, are they going to get their dignity or their political capital back? If so, is there a window where they check in for that? This is a symbolic presidential transition. It is a ridiculously bad poorly run presidential transition, which ought to be the subject of some discussion in our country. It is not going well. While the president-elect has already had to withdraw that disastrous attorney Germany general nomination. He had to withdraw his nomination for someone to run the DEA as well. That one lasted three days. Then they had to take back whatever that effort was to try to make his daughter-in-law a senator. Again, whatever that effort was. While all of those falling rocks have already fallen onto the proverbial road here. Now, we're one week out from the end of the transition. We're one week out from the inauguration.

In this last week, we are about to enter into the part of this very poorly run transition where the confirmation hearings are going to start, and specifically, where the confirmation hearings are apparently going to start falling apart. I say that because tomorrow was supposed to be the confirmation hearing for Trump's nominee to run the VA. Va to run Veterans Affairs. Now, most people could not pick that nominee, Doug Collins, out of a lineup as a nominee to run the VA. He is a bit of a walking scandal. The only thing he's known for when it comes to the VA is his stated desire to get rid of it, to privatize it, to no longer have a VA that takes care of our veterans. So scandal enough in the nomination. But that said, Collins's confirmation hearing is supposed to be tomorrow, but today they announced it's not going to be. Why have they canceled the confirmation hearing for Doug Collins? It's because they haven't finished the paperwork and background checks necessary to start his hearings. Oops. The day before that one is supposed to happen, that one is now not happening. Tomorrow It is also supposed to be the confirmation hearing for Trump's nominee for Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum.

Not a familiar name, I know, but you might remember him as the obscure Republican presidential candidate who had to pay his way into the debates. There was a provision in the Republican primary debate rules where you had to get a certain number of people to become donors to your campaign in order for you to get into the debates. Doug Burgum was nowhere near the sufficient number of donors that he would need to get him into the debate. So he literally paid people to donate to him. He would give you money. He would give you $20 if you turn around and gave him $1 as a donation. Apparently, that was legal. But that is how Doug Burgum got into the Republican presidential debates, which if you don't live in North Dakota, that's the only thing you know him from. Now, Trump wants him to run the Department of the Interior because sure not. Doug Burgum's confirmation hearing was also supposed to be tomorrow, but it also now has been called off because like with the guy they want to abolish, I mean, lead the VA, the Trump transition was also just unable to get the paperwork together for the Doug Burgum nomination.

Now, Doug Burgum can't have his confirmation hearing tomorrow either. Both of them called off the day before the hearings were supposed to happen. Now, here's word of another. This one is for the Trump nominee, who I think is probably the least confirmable of any of them. This is the Trump nominee who, I would argue, might even be less confirmable than Matt Gates would have been if they had left him as the nominee for attorney general. I'm speaking, of course, of Trump's choice for Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. This is the choice when this nomination was announced, Russian state TV reacted to this announcement like it was the Kremlin's biggest international victory since they launched Sputnik. A source at the Senate Intelligence Committee told us last week that Republicans were hoping the confirmation hearing for Tulsi Gabbard was going to be this Friday, January 17th. That was the date we had penciled in for Tulsi Gabbard. But it's not happening. Amid multiple reports of yet more trouble getting the paperwork together, Tulsi Gabbard's confirmation hearing is not on the calendar for this week. It has still not been scheduled at all. This is one to watch just to see if it ever gets scheduled ever.

They have already had to pull two of their botched nominations. They had to pull the botched nomination for attorney general and also the botched nomination for DEA. Watch this Gabbard nomination as well, given what's emerged just in public reporting on Tulsi Gabbard's background, public reporting more recently on how poorly she has been doing in her meetings with senators. Also, we're all listening very attentively to the conspicuous silence from Capitol Hill in terms of whether or not there is going to be sufficient support for her to even make it through committee. It has been a deafening silence. If anybody is next to be pulled, it might be, well, there's a bunch. It might be, but Tulsi Gabbard is one to watch. For me to be able to say that with a week left in the transition before anybody's confirmation hearings have even started, tells you all you need to know about this transition being a botched job. But there is so much more from all the way at the top. I mean, Trump himself went on Meet the Press with Kristen Malker and told her that he won the election because of grocery prices. I won on groceries.

