← The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell
The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell
Lawrence: The only humiliation in court during Comey’s arraignment was on the Trump side
00:43:00
Tonight on The Last Word: James Comey appears in federal court for his arraignment. Also, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse calls out Attorney General Pam Bondi’s “nonsense.” And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene calls on Speaker Mike Johnson to bring Republicans back to Washington, D.C. Andrew Weissmann, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, and Rep. Mark Pocan join Lawrence O’Donnell.
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MSNBC Announcer
From Executive producer Rachel Maddow MSNBC Films presents Andrew the Dirty Work.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
I will call for Andrew Young, that dedicated leader.
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MSNBC Announcer
The inside story of Martin Luther King's trusted friend and advisor.
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Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
If I had to take a few kicks and licks to get a civil Rights Act, I'd do it any day of the week.
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And how he carried the dream forward onto the world stage.
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Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
We had to take the movement into politics.
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MSNBC Announcer
Andrew Young, the dirty work Friday, October 17th at 9pm Eastern on MSNBC.
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Jen Psaki
The last over with Lawrence O' Donnell starts right now. Hey, Lawrence.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
Hey, Jen. I have to make sure I have everything I need on this desk because in the last, I don't know, let's see, 45 seconds, I've had to run out of here, go down the hall to another studio because this place wasn't working technically. We got to the other studio and then this place was working technically and it was better to work here than there. Okay. Here it's all. So as I'm, you know, stretching here, all sorts of material is being dropped onto this desk where it was a minute ago. But then we had to run down the hall and come back here. And now we're on tv. Everything's fine, everything's.
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Jen Psaki
I may have heard you were running swiftly down the hallway.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
Yeah. Were you getting a rumor? Was the control room telling you, hey, you might have to do an extra five minutes?
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Jen Psaki
Sometimes it's like just keep talking for a little bit. Cause Lawrence is running down the hallway because he has a broken thing.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
Well, you know, and for once, it wasn't my fault. This is the first time it wasn't my fault.
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Jen Psaki
The good news is you could just talk about all sorts of things and your knowledge of the Senate and your knowledge of governing and politics. The West Wing. I could listen to you about the West Wing forever. You don't need anything else, just do you.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
Well, this was a little test of the emergency broadcast system and we got back into the proper spot. So here we go.
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Jen Psaki
You're back.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
Here we go.
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Jen Psaki
People watching are grateful.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
Right. Thanks, John.
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Andrew Weissman
Of course.
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Jen Psaki
See you Tomorrow.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
Thank you. She said two words and only two words in the courtroom today. It was her first appearance as a prosecutor in an arraignment in her career as a prosecutor. And career is a very strong word to use for someone who has so far spent exactly 12 work days of her life in that career. If you're a kindergarten student in America tonight, first of all, you should be asleep at this hour. And second of all, you already have a longer career as a kindergarten student than Donald Trump's new favorite prosecutor has as a prosecutor. She proved once again today that she knows absolutely nothing about prosecuting anything. The only two words she spoke today were her name, and she got that wrong as only she could in a lifetime of listening to lawyers identify themselves in court as they are required to do at the beginning of a proceeding. I have never heard a lawyer get that part wrong until today. She was surrounded by lawyers who knew how to do it and got it right, including one who showed her how to do it right before she got it wrong. The clerk was the first to speak in the courtroom today, asking the lawyers to, quote, please note their appearances for the record. And the proper response to that is the lawyer's name and who the lawyer is