time for you, two and a half seconds before the camera goes on. but i need that little glide time. >> just take it in through your -- >> it's a breathing thing? all right. well, we are going to see how this hour works then. >> well done, my friend. >> thank you, rachel. >> thanks, lawrence. full disclosure, tom melanowskism melanowski is a friend of mine. he's going to be joining us this hour. he was born in poland when it was in communist control. when he was 6 years old he fled to the united states with his mother, grew up in new jersey. i met tom when we both started working for senator daniel patrick moynihan around the same time in 1988. tom has spent his life concerned with human rights in his work in senator moynihan's office and then in president clinton's national security council where he was a senior director and then as the chief advocate for human rights watch and then as president obama's assistant secretary of state for democracy rights and labor. i could have known what tom was going to do when president trump said that he believes that kim jong-un had nothing to do with the torture and death of otto warmbier. tonight tom tweeted this. i'll be introducing a bipartisan resolution next week affirming that congress holds kim jong-un responsible for the death of otto warmbier. of course tom malinowski is going to get that done. that's why the congressman will make his first appearance on this program later in this hour. this one is emotional for me. this one is personal. when tom and i started working for senator moynihan in 1988, neither one of us ever dreamed that we'd be doing what we're doing today. that tom would be a freshman member of congress and i'd be lucky enough to be in a position to interview him. you're going to want to meet tom malinowski. at the very end a last word segment using video from the michael cohen hearing, starring congressman jimmy gomez, alexandria ocasio-cortez, and some additional footage with matt santos played by jimmy smitz on "the west wing." we'll show you something that congresswoman owe caukau ocasio and jimmy smitz will show the presidential candidates how you take on donald trump on the debate stage. you will not want to miss that. malcolm nance will join us tonight. we will also be joined by congressman lloyd doggett, a member of the one committee that has the legal authority to obtain donald trump's tax returns. the ways and means committee is not usually an important player in investigative hearings, but the trump tax returns might make ways and means the most important committee in the investigative process. it is now clear that democrats in congress intend to use michael cohen's testimony this week as the road map for their investigations of the president of the united states. that means michael cohen' testimony is the beginning of the beginning of the first serious congressional investigations of donald trump. and one of the first steps in these real congressional investigations of the president will be to obtain his tax returns. the associated press reports multiple democrat-led house committees are pledging to investigate not only trump's campaign ties to russia, which are also the subject of special counsel robert mueller's probe, but presidential conflicts of interest, possible money laundering and other oversight matters that democrats say were ignored under gop control. after michael cohen's final day of testimony, which was to a closed session of the house intelligence committee, a member of that committee, democrat eric swalwell said that michael cohen, quote, has been asked based on a lot of new evidence we learned today to bring corroborating materials that he believes he has. the most incriminating corroborating material thatrodu publicly so far was the check that was called a smoking gun in wednesday's public hearing. the check showing donald trump's signature while he was president of the united states engaging in a criminal scheme to reimburse michael cohen for paying for the silence of stormy daniels in the last days of the presidential campaign. the world has never seen a check signed by a president of the united states for a criminal purpose. that is what federal prosecutors in new york say donald trump and michael cohen did in arranging the payoff to stormy daniels. they engaged in what the prosecutors call a crime against the united states of america. nbc news reports that the ways and means committee, which has jurisdiction over taxation and has the unique power to examine individual tax returns, is, quote, readying a request for years of president donald trump's personal tax returns that is expected to land at the internal revenue service as early as the next few weeks. nbc news has learned. and democrats are prepared to take all necessary steps, including litigation, in order to obtain them. ways and means committee chairman richard neil has asked the committee's attorneys to prepare the request according to two aides involved in the process. neal has conducted the chairs of several other house investigative committees, including oversight and government reform, financial services, intelligence and judiciary asking them to provide detailed arguments for why they need the president's tax returns to conduct their probes. the ways and means committee believes ten years of president trump's tax returns, quote, can give a good sense of whether there is any evidence of tax fraud and numerous items of interest, an aide told nbc news. lloyd doggett will join us in a moment. top democrats have told axios that the house committees want to call trump family members to testify with subpoenas if necessary before some committees. besides russia, topics include conflicts of interest, money laundering and jared kushner's security clearance and other white house clearances. democratic congressman jamie raskin tells axios that the committees are zeroing on the moscow project, the russia connection