Then he went to Time magazine and said, Yeah, I don't think I'm be able to bring down grocery prices. It's really hard to do. Did you know? Trump said that he was going to end Russia's war in Ukraine in one day. He didn't even say he'd do it one day after he was sworn in. He said he'd do it one day after he was elected back in November. Well, gee, that didn't happen. Now his Ukraine envoy says, Maybe we'll need 100 days. Trump says, I think we'll try for six months. In this transition, Trump explicitly and out loud and in public told the Republicans in Congress to shut down the government unless and until they abolished the debt ceiling. Republicans in Congress did not shut down the government, nor did they abolish the debt ceiling. Trump put eccentric right-wing billionaire Elon Musk in charge of enacting this radical austerity plan for the United States. He said he would cut at least, at least, $2 trillion from US spending. At least $2 trillion is going to cut. Now, Musk himself is saying, Maybe we'll get to $1 trillion? Maybe. There's a good shot at getting to $1 trillion, maybe.

Even though Trump keeps saying all those austerity cuts won't affect anything the American people care about at all. Nobody's going to feel these cuts. House Republicans decided to roll out their roadmap of where they intend to make all of these cuts, and it turns out mostly there's They're just planning on cutting your health care. Wait a minute. He never said he was going to cut our health care. He didn't run on that. He said it was all just going to be waste. That Elon Musk would find the waste. As transitions go, this has been a very bad presidential transition, and we should describe it as such. It has been incoherent. This whole January sixth Pardon controversy? The vice President-elect, JD Vance, says nobody's getting a pardon if they were violent on January sixth. Trump asked the same question, says, Yeah, maybe they will. But he also says at the same event that maybe Hezbollah did January sixth. So make of that what you will. It's been incoherent. It's been incompetent on policy. Grocery prices are hard. It's been incompetent on politics, making Republicans sign on to these horrific the nominees and then pulling the nominees anyway, doing that political damage to the people you need to get everything done.

It's even been incompetent just on process. I mean, their confirmation hearings are finally starting tomorrow, but we're only having one instead of the three they scheduled because they had to last minute cancel the other two they scheduled because they just couldn't get it together to do them. They can't even manage to start hearings for their own nominees when their own party controls the Senate. Oh, good. Thank goodness they're picking up the nuclear next week. They seem so together. Now, starting next week, I'm going to be here five days a week again. We are going to do special coverage on Monday, a week from today for the inauguration. I really hope you're going to be here with us for that. That's going to be a very big deal. But from there on out, for the first 100 days of this new administration, which starts on Monday and goes right through the end of April, I am going to be here on MSNBC at 9: 00 PM Eastern, five nights a week, Monday through Friday. That is happening for a couple of reasons. One comes from the mantra that we all learned in the first Trump term, which is watch what they do, not what they say.

If there was any question as to whether or not the second Trump term was going to also require us to say that mantra every single day, this shambolic, terrible Trump transition has laid to rest any of those doubts. We're all really conscious here at MSNBC that whatever craziness is coming from the podium, whatever transgressive provocations are emanating from Trump and anybody else in his administration who he allows near a microphone, we are well aware, if we didn't remember it from the first term, now deep into the absolutely botched nature of this chaotic, frenetic, pointless, own a hole-ridden transition. We are well aware that we need to be watching what they do and not what they say. We are well aware that the most important stories are going to be told through fieldwork and frontline reporting about the consequences of government action, not just the flapping of lips in Washington. We are very lucky because our beloved colleague, Alex Wagner, who is a fantastic field reporter, she has been itching to get out into the world to do more frontline reporting talking about the consequences of this new Trump administration's actions, getting out and doing frontline reporting both around the country and overseas.

For the first 100 days of this new administration, for MSNBC primetime, Alex is going to be prioritizing that field reporting. That means that I will be here at the desk. Instead of just Mondays, I will be here every weeknight, starting on Inauguration Day. This is not a permanent thing. We're going to go back to our previous schedule as of April 30th when the 100 days is over. That'll be me again just doing Mondays and Alex doing the rest of the week. But for these first 100 days, you and I, we are going to spend a lot of time together. I apologize in advance that I'm going to speak bluntly. I apologize in advance that I am still likely to wear the exact same thing every single night. Don't get your hopes up on that front. At least you'll get to see this blazer wear out faster than it was before. But even with these The two confirmation hearings that have been canceled for tomorrow, the VA and Department of Interior, confirmation hearings have been canceled tomorrow because Trump's transition couldn't get its act together to have even their first nominees ready in time for their first hearings.