representing. Everyone knows that except Donald Trump's favorite new prosecutor. The clerk said, will the parties please note their appearances for the record. Mr. Lemons. Good morning, your honor. Tyler Lemons for the United States government. Ms. Halligan. Lindsey Halligan. Mr. Diaz. Good morning, your honor. Gabriel Diaz for the United States. The court. Good morning, Mr. Fitzgerald. Good morning, your honor. Pat Fitzgerald. And it's the honor of my life to represent Mr. Comey in this matter. The court. Good morning, Ms. Carmichael. Good morning, you, Honor. Jessica Carmichael for Mr. Comey. Now, I know if you haven't spent much time in courtrooms, it sounds very picky of me to note that 36 year old Lindsey Halligan, who has never prosecuted anything in her thin experience as a lawyer, didn't say lindsey Halligan for the United States. That's what every federal prosecutor says every time something on something like that. And there's a very powerful ring to it in that room. It's a phrasing that scares defendants, although nothing could scare the tallest man in the room today, the 6 foot H. 6 foot 8 inch defendant, former FBI director James Comey. But for a typical defendant who shows up in court for the first time in a federal case, and here's the case announced as the United States of America versus John Doe, many a John Doe gets weak in the knees, realizing that he's up against legally anyway, the United States of America. Federal prosecutors love to throw that around. Tyler Lemons for the United States government. Gabriel Diaz for the United States. Lindsey Halligan didn't know she was supposed to say that. Lindsey Halligan didn't know that. She technically failed to respond to the directive to explain her appearance in court, what she was doing there. But what she said was more accurate than trying to claim that she was there for the United States. She was there for Donald Trump and only for Donald Trump. She personifies Donald Trump in that courtroom. But Donald Trump actually has more experience in criminal courtrooms than Lindsey Halligan has. Donald Trump really is the prosecutor of this case and he is the most incompetent prosecutor in history. And so he has chosen the most incompetent so called Acting U.S. attorney in History. The silent Lindsey Halligan's prosecutorial career is now 12 days old at this point, but might not last much more than that, maybe not more than another month or so, because knocking her out of the case is one of the first things that James Comey's lawyer intends to do, as he announced to the judge today. In discussing the scheduling of the case in which James Comey has asked for a speedy trial, defense attorney Patrick Fitzgerald told the judge, we would like to bring a motion to challenge the lawfulness of the appointment of Ms. Halligan as United States Attorney because we think that's an unlawful appointment. Patrick Fitzgerald didn't elaborate on the point at this stage. He was simply alerting the judge to the kinds of motions he intends to file before the trial, while suggesting an expedited hearing schedule for those motions so that there still could be a speedy trial. Judge Michael Nakmanoff, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, might turn out to be the fastest working federal judge we have seen in the era of Trump inspired federal prosecutions. He was ready to set a trial date before Christmas, but adjusted to January 5th in order to accommodate the pretrial hearing schedule proposed by James Comey's lawyer. No schedule was proposed by the silent Lindsay Halligan or the two assistant US Attorneys who had to be imported from North Carolina to Virginia because no one in the federal prosecutor's office in the Eastern District of Virginia was willing to join Lindsey Halligan in this case trying to prosecute James Comey. She was like anyone who doesn't understand what's going on in a courtroom, apparently lost throughout the proceeding. The New York Times reports Ms. Halligan, a former insurance lawyer, did not speak in court. Instead, she spent the hearing Rocking and nodding in her chair as a junior federal prosecutor brought in from North Carolina spoke for the Justice Department. And that junior federal prosecutor said, we don't know what we're doing. He didn't speak those words, of course, but he said something that you can spend a lifetime in federal courts and never hear. When James Comey's lawyer said, quote unquote, we haven't received a single piece of paper of discovery to date. The junior federal prosecutor, Tyler Lemon, said, we're just getting our hands around the discovery as well. What? How can you be standing there prosecuting James Comey and not know what your evidence is to prosecute James Comey? That's what the junior federal prosecutor told the judge today. We don't know what our prosecution evidence is. That's what he meant. The judge knew that. The judge's response to that was a judicial version of are you kidding me? The judge said, all right, well, I will tell you, I'm a little skeptical of that. This does not appear to me to be an overly complicated case. There are two counts. It's a discrete set of facts. That's a polite way of saying this is the thinnest indictment that could possibly exist. And here it is, right here. It is two pieces of paper. And the only reason it's two pieces