world to persuade trump to stop the violence, which he for 187 deadly minutes failed to do, or outright refused to do. the breaking news today, the select committee now breaching the innermost ring of trump's family circle. his daughter ivanka is being asked by the committee for information on her direct contacts with her dad, the expresident, at key moments on the day of the insurrection. among those moments, according to a letter from committee chairman bennie thompson to ivanka released today, quote, as january 6th approached, president trump attempted on multiple occasions to persuade vice president pence to participate in his plan. one of the president's discussions with the vice president occurred by phone on the morning of january 6th. you were present in the oval office and observed at least one side of that telephone conversation. the committee also appears to zero in on ivanka trump's efforts as the insurrection unfolded to get trump to step in and stop the violence. the committee going so far as to publish the testimony of another key witness on the efforts to get trump to act. that was pence's then national security adviser, keith kellogg. here's a dramatic exchange from his testimony. quote, question from the committee, did you think that she, ivanka trump, could help get him, president trump, to a place where he could make a statement where he would stop this? answer from kellogg, yes. question, so you thought ivanka could get her father to do something about it? answer from kellogg, to take a course of action. question, he didn't say yes to mark meadows, or kalee mcpain inny or -- but he might listen to his daughter? answer, yes. question to kellogg, proposally first time she, ivanka trump, went in, it wasn't sufficient or she wouldn't have had to go back at least one who time i assume; is that correct? answer from kellogg, well, yes, ma'am, i think she went back in there because ivanka can be pretty tenacious. the committee also describing in its letter frts by donald trump jr., laura ingram, brian kill immediate, sawn hannity, multiple members the congress and the president governor chris christie and many others to get trump to appear in the media to ask rioters to stand down. here's one newly released text he can change between a white house staff member and someone outside the white house. it goes like this, incoming text, is someone getting to potus? he has to tell protesters to dispain. someone is going to get killed. response from white house staff member, quote, i have been trying for the last 30 minutes, literally stormed in outer oval to get him to put out the first one. it's completely insane. but of course the entreaties for hours fell on deaf ears. as far as trump's action as commander in chief, the committee rights this, quote, the committee is aware that certain white house staff devoted time during the violent riot to rebutting questions regarding whether the president was attempting to hold up deployment of the national guard. the committee has identified no evidence that president trump issued any order or took any other action to deploy the guard that day. nor does it appear that president trump made any calls at all to the department of justice or any other law enforcement agency to request deployment of their personnel to the capitol. the january 6th select committee ensnaring the former first daughter and revealing the strength of its evidence against expresident donald trump is where we start today. we will be joined in a couple men's by committee member bill lofgren. first let's bring in -- and our friend carol len i go is here, "washington post" reporter. both are msnbc contributors. i have read this now three times. i have gone through and looked at all the footnotes and the references to documents in possession by this committee are what have me gob smacked today. neil, your first reaction? >> i think you should be gob smacked. there is a lot they have got. congress now wants to hear from ivanka trump. given how li tinlous the trumps are i think it is only a matter of hours before we see a lawsuit about former executive's favorite child privilege. but i think that's, you know, that's likely to happen. i think the timing of this is not surprising. it comes on the heels of a remarkable loss for donald trump by the u.s. supreme court last night which in my judgment is a key step in restoring the rule of law in this country. what that decision last night -- what has gotten lost in the last 20 hours is what that case, nicolle was about. by that i mean the specific documents. congress was trying to know what trump was doing on january 6th. they wanted his diary. they wanted a handwritten note that he wrote. they wanted to know what he did that day. and he went into court, including all the way to the supreme court, and said, no, the american people don't have a right to know what i was doing on january 6th. and he lost that claim 8-1 in the supreme court. and so it is not surprising today now you are getting calls from congress for these document, for additional evidence from ivanka trump and others because it all goes to that key question, what in the world was he doing for 187 minutes on january 6th, particularly when his own daughter was trying to stop him from kind of inciting and encouraging what was going on? >> neil, you said that had been lost. let's make sure it is found. these are the documents that will be handed over to the january 6th select committee as a result of that supreme court decision. draft text of a presidential speech for 1/6. presidential diaries, activity logs, notes, remarks related to 1/6. talking points for trump press secretary kayleigh mcenany related to the 2020 election. a draft executive order on election integrity. a handwritten list of potential or scheduled briefings or calls containing election issues. carol len i go, on the twin bombshells the supreme court decision and invitation for ivanka trump who has been painted by a witness who has already cooperated as someone with singular authority in the eyes of donald trump to try to turn him from the posture he was in to one where he might say something to the rioters. >> i think they are someone bombshells to the every day public. i think on the law the supreme court ruling was the only way the supreme court could rule. there was no legal standing to deny the committee those records of what a president was doing on that day. in fact, there is an argument to be made that many white house staffers and others around trump broke the law by not keeping these records and preserving them properly by their own personal teches and other gmails they were using on this day when they should have been preserving these records for perpetuity. it is a bombshell, however, nonetheless, because there were a lot of people quite concern who had watched the supreme court who feared that some of the more political and etiological members of the court might rule in donald trump's favor. remember, donald trump sort of famously said, to me and to many others, that he found the court appointees that he had put on the court horribly weak and gutless and disloyal to him because they did not rule in his favor on questioning the integrity of the election when it was free, fair, and confirmed by all authorities. on the second bombshell about ivanka, i have got to say, it's quite a day when you think about the fact that leticia james in new york is now accusing ivanka trump of defrauding the irs. now, she's not bringing a criminal case at this moment but that's essentially what she said. they have significant evidence of her breaking federal law. in the same moment she's being asked to come clean about how hard she worked on january 6th to get her father to keep people from being killed, including republican lawmakers and including vice president pence whom rioters were threatening to hang that day as he fled his own hideaway office of one last thing i would say, nicolle, is that this moment is so important on the part of the committee because they are corroborating a lot of great reporting that's been done. >> uh-huh. >> they are reporting a lot of information that colleagues of mine and me and my partner phil rutger gathered. but what they are revealing in whole is a lot of people who still publicly proclaim the big lie are revealed in these records to have recognized january 6th as incredibly dangerous, to have recognized it as a riot, not a tourist visit, to have recognized it as something that was totally disastrous for donald trump's legacy. >> well, one of the people who seems to think that as it's unfolding that it is nothing short of an atrocity is sean hannity. that's not the public position he takes on his broadcast. but he sends this message to kayleigh mcenany on january 7th in the text. no more stolen election talk. yes, impeach and 25th amendment are real. and many people will quit. kayleigh mcenany who i believe was moonlighting a of the the rnc at this point furthering the lies about election fraud responds love that, that is the playbook i will enforce. the playbook, no more stolen election talk. i believe she engaged in stolen election talk, lots of it afterwards. how does that evidence pull together what the committee is doing, piecing together doublespeak, privately communicated about how horrible the president's conduct and lies really were? >> i think it is significant. there is both -- just a fact-gathering component to what the congressional committee is doing. then there is potentially a law enforcement component. what was the state of mind of these individuals. because for a criminal investigation you have to have mens rea, some bad intent. as this evidence unfolds and you start to see trump diagnose told -- that's what the committee is trying to figure out, what was trump told? did ivanka try to intervene? did hannity? did others go and say to him stop this? did he sit on his hands or in some way actively encourage it? those are the key questions. the me it is remarkable, nicolle, that the president went into supreme court