Even with those two cancelations, even this last week of the transition before we even get to the inauguration, you should expect that tomorrow is going to be a huge day. For one, we're expecting the Justice Department to release half of its special counsel report, the half that details the criminal evidence against Trump, which led to his federal indictment for inciting January sixth for trying to overthrow the government. We're going to be talking with Andrew Weissman about the release of that report live here in just a few minutes, looking at what to expect from that report, looking at some intriguing requests made by at least one State Attorney General who's asking to obtain the whole report, the whole case file for the purposes of possible state charges, which is super interesting. We're going to have more on that in a moment, but we are expecting that report sometime after midnight tonight or sometime during the day tomorrow. Also tomorrow, again, we've got two confirmation hearings that were scheduled tomorrow that have been canceled, but still, the most radical one is apparently still on. Now, while NBC News has not independently verified this reporting, The Washington Post reported when the Pete Hegset nomination was first announced that the Trump transition had apparently not even been told to try to start vetting Pete Hegset, to not even start looking into his background until after Trump had already offered him the job of defense secretary.

According to the Washington Post's reporting, Trump offered him the job and then only then told his transition folks that they should start looking into this Pete Hegsaff guy. Well, when you're running your transition like that, when you're putting that deliberation and care and forethought into making a big, important decision for the country like that, yeah, I bet you are blindsided by the police report that then surfaces detailing the rape allegation against him and the details of the hush money settlement he paid to the woman who made that allegation. The Trump transition in all its competence was reportedly equally bewildered to learn of all the workplace allegations against Hegsat, allegations of him drinking on the job, and the history of him being forced out of the not one but two pro-Irak war advocacy groups he ran that were both run into the ground financially under his leadership. They had no idea. Yeah, it turns out you have no idea if you never ask, if you never Google, if you never do any vetting. As the conservative pro-Trump Wall Street Journal editorial page notes just tonight, Pete Hegset, quote, lacks the experience typically required. He has never run an organization of any size, never mind a bureaucracy with as many snares as the Pentagon.

Wall Street Journal Editorial Board tonight says, This is too fraught a moment in global affairs for senators not to ask the hard questions. That's the view from the right. The FBI background report on Hexath has not been given to members of the Arm Services Committee. Nbc News reports that whatever background check the FBI did do, they apparently did not speak with any of Hegset's ex-wives or the woman who accused him of sexual assault. Whatever FBI background check was done on Hegset that was reportedly discussed with the chairman and ranking member of the committee, but not given to them and not shown to any of the other senators who are supposed to be assessing him for this job. One of those senators is Illinois Senator and combat veteran, Senator Tammy Duckworth. She has been red hot about this nomination saying, I need to see his FBI background check. We need to see his financial disclosures. We need to know about any other potential lawsuits he might be facing, any other allegations he might be facing. She says, Is he someone who might be, excuse me, Is he someone that is blackmailable? I don't know, but I should be able to know if I'm going to have to vote for him for Secretary of Defense.

Senator Duckworth continues, I just want to know if he can do the job. Maybe he has hidden talents that he's not telling people about. Maybe he's led an organization larger than a 40-man platoon, which I believe is the largest unit he's ever been in charge of. Maybe he has successfully led an organization with a budget of around $800 billion. I don't know. From what I've seen, he's led two partisan political groups veterans organizations, both of which said that he mismanaged their finances. But maybe he's run a Boeing or a Northrop Grumman, and I just don't know about it. Because from what I can tell, the manager of your local Applebees has more experience managing a bigger budget and more personnel than Pete Hegset. I don't want that person in charge of the DOD. Like I said, she has been red hot on this nomination. The New York Times did a profile this weekend of incoming White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles. In the course of interviewing her for that profile, they asked Susie Wiles what exactly makes Pete Hegset qualified for this job. Led to this rather astonishing paragraph in their recent profile of her.