and the influence of other foreign actors like saudi arabia. today congressman jerry connelly of the oversight committee said it's all about methodically building a case. >> how do you reconcile that growing belief that criminal activity took place and hesitation, even reluctance to consider impeachment? >> well, what you're describing as hesitation or reluctance i would rather describe as trying to be methodical and building a case here, if a case is to be had. we can't ignore criminal activity. but remember, this is the first public hearing, the first. it has to be a process. when we look back at watergate, that was almost a two-year process and it worked. it persuaded the american people that the person they put faith in didn't deserve it. >> leading off our discussion now, democratic congressman lloyd doggett of texas, also with us former federal prosecutor, barbara mcquade and jill wine-banks, a former assistant watergate special prosecutor and an msnbc legal analyst is with us. congressman, i want to begin with you and the ways and means committee, your attempt to obtain the president's tax returns. this is a power that the senate finance committee has with its jurisdiction over taxation and the house ways and means committee has with its jurisdiction over taxation. it is rarely used. in my years working as the staff director of the finance committee i never saw it used. so the system is a little rusty about actually how to use it. does congressman neal feel that he has all the legal counsel he needs now to proceed with asking the irs to deliver donald trump's tax returns? >> well, that would really be for him to say. i have confidence in him and the approach he's taken here. clearly the evidence grows by the day of a potential criminal enterprise here. and we have our work cut out, given the confidence that we need in the tax system for the american people, given the role that the president can play in tax law and tax administrative decisions. there's some estimate that he may have gotten as much as a billion dollars for his family out of the recent tax law. so we have so many reasons in addition to what michael cohen has said this week to look at the tax law, tax policy, and then our committee also has a responsibility for others. the possibility of significant amount of saudi and russian influence through investments in mr. trump's enterprises. that also needs to be explored. so i'm hopeful now we're three months almost into this session that we will move almost immediately to get personal and business tax returns in order to get a full picture of what's going on here. you're familiar, lawrence, as you said with the statute. it's almost a 100-year-old statute. it makes it clear all it takes is the signature of the chairman of the ways and means committee to request the treasury department to provide these returns, though i think good groundwork is being laid here to lay out a very legitimate set of legislative purposes that will be met by getting these returns. >> congressman, i just want to clarify for the audience that one of the purposes of the committees the chairman being able to retain the returns is actually for -- to understand how tax law is working. and so the cases that i have seen when i was at the senate finance committee were we obtained certain kinds of tax returns where the individual's information was crossed out. we didn't know whose return it was. we just wanted to see what does it look like when you see a certain pattern of deductions and how does this particular real estate deduction work and how is it working in practice. >> yes. >> that's normally what it's been for. it's a pretty academic exercise. >> that's right. >> this is something very, very different. this is almost like the ways and means committee wanting to do its own audit of returns. that's something we haven't seen before. >> well, and we're in an unprecedented situation with this president and the way he operates and the way he's operated and mixed his personal interests and desire for personal enrichment with what should be the public interest. so there are many aspects of this that need to be explored. even donald trump recognized he needed a stamp of approval for his tax returns so he produced a letter that i think you've discussed last year from his law firm saying that he was clear of any russian counterparts. of course the law firm that gave him that stamp of approval had up on their website that they were proud to be the firm of the year. and so looking at his foreign entanglements as reflected not only in his personal returns but up to 500 plus entities that he appears to control that range from panama bea, michael cohen raised a question whether he was actually being audited. we want to make sure it's being done right. in richard nixon's case there were generous public comments about the audit from the irs. then when the facts were all out there, it turned out that he owed a significant amount of money. here's a president that appears to have engaged, according to his fixer, his lawyer, in some very questionable, what appear to be criminal, sleazy kind of operations that would deny tax revenue the government needs and confidence that the public needs in this tax system so that we all do our part to support this country. >> jill wine-banks, congressman doggett just handed the ball off to you with that reference to richard nixon's tax returns, which i know were part of the watergate investigation. this week, jill, for you, this is when it must really start feeling like watergate. you have very serious congressional investigations under way at the very same time that you have a very serious special prosecutor at work. now we see the pursuit of the president's tax returns. tell us about how the nixon tax returns worked their way into the investigation. >> well, first of all, both congratulations to your opening and congressman doggett that really lays