trump and biden, i will have more details for you about what our coverage of that is going to be like. i will be anchoring with joy reid and nicole wallace and you will be able to watch the whole thing live. i will have more for you later on. the debates and this last lead of election will coincide with republicans trying to rush through the confirmation of a new hard, hard line arch conservative supreme court nominee. the republican plan to confirm amy coney barrett right before the election. they're hoping they'll excite their base by doing that as close to the election as they can. democrats are not conceding this is a done deal. vice president biden urging republican senators to not move the barrett nomination forward and not move any no, ma'minatio forward until after voters choose. >> and off the bylilinder for a moment and stand up for the constitution. uphold your constitution and summon your conscious. it will take two more republican senators to side with senator collins and murkowski. if two more senators joined with them then this nomination will wait after the election. democrats are pledging to do everything they can to stop any confirmation. elements are trying to stop this nomination are getting some backup now from boldface editorial from "the washington post." the senate should ignore amy coney barrett's nomination. it would be the wrong choice because it is the wrong time. senate republican should be disgusted as playing the role they are being asked to play. the president says he's counting on judge barrett's hurry confirmation. he's spoken in recent days about getting rid of the ballots and enlisting the court and stopping the democrats voting scam and he needs a ninth justice to ensure the court rules his way. the editorial continues, imagine the turmoil it would cost. some american ballots should not count. are there not enough republican senators which all it would take sufficient conscious care for the country. >> the effort to delay the confirmation until after voters chosen the next president will get some backup we now know from a new women's march that's scheduled for saturday, october 17th in washington, d.c. that march will be aimed at trying to backstop these efforts to stop the nomination until after the inauguration. it is all happening all at once. all new stream on stun. everything at the same time. and, you might have heard "the new york times" got trump's taxes more than 20 years of tax returns. tylen finally after all this time. turns out how we got here, the "times" published three pages from trump's tax from 1995. 2016 it was when they published it. the president declaring huge financial losses from his failing business efforts, potentially more business losses than any single taxpayers in the country that year. until 2017, we published two pages from donald trump's 2005 taxes. two pages from his federal tax returns, those two were obtained sort of mysteriously. they were mailed anonymously and gai gave it to us to put on tv. it shows trump paid a bunch of taxes but no explanation. and the year after that, an epic investigation into the trump's family that we later learn they obtained from mary trump. mary trump published a book this summer in part of her financial family records at the time. mary trump filing a new lawsuit against her uncle for cheating her out of tens of millions of dollars out of the family. all of that happening 2016 and 2018 and the lawsuit from mary trump and the family's finances and now what just happens in the time, this is different on an order of magnitude. from the times right now, there is a reason republicans have all been in hiding today. you have no idea what they are supposed to say about this. they're all under their perspective rock at this point. how are they explaining this to the american team especially when so many people are saying put me back in office alongside this president. nixon was caught cheating on his taxes. he was making 2,000 a year. president nixon was paying in taxes at that time not what you would expect a person making 200,000 a year. he paid taxes like he was making 7,000. nixon was found to pay a federal tax bill in 1970 of $792 818. that's it? >> he made $200,000 a year and he paid less while he was president? i think he released four years of his tax returns publicly. he was found to have weaseled out of his taxes. turns out he actually owed half a million dollars in back taxes which he did end up having to pay and that ended up being one more thing, driving nixon absolutely nuts and public opinion through the floor in the middle. but that debacle from richard nixon weaving out of his taxes. because of that, nixon's debacle, we expect presidents can't hide stuff like that in their tax and they will proactively show us their tax returns. donald trump has broken that rule. if it were not for the new york times, president trump would still be hiding his taxes. thanks for this new york times, we know president trump paid less than nixon did in federal income taxes, even if you don't adjust inflation between 1970 and now. nixon paid more. nixon paid more, 780 something? trump paid $750 in income taxes. that's it. the biden campaign turned that fact in toe a new ad contracting what president trump contribute to this country. i think the american people have learned how the rich rig the system in our country. people expect now find ways not to pay taxes. but, even though we have a sort of cynical expectations of that. what the "times" just revealed is trump is doing something way different than really normal rich people do. on average, we know what the richest 1% of americans pay in taxes each year now. if trump paid that and what the other mega-rich people in the universe paid, he would have paid $400 million in taxes. he's gaming that system like no one else. the details are weird and damming and memorable. that year from which we got the two pages of his tax returns from 2005, we got two pages from johnson. turns out that year 2005 was a huge anomaly. in that he paid any taxes at all. in 11 out of the 18 