of paper is that on the first page, it accuses James Comey of making a false statement in a Senate hearing. And on the second page, it accuses him of obstruction of the Senate by making that same so called false statement. So the one sentence James Comey spoke managed to get them two pages of an indictment. And James Comey said that on television in a Senate hearing. That's the entire case, that one sentence that he spoke on tv. And the junior federal prosecutor, standing beside the silent Lindsay Halligan, rocking in her chair, tried to tell the judge that they are in possession of some massive amount of evidence, which includes, inexplicably, according to them, classified information. And there's so much of it that this junior federal prosecutor, who's been on this case for exactly one day, along with the other junior prosecutor from North Carolina who's been on the case for one day, because no real prosecutor in that office in Virginia will take the case, are, quote, just getting our hands around the discovery. The judge knows he's dealing with Courtland clowns. The judge knows that every federal prosecutor in the eastern district of Virginia has refused to participate in this case. The judge knows all of the public information in this case. The judge knows that he's watching A legal Trump clown show in his courtroom. And although he dealt with it politely today, he also made it clear he has zero patience for Trumpian nonsense. The judge told the Trump prosecutors in front of him, I will not slow this case down because the government does not promptly turn everything over, and the government should have every interest in doing that. There should be no reason that this case gets off track because of the existence of some classified information. Either it's not relevant to the case, or it can be declassified, or we will go through the fastest CEPA process you have ever seen in your lives. Donald Trump's fever dream about today's proceeding was that he would, by ordering the prosecution of James Comey, force James Comey to suffer the humiliation of an arraignment in that federal courtroom today. But the only humiliation in that courtroom was on the Trump side of the courtroom today. The humiliated, silent, inexperienced lawyer rocking in her chair in service to Donald Trump. The humiliated junior assistant prosecutor who was forced to speak and confessed to the judge that he doesn't know what the evidence in the case is. And then the humiliated other assistant federal prosecutor, who's an experienced prosecutor, but who remains silent throughout the 27 minute proceeding. Patrick Fitzgerald is actually the most experienced prosecutor in the room. He's a former prosecutor who prosecuted the governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, on corruption charges. He prosecuted Al Qaeda in terrorism cases and now appears proudly as James Comey, defense counsel. He told the judge just how incompetent and unprofessional the prosecution has been so far. He said. We haven't received a single piece of paper of discovery to date. We still haven't been told who person three and person one are. We don't know the nature of the charges below those charges. We have never been able to easily guess what the indictment. We've always been able to kind of easily guess, based on James Comey's televised testimony, what the statement is, the false statement they're accusing James Comey of making in his Senate testimony. But the indictment doesn't actually identify a statement. It doesn't have what this case requires at this point, which is showing in quotation marks exactly what James Comey said that Donald Trump's favorite new prosecutor thinks was untrue. Judge Nachmanoff said that he would refer the motion to disqualify Lindsey Halligan to another judge from a different district, which is the standard procedure in that court for such motions. But Judge Nachmanoff will consider the other pretrial motions that Patrick Fitzgerald proposed. A hearing schedule for which the judge immediately accepted. Patrick Fitzgerald told the judge the first tranche of defense motions, which would principally consist of a vindictive prosecution motion. And whenever I say vindictive prosecution motion, your honor, I mean both strands of the vindictive prosecution doctrine and the selective prosecution doctrine. So it may be a retaliatory prosecution, where our view is that this prosecution was brought at the direction of President Trump to silent a constant critic of him. And so after Patrick Fitzgerald began the session by proudly announcing, it's the honor of my Life to represent Mr. Comey in this matter, he made it clear that the person he, the most experienced prosecutor in that room is going to, in effect be prosecuting in that room is Donald Trump, the man who illegally ordered the prosecution of James Comey. And the person who will be humiliated in that courtroom every day will be Lindsey Halligan. Leading off our discussion tonight is Andrew Weissman, former chief of the Criminal Division for the Eastern District of New York, former FBI general counsel and an MSNBC legal analyst. Andrew, I wasn't in the courtroom today. I didn't have that pleasure. But reading that transcript, it's one of those Trumpian courtroom era sessions that could only happen inspired by Donald Trump.