out a significant case and also to congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez who really laid the foundation saying that through a very concise series of questions, that there was a real reason to get the tax returns and financial and bank records of the president. she really laid it out. she also identified some significant witnesses that should be called to congress. having public hearings is very much a part of what watergate did to bring the american people the knowledge they needed so that they could accept what we did in the indictment. the tax returns for richard nixon related to some phony deductions that he had taken and were legitimate grounds for one of the many things that he did wrong. they sort of got lost in the overall obstruction of justice case, the abuse of power, the abuse of government agencies like the cia to interfere with the fbi. those things ended up being much more what the public focused on. but i think that this series of really first time public hearings is so critical. we need more of it. the american people want to know and should know. whether the evidence ends up exonerating or incriminating the president. we don't know the outcome, but so far the public hearing is incriminating to the president. >> barbara mcquade, as a prosecutor, when you hear congressman jerry connelly say building a case, what you're seeing is congress methodically, as he put it, building a case. and you see we now have three to four committees in active pursuit of building that case. >> yeah. a supervisor of mine when i was a federal prosecutor used to like to use this metaphor to say one brick is not a wall, but many bricks are a wall. and so don't expect to advance a case with any one witness or any one document. but if you can assemble enough of them, you can put together a very sizeable and significant case. and so this week i think we learned many things that help advance that case. michael cohen himself is not a wall of evidence. and i think there are those who are pointing to michael cohen and saying see there, there is no collusion, there is no case. but he advanced the ball in many ways. fi first, some of the facts that he testified to and some of the documents he brought himself. but as jill just said, in the questioning, for example, congresswoman ocasio-cortez elicited the names of additional people that should be questioned and other documents that should be reviewed. and so in that way every time you interview a witness or look at documents, you uncover additional bricks that you can use to build that wall. >> congressman lloyd doggett, i know that you thought that the most controversial pressurized thing you'd ever handle is tax legislation because that's what usually is the most pressurized thing in a congress. here you are now on the ways and means committee at the very center of this investigation and we really appreciate you joining us tonight. we hope you can come back. we'll have to hear more about how it's proceeding in your committee. we appreciate it. barbara mcquade and jill wine-banks, we always need your expertise and we're lucky to have it tonight. thank you for joining us and we really appreciate it. >> thank you. when we come back, the democratic congress will investigate why intelligence experts and donald trump's own top aides didn't want jared kushner to have a top security clearance. but president trump gave it to him anyway. and freshman democratic congressman tom malinowski will join us. he is going to introduce a resolution in the house of representatives that says kim jong-un is indeed responsible for the torture and death of otto warmbier in direct contradiction to what donald trump has said about it. tom malinowski will join us. at the endi of this hour, we wil use more material from the michael cohen hearing, starring jimmy gomez, alexandria ocasio-cortez, with a cameo appearance from a fictional congressman max santos played by jimmy smitz from "the west wing" and it will lead to a lesson for the democratic presidential nominee on how to handle president trump on the presidential debate stage. alexandria ocasio-cortez will show them the debating homework they're going to need and jimmy smitz will show them the debating style they're going to need against donald trump. and, yes, there will be a "west wing" clip. too much time in the bathroom with recurring constipation and belly pain talk to your doctor and say yesss! to linzess. ♪ ♪ yesss! linzess treats adults with ibs with constipation or chronic constipation. linzess can help relieve your belly pain and lets you have more frequent and complete bowel movements. linzess is not a laxative. it works differently to help you get ahead of your recurring constipation and belly pain. do not give linzess to children less than 6, and it should not be given to children 6 to less than 18, it may harm them. do not take linzess if you have a bowel blockage. get immediate help if you develop unusual or severe stomach pain, especially with bloody or 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clearances, but that investigation went into overdrive today after "the new york times" reported jared kushner was denied a security clearance by everyone involved in the process, and then got a security clearance only because president trump intervened and ordered a security clearance for his son-in-law, jared kushner, something the president has repeatedly publicly denied that he did. >> there's been a story in the news in the last two weeks about your son-in-law's security clearance. >> yeah. >> did you tell general kelly or anyone else in the white house to overrule security officials, the career veterans? >> no. i don't think i have the authority to do that. i'm not sure i do. >> you do. >> but i wouldn't. i wouldn't do it. jared is a good -- i was never involved with his security. >> donald trump is not the only trump who denied that the president