explicitly that russian intelligence planned to shift its messaging if trump lost and clinton won, to say that the democrats had stolen the election and trump was the real winner. the idea was that would sow chaos in the united states, it would undercut clinton s legitimacy as president hopefully in an ongoing way, it could potentially even lead to political violence in the united states. according to the intelligence community assessment of what russia did to interfere with our election, that was russia s 2016 plan if trump didn t win. it was also the stop the steal roger stone plan. ultimately trump did win. but the special counsel s office started looking into what exactly happened in the campaign between the trump camp and the russian interference campaign. and as part of that investigation, political entities that roger stone created around the trump campaign started getting subpoenaed, as did lots of the people who worked for them. stone himself right now is widely believed to be
hitting eight days and counting after the election. the person i wanted to talk to about this tonight is ron klain, he s an attorney who worked on behalf of al gore in the nightmare 2000 florida presidential recount. mr. klain, thanks for joining us tonight. i know you have voiced this interesting idea that what is happening in florida right now with the legal challenges, with the physical protests that are happening in the street outside elections offices, and with the
he s an attorney who worked on behalf of al gore in the nightmare 2000 florida presidential recount. mr. klain, thanks for joining us tonight. i know you have voiced this interesting idea that what is happening in florida right now with the legal challenges, with the physical protests that are happening in the street outside elections offices, and with the sort of pr campaign being waged by the president, by rick scott, by the republican party. you ve described this as something that we should maybe see as a kind of dry run for how the president might contest his own election results if he lost in 2020. as a veteran of all the things you ve been involved in and you ve seen, why do you make that case about what s happening in florida now? look, we have to separate what s really happening on the ground in florida, which is a process whereby ballots are being counted, they re being recounted pursuant to law, that s what it should be, from
but the angry republican protests outside the elections offices in florida right now, they are being organized under that same stop the steal banner that roger stone for the trump campaign and apparently russian intelligence both prepped in 2016 in case trump hadn t won the presidential election. they didn t end up having to use it in 2016 but they re trying it on now to see how it works in florida. and as far as we can tell, it s not just the same signage and the same slogan. at least on the republican side, it appears to be the same people personally who are involved in trying to pull this off. you made out the stickers, you gave out the stickers? you didn t tell me last night you guys work for roger stone. roger is a good friend. he s a good friend. you are good friends? is that the extent to which you re working for him, just as friends? who are you? we met last night, i m the msnbc producer. i m sorry, i didn t recognize the glasses. i m different in the daytime.
it looks like. if they said, stephanie ruhle, your signature needs to match what it looks like on your driver s license, there s zero chance that would be the case. so what does it actually look like? reporter: so they go through steps for that. and they say the tie goes to the voter. there are some instances where they can look into somebody and one of the judges on the canvassing board was explaining this to me yesterday. they say, this person s last name has changed, so they reach out to them. but they go through other methods to see if this person was married, or did this person get a little bit older so their signature might be a little shakier. what s at stake in this case is basically who is making those determinations when you look at the signatures. the nelson campaign and the democrats who filed this suit are basically arguing that although these staffers at the elections offices are very good, they re not well trained in handwriting. they re not handwriting experts. so tha