With the investigation, cnn reports this, questions asked of two recent witnesses indicate smith is focusing on how money raised off those baseless claims of voter fraud was used to fund attempts to breach Voting Equipment in several states won by joe biden and squarely in jack smiths sights, unindicted coconspirator number three, thats trump codefendant attorney Sidney Powell. Cnn reports this, quote, according to sources, witnesses interviewed by jack smiths prosecutors in recent weeks were asked about powells role in the hunt for evidence of vote fraud after the 2020 election. Including how her Nonprofit Group defending the republic provided money to fund those efforts. If team trump was literally trying to break into the Voting Machines after the fact, then the truth spun by chris krebs about the security of the 2020 election was a real fly in the ointment. There is no foreign power that is flipping votes. There is no domestic actor flipping votes. I did it right. We did it right. This was a secure election. You can see now how that complicated things for team and he said he met with jack smiths investigators. We dont know if the new information in the reporting and the factor related but it is intriguing. As for Sidney Powell, the recent court filing, she admits her nonprofit defending the republic paid a forensics firm, quote, after the fact, end coat, to look into Voting Systems in coffee county, georgia. The Voting Machine Breach in that county the day after the january 6th attack forms the basis for multiple charges in fani willis sprawling racketeering case. The federal level jack smith also appears to be looking into Sidney Powells role in spreading the big lie, specifically conspiracies about dominion Voting Systems that you will recall led to fox news having to pay dominion up to three quarters of a billion dollars. Cnn reports that former nypd commissioner bernie kerik, and another witness, were, quote, both asked if Sidney Powell was ever able to back up her various claims of fraud. Including Conspiracy Theorys that Foreign Countries had hacked Voting Equipment. Both were also asked about defending the republic and how it was used as a source of Funding Efforts to find evidence of voter fraud. Jack smiths Investigation Zeroing in on the big grift and Voting Machine Breaches and the tie between the two is where we begin today. Tim haffy is here, former u. S. Senator and msnbc political analyst Claire Mccaskill is here, and former congressman from florida and msnbc political analyst david jolly is here. Tim, what is jack smith looking for . Hes looking for more evidence of the big grift. We laid this out in great detail during one or more of our hearings and it is outlined in the report. A lot of people were profiting on this false narrative that the election was stolen. Save america pac raised 250 million after the election by telling people that the election was stolen. Sidney powell set up a nonprofit and Legal Defense fund in which those same lies led to a lot of people giving money. Again, it is important to remember that there is just no foundation in any of those fundraising solicitations. So jack smith is understandably interested in that because it could be a fraud scheme, right, telling people as a basis to raise money that facts that are just simply not appropriate and it is part of a broader plan to disrupt the joint session. I have some of the evidence that you and your colleagues on the committee developed and ill play that in one second. I have one more question for you. We all have this sort of Cable News Education in the power of broadcasting known falsities in a liable context. I wonder if you can tell us what the parallel is in terms of Potential Criminal Exposure for raising money off things that you know are lies, are we looking at wire fraud . What crimes are they looking at . Yeah, look, it is a scheme to defraud. If somebody says, if you drink this potion, youll lose weight and people buy the potion, relying upon that representation, thats fraud, right . If somebody says if you give me money, ill use it to do the following, ill give it to Refugee Resettlement in our community, but you dont use it for Refugee Resettlement, you use it for other purposes beyond that which you indicated. That is fraud. Wire fraud, mail fraud are broadly crimes that broadly criminalize any scheme that is meant to deprive people of their money based on deception, based on falsity. Thats what one of the many things that the Special Counsel may very well be looking at here. Let me ask you, what do you think it says that this part of the investigation is active . I think it means that it is an ongoing investigation, right . Just because an indictment is issued does not mean that everybody stops and the record is complete, right . The Special Counsel is continuing to gather facts. It is tricky because he wants a speedy trial and if there is a Superseding Indictment or additional counts against the former president , it jeopardizes that March 4th Trial date. This could be something that will come about if it ripens into evidence of control conduct, which it very well may, to other charges against other people. The former president was the head of this conspiracy, but there are others that havent yet been charged federally. So hes continuing a pace. Hes continuing