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Andrew Weissman
Absolutely. So just think about this. We talked about how this case got here, and this is now the first day of the criminal case of the former FBI director. The government shows up and not only do they basically say, we do not know the discovery, as you pointed out, Lawrence, but they then use excuse after excuse after excuse to delay the case. They are not ready. The team that is on it did not investigate the case. They don't know anything about the case. That is sort of unbelievable on its face. Just understand, normally when you indict a case and you show up in court, your answer to the question from the judge, like, are you ready for trial? Which is on day one, you say, yes, we are. And that is because if you have decided to bring the case, that has to be your answer. That is your responsibility. It is the government that wants to go to trial. It is the defendant who under almost all circumstances never wants to go to trial. Any day that they're not on trial is a good day. This is very much the reverse. And it was. You add it to the shocking things about this Trump second administration is what happened today in court.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
Andrew, as we go forward here, it seems like the, the legal firepower on the defense side is everything you'd want. It's flawless. And I think it's common for people to think that the lawyering is the decisive factor in courtrooms. But in fact, no matter how good the lawyers are, you cannot prevail without the evidence being on your side. You cannot prevail without being able to present the evidence in a way that completely favors your side of the case. So far, the prosecution side of this case hasn't presented anything and they haven't presented anything in the indictment itself.
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Andrew Weissman
That is true. So, look, sometimes there is a case that is sort of so sort of on the margins in terms of evidence that a good defense lawyer or a good prosecutor can make a difference. But I'm reminded when I was a young prosecutor on the Enron case, a defense lawyer turned to me and said, I don't know what you're so proud of. You have the facts and the law on your side. And I was thinking, he's right. In this case, again, we don't know what will ultimately happen, but all signs are there's no there there. Otherwise you would not have all the career people saying, don't bring the case. You have the career people saying, we will not go on the case. I mean, just think about that. Everyone that we. The reason they went to North Carolina is because the entire office in the Eastern District of Virginia is like, we will not do this case. The former Trump appointed U.S. attorney resigned over this. I mean, all of that gives you a sense of not incompetence, which is, you know, I take your point with respect to Ms. Halligan, but it really gives you a sense of corruption, a real corruption of the system here. And what the response is from the government is we won't really have the discovery for a while, so put the case off. The case is really complex, Judge, so please designate it as complex. So under that designation you get more time. And the judge is saying, what do you mean complex? You quoted it where the judge says, this is a simple case. I'm not going to designate this as a complex case. Then the government said, you know, there's going to be classified information and we're going to have this long, complicated SEPA process, which is a special statute called SEPA for handling classified information. And all of this was sort of excuse after excuse that the government is going to clearly use as this case goes forward to delay the case. And you can be sure they're going to try to delay the January 5th case. That is a short amount of time to prepare. But you heard the judge today that he is really going to hold their feet to the fire. And I have to say, in this situation, unlike most situations, holding the government's feet to the fire here is going to play to the defendant's benefit, not to the government's.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
And Andrew, on the complexity issue became comical when Pat Fitzgerald said he thought the case would take the trial, the trial would take two days. And the prosecutor then agreed that it would take two days. That's how not complex it is.
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Andrew Weissman
Look, at the end of the day, what is the, we don't know what the statement is, but you have to ask yourself what is going to be the proof here? And by all accounts, and I think, as ABC has reported, the witness who supposedly, supposedly is the one who James Comey is alleged to have said, you know, reveal this information to the media. It's reported that that witness is going to say that did not happen. I was not told that. If that is your witness as the government, this case, even if it started at a trial, a judge at some point, if there isn't sufficient evidence, does not let the case go to the jury. So I think what the government's strategy here is to delay this. So this case is pending over James Comey's head and you're putting off the inevitable, which is that it's really hard to see that this will ever actually go to a jury. And it's, even if it went to a jury, it's so hard to see that there would ever be be a jury that unanimously found proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Unless, of course, the government has a rabbit that they're going to pull out of a hat. But based on what we saw today, that seems extremely unlikely.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
Andrew Weissman, thank you very much for starting off our coverage tonight.