and tried to block the american people from getting answers to those questions. i mean, that chart you just showed of what the january 6th committee was trying to get and what trump tried to block them from getting to me is astounding. i see zero possible agent for how the american people shouldn't have access to that kind of information. kind of the most important thing you want to do is what the heck was the president doing on january 6th? and he said huh-uh, i get to keep this secret. and you know, this is a -- the supreme court is very conservative, i agree, but this is one in which i always thought they would do the right thing. and they did. because the consequences for a different alternative holding would have been insane. it would have been soviet. >> carol, i want to ask you about another -- i thought it was a revelation in the letter. chairman thompson writes this, the committee has information suggesting that president trump's white house counsel may have concluded that the actions president trump directed vice president pence to take would violate the constitution or would be otherwise illegal. did you discuss those issues with any member of the white house counsel's office or were any such legal conclusions shared with president trump? at the conclusion is a citation for a document cited by the 1/6 committee. i guess my question is, if the committee has information concluding that trump's white house counsel suggested what trump was asking pence to do was illegal, i think you and phil rutger went the further reporting on -- correct me if i'm wrong, but the white house counsel believed there was a chance trump could be arrested that day. we understand from your previous reporting in the book that there was damage that the president was on very unstable legal grounds. but have we ever heard before that there might have been a document that the committee had that the counsel concluded that what trump was asking partnerships to do was illegal? >> just a slight editorial comment, nicolle, laser sharp memory. yes, indeed, this is a new document, we have never heard of it. indeed, we did report, phil and i, that the white house counsel at the time, pat cipollone, not any shy, you know, sideline kind of person who didn't want to support trump, had concluded that this was inappropriate. the president's actions on that day could have triggered a charge of inciting violence, as could rudy giuliani, as could the president's son's comments and actions. and was concerned enough about this to threaten that he and his colleagues, his deputy counsels, might resign if the president pushed this issue of sort of prepardoning anybody with regard to january 6th. very concerned about the idea that the white house or any other officials might be drawn in the a claim of obstruction by helping donald trump avoid some consequences for some of his actions that day. now, of course we know president trump wasn't charged, wasn't arrested, wasn't accused of inciting violence, inciting a riot. but that worry was there. you are totally right about the document. this could be anything, right? it could be -- i would focus in on the words "may have concluded" it sounds to me not like a memo from pat cipollone, which says i have conclude. it sounds like a memo or a text where somebody says the white house counsel already warned you this isn't appropriate, it isn't constitutional for pence to take this action. it could be anything. it could be anything from a letter, a document, to literally a telephone text that's a few words long. >> and we know that a lot of the documents that the committee has cited are things that were turned over in that 9,000-document dump from mark meadows prior to being held in contempt of congress. we are going to put these questions to committee member zoe lofgren. we will ask you both to stick around to pick this conversation up on the other side. we will ask the congresswoman on the explosive efforts to get trump to call off the riot as it was underway. and getting the former vice president to talk. plus, after democrats failed to pass federal voting rights legislation president biden's second year in office begins with a very tough path forward against gop voter suppression efforts which are ongoing. we will talk about what's next in that fight. later in the program, the investigation into the expresident's insistence that people find him 11,000 votes in the state of georgia just took a significant step forward. we will tell you what that is. all those stories and more when "deadline: white house" continues after quick break. don't go anywhere today. s after. subway's eat fresh refresh s after. don't go anywhere today. has so many new fos, here's how they line up. we got the new chicken & bacon ranch, new baja steak & jack, and the new baja chicken & bacon, aka "the smokeshow." save big. order through the app. finally. our honeymoon. it took awhile, but at least we got a great deal on our hotel with kayak. i was afraid we wouldn't go.. with our divorce and.... great divorce guys. yeah... search 100s of travel sites at once. kayak. search one and done. with unitedhealthcare medicare advantage plans... ...you can take advantage of $0 virtual visits. - wow. - uh-huh. $0 copays on virtual visits for primary care and mental health. take advantage now. wow! 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be a lot to handle. ♪ this magic moment ♪ but heinz knows there's plenty of magic in all that chaos. ♪ so different and so new ♪ ♪ was like any other... ♪ but i think it's also important for the american people to understand how dangerous donald trump was. we know, as he was sitting there in the dining room next to the oval office members of his staff were pleading with him to go on television to tell people to stop. we know leader mccarthy was pleading with him to to that. we know members of his family. we know his daughter -- we have first-hand testimony that his daughter ivanka want in at least twice to ask him to please stop this violence. >> that was january 6th select committee vice chair liz cheney a couple weeks ago telling abc news that the panel had evidence that ivanka trump the expresident's daughter, had begged her father to call off the attack on the capitol while it was happening. that allegation is among the many explosive details laid out in the january 6th select committee's letter released today to ivanka trump, all of us showing the public for the first time how much the committee already knows about what happened inside the west wing on january 6th and the run up to it. that's before the nation's highest court rejected the expresident's bid to cover up his actions and documents before during and after the insurrection, giving the committee access to a massive trove of white house records. joining us now is congresswoman zoe lofgren of california, a member of the january 6th select committee. carol and neil are still here as well. the letter is the most revealing you all have been with some of this evidence. he want to get into it. first, ivanka trump responded to the invitation through a spokesperson who has a weird response. as the committee knows, ivanka didn't speak at the january 6th rally. i read the letter three tiles, i didn't see anything suggesting she had. and then they are spokesperson says she stated at 3:15 that day that any security breach is disrespectable, the violence must stop immediately. her quotes are the day. >> that statement from her spokesperson makes me think they actually hadn't seen the letter yet. >> yeah. >> because it doesn't really respond to the request that we made of miss trump. obviously, we had the direct testimony of general kellogg about what he heard the former president say to the former vice president. we would like to talk to miss trump about that. but we have direct testimony that miss trump went in multiple times, at least twice, maybe more, to her father. i believe she was alone with him. to ask him to call off the violence. we would like to talk to her about that. we have got some indication that the former president was told by his legal staff that what he was urging the vice president to do was unconstitutional and illegal. we would like to know if miss trump knows anything about that. so we hope that she does respond in a positive fashion as a patriot and as an american who wants to get to the truth. >> i want to deal with everything you just shared. let me start with something you just said. this is in the letter. the committee has information suggesting that president trump's white house counsel may have concluded that the actions president trump directed vice president pence to take would violate the constitution or would be otherwise illegal. did you discuss those issues with any emin of the white house counsel's office. to your knowledge, this is to ivanka trump, were any such legal conclusions shared with president trump? this citation is a document in possession of the committee. are you able to tell us if you have a document created by the counsel's office or reference to a document created by the counsel's office with the legal analysis that asking pence to do more than his ceremonial function want illegal or unconstitutional? >> i can't address that at this point, nicolle. and i think -- i'm sure your other guests will note that when you are doing an investigation, you don't necessarily want to reveal every piece of information that you have already obtained. that's going to help us get to the direct truth. i think the letter speaks for itself. we have some questions. we think miss trump can answer them. and we certainly hope she does. >> congresswoman, carol leonning and phil rutger reported when they book came out that white house counsel pat cipollone believed there was a chance trump could be arrested on january 6th. and sean hannity's text allude to a walkout a mass resignation by the counsel's office. have you spoken to members of white house counsel's office members? >> have i personally? no. but we are seeking to get all the information we can. let me