Hegset, a military veteran who has been accused by a woman of sexual assault, which he denied, has no experience leading an agency of nearly 3 million people. That's what staff is for, Ms. Wiles said briskly. We don't need a defense secretary who can run the defense department. That's what staff is for. Those are the people. They can I'm not sure which is a better take on things from the Trump transition, right? That line from Trump's incoming White House Chief of Staff. He may not be able to do it, but the little people, the staff, whoever they are, they'll run that thing. It doesn't matter that he can't do it. I don't know what's better. That line from Susie Wiles, White House Chief of Staff under Trump, coming in, or Hegset himself saying that if he does get confirmed to this job, he promises he will stop with all the drinking. If he doesn't get confirmed, well, hey. But if he does get confirmed, he's promising he'll wrap up this whole drinking thing. We no longer will have to worry about all the dozens of claims from his previous jobs of him drinking on the job.

He says he'll quit. I'm sure he will. I'm not sure which is a better case to the American people for this is the right guy for defense secretary, but they're trying them both. Keep in mind, though, just keep it in perspective. Keep in mind that this nomination, the Hegset nomination, represents the pinnacle of performance thus far from the Trump transition. This is their best effort. This is the only one of their nominees for whom they've actually been able to get it together enough to hold a hearing. This is the, Staff can run it if he can't, and he'll stop drinking if he gets the job. This represents the best that they can do. This is the level of performance they are demonstrating for the American people even before they have responsibility for governing. So yes, we will watch what they do and not just what they say from now on and for the first 100 days and for the duration. But it is worth saying and being real about the fact that what they are saying thus far and what they are doing thus far have both been utterly shambolic. None of us should be afraid to say so, and none of us here are.

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When the National Weather Service wants to grab your attention, when they want to say, You really need to take this weather thing seriously, one of the things they can do is issue something that is called a Particularly Dangerous Situation Warning. Particularly Dangerous Situation. This one from November, a Particularly Dangerous Situation Warning of Extreme Fire Conditions in Southern California. They issued that warning one day before a fire broke out in Ventura County that burned more than 20,000 acres. There was another Particularly dangerous situation warning that they issued, December ninth, that immediately preceded another fire in Malibu that burned more than 4,000 acres. Then a week ago, the National Weather Service issued another Particularly dangerous situation alert for extreme fire conditions, and it was right after that warning when the true calamity began. The Palisades and Eton fires, burning more than 37,000 acres this week, destroying more than 12,000 structures, a collective death toll of 24 so far, and that is expected to rise. Those fires in Los Angeles, of course, are still burning. While firefighters have made a lot of progress in the last couple of days, there's now a new forecast, which, I'm sorry to tell you, has necessitated a new one of those high-end alerts, a new particularly dangerous situation alert for conditions that are starting tomorrow.

Before dawn, Tuesday morning, overnight, Tuesday night, until noon on Wednesday, huge chunks of Ventura in Los Angeles are expecting wind gusts up to 70 miles an hour. That is terrible news for these fires because that makes it harder for firefighters to fight the fires that are existing. It makes it increasingly likely that they'll spread or even that new ones will start. While LA is bracing for what's coming in the next two days, tens of thousands of people are still anxiously waiting to see how much damage has already been done. Evacuation zones affecting hundreds of thousands of people. They're still off limits to their residents. National Guard turning people away at checkpoints. People can't go check on their homes themselves for the most part. La County has started releasing maps of preliminary damage assessments for both of the two major fires. These maps are really interesting. You can access them online. They show neighborhoods where authorities have been able to survey the damage so far. Each one of those little icons represents a structure. You can zoom in and click on an individual property to see how well or how poorly that property has fared. They have individual pictures of the sites that you can click on.

It's harrowing. But because authorities have only just started to have the manpower free to do these damage surveys, this is just preliminary data. They can't tell you everything. For a lot of Los Angeles, the best information people are able to get about the status of their own neighborhoods, their own homes, is coming from reporters. Reporters who are able to be on the ground at the front lines, able to get in to see what they can, and to let the public know what they can. Joining us now from near the States Fire is our own NBC correspondent, Jacob Soberoff, who has been doing just tremendous work covering this story. Jacob, thanks for being with us tonight.

Rachel, thank you so much for having me.