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Andrew Weissman
You're welcome.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
And coming up, the Trump Justice Department has reached back five years to try to prosecute James Comey in a case that is sure to fail. But yesterday, Donald Trump's attorney general told the Senate she couldn't possibly consider the facts in an investigation that occurred last year and that was still under consideration in the Justice Department days before she was confirmed as Attorney general. The investigation she was refusing to answer Questions about involved $50,000 in cash being handed to Donald Trump's so called border czar last year by undercover FBI agents, a payoff that was recorded by on secret FBI video. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse had a simple theme in his questioning yesterday about the $50,000. Show me the money. Senator Whitehouse will join us next.
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- [24:32]
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Jen Psaki
The American people are basically telling the president that they are not okay with any of this.
- [24:53]
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Lawrence O'Donnell
Joining us now is Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. He's a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. And Senator, you had that hearing yesterday with the attorney general where she refused to answer questions. She was untruthful in more ways than anyone could count. We, we saw Donald Trump's FBI director do the same thing in your committee. And here's Donald Trump trying to prosecute James Comey for testimony to the same committee. And the prosecutors, as we saw today, don't even know what the testimony is that he was indicted for.
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Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Yeah, it's ironic in the extreme that the day before this Department of Justice arraigns the former FBI director on charges of lying to the Judiciary Committee of the Senate, the Attorney General of the United States is providing false information to the Judiciary Committee of the Senate. And when asked about the current FBI director's lies to the Judiciary Committee of the Senate, she totally hangs him out to dry. And Lee gives him no cover at all on his lies that his grand jury testimony was sealed or that he's publicly released a transcript. Those are like, yes, no things. It's not like there's a lot of nuance. You're lying if you say that and it's not true. And the added problem is that Patel's lie about his grand jury testimony being sealed involved his assertion that had been put under court order by the chief judge in the federal court in the District of Columbia, who's like a real person who's paying attention to this stuff and who knows perfectly well and has since said on the record there was no such order. So you have the current FBI director lying about a non existent order, supposedly by the chief judge in the D.C. federal court. And in the meantime, it's Comey five years ago that they're going after. It's just an astounding side by side.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
And this is we have Donald Trump's public order to the attorney general to prosecute James Comey. The judge in this case knows that judges are allowed to read newspapers, they're allowed to consume news. He knows all about that before it will even be entertained as motions in his courtroom.
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Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Yeah, here's the huge problem that the MAGA Department of Justice has. They perform entirely for an audience of one. Right. It's Trump. He's the only audience. Patel, Bondi Blanche, the others care about. But judges are watching. Boseberg, the chief judge of the federal court in D.C. is watching Patel's lies about his court order. The judges in the Eastern District of Virginia in the Comey case are watching the Gong show that unraveled in their courthouse around the Comey case. The Southern District of New York judges are watching when the chief prosecutors in the Southern District of New York quit because of the corrupt Eric Adams prosecution. So you build up a lot of ill will. And where that comes back to bite you is in what Patrick Fitzgerald talked about here, which is we're going to make motions to knock this out for vindictive prosecution. And unless the government is willing to concede that he gets discovery, he gets to dig in. And the judge has wide discretion on what discovery is appropriate. So having Patrick Fitzgerald go up the chain from these new import prosecutors up all the way through to the president, digging ferociously with the tenacity for which he is famous and intimate knowledge of how the Department of Justice should and should not work. Those prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia are going to be dreaming of a two day trial by the time all of this gets ripped through. And the judges have wide, wide authority to let that discovery roll. And when they've seen this Gong show, the burden, the benefit of the doubt, is lost to the government.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
Senator, I want to squeeze in a quick commercial break here. When we come back, I want to ask you about the question you had for Attorney General yesterday that really left her speechless. The question about the Epstein files contain photographs that were in Jeffrey Epstein's possession of Donald Trump. With young women, those photograph questions really silen. We're going to be right back with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.
- [30:50]
Tide Commercial Announcer
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- [31:18]
MSNBC Announcer
MSNBC presents the chart topping original podcast, the Best People with Nicole Wallace. Each week, Nicole speaks with some of the people who inspire her the most. This week, she sits down with former White House Communications director Anthony Scaramucci.
- [31:34]
Lawrence O'Donnell
We are a beautiful, colorful mosaic of people and we are exactly what Lincoln, the last, best hope for mankind, the.
