time flies, even if turkeys don t. [ laughter ] a dad pardons a turkey as he embarrasses his daughters. that was good. that was good. i thought it was good. yeah. when all in starts right now. good evening from new york, i m chris hayes. under normal circumstances, the f-word doesn t get thrown a lot around in mainstream politics. people bring up fascism, it is generally within the fever swamp of conspiracy theorists. but this presidential campaign has been anything but normal. and now, some prominent members of the republican party establishment are openly invoking fascism to describe their own party s front runner, donald j. trump. started last week with a series of tweets from top advisers and supporters of donald trump s opponents after trump said he would be anticipate to creating a database or registry of muslims in america. here s john noonan, national security adviser, jeb bush, force federal registration of u.s. citizens based on religious identity i
expect no justice in a case that even seems clear, whether it s the rodney king case. you re watching the beating happen and it takes the federal government to step in. the confidence the citizenry has in our prosecutors and in due process is eroded when you need 400 days to determine that what people are seeing on a video is what they re seeing on a video. if the dash cam video did not exist, would the police lie that this officer was threatened, would that lie have survived and would there be charges tonight? jamie calvin, you go first. it s hard to imagine the police narrative wouldn t have sur vooied absent the video. and just following on the last comment, there are two dimensions of police accountability. run are the act, the alleged abuses. the other, and it s critical, to
that the police union maintained the officer fired in fear of his life because the teen lunged at him. lunged at him. that was their description. lunged at him and his partner with that knife. that s a description you read in these cases all around the country. and then once in a while there was a videotape, and, of course, he was going away from them. there was no lunge at them whatsoever. the police union story, a complete lie. yeah, and you can go back and take any case you want. the case in the late 91990s in new york, there was no videotape but it was the same story. the walter scott case, the initial story told by the officer and backed up by the department was that walter scott made a move for the officer s taser and the officer shot him in self-defense. the videotape proved that not to be true. and then you have this case where to mr. calvin s point, the city, which knew the information was not true put out a story in the midst, by the way, of a very
prove in cases. it is. have they set the bar too high? they have but here s why. number one, it s easier to negotiate a plea when you re starting point is murder 1 opposed to murder 2 to then get a plea of murder 2 or manslaughter. the only reason is because the d.a. waited so long, almost 14 months to prosecute and she wants to show that she is overly confident, almost comp satding for hiding that video. what about federal charges? that could be next. i want to point out that the d.a. kept saying that they were parallel investigations. federal. that doesn t make any sense. doesn t make any sense to me as a practitioner. you can charge him federally and you can charge him with the state and nothing stops the other party from investigating. but i do think it s more likely second-degree murder. jamie, you were one of the first to look at the autopsy report of mcdonald is this when you realized that the original account wasn t adding up?
why? that s correct. two reasons. she did not want to see and has not seen the video of her son s execution. and what mother would want to see that replayed and now on the news constantly. secondly, the family from the west side of chicago and there was a real concern of public reaction if the video went viral. so the family did not want it released and we, you know, represent the family so that we agreed with. we know that it was a journalist we spoke to in the last hour, one of the first to call on the city to release that video through foia request. they know it s out and covered about laquan s death an how are they reacting? you know, they understand first, they re still in grieving and his mother s in counseling and but she understands that the