I know you've spoken to a lot of residents from situation zones in the past few days. Can you give us a sense of what proportion of people, how many of the people you're talking to actually know the status of their homes right now?

I think that the assumption for most people, Rachel, is that their homes are gone. I grew up here in Pacific Palisades. This was a Ralph Supermarket. This was one of the two supermarkets that me and my mom and my family used to go to. Pacific Palisades, and Altadina for that matter, but really here in the Palisades, This community has effectively been wiped off the map of Los Angeles. This is a city that is a patchwork of communities, and the Palisades is one of them. It has essentially ceased to exist. We're talking about 5,400 structures, largely homes, that are gone. It is an incredibly eerie feeling to be here tonight. The power is still out in the Palisades. If these TV lights weren't here, it would be pitch black. First, among the concerns are what's going to happen over the course of the next day or so with these winds picking up. More than anything, there is an incredibly enormous recovery effort that has to take place and has to begin right now. I talked to Governor Newsom yesterday. He said it's going to take 9-12 months alone just to clear the debris, the environmental mediation before they can even start building here.

He said it was the worst natural disaster in the history of the country based on cost alone.

Well, Jacob, to that point, Los Angeles, we talk about it as LA as if it's one thing. It's 88 independently incorporated cities. That is interesting in terms of the way things run at the best of times, but in the worst of times, it raises interesting questions about how the cities and the county and the state and the federal government are all interacting, both to protect people, but to recover and respond. Who's really leading right now, if you can tell that from your reporting?

Yeah, it's a great question. The city alone is over 400 square miles, and there are 4 million residents within it. But LA County is the most populous county by population in the nation with more than 12 million people. It's run by a board of supervisors. The city, of course, is run by LA Mayor Karen Bass, who is getting an incredible amount of criticism here. She's come back from this international trip and briefed people almost on a daily basis, but you haven't seen her much out and about. At least we requested to talk to her tonight for you on the Rachel Maddo show, and they didn't get back to us. I think people want to hear from the mayor of LA. They want to hear from the governor who has been out on the streets. But there are many questions yet to be answered. Obviously, the federal government is going to play an enormous role here, too. President Biden has committed this 100% disaster recovery for six months. But you were just talking about in the last block of the show that the Trump administration is starting in a matter of days, and President Trump has been calling the response by both Mayor Bass and Governor Newsom, criticizing it at every turn.

What is he going to do? Is he going to step up and is he going to provide additional aid? This is something on the scale of which I think we haven't really seen before, and it is going to require a multi-jurisdictional. During the fire itself, there were fire agencies and first responders all throughout California, actually from Canada and Mexico as well. It's the type of recovery mission that we're going to need here in LA, too. I don't really think that the contours of that are particularly well defined yet. Granted, we're only six days into this. Tomorrow will be the one week anniversary, if that's the right word, of this all starting. But this is going to be a project that Governor Newsom calls it a Marshall Plan for Los Angeles, We don't even know what that looks like yet.

Jacob, in terms of the scale of this, it is hard to understand the scale of the destruction. That's part of why I showed that map, where you can click on individual properties, individual homes, and see photos that have been taken from these site surveys. Just trying to get a sense of the overall scale of it and the individual granular tragedy that this represents for each home, for each family that's affected. Is it your sense? Katrina was so big that the federal government came in and took over the response. Is it your sense that this is of that scale that you would expect the federal government, if it was so inclined, to come in and say, We're helming this, we're taking over. This is a disaster of national scale?

I'm a reporter, I'm not an urban planner, but I don't see how you do this on a piecemeal basis. There are 1,600 National Guard troops from California here on the ground, but effectively, you have to move out everyone in Pacific Palisades, the toxic fumes and the toxic chemicals that are permeating this community. You have essentially thousands of people who are made instantly homeless in the unhoused capital of America on top of an already strained system. What are you going to do with all of these people? Where are they going to go? And then how are you going to... Are you going to go block by block and have contractors do this on an individualized basis? I don't see how that happens and happens in a timely manner. They have got to clear these communities out, remediate them, make sure their mentally safe to go back in, make sure that the building materials are all up to par, that a fire like this doesn't happen again and bring back a community. The Palisades alone has 23,000 people. How do you do this without the federal government? I don't think that we know, again, answer to that question tonight, Rachel.