divert for just one minute. >> sure. >> because a very significant decision was reached yesterday by the supreme court that will allow the committee to receive a very large amount of information from the archives. we hope that the trump white house complied with the law and actually delivered all the material they were required to deliver to the archives. and we think that some of the answers will be found within that material. so i think at this point that's the best i can answer your question. >> it gets to something dan goldman and others have made -- points they have made that your document case, the strength of the do you mean case, paper case, may make conversations about the few folks who have avoided your subpoenas irrelevant. i won't put you on the spot, but is -- let me put up first what you are going to be getting. this is what the supreme court decision frees up. your committee will be receiving draft texts of a presidential speech for january 6th, presidential diaries, activity logs, notes, remarks related to 1/6. talk points for trump's press secretary, kayleigh mcenany related to the 2020 elections. draft executive order on election integrity. handwritten list of poe tengs or scheduled briefings and calls concerning election issues and a undrafted proclaimationation honoring deceased capitol police officers. >> among other things. >> go ahead. >> among other things. we have asked for more than, that but that's a pretty good list. >> when do you -- i worked in a white house. again, it is a known unknown that the trump white house whether they complied with records acts and whether all of their speeches were staffed the way they are normally staffed. there is no indication there were normal but when do you expect to have these items that were hung up on this decision? >> very soon. we received a little bit of information last night. and we are expecting a large amount of material in the coming days. >> do you think that all of it will be -- it all exists and has been identified by the national archives. so the decision frees up -- >> yes. >> an immediate transfer? >> yes, it does. >> let me ask you. in the letter to ivanka trump there is this passage about chris miller's testimony. it says this, acting secretary of defense chris miller who was this the chain of command and reported directly to the president has testified under oath that the president never contacted him at any time on january 6th and never at any time issued him any order to deploy the national guard. miller did speak with vice president pence on january 6th but not with president trump. the committee has identified no evidence that president trump issued any order or took any other objection to deploy the guard that day, nor does it appear that president trump made calls at all to the department of justice or any other law enforcement agency to request deployment of their personnel to the capitol. what are you pursuing with this line of inquiry? >> well, we are trying to find out exactly what happened. i personally have found -- you know, as i was watching the riot out my window on the 6th, i wondered, where was the national guard? and i think there is more to know. we are getting -- you know, i'm not at liberty to disclose testimony without a vote of the committee. so we've not had that. but i'll say that the picture is still murky. one thing that the quote that you just read would indicate is that the president failed in his duty to protect and defend the constitution of the united states. it was under assault during that riot. it -- we would like to know more about that. >> i mean, look, one thing that i thought when i read that -- i worked for george w. bush and when he had a colon scope and was under indonesia there was a legal process row leased to the rest of the world that while he was under the effects of that anesthesia dick cheney would be in charge. it was the butt of some jokes, but internally known it was the process. is it your contention that donald trump wasn't funking as the commander in chief during the insurrection? >> we would like to know more about it. but there is evidence that mike pence was himself in danger. he was in the capitol itself. the mob was chanting "hang mike pence" and there was a variety of calls going into the defense deputy from people who were in danger. so i think it was not necessarily a transfer of power so much as, you know, nothing was happening from the white house, apparently, and there was a real threat to our discussion, to our system of government, and to the life of our vice president. >> are you pursuing any evidence, though, that he functioned as the country's commander in chief? i know what chris miller testified to was a conversation with vice president mike pence. >> right. >> but it is not clear who called in, ultimately, the national guard. miller has said he never talked to trump that day. >> let me just say we are still exploring that, including a deposition today. and there were some more threads to pull to find out the answer. >> it's -- i know there is so much more that you have than you can talk about. when things come out we are grateful to get to talk to you about it and to have you enhance our understanding of it. thank you for taking time to talk to us today congresswoman. >> any time. >> neil and carol i am coming back to you with these same -- i can't come up with a better word. should work at it, but just bombshells that the committee, you know, has this testimony that essentially -- i ran this down because those were my memories from the white house. you can't just slide into the chain of command but clearly trump never called in the national guard that day, neil? >> yeah, i think, nicolle, you are pointing to a possible third bombshell here with your eagle eyes which is this white house counsel may have concluded that trump's request to pence would violate the constitution and the laws n. a way that's not surprising news because it frankly means that the trump attorney can read english. because it would have been a clear violation of the law for pence to do what trump wanted. in that sense, it's not surprising that a trump attorney would conclude that this was illegal because it was obviously illegal. but that's not always a foregone conclusion when you are talking about trump attorneys. people like rudy giuliani who, you know, don't have any resepect for the law. carol is also a close reader. what she says, the letter from kong today says they have concluded it may violate the constitution. here's where i think there is a bombshell. yes, that's what the congressional committee concluded, but putting myself in the shoes of a white house counsel lawyer, any real lawyer would have been definitive about this. this is not something why which you say we advise you not to do this or something like that. this would be true of any client who you think is about to engage in criminal acts, you say in big letters, no, particularly somebody like trump who only reads big sharpy block letter language, which leads me to think if the counsel thought it was illegality would have been caveated and couched. it would have been explicit in bold letters. >> there was some history of the mcgahn counsel's office having a chief of staff who took notes. of the mcgahn counsel's office at one point sort of straining the law and telling trump that firing comey wasn't advisable. there was a history of the white house counsel's office under prior white house counsels writing things to file such as firing mueller could be viewed as obstruction of fis. as bizarro as this white house was there was at least some faint muscle memory to writing memos to tile about conclusions in which trump was clearly breaking the law. i keep thinking about if your staffer -- pence's chief of staff provided documents and testimony. if you are a staffer for pence you are des pat for the white house counsel's office to give your boss some legal cover for doing something that's politically catastrophic for him, which is defy trump's request to overturn the will american people. the idea there is something in writing from the white house counsel's office seems at least plausible. >> it does seem plausible. and let me just be -- let me geek out one more time on this and say the exact language of this letter is that we have information that pat cipollony may have concluded that this was unconstitutional and illegal. right? so may have concluded. so they have information that such a record may exist. and zoe lofgren just sort of gave us a hinted there under your polite interrogation. she gave us a hint which is we are going to get some records, we think a lot of them will be from the counsel's office and will help us figure all of this out. >> get this on paper. >> exactly. if neil is right, in that if there was a conclusion it was a term one. but they are getting evidence sort of secondhand that pat cipollone and his team may have reached this question. another important question geeking out is miss ivanka trump, do you have any information that this was shared with your dad? because that tells me, again, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, if you are a prosecutor or reporter worth your salt it tells me someone told me vaumpg say wear of this conclusion. ivanka is aware of conversations with her father about this conclusion and this warning from -- potentially, i should say, warning from cipollone's office. i would also say i really appreciated you flagging and asking congresswoman lofgren about the m.i.a. quality of the president, the evidence that they have. it seems almost like a bludgeon at this point. he didn't contact the attorney general. there is no evidence i should say that he contacted the attorney general. when congress members were in fear for their lives. he didn't contact, as far as they know -- they have no record of him contacting the department of defense. not his secretary, not his chairman of joint chiefs. and chris miller corroborated that in his testimony. they have evidence he didn't talk to the fbi or -- so -- so -- and meanwhile, phil and i, in our book ryabova vealed that pence did exactly as you described, nicolle, slid into the role of being commander in chief, was the person on the phone with the chairman of the joint chiefs, mark milley, was on the phone from his hideaway with the secretary of defense saying we have got to clear the capitol. we have got to get this country safe again. that's just, a, not following process. but, b, it seems to have been the only course that pence could have taken because the president was bickering with his staff about whether or not he should ask his followers to stop attacking members of congress. >> yeah. a former very senior national security adviser said to me if you are mark milley it might have been enough, a call from mike pence might have been enough. the chain of command might have -- to your point, carol, at that hour, been murky. the president wasn't seen after the ellipse on the rally when he called for a march on capitol and called for mike pence to do the right thing. i am reminded in the letter the tweet attacking mike pence comes out in the 2:00 hour. the attack on the capitol started in the 1:00 hour. the violence was under way. and he incites more vie lens toward mike pence. i don't know what ivanka trump does now for a life or a job, but it seems like that would be something she would want to clear up where she came down on all that conduct by the expresident. neil, carol thank you for spending time with us today. senators are trying to pick up the pieces at least on the democratic side after voting rights legislation failed last night. we will talk about the bipartisan underway to move forward and why some democrats say it still will not go far enough. that's next. ar enough that's next. rvice i can trust. >> singers: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace. ♪ you could spend half an hour preparing for the half hour status meeting. orrr... you could cancel the meeting and share updates in slack instead. it's where your whole team is in one place so everyone can stay up to date. slack. where the future works. it's your home. and there's no place like wayfair. to make your reach-in closet, feel like a walk-in closet now that's more your style. make the morning chaos, organized chaos. and make sure everything's in it's place. so nothing is out of place. however you make it, make your home a place like no other. throughout history i've observed markets shaped by the intentional and unforeseeable. for investors who can navigate this landscape, leveraging gold, a strategic and sustainable asset... the path is gilded with the potential for rich returns. today proebd's second year in office begins with a very different path forward against gop voter suppression efforts and navigating the reality was a 50/50 senate. after democrats fell short last night in their attempt to change the filibuster rule on this narrow issue to pass federal voting rights legislation with senators joe manchin and kyrsten sinema siding with all 50 republicans to block it. there is now bipartisan support on reforming the electoral count act. politico is reporting those talks include each some of the most forceful democratic advocates for reforming the filibuster who are already lowering their expectations. but here is georgia's senator's warning last night on the consequential difference between electoral reform and the much broader voting rights protections. >> i support reforming the electoral count act. that said, reforming the electoral count act will do uhl virtually nothing to address the sweeping voter suppression and election subversion efforts taking place in gentleman skbra and in states and localities nationwide. it doesn't matter if your votes are properly counted if you cannot cast your vote in the first place. >> joining our conversation, sam stein white house editor for politico and former congresswoman donna edwards who just announced she will be seeking another term in that house seat. we will talk about that in just a few minutes. dan, take me inside what senators have to settle for in terms of protecting our elections. >> well, they might have to settle for nothing at all. although, these talks are centering around a very tiny sliver of election law i would throw a heap of salt on it. there is -- they are in the nashent stages. it's not clear that they would have the support of the vast majority of either party. the one good piece of news i would say is that mitch mcconnell, while he hasn't said he supports the idea, he hasn't said he opposes it either. this is sort of what he did with the infrastructure talks, sort of an implicit go ahead to the mod ral republicans negotiating this like susan collins to find ten votes. even if they were going find ten republican votes as senator warnock notes here you are asking these democrats who have been championing the voting rights bill for the past year to swallow almost nothing. we will deal with a slice of subversion. i am not sure at this juncture that the voting rights commune is willing to turn around off the defeat last night and say okay we will take this sliver of reform. it now it could be a very important sliver of reform. as we saw in the 2020 elections it could potentially be weaponized. but the feelings are still incrediby raw right now and the fear is raw, too. it is hard for me to see a path through politically through the senate. >> the republicans want this because everything that has been done and said in the spirit of the big lie is as bad as democrats say it is. why take this on if you are not aware of the danger? >> i wouldn't go so far as to say that i think there is a sliver of the republican party who says what trump tried to do in blocking the certification of the elections, basically sending new electorates to washington, d.c. that he believed should have been chosen because they believed his big lie -- what he tried to do there, cannot -- there shouldn't be loopholes in the law to allow that even to become a possibility. we need close those loopholes, strengthen the guardrails in that form. they don't think that pertains to things like mail-in balloting, absentee voting, even passing along water the people who are waiting in line. now, the vast majority of democrats, almost all of them say, no, that's ridiculous. as warnock said you can say an election is fair because we dealt with this one sliver of election law when you are suppressing the vote elsewhere. but they are comfortable saying, these laws in the states are not against suppression, but we need to guard against something trump did in 2020. >> this story is now the topic of extraordinary reporting in arizona, in michigan, the local reporting is i think ahead of where the national reporting is on this. the fake electors at least in michigan, they put their name down as real electors even though donald trump lost michigan by 150,000 votes, it was not close, and sent it to the national archives, a potential criminal act of election fraud and forgery. dealing with perhaps the most flagrant part of the lie is i guess low-hanging fruit but better than nothing. is that how you see it? >> i suppose. but let's be clear, dealing with the electoral count act as senator warnock described is not a substitute for dealing with voting rights and ensuring that everyone who wants to cast a vote can do it and do it in an unfettered way. i have to say, senator warnock's statements on the floor last night may have been one of the most consequential statements in a generation we have seen on the senate floor articulating really clearly what the problem is in all of these state laws and that we need to fix it and the moral imperative to do that. you know, i think some republicans may want to deal with the electoral vote count act because they want to get out of the morass of having rejected voting rights. but it is not a substitute and certainly cannot substitute from the egregious things that are taking place in the states and that we saw take place in 2020 and we were only now being able to uncover that. but there is more danger in the future as state and local elections boards and officials are being taken over by these radical people who really would have supported substituting their names, substituting their judgment for the voters of their state. >> dan stein thank you for being part of our conversation today. donna sticks around. trump's dominance and pressure looms over republicans on the hill. the toxicity there shows no signs of easing. and it is against that backdrop that we are going to ask donna edwards why on earth she wants to jump back into it. she wants to jump back into it looking to get back in your type 2 diabetes zone? once-weekly ozempic® can help. ♪ oh, oh, oh, ozempic®! ♪ ♪ oh, oh, oh ♪ ozempic® is proven to lower a1c. most people who took ozempic® reached an a1c under 7 and maintained it. and you may lose weight. adults lost on average up to 12 pounds. in adults also with known heart disease, ozempic® lowers the risk of major cardiovascular events such as heart attack, stroke, or 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(laughs) flexible cancellation. kayak. search one and done. at vanguard, you're more than just an investor, you're an owner with access to financial advice, tools and a personalized plan that helps you build a future for those you love. vanguard. become an owner. we are back with someone so important to conversations we have everyday who is now a congressional candidate. what made you decide to run back into the burning building? >> well, nicolle, thank you so much. we talked about so many of the issues that really challenge is both as a nation and around the country over these last several years and i decided i couldn't sit on the sidelines any more, both for my congressional district where we have seen some of the impacts of the pandemic that have exposed the inequities in health care and the economy. i want to go back in congress and fight for my district and fight for our country. we talked so much the last several years