years, president trump paid $0. two of those 18 years, he paid only $750 for the whole year. he radically, radically avoided paying taxes. he's done it in part by declaring stuff as business expenses that are things that don't seem like legit expenses. offering dirt on hillary clinton courtesy of the government that they wanted donald trump to use hillary clinton in the campaign. tax law says you can't deduct business expenses. expenses that were accrued based on your participation and the political campaign. that does appear to be the type of expenses for don jr. he never deducted it as a business expense. the president also deducted it as a business expense of his taxes, over $70 of hair styling expenses for himself. really? he deducted $100,000 of hair and makeup expenses for his daughter, ivanka. consulting fees are supposed to go to independent consultants and not to your own employee like ivanka trump. the tax records recorded by the "times" shown the president taken millions of dollars from foreign sources since he's been from the white house including money from turkey and india and the flphilippines. he has done that to the tune of millions of dollars. when it comes to money from russia, trump's miss universe pageant, that pageant lost money regularly except for that year when it was moved to russia in 2013. a russian billionaire offered to pay millions of dollars to put that pageant on that year in mou moscow. that russian oligarch lost millions of dollars himself but millions of his dollars ends up in donald trump's pocket. you recall this is sort of a pattern with the president. trump marked up by tens of millions of dollars without doing much to it at all. that's the property that michael cohen says in his new book. the president bragged money in his pocket approved by russian president vladimir putin which controlled major spending by oligarchs abroad. but the big story here, the big take away is two things. first is the president has avoided paying taxes to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars and that's in part of dubious business expenses but it is mostly of him telling the irs that his businesses are all massive failures. the trump corporation lost $134 million according to the president. his golf course since the year 2000s collectively lost $316 million. he says he lost over $162 million on his doral golf course in florida and his d.c. hotel. the president told the irs that hotel lost over $55 million. that's the first of the two big picture take aways here. we guess how the president conducting his business but this shows it in black and white. he has avoided paying hundreds and millions of dollars in taxes by telling the irs that everything he touches fails. that all of his business dealings and golf courses and hotels and everything with his name on it, all just failed catastrophically and it fails every year. that's now in the record that has been exposed by the "the times," we can see it in terms of his taxes. we can see how that story he's been telling irs of what he's been telling us. his financial disclosure from the white house for 2018 says that he made at least $435 million that year. well, his tax record shows he lost $47.4 million that year. well, which is it? did he make $435 million or did he lose it? which is it? he told different audiences two different things about that is same year. he told the irs he lost $47 million. is that true? is the president comfortable admitting he lost all that money in 2018 and he's been losing hundreds of millions of dollars for a year. can he shut up and eat that now that everybody is going to see officially that his business umpire is a terrible failure or can his ego can't take that? will he feel obliged publicly that yeah, those papers i told the irs but in reality i make hundreds of dollars. his ego is going to drive him to say that. there is a problem. the president is potentially showing the necessarily intent and the understanding of his actions to cross the line from obvious tax avoidance which isa serious crime. can the president's ego endure the public knowing of c catastrophe upon bankruptcy and failure. the second big take away here is that officially, the president appears to be up against the law financially. as the "times" puts it, his finances are under stress with hundreds of millions of debt coming through that he personally guaranteed. he's facing a battery of threat to business and his own financial being. he appears to fill his cash flow gaps with a series of one shot that may not be available in 2012, for example. he took out $100 million mortgage on the commercial space of trump tower. he took the entire amount as cash pay out. his company paid interests on the loan but nothing on the principle. that means the full $100 million mortgage is going to come due in 2022 which is only two years from now. the president has huge loan coming due for the doral golf course and the washington, d.c. hotel, he has $160 million there. in all, the president is totaling $421 million with most of it coming due within four years from now. should he win reelection? "the times" calls this a tightening financial vise. >> pelosi calls it a national security issue that the president owns hundred of millions of dollars to god knows who. loans that he would not be able to pay. what will would a president do to get himself out of that hole? here is something to consider. separate from the "times," remarkable reporting that keeps on producing more and more news, separate from "tthe "times." we have a new piece of history to help us prepare ourselves for the length this particular president may go through now that he appears to be in financial distress. it seems like the last time donald trump was in financial straight, this dire was in the late '80s and '90s when he runs all of his businesses under ground and had hundreds of millions of dollars including a whole bunch of stuff he guaranteed meaning his creditors could come to his personal bank account and assets. that's what's going on rieght now. that also happened to