interfered in the security clearance process. >> there were anonymous leaks about there being issues, but the president had no involvement pertaining to my clearance or my husband's clearance. >> now you know what ivanka trump looks like when she's lying. "the new york times" reports that white house counsel don mcdpm mcgahn and white house chief of staff john kelly were so concerned about the president ordering a security clearance for his son-in-law that they each wrote memos in which they clarified their objections to the security clearance for jared kushner. tonight overnight committee chair elijah cummings sent a letter to the white house saying that they have, quote, stalled, ekwquivocated and failed to produce a single document or witness to the committee about security clearances. today harvard law professor lawrence tribe said if trump is ever impeached, the charges of great and dangerous offenses against the nation should include recklessly imperilling our national security by abusing for personal and family benefit his authority to grant access to top-secret information. joining our discussion now is john cipher who ran operations in russia. this week he wrote a piece for "the new york times" titled "putin's one weapon, the intelligence state." he is also a writer for the cipher brief. and malcolm nance is with us, an msnbc counterterrorism and intelligence analyst. malcolm, i want to get your reaction to that last thing i read, which is lawrence tribe writing an article of impeachment. if it is proven that donald trump did override the process and order the security clearance for his son-in-law, is professor tribe's draft of an article of impeachment appropriate or is that an overreaction? >> well, that depends. it really depends on whether that information that jared kushner got may have been abused. we've seen some evidence that there was some abuse that is outside the parameters of normal foreign policy. mohammed bin salman, the crown prince of saudi arabia, actually bragged publicly that he was given a list of his enemies, whom he arrested, imprisoned and in one case may even have caused the death of an individual in order to extort money out of people who were the royalty of saudi arabia. he claims jared kushner gave him that enemies list. that is not a normal use of intelligence processes that we have. could donald trump say i did this, i gave him as essential adjudicating authority i gave him this clearance? yes. but if at any point that information is found to be in the hands of our enemies or is found to have been traded off in some form of horse trading for some personal benefit, then you have an article of impeachment. >> john, what do you see at stake in the security clearance process, especially as it regards jared kushner? >> well, in some ways i think it's more simple. i can remember in the '90s when some of president clinton's activities were such that essentially everybody below him would have been fired for the same stuff that he was getting involved with. i think this impacts on millions of people with security clearances who have to open up their lives, who have to show their financial records, who have to follow the rules to keep a security clearance, when the people at the top can abuse that privilege, you know, at will. and so i think there's a lot of people working for this president, working for this administration who really feel that they're part of an unfair process. >> malcolm, the fact that the president is out there saying i didn't do what sources inside the trump administration are saying he did do, this is not going to come as a surprise to anyone. this is something that it seems the country has already just figured into the process, that there's really no chance donald trump would tell the truth about something like this. >> no. well, donald trump, you know, plays this active measure sort of old communist trick. the fog of unknowability that served vladimir putin so well. i didn't do this. i never said that. but if i did, i'm president, i could do it. well, which one is it? and he really markets that, so that when it does come out, and it will come out because there are two contemporaneous memos from eyewitnesses to this process, he will lean back and will say, well, i had the authority to do that anyway. like michael cohen said the other day, it's the way that he gets people to lie and say things in an open sort of scheme in which he will give them an inference and they will run with it. so by next week when this comes out, the entire republican party will be saying he has the authority to do this. >> john, obviously the trump white house is leaking about this. i mean "the new york times" doesn't reveal its sources, but that's where all of this information would have come from, the existence of the john kelly memo, the existence of the white house counsel's memo saying there should not be a security clearance. i mean leaks from inside the white house are hanging signs on exactly what the congress should be sending subpoenas for. >> well, that's because, like i said before, i think a lot of these people realize the unfairness of it. the fact that they would get fired if they did any of this kind of activity. think about the people who had to review these security clearances for mr. kushner. for them to deny a clearance to him, the president's son-in-law, think of how they had to make that decision. they had to be pretty sure of themselves to deny a clearance for someone that high in the white house, that close to the president. they had to be pretty confident this was a really bad idea. so the people in the white house who were around this and see these things and see these things every day and see mr. kushner and perhaps like we do see him as someone who's really a third stringer, a 32-year-old with no experience whatsoever running our foreign policy, they are probably embarrassed by it and upset by it as well and, therefore, perhaps leak. >> well, chairman elijah cummings will try to subpoena his way to the bottom of this and maybe so is the special prosecutor. thank you both for joining us tonight, really appreciate it. when we come back, i could have known that tom malinowski wasn't going to stand for what donald trump is saying about north korea's murderous dictator. you'll meet him tonight as a freshman member of congress. next week he will introduce a resolution in the house of representatives in direct contradiction of president trump, a resolution that says the north korean dictator is responsible for the torture and death of otto warmbier. i can'. that there's a lobster in our hot tub? 