about the damage that's been done to our democracy and i believe that it is time for my voice with the leadership that i have, i served in the majority and the minority as a rank and file member and in the leadership of the democratic caucus in congress and i'm looking forward to going back, joining me colleagues, feet to the fire, to make sure we can preserve and protect our democracy and so i can fight for our congressional district. >> you come on this show, we ask you to talk about what we're seeing and help us understand it, but you did a lot of listening. talk about your travels. >> i did. when i came out of office, i actually got on the road in an rv that i borrowed from a friend. i thought i would be on the road for two weeks. instead, i was on the road over three months, listening, talking to people, people that didn't agree with me, people that had never spoken to a black woman before in any kind of depth. i learned a lot and gave me perspective to come back to washington, both in my analysis and my writing for "the washington post," committed to trying to understand the country and to come up with solutions. it is actually with that spirit and understanding the breadth, depth, diversity of the country that i go back into congress. it actually makes me redoubled in my desire to make sure that we can make changes that make a difference in people's lives, things like health care and how much they're paying for prescription drugs and the roads they are on, the jobs they have. i'm ready for this fight. >> well, there's no one who has compassion for the tragedies of covid and frustration that the attacks on our democracy and insights on your colleagues, no one combines all of that like you do. i hope you're prepared for us to call on you as you transition from analyst to candidate. >> and don't forget donna edwards.com. don't forget donna edwards.com. >> woman: what's my safelite story? >> vo: my car is more than four wheels. it's my after-work decompression zone. so when my windshield broke... >> woman: what?! 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go to prison for crimes committed. in this specific case, attorney general tish james has all of the evidence. she's what's called documentary evidence. she has the goods. >> it is 5:00 in new york. she has the goods. not exactly the words you want to hear if your name is trump. the former fixer to former president donald trump is talking about a significant update in the new york attorney general civil investigation into the ex-president's business dealings. in a statement released late tuesday, attorney general la tish a james says she has significant evidence that suggests donald trump and the trump organization falsely and fraudulently valued assets for economic benefit. she's seeking legal action to compel donald trump, donald trump jr. and ivanka trump to provide sworn testimony. james' statement was released with a filing detailing examples of the president and his ex-company lying about value of assets, very much in line with the donald trump we've come to not be surprised by for decades. mr. trump's pen chant for hyperbole has defined every stage of his career, from real estate mogul to reality television and to u.s. president. when it comes to business, trump conceded making the occasional exaggeration, remarking that everyone in flats worth of assets but he didn't do so beyond reason. the question of whether such misstatements were show man ship or a pattern of fraud. the filing was in response to last month's attempt by the ex-president to shutdown her investigation and quash the subpoenas. saying her allegations are baseless, will be vigorously defended. the ag's office hasn't reached final decision whether this evidence merits legal action. if so, it is not the only state examination examining the ex-president's actions picking up steam. from atlanta-journal constitution. fani willis is requesting a special grand jury to aid in her investigation of former president donald trump and efforts to overturn georgia's 2020 election results. willis is looking into whether he committed a crime when he pressured the secretary of state to find him 11,780 votes. cited the need to subpoena witnesses an authority the grand jury would have. intensifying investigations of the president's misconduct is where we start. reporter suzanne craig is here, she covered finances and taxes of donald trump and the trump family since 2015, winning awards along the way. harry lip man, former deputy assistant attorney general, and donny deutsche, host of on brand podcast. let's take the two investigations separately. tell me, give me a viewer's guide, nonlawyer viewer's guide to what attorney general tish james is saying in the filings. >> it isn't all that lawyerly, nicolle. she's saying we have a right to depose trump and his children and there's not a big showing you have to make for that, but there's a little pr component. she says since the republicans and trumps said this is in bad faith, let me tell you what we have, and what they have are some really, really brazen lies and exaggeration or hyperbole would be nowhere near what we are talking about. apartments he said are three times as big as they really are, nonexistent mansions, all kinds of grotesque disparities between valuations for one purpose and for another that defraud banks or insurance companies. she has a really strong 12 instances, letter and verse, flat out brazen lies she's saying for that reason i get a right to depose the higher ups because the higher ups haven't cooperated. >> some of what we know in terms of evidence james has is from your friend, michael cohen. here he is on cnn. >> i provided documentary evidence to the oversight committee and district attorney's office. i know the documents that they have. on top of that, i'm not the only one. there are about close to a dozen corroborating individuals which is so important to me considering donald trump labeled me as a convicted liar simply so he could denigrate me and ruin my credibility in the event this case goes further and he ultimately has to sit for trial. >> donny, do you know who the dozen corroborating individuals are and does michael cohen? >> michael cohen would know who they are. i wouldn't be surprised if one of them is not the coo, his name escapes me now. we know weisselberg is not. he is standing trial coming up for tax fraud. i find the whole premise of this, of the trump defense, that people are given to hyperbole. when you speak to the irs, you can't speak to legal folks, say i was just exaggerating. you know. this trump tower apartment that i said is worth $300 million, really worth 25 to $30 million, got a loan based on that as an asset, and there are five, ten, twenty other examples like that. if you talk to forbes to get on the 400 list, not bank statements or loan statements or insurance statements. what we do know, and james knows this and the new york district attorney's office knows, what donald trump has done and his children, anybody else would go to jail for. i could take a thousand cases, harry could talk about this better than me. the question in the attorney general's case, it is a civil case, she could take assets from him. we still haven't heard from what was cy advance's office, also bragg's office. >> let me read from the filing that they alluded to. with respect to trump's triplex apartment in trump tower, oag has discovered the valuations of this asset as incorporated into the statements of financial condition since at least 2012 were based on the assertion the apartment was 30,000 square feet in size. the actual size of his apartment was only 10,996 square feet. because the valuations were performed by multiplying number of square feet times price per square foot, reduction in square footage from 30,000 to 10,996 indicates that the valuations of his triplex in 2015 and 2016 were overstated by a factor of three as weisselberg conceded in his testimony. he admitted this amounted to overstatement of give or take 200 million. he is saying these are exaggerations, lies, that would land most of the rest of us in jail. what is the status now based on what is public facing in the investigation? >> well, that exaggeration in itself wouldn't land you in jail, it is what you do with it after you make the exaggeration. you can have the biggest, best building, it can be worth 400 million. where you get into trouble is where you submit false information to financial institutions, banks, insurance companies, and then get a loan off it. that's where you can get into hot water. what's interesting about what happened this week, when i looked at all of the documents, very common defense in this situation is well, i relied on the advice of professionals. i had accountants, lawyers. and what the attorney general is saying is that the trump family, donald trump and his children, were much more involved in inflating values than we previously have known, and that they overstated how much they relied on experts. both can be true, the trump family could have been very involved and could have had experts, where the attorney general is going with this, making a case, is saying the trump family was much more involved than we thought and was sending documents over and putting stuff in front of bankers to a degree that could get them in trouble and that's where the attorney general is heading on that. >> and potentially consistent with that, the president's son eric trump invoked fifth amendment right when brought in to testify. is there any sense what the line of questions were when he did that? >> i think they were asked about all of the valuations. eric trump in particular is very involved in seven springs, one of the properties that they're looking at in terms of valuations that were placed on it. that was definitely among the questions. but that was the range would have been all the properties he he touched, which is most of them, and taking the fifth amendment in a civil case can be used against you. i sense that's why the attorney general wants to