- [31:42]
MSNBC Announcer
Best people with Nicole Wallace. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [31:50]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Yesterday, Donald Trump's Attorney general refused to say whether the Epstein files in her possession in the Justice Department include what were described in yesterday's hearings as photos in Jeffrey Epstein's safe of Donald Trump with, quote, half naked young women. Donald Trump's attorney general could have said no, there are no such photos in the Epstein files of Donald Trump with young women. But she didn't.
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Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Let me ask you something else. There's been public reporting that Jeffrey Epstein showed people photos of President Trump with half naked young women. Do you know if the FBI found those photographs in their search of Jeffrey Epstein's safe or premises or otherwise? Have you seen any such thing?
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Jen Psaki
You know, Senator Whitehouse, you sit here and make salacious remarks once again trying to slander President Trump left and right when you're the one who was taking money from one of Epstein's closest confidence. I believe I could be wrong. Correct me, Reid Hoffman, who was with Jeffrey Epstein on multiple occasions and the senator sitting right next to you tried to block the flight logs from being released, yet you're grilling me on President Trump and some photograph with Epstein.
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Congressman Mark Pocan
Come on.
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Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
The question is, did the FBI find those photographs that have been discussed publicly by a witness who claimed Jeffrey Epstein showed them to him? You don't know anything about that. Okay.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse back with us. Left your speechless there at the end. Yeah.
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Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
First of all, that was a really easy question if the answer is in fact, no. And when she can't say no to that question, then it was actually a two part question. Did the FBI find those photographs? Couldn't say no. Did you see them? Couldn't say no. It could have been over super quickly. All she had to do was say no, Senator. And I would have gone on and that would have been the end of it. And interestingly, this ties back to our last segment because when she came in with her little oppo research, cliff notes to accuse me of having taken money from this supposed Epstein confidant. She had her facts wrong. And it's an incredibly easy thing to find out whether I got a campaign contribution from this person, because all of my campaign contributions are publicly disclosed on the FEC's website. So here she is getting ready to arraign Comey the next day and saying something that is arguably more untruthful than anything Comey said directly to me. And it's a thing that any idiot can fact check. So even if there's not an honesty issue about her telling something false under oath in the Judiciary Committee, there's this competence issue of this is a DOJ that can't fact check something that obvious before the Attorney General marches out to make that accusation publicly and under oath. I mean, you know, back to gangster and Gong Show. You know, it's gangster to drop oppo research on senators you don't like in a hearing, but it's Gong show to get it wrong. Yeah.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
There's nothing easier to investigate if we want to use the word investigate. The question of who gets campaign contributions from whom. They're all the direct contributions are all publicly disclosed by law on the FEC website. We could do it right now.
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Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
An intern could do it.
- [36:03]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Yes.
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Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Yeah.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
And so there's the investigative skill of the Attorney General at work.
- [36:08]
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Yeah. And again, judges are watching. And every foolish, stupid, mistaken, Trump sucking step that they take, judges see and they register and they know, wait a minute. This is not the normal Department of Justice, the normal deference that we give to the Department of Justice, the normal confidence we have in the integrity of the Department of Justice, the normal scope and leeway we give to the Department of Justice, they're not going to get. And that, I think, is going to come back and pinch them hard in the Eastern District of Virginia when Patrick Fitzgerald starts rooting through the evidence of vindictive prosecution.
- [36:50]
Lawrence O'Donnell
And Senator, the photographs you were referring to, if they exist, if they are in the Epstein files, would be a huge reason for Donald Trump to fight as hard as he has fought to keep the Epstein file secret.
- [37:06]
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Totally. Totally. I mean, they are described in pretty plain ugly terms by a fairly well known individual, a witness who said that he was shown them not once, but twice by Jeffrey Epstein and that he saw them put into Jeffrey Epstein's safe. So if that witness is to be believed, we know they exist. We know they show Trump with half naked girls. We know they were at one point in Jeffrey Epstein safe. And we also know that the FBI went back later and seized the contents of the safe and frankly, the rest of the premises, if it looked like it was related evidence. So, you know, it's a pretty. It was not a salacious question. It was an easy question. Did the FBI find the photographs?