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(ba100, you're clear for take-off). how you follow your own path. you've led revolutions... of all kinds. yet you won't shout about it. it's just not in your nature. instead, you'll quietly make history. cake. beds. poetry. trouble. love! hope! and rather a lot of tea. the best of britain, from the moment you step on board. historians will struggle to decide what is the most deplorable thing president trump said, the stupidest thing president trump said, the most evil thing president trump said. what he has said this week about the murderous dictator of north korea will be on historians' lists in every one of those categories. >> he's very smart. he's sharp as you can be and he's a real leader. >> no dictator is a real leader. real leaders are elected by a majority of the people in their country. that means donald trump is not a real leader and it means that kim jong-un is really not a leader at all. he is a terrorist. he controls his country by terror. >> he likes me, i like him. some people say, oh, you shouldn't like him. i said why shouldn't i like him? >> you shouldn't like him because he is an overfed man who starves his own people to death. that man staurrves children. that man sitting beside you starves the elderly. he is a world class sociopath sitting right beside you, a madman. he is not smart by any standard other than the trump family standard. that's why you should not like hident is to to tiate with people you don't do things we want them to do. president obama has always done that. president obama never said that he liked the leaders of iran when he got them to stop their program of developing nuclear weapons through negotiations. you should not like the north korean dictator, and you should not believe him. donald trump became a partner, an active partner in evil with kim jong-un when he said he believed that kim jong-un had nothing to do with torturing the young american citizen, otto warmbier, who was in custody in north korea for a year. tortured to the point of brain damage for a year. when kim jong-un finally let him go home to die. donald trump says the murderous dictator of north korea had nothing to do with that. >> i don't believe that he would have allowed that to happen. it just wasn't to his advantage to allow that to happen. i don't believe he knew about it. some really bad things happened to otto. some really, really bad things. but he tells me -- he tells me that he didn't know about it. i will take him at his word. >> what was that? rank trump stupidity? yes. evil? yes. here's what otto warmbier's parents had to say about that in a written statement today. we have been respectful during this summit process. now we must speak out. kim and his evil regime are responsible for the death of our son otto. kim and his evil regime are responsible for unimaginable cruelty and inhumanity. no excuses or lavish praise can change that. our next guest is not going to stand for it. freshman congressman tom malinowski is going to introduce a bipartisan resolution affirming that congress holds kim jong-un responsible for the death of otto warmbier. congressman tom malinowski will join us next. ill join us next how do you gauge the greatness of an suv? is it to carry cargo... or to carry on a legacy? its show of strength... or its sign of intelligence? in crossing harsh terrain... or breaking new ground? and to do these things once... or seven times over? this is the mercedes-benz suv family. get the 2019 glc, starting at $40,700. mercedes-benz. the best or nothing. the communal feast. potluck. this parade of dishes will soon be yours to scrub. and they're not even... yours. new and improved dawn ultra can finish off this buffet. each drop now has even more grease-cleaning power. so you can scrub 50% less, and get done faster. next month, their place! a drop of dawn and grease is gone. each day justin at work... walk. and after work. he does it all with dr. scholl's. only dr. scholl's has massaging gel insoles that provide all-day comfort. to keep him feeling more energized. dr. scholl's. born to move. here is the father of otto warmbier in 2017 after his son died from the torture that he suffered in north korea. >> he's blind, he's deaf, he's got a feeding tube, and we kneel down and hug him and try to connect with him. he's a complete vegetable. and his bottom teeth look like they had taken a pair of pliers and rearranged them. otto was systematically tortured and intentionally injured by kim and his regime. this was no accident. >> that was shortly before otto warmbier died. joining us now is democratic congresswoman tom malinowski from new jersey. he was former the assistant secretary of state in the obama administration and plans to introduce a bipartisan resolution in the house affirming that congress holds kim jong-un responsible for the death of otto warmbier. tom, thank you for joining us tonight, really appreciate it. i explained to the audience at the beginning of the hour tonight our connection going back to 1988 working at the same time, both of us, for senator moynihan of new york. you were always working on human rights issues then. your career has stayed on that focus and here you are now