interview all of the trumps. once they're in front of her and take the fifth, it could be used against them in a civil case. so that's something that's got to be on the attorney general's mind and her investigators. >> a lot of what we knew prior to the investigations starting to have any sort of public facing tidbits or tea leaves was based on your reporting which was based on documents that sort of had a limited view if you will of what happened in terms of how trump paid taxes and what he claimed and what he valued and a lot of what the investigators now have as a result of the supreme court decision to turn over and have access to some of the accountants and some of the banks. what are you waiting to see based on all you knew going into this and all they have in addition to what you were able to see and understand? >> well, i think what's powerful about, we did a lot of this work in 2018 in particular, to have his taxes is one thing. we had 20 years of corporate and personal tax information for stories we did in 2020. what is so powerful is when you have and we had the advantage of this in 2018 in the story we did on fred trump's wealth, his father, is putting the pieces together and seeing not just the taxes but the bank statements. i was looking through the filings from the attorney general the other night and they've got so much information from the accounting firm, there's information from banks, depositions. when you put all of this together, it is very powerful. i think we're going to see both something coming out of the attorney general and then there's a separate criminal case in manhattan where they have reams of documents and it is how they all come together, how they speak to each other, once you have them all and can see here is money coming in here, valuation here, you have emails, and you can see who was talking to who and what happened. >> and harry, what is sometimes unsatisfying is from the outside, the investigations necessarily have to hunker down and go through all the documents she's talking about, but there was reporting about the kinds of folks forensic attorneys and accountants that came in, i wonder if you can speak to what the investigation has in front of it that we've never seen before, what will be new? >> sure. first of all, as to the 12 that cooperated, they're accountants and lower down folks that say i didn't see or say that's what it was. what you have that is sort of a gold mine for prosecutors, is the contrast. here's what they said to tax folks. here's what they said to bankers to get the loans. look at this. three time discrepancy. that's not hard to show. that will be one. then you'll have testimony from the likes of michael cohen that will speak exactly to the degree of involvement, nothing happened without trump's say so and moreover, one of his points of say so was don't ever email me, don't ever put stuff in writing. that's going to give a portrait of almost a criminal enterprise with really a routine pattern of cheelting either taxes or insurance companies depending. >> donny, you characterized donald trump's reputation prepolitical career as someone known to be shady. how does someone take a reputation and go around, michael cohen seems to be focused on the corroboration that has taken place since his testimony before the house, i believe it was under questioning from congressman alexandria ocasio-cortez, described the process around a football transaction, inflated his assets to buy a football team, he deflated them to get insurance. that's been testified to by cohen, but clearly the painstaking work of corroborating all of that, finding the papers, what has taken so long. what is your sense of whether all the allegations have been borne out or whether cohen still is called in to answer extra questions, provide new leads for people to corroborate those allegations? >> cohen has been called in i think 11 times, last time we were on this subject, you asked about timing. he was told by the lead prosecutors, words were something is imminent, that something is coming. and you just have to use common sense. they're not doing all of this for a dance. the rooster is going to come -- the chickens, roosters, hens, what's the saying. >> something comes to roost. >> chickens and roosters. the other interesting thing taking it politically a second, you just wonder. everybody talked about you who he owns the republican party. you just wonder, the january 6 stuff, new nbc news poll, they asked republicans your allegiance to party or trump first. 56% said to the party first, only 38% to trump. that's a tremendous, tremendous switch. you just wonder if this stuff even from the legal point of view, beyond the legal point of view, starts to chip away and where people will start to say maybe desantis looks -- we just don't need any more of this. flip -- this is chipping away. >> or i think the other issue is that it could be, i think people will see him as possibly they're just going after him, he didn't do anything. this is a witch hunt. prosecutors are weighing the issue about charges and that's on their minds as they are going forward and if you bring a case and it doesn't work like in manhattan, a criminal case, if they bring charges and it doesn't go their way, it lifts him. i think that cuts both ways when i think of it. >> harry, is that appropriate, that the potential politics are weighing on prosecutors making decisions about charging? >> the short answer is no. there's politics and there's politics. we think about merrick garland who serves at the pleasure of the president, might think he is stepping on a hornet's next. i think james led with her chin a bit starting with the campaign where she basically gave reasonable people some basis for thinking she really was going after him. it should be without regard to that. she says in her statement it is without regard to that. but that's going to be the theme that they're going to be again and again and again if she brings charges. >> let me just say if you were to commit a crime on tape, they do that anyway, seems to be the case in georgia, where he committed campaign fraud on a phone call with people listening, asking brad raffensperger to find votes, the margin of victory for president-elect joe biden. what is the significance of a special grand jury potentially convened there? >> yeah, i always thought this was the most dangerous case for him, it is discrete, clean, has what prosecutors love, an audio tape and goes through it. the special grand jury itself, nicolle, is not the biggest news, it is what you need to have more than two month long investigation that you can subpoena folks and bring them in and out. i am surprised she didn't do it earlier. it shows her resolve and she's dangerous for trump, she is not subject to the same political cross currents and disincentives, she's one d.a. and has a strong, clean, simple case under georgia law. the grand jury itself is just a necessary component to investigating it. if they actually bring charges, it will be to a regular grand jury. they'll say here's what the special guys found, will you vote this crime as an indictment. >> whole lot of jury duty for a whole lot of americans. thank you so much for starting us off. harry is back later in the hour. when we come back, with fears growing by the hour over potential russian invasion of ukraine, president joe biden clarifies remarks made yesterday during this hour while his administration announces new sanctions on two ukrainian lawmakers accused of working with moscow to destabilize the country in preparation for a takeover. all those new developments and live report from kiev next. at home, calls to prosecution cute fake electors that signed their names to false documents in attempt to claim that joe biden's victories for donald trump. "deadline white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. use" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. to be a thriver with metastatic breast cancer means asking for what we want. and need. and we need more time. so, we want kisqali. women are living longer than ever before with kisqali when taken with an aromatase inhibitor or fulvestrant in postmenopausal women with hr+, her2- metastatic breast cancer. kisqali is a pill that's significantly more effective at delaying disease progression versus an aromatase inhibitor or fulvestrant alone. kisqali can cause lung problems, or an abnormal heartbeat, which can lead to death. it can cause serious skin reactions, liver problems, and low white blood cell counts that may result in severe infections. tell your doctor right away if you have new or worsening symptoms, including breathing problems, cough, chest pain, a change in your heartbeat, dizziness, yellowing of the skin or eyes, dark urine, tiredness, loss of appetite, abdomen pain, bleeding, bruising, fever, chills or other symptoms of an infection, a severe or worsening rash, are or plan to become pregnant, or breastfeeding. avoid grapefruit during treatment. ask your doctor about living longer with kisqali. hey lily, i need a new wireless plan for my business, but all my employees need something different. oh, we can help with that. okay, imagine this. your mover, rob, he's on the scene and needs a plan with a mobile hotspot. we cut to downtown, your sales rep lisa has to send some files, like asap! so basically i can pick the right plan for each employee. yeah i should've just led with that. with at&t business. you can pick the best plan for each employee and get the best deals on every smart phone. i was clear with president putin, any assembled russian units move across the border, that is an invasion. it will be met with severe and coordinated response which i discussed with allies and laid out clearly for president putin. but there's no doubt, let there be no doubt at all, if putin makes this choice, russia will pay a heavy price. it is also not the only scenario to be prepared for. >> president biden on the topic of russian aggression adding context to remarks made during the news conference yesterday