Nbc's own Jacob Soborow in his hometown of Pacific Palisades. Jacob, I know this has been a 24/7 around the clock and very emotional beat for you. Thanks for being here with us tonight, my friend. I really appreciate it.

Thank you, Rachel. I really appreciate it.

All right. Much more news ahead. Stay with us.

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Hey, everyone. It's Chris Hayes. This week on my podcast, Why Is This Happening? We're sharing the first chapter of my new book, The Sirens Call: How Attention became the world's most endangered resource. To live at this moment in the world, both online and off, is to find oneself endlessly wrinkling on the mast, fighting for control over a very being against the ceaseless siren calls of the and devices, and corporations, and malevolent actors trying to trap it. That's this week on Why Is This Happening. Search for Why Is This Happening?

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How do we strategically align ourselves ourselves to this moment of information, this moment of transition in our country?

The Rachel Maddow Show, weeknights at 9: 00 PM Eastern on MSNBC.

It has been two years and 56 days since Special Counsel Jack Smith launched his investigation into Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election and try to stay in power despite the fact that he lost. While that investigation and indictment we now know will not result in a criminal trial for Trump, the Special Council His team did compile a report on what they found in their investigation. After some legal back and forth, DOJ is now allowed to release that report as soon as the clock strikes midnight tonight. I have a couple of questions about what's going to happen next. The first is, when? When exactly are we going to see it? Like I said, the Justice Department is allowed to release the report at midnight Eastern tonight. Does that mean we're going to see it at midnight? Do you think they're going to wait until business hours tomorrow? Is there any reason to think that it's not going to come out tomorrow at all? Could there be some additional delay? All of that is when. That's question one. Question two for me is, what exactly are we going to learn in this report? Do we expect that we're going to learn something we didn't know from the indictment or from all the hearings related to this case or from the January sixth investigation in Congress?

Will there be new stuff that we didn't previously know? My third and final question is about what this report is on. This is the report from the Special Counsel's investigation. The case that the Special Counsel's office put together, all the evidence they compiled, all the witnesses they interviewed, all that stuff doesn't cease to exist because Trump is no longer going to go to trial. What happens to all that underlying information? This is a contested matter. Today, the Senior Senate Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Dick Durban, asked DOJ to please preserve all records from this case relating to Donald Trump. Preserve evidence from the Trump investigations. What does that mean? Can the DOJ do that? What would it mean in terms of law enforcement in the future? At the same time, and even more provocatively, the attorney general from the state of Arizona has also just asked the Justice Department to provide her with information on this case. Specifically, she's asked for Jack Smith's full case file against Donald Trump. The Arizona attorney general is prosecuting some of Trump's allies for their alleged election subversion efforts. She wants the product of Jack Smith's investigation to help in those efforts.

That's my third and last question. Can the Justice Department actually meet those requests? How much of this stuff is likely to come out, and to whom will it go? I know just who to ask. Joining us now is Andrew Weissman, former FBI General Counsel, former member of Special Council, Robert Mueller's investigation. Andrew, it's nice to see you. Thanks for being here.

Nice to be here.

Let me ask you about that last question first. The Senate Judiciary Democrats asking the Justice Department to preserve all the information related to this case, the Arizona Attorney General asking to please have all the information from this case. How do those queries relate to this report we might see tomorrow, and what do you make of those requests?

That's, I think, really the question, which is how do you make sure that this evidence, the underlying evidence that you noted, Rachel, does not disappear. Now, of course, some of that evidence is going to overlap with the January sixth evidence. That is something that has been made public by the January sixth Committee. But obviously, there's a lot more. The federal government has grand jury power. They interviewed a host of witnesses. The name of the game here is if you want to make sure that that is not destroyed by the next incoming administration to Let's assume that they wanted to do that. We don't know that they would, but if you want to make sure that doesn't happen, the only sure way to do that is to make sure it gets into the hands of people who are outside of the executive branch. That can be Congress, it can be a state prosecutor, and it can be the courts. When I was working for Special Counsel Mueller, we had very lengthy submissions to the courts precisely because we were concerned about the Nixon era Saturday Night Massacre, and what would happen if we were suddenly disbanded, and what would happen to all of the evidence that we had compiled.