in your first year of service in the house. what was your reaction when you heard the president just acquit, totally acquit, say, kim jong-un is innocent of the death of otto warmbier. >> disgraceful, and part of a disgraceful pattern. he seems to instinctively side with powerful men who are accused of moral transgressions. go figure. in this case bringing more pain to a family that has suffered far too much pain. an i think it's just another case where the united states congress has got to try to be an alternative voice for america in the world. congress has to step up and say what's right and what's wrong, what's true and what's false. and i've got to tell you, i've talked to a lot of my republican colleagues in the last 48 hours, just on this issue, and they agree. this is something we're going to be bipartisan on. >> your announcement tonight said bipartisan, so that means you believe you have republican votes lined up for your resolution. >> we're divided on so many things, right, in the congress. domestic policy, even foreign policy. but not a question like this. this is so fundamental. i think, again, it's just important that when the president goes off and says something like this or fails to say the right thing on behalf of our country, that the congress step up and do its duty together. i think we will. >> let's listen to what the republican leader of the house, kevin mccarthy, has said about this. >> i do not see the leader of north korea as somebody who's a friend. we know what happened to otto. we know what this country has done. i support the president and his effort to denuclearize them but i do not have a misbelief of who this leader is. >> do you think you're going to have kevin mccarthy's vote on this vote that basically rebukes president trump? >> i sure hope so. i think it's a vote that stands up for what the united states believes in. say what you want about president trump, we need to speak for america. >> this will really be historic in so many ways. first of all, it's just beyond belief that the congress even has to make this statement in reaction to a president saying this. but if you are the one who introduces the resolution that finally finds the thing in which you can get republicans, possibly even a majority of the republicans in the house of representatives to vote against the president -- >> it won't be the first time. we just did it on nato. we just overwhelmingly passed in the house of representatives not just a resolution, but a binding piece of legislation that says you cannot pull the united states out of nato. when it comes to our basic values, our security in the world, who we stand with, who we stand against, i still think we're united in the congress. >> tom malinowski, thank you for joining us tonight. this is really an honor to have you in your first appearance here as a member of congress. >> it's my honor, thank you. when we come back, the michael cohen hearing was a lesson for the democratic presidential candidates on how to handle donald trump on the debate stage. i will explain that with clips from congressman jimmy gomez, congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez, and a cameo by fictional congressman matt santos played by the great jimmy smits in the nbc presidential drama, "the west wing." yes, "west wing" clip coming up. ye s, "west wing" clip coming up. feel the clarity of non-drowsy claritin and relief from symptoms caused by over 200 indoor and outdoor allergens. like those from buddy. because stuffed animals are clearly no substitute for real ones. feel the clarity. and live claritin clear. ♪ did you know you can save money by using dish soap to clean grease on more than dishes? 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[ loud crash ] yeah. he'll figure it out. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty ♪ remember the audit? it's the reason candidate donald trump said he could not release his tax returns. >> i'm being audited now. >> a minor audit it's under routine audit. like routine. but, but, as soon as my routine audit is finished, i'll release my returns. i'll be very proud to. >> as i told you then, i never believed it. i never believed there was an audit. i immediately started asking donald trump and the trump campaign to produce the audit letter that begins every audit. a letter from the irs saying they are auditing donald trump's tax returns. that audit wouldn't tell us anything that's in hi tax returns, it's a simple one-page letter that everyone under audit gets. it's one of the many reasons donald trump would never be interviewed on this show, the audit letter that probably didn't exist, and where he was interviewed, the interviewers didn't know about audit letters, so the news media let it slide and slide and slide. but congressman jimmy gomez never forgot about the audit story. >> mr. cohen, do you know whether president trump's tax returns were really under audit by the irs in 2016? >> i don't know the answer. i asked for a copy of the audit so that i could use it in terms of my statements to the press and i was never able to obtain one. >> he obviously means he asked for a copy of the audit letter since there is no copy of an actual audit. i'd like to think that i provoked michael cohen to ask for the audit letter over there in trump world. but donald trump and his accountants didn't have an audit letter to show michael cohen. >> can you give us any insight into what that the president has refused to release his tax returns? >> the statements that he has said to me is that what he didn't want was to have an entire group of think tanks that are tax experts run through his tax return and start ripping it to pieces and then he'll end up in an audit and he'll ultimately have taxable consequences, penalties and so on. >> so that's an interesting point. that basically said he didn't want to release his tax returns, because he might end up in an audit. so