when he suggested minor incursion into ukraine wouldn't necessitate the same response as full invasion. that pointed clarification emblematic where we are in the crisis. a stage of deterrence, rhetoric, boiled down to if you do this, we will do that. wartime preparations go on behind the scenes, russian troops on the border number some 100,000. as of this week, there's a russian military presence in belarus as well. amid that escalation, the biden administration today made two moves. first, the state department authorized certain nato allies to rush anti-armor missiles and other things to ukraine. they imposed sanctions on four ukrainian officials, active members of the parliament in connection with effort by russian intelligence service to destabilize the country from within, all that ahead of a high stakes meeting between secretary of state anthony blinken and sergei lavrov. let's bring in richard engle in kiev, and msnbc national security analyst, and former deputy national security adviser to president obama, ben rhodes. three people that know more than me. richard engle, what is the sense, the understanding and expectation on the ground? >> reporter: so there's confusion among ukrainian people, they don't exactly understand why president biden who has been in government for so long would reveal so many cards. a lot of people here were taken aback, why would he appear to give a green light to vladimir putin to launch a limited military invasion, that's the way they saw the comments which were clarified by the white house and then the president himself that you just played. the ukrainian government is not just confused, they're annoyed. the ukrainian government is trying not to talk about the crisis. that's one of the things you notice here in kiev. the world media is talking about this, but if you turn on ukrainian television, it is not being discussed much. president zelensky barely talks about russian troops on the border and it is leading to some uneasiness here. people are wondering is the crisis made up, are western media exaggerating the threat because their own government isn't focusing on it. but yesterday before president biden spoke, zelensky made some relatively rare comments and had just told the people here to be calm, that risk of invasion is not particularly high, that they should go on living their lives as usual. and then a short while afterwards we saw the comments from president biden saying he expects there will be some move by russia and that if it is a limited move, he implied it could meet somewhat limited response. president zelensky was aggravated, issued a sharp tweet that you heard about. it says in english we want to remind the great powers that there are no minor incursions in small nations just as there are no minor casualties and little grief from the loss of loved ones. i say this as the president of a great power. >> so frank, what is the truth? i mean, there is a sense among american current and former national security officials that russia very well may be the aggressor here as richard engle is saying, that's sort of not being spoken about much to keep the country calm it would appear. what is the reality? >> some of the current and former intelligence community folks i'm speaking with do think that there's almost inevitability to some form of invasion. i'm not going to use the word incursion because i agree, there's no such thing as an incursion, it is an invasion. >> it is an attack, yeah. >> if canada were to take over the new england states, i don't think we would call it a minor incursion. so i think sometimes it is a challenge even for folks in the intelligence community when they're speaking publicly to distinguish and keep clear what they know from classified intelligence sources and what they're allowed to speak publicly, and we might have had a glimpse here of some intelligence kind of coming through in the transparency of president biden when he said you know, i think they are going to do something. i don't think he is working on a hunch or gut feeling, i think there's intelligence that likely supports that, and i think putin is looking at that. richard told us how ukraine is confused. i think putin is confused now about what's going to happen, whether nato will be divided if he does something, small, large, medium sized. i think we need to prepare militarily and in the intelligence community for what some folks call prepping the battlefield. that would be yet another sign that things are happening. today, what does prepping the battlefield mean? we could see in ukraine some significant denials of service, we're already seeing reports of cyber attack, the energy sector. that could keep extending even perhaps to us if it is determined or putin thinks we're likely to come in in some form of military engagement or otherwise. >> ben rhodes, to be fair, the president and the white house clarified this language that zelensky is responding to almost immediately. pick up on frank's hypothesis that this was perhaps president biden alluding to what he knows is likely and maybe, you know, if there was strategy there from your perspective. >> well, i think there are two issues at stake. one is a reference to potential incursion, and the other is a suggestion that he had that there were divisions in nato -- that's important because sanctions are the most powerful deterrent that we have. it is clear when you have 100,000 troops encircling the country, russian disinformation campaign, cyber attacks, putin seems to be foreshadowing he is going to do something. the challenge of what biden was speaking to yesterday, there's a range of things that could happen. you could see russia move more troops into the parts of eastern ukraine where they are already active, try to and ex-regions. you can see russia invade ukraine large scale. have a war in europe like we haven't seen in decades. i am sure part of what's happening behind the scenes, europeans we need for the sanctions are possibly divided on how far they will go if putin does engage in a more limited invasion. ultimately remember for the sanctions to work, europe has to be involved, they do more trade with russia in the energy sector. europeans will take a bigger hit to the economy. i think the bottom line in the clarifications is it is the role of the united states to draw the most maximalist defense of ukrainian sovereignty and the right to be a democracy which is at stake. it is the role of the united states to ensure the maximalist response from the west, including preparing sanctions. to have any hope of deterring putin and informing his calculus, you need to make clear anything he does will have the strongest possible response. we saw that in the clarifications today. >> richard engle, was there any reaction official or that you detected from sources to the united states sanctions against ukrainian lawmakers and the sort of signal that ukraine had a ways to go in clearing out corruption in their own government? >> no. a lot of the attention here is focused on much more domestic politics. the former president poroshenko returned and he is trying to present a challenge to president zelensky. it is absent from the public discourse here. zelensky doesn't want to show that he potentially has russian spies in his government or that the government is potentially compromised in some way. he was telling people to go out and live their lives. he said the risk of an incursion or risk of an invasion now is no different than it was a year ago. and that doesn't seem to be the case by looking at what's going on in the border area, so the message that he is giving to the ukrainian people is very different from the discussion we're having now. >> so interesting. we'll continue to call on you. richard engle, thank you so much for spending time with us. ben and frank are sticking around. quick break for us. we'll be right back. around quick break for us quick break for us we'll be right back. for nutrition, sleep, immune systems and energy, cvs can help them happen a little less. ♪ ♪making your way in the world today♪ ♪takes everything you've got♪ ♪ ♪taking a break from all your worries ♪ ♪sure would help a lot ♪ ♪wouldn't you like to get away? 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>> yeah, boy, i think we're both old enough to remember when far right conservatives were champions of democracy and the right of free people to determine their own destiny, which is what we're all about with regard to ukraine. and the false equivalency with china taking over mexico got my attention because it really is kind of a russian talking point and it is a very false equivalency. yes, if china took control of mexico, we would push back hard, even militarily, right? so would all our allies. that's not what's going on here. it is the fact that russia is talking about invading a free country that doesn't want to be invaded and it is us that needs to push back there. that's what's happening. where's the danger here, someone like tucker carlson who really controls seemingly the minds of many, many people could actually influence them against a decision that the u.s. government is making in the national security interest, but even on a much larger scale, nicolle, we talk about a segment of people here who would dismiss the idea that america is supposed to stand for liberty, freedom, democracy around the world and dismiss that idea in favor of an adversary having license to do what they want to do against a free people. we should have vehement disapproval, disagreements, discussions. look at the vietnam war era. that's a beautiful thing about america. we can disagree with our government's decision. when you start to side with an adversary and spout false equivalencies, it gets very dangerous. >> it is more insidious than that. i am old enough to have spent time on fox news programs in my time as a republican spokesperson that they were offended by vladimir putin's russia, when their identity was wrapped up in a patriotism that stood for democratic norms and this democracy and