- [38:03]
Lawrence O'Donnell
And the answer was not no.
- [38:05]
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
And the answer was not no.
- [38:08]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
- [38:11]
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Thank you.
- [38:12]
Lawrence O'Donnell
And coming up, Arizona's two Democratic senators confronted Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson today for refusing to swear in the newest member of the House of Representatives, who happens to be a Democrat from Arizona. You'll see that confrontation next. Once again, today, we saw something in the Trump era that we've never seen before. United States senators leaving their side of the Capitol to go across to the House of Representatives to confront the speaker of the House. That never happens, but it happened today. Arizona's two Democratic senators, Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly, held a press conference outside the Speaker's office in the House of Representatives. I've never seen anyone do that before other than, of course, the Speaker. They were there to attack the speaker for refusing to swear into the House of Representatives its newest elected member, Adelita Grialba of Arizona. There is nothing preventing the speaker from swearing her in. Now.
- [39:17]
Congressman Mark Pocan
Be clear. The reason Alita Grahava is not here is because Mike Johnson wants to do two things. Number one, cover up for pedophiles on the Epstein list. And number two, put his members in a really rough position when it comes to voting and extending these ACA tax credits.
- [39:34]
Lawrence O'Donnell
And then this happened.
- [39:37]
Andrew Weissman
We can fix that problem. Today.
- [39:41]
Jen Psaki
The Trump administration is valuing more action during the shutdown. They said they're going to do mass firings. The president's questioning if furloughed workers will be getting pay.
- [39:49]
Republican Representative
Oh, hey, gentlemen.
- [39:50]
Congressman Mark Pocan
Hey, Finger.
- [39:50]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Appreciate it.
- [39:51]
Andrew Weissman
Good to see you all.
- [39:52]
Congressman Mark Pocan
Hey. So his congresswoman and friend of ours waiting, you know.
- [39:59]
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Yeah.
- [40:00]
Republican Representative
Reopen the government so we get back to work.
- [40:02]
LifeLock Announcer
I mean, but this.
- [40:02]
Congressman Mark Pocan
This just keeps on moving.
- [40:04]
Republican Representative
Yeah, it's not great if you want representation. Last week, there's 750. Wait, let me address the. Let me address the. Answer the question. We're happy that she got elected. She's filling her father's seat. That's fantastic. We have a long tradition here and a process of how we administer the Oak to a member. You know, he served here for a while. We're going to do that as soon as we get back to work, but we need the lights turned back on, so we encourage both of you to go open the government. So we get everybody back to Republican swore. No, no, the exception is there were two Florida meridians who were elected in a special election. This happened a couple months back. They were here on a day. They had their families here. They had a scheduled day for the oath of office and the House was called out of session that day. They had all their family and friends here. So we went ahead and went through the process. Let me answer the question if you can ask it. And so that was the exception we did because the family was here. Ms. Grijala has not yet had a scheduled date because she was elected after the House was out of session. So I am anxious to administer the oath to her. As soon as you guys vote to.
- [41:08]
Congressman Mark Pocan
Help in the government, you don't want.
- [41:10]
Andrew Weissman
To be on the Epstein district.
- [41:10]
Congressman Mark Pocan
How much?
- [41:11]
Republican Representative
Because you're totally absurd. You guys are experts in red herrings. There's nothing to do with Epstein. The House Oversight Committee, the House Oversight Committee is working on the Epstein files right now, releasing 34, 000 pages and.
- [41:24]
Lawrence O'Donnell
More on the way.
- [41:25]
Republican Representative
Let me finish. Let me finish. The House over overseas committee.
- [41:28]
Congressman Mark Pocan
This is an excuse so she doesn't.
- [41:30]
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Sign on to that.
- [41:30]
Republican Representative
This is absurd.
- [41:31]
Congressman Mark Pocan
This is the longest time.
- [41:33]
Republican Representative
Do you want me to answer the question?
- [41:34]
Congressman Mark Pocan
If you ask the question, I actually answered the question.