him in the late '80s and '90s. mary trump brought legal action against president trump and other family members for cheating her brothers and the family. this bomb shell from the "the times." this week on "the washington post" also reported, in 1990, the last time donald trump was in financial distress was he owed hundreds of millions of dollars including personal guarantee loans. in 1990 as detailed, donald trump sent an accountant and a lawyer to see his father to tell his father to sign a document changing his will to benefit donald trump. it was a fragile moment for the senior trump who was 85 years old. he was diagnosed with cognitive problem such as unable to recall things he was told 30 minutes earlier or remembering his birthday. trump's father was 85-years-old, he was about to be diagnosed with dementia and alzheimer's and that's when trump went to him and said sign these over to me. in 1990 when donald trump was in financial distress, he's trying to push his dad to sign over control to him. trump went to him anyway trying to get him to do his will. mary trump released recordings of her aunt, the president easter talking about that incident. so trump's family medical record and tax records and the recording of the trump's family talking about there financial history. all of this stuff is making its way to the press the day before the first presidential debate. we know the president owes hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, loans that are all coming due very soon and he has no way to pay back. we know the last time that happened to him, he was not president but he did have a father from whom he tried to hijack the family's fortune. the time his father is gone and he wandered the family's fortune. this time in desperation, he got us, the american people and the power of the federal government and an election coming up soon by which people try to stand in office happens to offer him immunity as long as he's in power and which may conceivably not seize everything he owns. how far do you think he goes? what can possibly go wrong for us as a country? how is a person liability like this in the presidency in the first place? my god. presidency in the first place? my god i'm a conservative, want conservative judges on the court. this may make you feel better, but i really don't care. if an opening comes in the last year of president trump's term and the primary process has started we'll wait to the next election. i want you to use my words against me. you're on the record. yeah, hold the tape. lindsey must go and the lincoln project are responsible for the content of this ad. "the new york times" broke this story yesterday of the president's tax returns, the president having $400 million in guarantee debt he need to pay back in the next four years. it appears no way for him. he could not get the lowest level security clearance with that liability hanging over him. here he is president. the president's financial attack history provided by mary trump's the president's niece. mary trump says she's not the source from the latest reporting of the "times." nobody has seen the raw documents, only the "times" have seen this. joining me now is mary trump, the niece of president trump. she's the author of "too much and never enough." thank you for being here. >> happy to be here, rachel. >> a bunch of things are going on here at once. i feel like the revelation of what your uncle did, last time we knew he was in dire financial problem when he tried to go to his father. i fear what he may do now when he's president and he's going back to financial straight that's dire. >> unfortunately it is parallel in a long series of parallels that for reasons i am grappling with a lot of people chosen to ignore or take advantage of. it is not what a theoretical would do. it is what donald would do in the situation and we know. >> in terms of what the "times" reported today, in 2018 they had the huge expose based in part of the documents, tax returns nobody ever seen and nobod nobody -- how is this reporting of your uncle's financial history. did this open big new avenue understanding for you or keeping of what you expected. >> it is in keeping of what i would expect because nothing donald done surprised me. it does not mean it is necessary. as usual they are brilliant in their reporting and i believe every word of it and also head to mr. mcintyre who i don't know. laying out this way is very important for the american people because it is one thing for me to have an opinion or for me to say i am not surprised it is all part of a pattern and just by your own brilliance and k connecting of dots, people want to see proof. it is interesting how that $750 number resonated so strongly with american taxpayers even though i don't think it is the most important aspect of the article. the security threat is more important. if it helps people connect to the story and if it is an end road to understanding, this complex tax information, i am all for it. >>. >> mary, the president debate is tomorrow between your uncle and joe biden. this is going to be the basis for question but it is an important part of the backdrop for the news heading into this debate. your uncle's ego around financial issues and the way he likes the perform this sort of pageant of success and never having any sorts of failures may be a weak point for him in the debate on this if vice president biden may want to try to pin him on this issue. you know his brain better than anybody else. do you think he'll cop to the fact that his businesses and the irs filings appear to be failures or he'll explain something that he did to avoid taxes which provided a form of risk for him and in terms of future prosecution? >> he's in a bit of a vine, is he? >> i hope that this is a major topic of the debate. honestly for people to ignore this and ask him about his policy position is once again to legitimatize him. this is a topic can't let go. if he's just asked once, you're right, his ego will kick in but he'll spin it in a way that makes it seem like it was the