i wonder if you can speak to having written the book on how a country could slide into autocrisy, how does a corporation with as much reach and influence as fox news fall in line behind tucker carlson when other hosts have been there many years had very different views and ideologies on vladimir putin's russia. >> well, another thing is tucker carlson recently said he is going to return to hungary where his or a bon is prime minister. he is also a supporter of vladimir putin. a common strain among politics of the different countries, far right in this country and hungary and russia is it embraces white nationalist authoritarianism that has similar set of opponent. immigrants, lbgtq movement, anything that challenges a traditional set of identity politics. and what is so chilling now is that the fidelity that brand of identity politic is stronger in the far right than fidelity to democracy and values and what america stands for. at this moment, one thing president biden needs to do is there's a direct linkage to what he is trying to do in this country and saw in the fight for voting rights that reached a bit of a dead end yet but isn't over yet and what he is trying to defend around the world. we are trying to preserve and protect survivability of democracy in this country and other places around the world. and the forces that are challenging democracy in this country are in many cases the same forces, same brand of politic, same brand of nationalism challenging democracy around the world. and i think we have to come together in defense of that democratic story in terms of policies and in terms of arguments that we're making because we see that there's no reticent on behalf of tucker carlson or elements of the republican party now to embrace fundamentally undemocratic brands of politics. >> it is unbelievable. thank you so much for spending time with us today. when we come back, it is perhaps the biggest example of fraud in the 2020 election, the fake slats of electors that signed phony documents, seeking to disclaim the ex-president. one state he lost and bigly, will the fraudsters be prosecuted criminally and how high up did it go? 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ask your health care provider today about once-weekly ozempic®. ♪ oh, oh, oh, ozempic®! ♪ you may pay as little as $25 for a 3-month prescription. >> vo: my car is my after-work decompression zone. ♪ music ♪ >> vo: so when my windshield broke... i found the experts at safelite autoglass. they have exclusive technology and service i can trust. >> singers: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace. ♪ well, would you look at that? jerry, you gotta see this. seen it. trust me, after 15 walks... gets a little old. i really should be retired by now. wish i'd invested when i had the chance... to the moon! ugh. unbelievable. new reporting in "the washington post" digs deeper into an area that's of interest to the select committee investigation. using fake electors that changed the electoral votes in 2020 from the rightful winner, joe biden, to the loser, donald j. trump. the post reports it was rudy giuliani that oversaw the electorates internally in the campaign, worked to replace electors unwilling to go along with the plan. reporting comes as calls to prosecute fake electors are growing, amid the conspiracy that might go to the highest levels of the disgraced ex-president's circle. an attorney writes this could be trump's watergate. if state and federal law enforcement authorities convene grand juries to investigate the low level gop officials who signed and submitted phony electoral certificates in the 2020 election, the entire conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election could unravel. joining the conversation, tim miller, former rnc spokesman, writer for the bull work. i hoped the 1-6 committee was going from the top down and bottom up. electors put their names to fraudulent documents in states that president joe biden won by huge margins that were not the subject of any criminal investigations by bill barr or chris crabs. what's your sense of where that stands as a sort of state investigation in the seven states, tim. >> as far as where the investigation stands, i think that's a question for garland which roderick gets into today. this is an opportunity to be aggressive and potentially identify people that have committed falsified documents in hopes of uncovering who it was that organized this effort. look, if you are a regular voter that fills out an absentee ballot request fraudulently, that's a crime and it should be. noticed a lot of trump voters turns out did that over the course of the last four years, despite it was the left committing voter fraud. how is this different? if you are fraudulently advancing a vote versus fraudulently advancing your role as election tore to the electoral college, i think it is something for department of justice to look into. the most interesting thing "the washington post" report saying that rudy was organizing this, shouldn't be a surprise. the white house press secretary at the time was talking about alternate slates on fox a few days before documents were put forth. that's another indication if they're both familiar with this, it was something happening in the inner circle of the white house. >> harry, we know that caylee cooperated with the 1-6 committee and the committee is looking at the effort, it is in some cover letters and subpoenas for campaigns to probe the contacts in the states, statewide efforts. we know john eastman put it on paper. to sobbing extent, they were pursuing a seven-state strategy that john eastman put on paper why what is your sense of michigan's attorney general been on show and turning this evidence that she has which is larmgly the documents returned to the state of michigan to the feds. what is your sense of whether that is enough to commend scrutiny if that's not already happening? >> 100% enough. here's another little fact. all five used the same words. the same font. the same everything. there's obviously a higher coordination and independent reason to think that mark meadows is neck deep in it. is there enough for an investigation? surely. it's almost hard to see what the defense would be of the state electors -- i thought it was okay. that is not a defense to a criminal violation and by my count i gave it a try and up to five federal crimes easily to have been broken. this is vivid stuff. >> tim, sometimes the watergate comparisons fall short. this is a pretty apt one to the plumbers. >> i think it's apt in the sense that this is clearly a plot happening from inside the oval office. right? the crimes are different, of course, but if this is something that meadows is neck deep in and trump and the lawyer woging on i think it's clearly additional evidence that the white house was constructing a multi-pronged effort in order to overturn the results of the election and outside the law. amanda carpenter has an article listing out the six elements of the strategy. it is easy to look at rudy and ridiculous and is this coup serious? if you combine the fraudulent electors with the pressure on the secretaries of state with what is happening in the house of represent is and the other items and put it altogether and a plan not likely to work and dumb by a premeditated plan coming from the very top to overturn a free and fair election. >> thank you. >> with one more thing to add the eastman memo is where it begins. >> thank you for staying with us. we'll be right back. us us we'll be right back. you'll find a better life. it all starts with the most innovative technology. like the new miracle-earmini, available exclusively at miracle-ear. so small that no one will see it, but you'll notice the difference. th no obligation. so small that no one will see it, call 1-800-miracle right now and experience a better life. psoriasis really messes with you. try. hope. fail. i felt defeated. the pain, the stares. no one should suffer like that. i said, enough. i started cosentyx®. five years clear. four years clear. five years and counting. cosentyx works fast. for clear skin that can last. real people with psoriasis look and feel better with cosentyx. don't use if you're allergic to cosentyx. before starting, get checked for tuberculosis. an increased risk of infections some serious, and a lowered ability to fight them may occur. tell your doctor about an infection or symptoms, or if you've had a vaccine or plan to. tell your doctor if your crohn's disease symptoms develop or worsen. serious allergic reactions may occur. best move i ever made. i feel so much better. see me. ask your dermatologist about cosentyx. ♪ i see trees of green ♪ ♪ red roses too ♪ ♪ i see them bloom ♪ ♪ for me and you ♪ ♪ and i think to myself ♪ ♪ what a wonderful world ♪ a rich life is about more than just money. that's why at vanguard, you're more than just an investor, you're an owner so you can build a future for those you love. vanguard. become an owner. a quick update on a story we braugh you earlier in the week. npr reported that supreme court justice neil gorsuch refused to wear a mask forcing justice schl to work remotely because she had diabetes. npr's story included that chief justice roberts asked all of them to wear masks. yesterday there's a joint statement denying any mask tension saying while we may disagree about the law we are warm colleagues and friends and then a statement from chief justice roberts who denied asking them to wear a mask. npr acknowledged the words but wrote the npr report said the chief justice's asked to the justices in some form. quick break for us. we'll be right back. we'll be right back. make the morning chaos, organized chaos. and make sure everything's in it's place. so nothing is out of place. however you make it, make your home a place like no other. 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"the beat" starts right now. hi. >> hi. we start with breaking news. new legal heat on ivanka trump as congress seeks her testimony about the insurrection. ey