I think the surest way is for this administration to comply with those requests, and they also could give the report and all of the underlying evidence to, for instance, the chief judge in DC to make sure that it is in in the possession custody control of somebody outside of the executive branch.

Wow. Just locking it up in a safe, effectively, by making sure that it's in another branch of government because of what you expect might happen to it in the executive branch. Okay, that's hairy and interesting. My first question, when do you think we should expect to see this report released? Obviously, they can release it as of midnight. Is this the thing they would release at midnight? They'd wait till business hours? Is there anything that might delay it even past tomorrow?

Well, the only thing that could delay it between now and midnight is if one of the judges, Judge Canon, doesn't seem like she's going to, say the 11th Circuit or maybe a last minute, reprieve from the Supreme Court, but the clock is ticking. So it really looks like at 12: 01 that the Department of Justice is going to have the green light, and they need to grab it and growl. If they have the green light, they really cannot afford to wait. The public, as you noted, has been waiting a very long time for a public accounting. They were denied a criminal trial in this matter for a whole variety of reasons. And this Is at this point the next best thing to having some accounting of exactly what happened and also an historical record of what happened. I would be really surprised if the department doesn't take advantage of the fact that they have the legal authority at 12: 01 to go forward and release this to the public.

Are you expecting it to have new details in it that we haven't heard before, or will it be a official summation of stuff that we generally know from having watched the case thus far?

A bit of both. I think there's no question because of the January sixth Committee and lengthy submissions by Jack Smith, that we will have a certain... The general narrative is something that we're aware of. I think I'm expecting that the full litany, the panoply of people who told the then President that he had lost the election, starting with the vice President, his campaign, the Department of Justice, his White House Council, the people at the Department of Homeland Security charged with whether there was election interference. I think we're going to be overwhelmed with the details of that. But I also think there will be some new information because Jack Smith had the ability to interview other people and to put them in the grand jury. Now, I don't think we'll get all of that grand jury material, but I think there will be substantial details to fill out the historical record.

All right. I'm clearing my schedule. Andrew Weissman, thank you very much for your time tonight. Good to talk to you, my friend. All right, we'll be right back. Stay with us. One of the things President Biden has done in his last few days in office is put new sanctions on Russia that are an order of magnitude bigger than anything the US has done before. This has had a little bit of attention, but it probably deserves more than it's getting. It's a really big deal. Russia is basically a Petra state. Its whole economy depends on being able to sell oil and gas. After they invaded Ukraine almost three years ago, the Western world basically united in an effort to stop them from selling their oil and gas. Russia pretty quickly figured out how to get around those sanctions. A lot of the ways they got around it was by using something called a shadow fleet of ships that aren't supposed to be carrying oil, that have no clear connection to Russia, but they've used those ships to ship oil around the world and sell it basically off the books to keep the Russian economy afloat. Well, now, the US, along with the UK, we're cracking down on Russian state oil companies, on Russian energy officials, and specifically, indirectly, on nearly 200 of the ships who are believed to be part of that shadow fleet that lets Russia evade the sanctions.

These new sanctions will make it pretty much impossible for Russia to use those ships to carry its oil around and sell it. That potentially takes away a huge amount of Russia's ability to earn money through the only thing that it makes and sells itself. They have oil and gas, they've got weapons, that's it. Us officials say the new sanctions have the potential to cost the Russian economy billions of dollars every month. It's a much bigger deal than anything the Biden administration has ever previously done. Of course, these new sanctions will set up a big test for what happens one week from now when Joe Biden leaves office. Will Donald Trump take those sanctions away? President Biden has set a benchmark here at the close of his term with something that is a big deal. If President Trump were so inclined, he could do a huge favor for Vladimir Putin by taking these new sanctions away. Stick a pin in this. One to watch. Watch this space. That's going to do it for me tonight. I will see you next week, next Monday, for the inauguration starting at 10: 00 AM Eastern. Yes, starting that night, Monday night, next week, I will be here with you at 9: 00 PM that night and all week long, five nights a week.

I'll be here five nights a week for the first 100 days of Donald Trump's presidency. Alex Wagner will be reporting nationwide and overseas on the first 100 days of Trump land. We're all making an extraordinary effort for what we know is an extraordinary time. These first 100 days, looking very much forward to spending it here with you.

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