could you presume from that statement that he wasn't under audit? >> i presume that he's not under audit. >> sounds like michael cohen and i have -- michael cohen and i have both been presuming that donald trump has not been under audit since the first time he claimed that he was under audit. ocasio-cortez has been appraised and declared that alexandra ocasio-cortez won the hearing because of a basis for congress to subpoena donald trump's tax returns. but she did something else with her questions that no one else seems to have noticed, something very important for the presidential campaign. and we'll show you that, next. e. and we'll show you that, next. ♪ introducing the new capital one savor card. earn 4% cash back on dining and 4% on entertainment. now when you go out, you cash in. what's in your wallet? what do you look for i want free access to research. yep, td ameritrade's got that. free access to every platform. yeah, that too. i don't want any trade minimums. yeah, i totally agree, they don't have any of those. i want to know what i'm paying upfront. yes, absolutely. do you just say yes to everything? 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>> i don't know. i asked david pecker for them. >> so you would say the person who knows of the whereabouts of these documents would be david pecker. >> david pecker, barry ravine or dylan howard. >> so david pecker, barry levine and david howard, your subpoenas are on the way. and then ocasio-cortez asked the first question in what is sure to be an investigation of insurance fraud by donald trump. >> to your knowledge, did the president ever provide inflated assets to an insurance company? >> yes. >> who else knows that the president did this? >> allen weisselberg, alan lieberman and matthew california mary. >> do you think we need his tax returns in order to compare them? >> yes, and you would find it at the trump org. >> so allen weisselberg, better get ready for questions on insurance fraud and many other aspects of the trump business. congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez has been widely praised for all of that, but most observers have missed that the congresswoman who republicans like to call a socialist exposed donald trump's personal brand of socialism. the socialism that donald trump really loves. the socialism that puts taxpayer money directly into donald trump's pocket. >> the trump golf organization currently has a golf course in my home borough of the bronx. trump links. i drive past it every day. going between bronx and -- going between the bronx and queens. >> that was the most perfect illustration of house speaker tip o'neill's old line that all politics is local. and it turned out to be the perfect illustration of just how much donald trump loves socialism when it's just for him. >> taxpayers spent $127 million to build trump links in a, quote, generous deal, allowing president trump to keep almost every dollar that flows in on a golf course built with public funds. >> new york taxpayers spent $127 million that could have gone to public schools or public housing. but it went to a trump golf course, which benefits the fewest possible new yorkers per square foot of any building project in the history of new york. and it financially benefits donald trump. >> tonight, we renew our resolve america will never be a socialist country. [ cheers and applause ] >> yeah, donald trump is like every other republican businessman in america who hates socialism, except when the socialism is designed to specifically put money in their pockets, like the owners of professional sports teams who force taxpayers to pay for their stadiums. the presidential candidate who is going to beat donald trump on a debate stage is the presidential candidate who knows what to do when donald trump throws around that word "socialism" as if it is a crime. in the final season of nbc's "the west wing" when i wrote the live presidential debate episode, i had alan olal dathro the world liberal at jimmy schmidt schmidts, and he said, what i always wanted to hear a candidate say. >> republicans have tried to turn liberal into a bad word. well, liberals ended slavery in this country. [ applause ] >> a republican president ended slavery. >> yes, a liberal republican. what happened to them? they got run out of your party. what did liberals do that was so offensive to the republican party, senator? i'll tell you what they did. liberals got women the right to vote. liberals got african-americans the right to vote. liberals created social security, and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. liberals ended segregation. liberals created medicare. liberals passed the clean air act, the clean water act. what did conservatives do? they opposed every one of those programs. every one. so when you try to hurl that word, "liberal" at my feet as if it were something dirty, something that i should be ashamed of, it won't work, senator, because i will pick up that label and i will wear it as a badge of honor. [ cheers and applause ] >> so when donald trump throws the word socialism at the democrat democratic candidate, that candidate cannot hide, cannot run away from that word. that candidate has to tell the audience that's what republicans said about social security when they opposed it in 1935. and that's what republicans said about medicare when they opposed it in 1965. and it's true that those are socialistic programs. but they're programs that work well and make millions of people's lives much better. the democratic candidate is going to have to be brave enough to honestly talk about socialism to that national tv audience and tell them that there is good socialism, like social security and medicare, and there is very, very bad socialism. and the worst socialism in america is trump golf socialism. donald trump's socialism. that's tonight's "last

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