to look to pull threads and based on leads to gather additional information. That is appropriate and fairly common in Criminal Justice world. Let me show i reminded myself, i watched some of this earlier today, to remind myself with this part of the congressional investigation looked like. Watch. Between election day and january 6th, the Trump Campaign sent millions of fundraising emails to trump supporters. Sometimes as many as 25 a day. The emails claimed the, quote, left wing mob was undermining the election, implored supporters to, quote, step up to protect the integrity of the election and encouraged them, to quote, fight back. As the select committee demonstrated, the Trump Campaign knew these claims of voter fraud were false, yet they continued to barrage small donor donors with emails encouraging them to donate to something called the official Election Defense Fund. The select committee discovered no such fund existed. I dont believe there is actually a fund called the Election Defense Fund. Is it fair to say the Election Defense Fund was another, i think weve called it a Marketing Tactic . Yes. President trump created a separate entity called the Save America Pac. Most of the money raised went to this newly created pac, not to election litigation. The select committee discovered that the Save America Pac made millions of dollars of contributions to pro trump organizations, including 1 million to trump Chief Of Staff mark meadows charitable foundation, 1 million to the America First policy institute, and a conservative organization which employs several former Trump Administration officials, 204,857 to the trump hotel collection, and over 5 million to event strategies inc. , the company that ran President Trumps January 6th Rally on the ellipse. One more question for you, tim. I dont im not on trumps mailing list, but i do see his appeals and theyre still using these messages. Theyre still raising money predicated on the lie. Thing about grift is ongoing. What do you do about that . Because it works, because it has been so successful, lying to people and getting them spun up about false allegations of voter fraud has been hugely successful to that organization. The only thing i would add to the clip from the Video Presentation is that a lot of that money from the Save America Pac went to pay the legal fees of witnesses who were called before the select committee and have been called before the Special Counsel so there is this sort of circular pattern of people being told the election is stolen, they give money and that money then goes to Fund Legal Fees to witnesses who then either dont appear asserting some privilege or dont recall a lot of relevant information. Thats what happened with Cassidy Hutchinson and others who appeared before the select committee. I mean, david jolly, circular is one word for it. It is stinks to high heaven. Maybe this is the way we describe the political arena. To this point that it is ongoing, thats what i want to deal with now. This is some great reporting from cnn about questions being asked recently of witnesses about what appear to be very serious potential crimes, if they bear out, and if theyre charged. But the larger grift is happening right now. If you were to step away, please dont, but if in the echo system, closer than you might think, these lies are being spread, donald trump is raising money off them, theyre it is all metastasized, it is almost, i dont want to say too late, but almost part of the new normal and the Information Ecosystem on the right. Yeah. It is Donald Trumps platform to return to the white house. If you boil down his essential message, thats it. Look, a bunch of fakes, frauds, liars and grifters that is donald trump, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani and everybody who supported the conspiracy to defraud the United States which is the charges brought by jack smith and because of the work of tim and the committee, i think we know there is this bigger element of how did the money flow, who touched the money and did fraud occur . In some ways it is surprising we havent seen charges yet around the flow of money because that is such a didactic threat and easier charge in some cases, but i think to tims point, because this remains open and because of the solid reporting that jack smith is continuing to investigate it, we may see charges against the former president as it relates to how money flowed or we might see charges against others that then ultimately perhaps are used to cooperate in this case. The bottom line, though, and to your point, it is still the message of donald trump and frankly it is the message of a lot of the other republican candidates running against him for the nomination because they have failed to stand up to him to this point. Donald trump is going to seek to be reelected on the message that the last election was stolen from him and he needs to return to the white house for retribution to fix all of this. It is a dangerous time. Yeah, and i guess, claire, to that end, the danger that it represents to the entire democracy and everybody living in it, not the sail yens of the political message, david is right. That interests me less than the contamination of disinformation. It is now completely comingled with what everyone is getting ready as a country to perhaps