thing 1 tonight, president trump is on a nonstop crusade to discredit the mueller investigation. today he introduced a new line of attack tweeting, a.p. has just reported the russia hoax investigation has now cost our government over $17 million and going up fast. it s $16.7 million but rounding up is fine. that is a big hunk of change. you could do a whole lot with $17 million. you could buy this nice private jet, still have a few million over or this luxury estate in the bahamas, boat not included or if you re like president trump you could golf a handful of times. that s thing 2 in 60 seconds. uncompromising protection. advanced connectivity.
$7.7 million from last may when he was appointed. but there s also a $9 million amount from other justice department or fbi personnel who don t report directly to mueller but have been tangentially related to other activities. when you add those together, you get to $16.7 million. but of course the president says it is all a big waste of money. good reporting on your part. thank you very much. joining us, ted lieu, served on the judiciary and foreign affairs committee. congressman, what s the message the president is sending with the latest pardon? thank you, wolf, for your question. even though i m a former prosecutor, i ve sent a number of letters in support of commutations, clemency and pardons because one of the things that makes us human is our capacity for forgiveness and mercy. that s why when the president uses a pardon power, he needs to
to do that, and in fact the president has gone completely around the process. i think that s part of why you see former federal prosecutors saying in this case we did it by the book. the president is allowed to do this under the constitution, but we think we did it right. i understand we re getting in a new tally on how much the russia investigation is costing taxpayers. that s right. we have seen the president tweeting about some $20 million number, saying it is a waste of time, it is a witch hunt. but new figures from the justice department today when added with prior figures that were released in the past, wolf, showed the cost is actually roughly around $17 million. more specifically, $16.7 million. but it is important to breakdown how these costs are coming about. remember, the russian investigation is not just mueller, it started with an fbi counter intelligence investigation. so if you look at the figures spent to date for mueller s office alone, his team,
of 35.9 million early votes have been cast in 2016 with 16.7 million in 12 key battleground states. more registered democrats have voted in eight of those key battleground states while more republicans have voted in three, in florida, an equal number have voted with a record 4.8 million early votes already cast. just four nights from now, nbc news will be projecting the winner of the presidential election. joining us now is john lapinski, who will be in charge of making that decision to make that projection as the director of elections for nbc news. so, john, 10:20 p.m. tuesday night. might we know as early as then? look, i mean, we really don t know this early on in the sense of when we re going to be projecting this. i mean, i saw you had sam wang on earlier.
days is, in florida, in north carolina, in places all across the country, votes generally have been up. you ve seen, in the african-american community, big surges in early vote. big surges in latino vote. big surges in youth vote. and so if we can just sustain what we ve done over the last several days, then i will feel good about the ultimate turnout results. the latest data from nbc news and target smart shows a record of 35.9 million early votes have been cast in 2016 with 16.7 million in 12 key battleground states. more registered democrats have voted in eight of those key battleground states while more republicans have voted in three, in florida, an equal number have voted with a record 4.8 million early votes already cast.