- [41:37]
Lawrence O'Donnell
And today, Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, normally a full fledged Trump supporter, on everything, explained why she is siding with the Democrats in the shutdown. Now, on the health care issue, we.
- [41:54]
Jen Psaki
Should be doing appropriations. The House should be in session and continuing that work. But for the health insurance issue, it's happening right now. These premiums are going to go up. What I am upset over is my party has no solution. It's not something that we talk about frequently, but it is a reality for Americans and it's something that I don't think we can ignore.
- [42:18]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Mark Pocan of Wisconsin. He's a member of the House Appropriations Committee. Congressman, thank you very much for joining us tonight. How surprising is it to have Marjorie Taylor Greene on your side now in the shutdown?
- [42:34]
Congressman Mark Pocan
Well, thanks for having me, Lawrence. I'm somewhere between a broken clock is right twice a day and rechecking my position. But she's right. The heat is definitely on the Republicans right now. I just went around yesterday and did four town halls in Derek Van Orden's district, my neighbor's district, a Republican member who's never done an open public town hall. I did a press conference today with 25 Democratic state legislators in Madison, and we're all hearing the same thing. People are concerned about rising healthcare rates. 15 million people are gonna lose healthcare because of the big ugly law, but everyone is gonna pay more because of that law as well. And the rates are coming out right now in mid October in places like Wisconsin and across the country. And people already are seeing their rate increase. Lawrence, I had an employer tell me Friday night they got their new rates for next year, 41% increase. And that's what we're fighting for. And you know, Marjorie's just kind of stating the obvious.
- [43:29]
Lawrence O'Donnell
What we've been also in those town halls. Are you hearing about what tariffs are doing to the prices in people's lives? Yeah, absolutely.
- [43:40]
Congressman Mark Pocan
I mean, so housing has kind of been inflated in cost for a while, but people are now paying more for groceries because of Trump's tariff tax on the American people. People are paying more for durable goods. And come holiday season, people are going to be paying a lot more for gifts and things like that. Energy went up because of what they did in the big ugly law. Getting rid of some of the work that we did around wind and solar and working with utility companies. And now health care costs are for one employer going up 41%. And we know that in Wisconsin, a 60 year old couple making 85,000 a year according to the Kaiser foundation, will see on average a $17,000 increase next year in their health care premium. So when you're paying more for absolutely everything, and Donald Trump said the reason he was getting elected was to lower the cost of goods, people can smell that something's not right. And you know, we're absolutely hearing about tariffs, healthcare costs and ice, probably the top three issues.
- [44:37]
Lawrence O'Donnell
And as we go forward in this shutdown, what do you think is the significance of the Marjorie Taylor Greene defection? She's not just anyone in the House of Representatives. She's not somebody who they ignore.
- [44:51]
Congressman Mark Pocan
Well, I think she's the only person saying it outwardly. I think there's plenty of other Republicans who are hearing this. There's a reason they're not doing town halls right. If you really did something great, you would go and brag about it around your district. You'd get a megaphone, you'd get on everyone's rooftop and talk about it. But if you're hiding in your basement instead, that doesn't pass a smell test in places like Wisconsin. We get it. So yesterday I went to places like Richland Center, Viroqua, Wisconsin, La Crosse, Wisconsin, Eau Claire, and had town halls for an hour in every single one of those cities in my neighboring Republican members district because he's never done an Oakland public town hall for three years. And people want to be heard. They're really concerned, especially on health care. You know, also we have to remember during that big ugly law, they triggered a half a trillion dollar cut to Medicare. And that also affects us all. So if we're all affected by cuts to Medicare, we're all going to have our rates go up. 15 million people between Medicaid and the Affordable Care act are gonna lose their health insurance. Guess what? That's a huge problem. I got 85 calls last week about the government shutdown, But I have 14,435 calls this year on healthcare. I can tell you what people are worried about.
- [46:01]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Congressman Mark Pocan, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
- [46:05]
Congressman Mark Pocan
Sure. Thank you.
- [46:06]
Lawrence O'Donnell
We'll be right back. Carson. Mark Pocan gets tonight's last word.
- [46:14]
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