smart thing to do as he says in 2016. but, if he goes there obviously nobody is going to be able to prove criminality on the debate stage. one thing to be a private citizen and not pay tax because you're quote on quote "smart," it is another to do as a leader of the country, it is deeply unpu unpatriotic. it needs to be seen in those terms right now and we'll deal with the rest later. >> the niece of president donald trump. i am looking forward to talk to you after the debate tomorrow. i know it is going to be and i feel a sense of this. i can't wait to see it. >> i am with you. >> all right. thank you. all right, still ahead tonight, we are going to be speaking with somebody who had more of a chance than anybody on earth to investigate the president's finances with subpoena power and all the rest of it except he was told to stop. he's written a remarkable new book about it and he joins us for his first tv interview with that book, next. stay with us. interview with that book, next. stay with us (sneeze) skip to cold relief fast. alka-seltzer plus power max gels. with 25% more concentrated power. oh, what a relief it is! so fast! that's why i've got the power of 1,2,3 medicines with trelegy. the only fda-approved, once-daily 3 in 1 copd treatment. ♪ with trelegy and the power of 1, 2, 3, i'm breathing better. trelegy works 3 ways to open airways, keep them open, and reduce inflammation for 24 hours of better breathing. trelegy won't replace a rescue inhaler for sudden breathing problems. trelegy is not for asthma. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition or high blood pressure before taking it. do not take trelegy more than prescribed. trelegy may increase your risk of thrush, pneumonia, and osteoporosis. call your doctor if worsened breathing, chest pain, mouth or tongue swelling, problems urinating, vision changes, or eye pain occur. think your copd medicine is doing enough? maybe you should think again. ask your doctor about once-daily trelegy. we know times are hard and we're here for you. find support at trelegy.com. how and why the special counsel's office failed to investigate the president's finances. really anything about the president's finances. this is how weissmann described what happened. the president kept secret throughout the 2016 campaign. the prosecutors leading the investigation, knew that making a move like this would get back to the white house and there could be consequences. sure enough, he was to stay down. mueller agreed with him that this was not worth a potential blow back. aaron claims this would hurt this negotiation. we shut the door for her office and had the mother of all big sessions. better to get fired than the voluntarily pull our punches. all i can do is reiterate her point in various different ways. from then on better to get fired was the refrain we tossed back and forth every time we sensed our office pulling back. needless to say that meant trump's tax returns were out of bound. in the end, we would fail to conduct the investigation and we never got an interview with the president. in the end, the wrong doing we found which we chose to look as a result of cohen's operation led me with an unsatisfying feeling of what's out there that we did not examine. that's the new book by andrew weissmann. it comes out tomorrow. it is the first look that we had inside the mueller investigation from someone who's there from day one until the end. weissmann is not shy where he thinks the investigation fell short on particularly the issue on following the money. now, all the unexploded bombs that are inside trump's tax bracket. we got andrew weissmann joining us here next, live. stay with us. n joining us here next, live stay with us tonight, i'll be eating a veggie cheeseburger on ciabatta, no tomatoes.. [hard a] tonight... i'll be eating four cheese tortellini with extra tomatoes. [full emphasis on the soft a] so its come to this? [doorbell chimes] thank you. [doorbell chimes] bravo. careful, hamill. daddy's not here to save you. oh i am my daddy. wait, what? what are you talking about? (fisherman vo)ce) how do i register to vote?ential election... hmm!.. hmm!.. hmm!.. (woman on porch vo) can we vote by mail here? (grandma vo) you'll be safe, right? (daughter vo) yes! (four girls vo) the polls! voted! (grandma vo) go out and vote! it's so important! (man at poll vo) woo! (grandma vo) it's the most important thing you can do! the fall of 2018, andrew weissmann is in a meeting arguing his case to robert mueller. "the way i saw it, our office had a mandate to kconduct an investigation." we'll have our decisions thrown in their face. if we don't subpoena the president in this investigation, how can others justify the need to do so. mueller offered no reaction and no indication whether it affected his thinking. the meeting ended after i concluded. it was a clear decision had been made and the rest of us simply late in recognizing that. we also knew how of us would have preceded if we had been in charge. it just didn't sit right. it felt like we were letting down the american public. one of the lead prosecutors for special counsel mueller headed up the prosecution of paul manafort. the book is called "where law ends." it is on sale tomorrow. thank you for being here. >> nice to be here, rachel. >> this is a heartbreaking book. this is not the book that i expected to read. and your sort of rending of garments and your regret of what was done feels terrible. the book is beautifully written, and i learned a ton and i'm sort of gutted. did you know it was going to do this to me? >> well, it did it to me also. it was a very hard book to write, but i really thought it was necessary for me to be as candid as possible about the things that we did right and the things that i thought we could have done better. i do think one thing that's certainly relevant to "the new york times" story you have been reporting on is just how much the white house did not want us to do a financial investigation. in the book i tell the story of our issues a grand jury subpoena to deutsche bank. it