turn to. The kickoff of, if you will, of a president ial election season. And i think it is a moment to sort of stand up and realize that were not setting up for a battle of ideas, different ideas about National Security. They are very different. You got one guy who wants to be in access with his friends, the autocrats and joe biden who has done largely unappreciated things on the world stage. You have the other side in our politics so completely intermingled with alleged criminality and the lies they told that they want to cleave out the lies now at the root of criminal charges and ongoing federal investigation, theyre still raising money off of them. How do we disentangle those things and deal with them truthfully . You know, it is a cancer that has spread. Over the weekend, a story broke here in st. Louis that a State Senator who is running for governor by the name of big eigle was sending out fundraising emails from a company in virginia, and these emails are echoing exactly what trump is saying, the left wing mob, biden is coming after him, we got to and it reads like it is trump in a very fine print at the bottom and it says it is for bill eigle. And this woman, they got a hold of a woman in arizona who giving him 10 and didnt know she checked a box to send it to him every month and she checked a box and doesnt know who bill eigle is. Not only is trump doing this, but the rest of the Republican Party is emulating him to commit fraud against these small donors that has now become the life blood of the Republican Party. Small donors, who are being lied to, who are being suckered into giving money. And so it is a serious disease. The cancer has spread and the only way i think it gets solved is for some of these people to go to jail, in prison, period. Claire, to your point, i understand and i think we all have come to really appreciate the legal strategy behind jack smiths narrow indictment of trump and only trump. Do you are you surprised that there hasnt been more state level action on the fraud because these are the citizens of their states that have checked the boxes either wittingly or unwittingly being billed every month, evidence developed by the committee made clear they were not particularly transparent in their Legal Defense fundraising. Yeah, i think part of the problem here for prosecutors is our democracy has been so hollowed out by the misinformation and the plethora of lies that are being told that so many jurors would say, well, they all lie. Why is this guy going to jail for lying . All politicians lie. The cynicism has gotten so serious that it is unfortunately a truth that many jurors would probably balk at convicting some of these people for lying because they have been convinced that this is something that everybody does in politics. It is Something Like looking at the sun, hard thing to acknowledge about politics, particularly if you loved your time in politics, but it is a sad reality we all have to grapple with. David, i want to come back to Sidney Powell. And what she may have been doing or what we understand from cnn is being investigated. And that is more contact, i think thats the most generous word i can use with Voting Systems. I hope were not at a point where we gloss over how crazy that is and it brought back why chris krebs had to go. His firing was abrupt, even by trump standards, right . He said it was the most secure election in american history, and off with his head. He was fired immediately. And attacked viciously. It is clear that that message could not coexist with what trumps team was trying to do. Yeah. The other thing chris krebs didnt say in that piece you aired is the only person trying to interfere is donald trump. And to your point, you know, one of the most glaring charges or facts in fani willis report and i know that tims committee touched on this as well is the physical tampering with Voting Machines in georgia. And thats where not only Sidney Powell is in a lot of trouble, but mark meadows finds himself in a hard place to say, hey, i was just supporting the president , no, he wasnt. He was supporting the physical tampering of election equipment in georgia and thats where this gets very dangerous. Dangerous for our democracy and for our republic because if they had succeeded, they would have disenfranchised American Voters in a critical election and undermined our democracy. I think your question to claire is right, how do we stop it . I agree with claire, more people have to go to prison, but we must be at the ballot box, beat back this movement pretending to be a political movement. This is not a political movement. Donald trump started a Cultural Movement and parked it in the Republican Party and the danger in the Cultural Movement is how it gives aid and comfort to white nationalists and xenophobia and racism and misogyny and all these other critical things In The Name Of retribution and protecting ones place in society. This must be beaten back at the ballot box. It is a heavy burden for democrats to carry in the next november, but they must succeed. There is so much in what you just said, look a twohour programs worth of conversation there. I want to come back to you, tim, on i just need to freeze frame on this idea that were still two and a half years out talking about what we still dont know about the efforts to