turned out that was for paul manafort. but the white house got wind of the fact that we issued that grand jury subpoena and called up and demanded to know whether we were doing a financial investigation of the president, that that was a red line. at that early stage in the investigation where there was this sort of dam close over us as to whether we were going to be fired from one day to the next, the decision was made better to let the investigation go forward and put the financial investigation on hold. the issue i have is that that decision was not revisited and that we really should have done the financial investigation. and many of the questions that people have from the new york times reporting would have been answered. >> in a normal prosecution that doesn't involve the president when a suspect or a target of an investigation tells you some thinged are red lined, don't go there, wouldn't you take that as an indication of that's where the crime was? >> that would be a red flag. usually when someone is saying don't look there, as a prosecutor, you want to look there. also, it is completely abnormal to be investigating somebody who has the power to pull the plug on your investigation. so it's important to remember that for 22 months we did not know from one day to the next whether we would have a job the next day. so it was an extremely unusual situation. >> that said, i feel like you would have all had -- you would have not had the jobs that you had working on the special counsel's investigation, but you would have all had jobs. you would have gone back to what you were doing before you were on this investigation. the thing i still feel like i don't understand and maybe i'm just not a lawyer and i haven't worked at the justice department and i can't empathize for those reasons, but it seems like getting fired was not a fate worse than death. if you had been fired because you did something that angered the president and then other investigators would know that you hit the land mine, that you stood on something that exploded and that's why you were all fired. there would have been -- just as after the saturday night massacre in watergate there would have been a reason and a way to follow up on you guys if you rushed too hard. >> rachel, i completely agree with you. that is a decision i think that we should have made, whether it came to subpoenaing the president, whether it came to doing a financial investigation. there is absolutely nothing wrong with being fired for doing your job, and i think that's a fine we had an obligation to the public to do that. >> andrew, let me ask you about something that emerged over the course of the manafort investigation, which you are sort of team leader on, and that was the issue about manafort's contact with con stan teen ka limb nick. he was described as somebody who was tied to russian intelligence. the senate intelligence committee came out and said bluntly, he's a russian intelligence officer. i want to ask you about those different ways of describing ka limb nick or whether you think the intelligence committee came up with something other than what you guys had, but also what you take -- what you think the people -- the american people should take away in terms of the seriousness of this incident in which manafort was providing him with all this strategic data about the campaign while manafort was serving at trump's campaign chair. >> so i'm not sure whether the senate intel committee came up with evidence. there was a lot of debate about the team, it was my team, wanted to have a classified appendix to the report that put in information that would supplement our information about con stan teen ka limb nick. it could be that information is what guided the bipartisan senate report. i think what people need to understand that's remarkable is that paul manafort during the presidential campaign in june, july, august of 2016 was sharing trump campaign polling data with con stan teen ka limb nick who has been identified as a russian asset. he met with him on august 2nd and described for him the state of the campaign he described, the state of play in so-called battleground states of which one of the battleground states he described was wisconsin, which i don't think people generally thought of that way. so there was a lot of private information going to russian intelligence officer, which of course is remarkable. >> at the same time that the russian intelligence was mounting an effort to make sure that candidate got elected and doing so with some level of skill and detail. >> yes. and -- >> it is a remarkable story that still is not told. sorry. go ahead. >> i was going to say tieing it back to what we learned from the new york times yesterday, if you remember, eric trump in 2014 made the statement that the trump organization did not rely on american banks because they got plenty of funding from russia. so the outstanding question and the question that i think we really did drop the ball on is the $400 or so million that the president has in debt, who does he owe that money to? we have some inkling from eric trump as to one possible answer to that. >> the book is called "where law ends: inside the mueller investigation." it is on sale as of tomorrow. thank you so much for your time tonight. congratulations on the book. >> thank you very much. >> we'll be right back. stay with us. stay with us last year of president trump's term and the primary process has started we'll wait to the next election. i want you to use my words against me. you're on the record. yeah, hold the tape. lindsey must go and the lincoln project are responsible for the content of this ad. that's going to do it for me tonight. i'll see you again tomorrow for our debate coverage. but right now it's time for "the last word" can lawrence o'donnell. "the last word" celebrating it's 10th anniversary. kamala harris. oh, good evening, lawrence. didn't know you were there. >> hi, rachel. i don't see how it can be ten years since i'm only five years older since when i started the show, so i don't get it.