← The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell
The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell
Officials release new details on suspect arrested in Charlie Kirk’s murder
00:43:06
Tonight on The Last Word: Lawmakers request more security after the Charlie Kirk killing. Also, NATO steps up its air defenses after Russian drones were shot down in Polish airspace. Plus, Donald Trump asks a federal appeals court to allow him to fire Lisa Cook ahead of Tuesday’s Federal Reserve meeting. And consumer prices rose at an annual rate of 2.9 percent in August. Marc Santia, Michael Feinberg, Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling (ret.), Barbara McQuade, and Betsey Stevenson join Ali Velshi.
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
The Last Word starts right now with Ali.
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Ali Velshi
Velshi in as every Friday night for Lawrence o'. Donnell. Hi, Allie Friend. You know, I always, I always think your show is great, but tonight was important. That conversation, which you're uniquely positioned to have about the tenor you know that we use, the, the language that we use around violence in politics is evolved. It's changed. And I don't think there's anybody in America who thinks it's changed for the better at this point. And that's an important part of how we think about these things. When tragedies occur like they do this year, how do we talk about it in a way that doesn't make it worse? I don't argue that you have to like anybody or like anybody's views. You've been in a position in the White House where you've had to debate people, but that's what you do. You debate people. And we need to learn that we've got that agency, we've got that freedom in this country to do that. And that's where it should begin and end. Such an important point about we can debate.
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
We love to fight, we love to call people out, we love to hold people to account. We will continue to do that.
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Ali Velshi
And there is no place for violence.
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
And I also think this is a moment where leaders have responsibility and there are so many points in history to think about, I don't know, bringing people together in a naive way.
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Ali Velshi
But I Think you know what I'm saying? No. You showed examples of political leaders who did that in the aftermath of crises who said I'm gonna make a choice, I have a choice to make about how going to move forward. And they did that. And again, that's also absent today. But thank you for your efforts tonight. I appreciate it. You have a great weekend. Thank you, Ali. Well, tonight the suspect in the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk is behind bars after a 33 hour manhunt as we continue to learn new details about that suspect. He's a 22 year old Utah resident. His name is Tyler Robinson. Robinson is being held in state custody. Officials believe he acted alone in the shooting. In a statement, the Utah Attorney General, Jeff Gray said his office is planning to file formal charges against Robinson on Tuesday. According to a probable cause affidavit, Robinson is expected to be charged with aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm, causing serious bodily injury and obstruction of justice. At today's press conference, the Utah governor, Spencer Cox said the suspect had either confessed or implied to a family member that he was responsible for the fatal shooting. That family member then told a friend who contacted the Washington County Sheriff's Office. Robinson then surrendered to police.
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Utah Law Enforcement Official
We're grateful for everyone who worked together in such a short amount of time to find this person and to bring justice. I want to thank the public who has been so engaged reviewing videos, helping us with sending in tips and helping us get to this point. I want to thank the family members of Tyler Robinson who did the right thing in this case and were able to bring him into law enforcement as well.
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Ali Velshi
Tonight, the New York Times has new reporting on the suspect. Quote, Mr. Robinson is registered to vote in Utah, but he's not affiliated with the political party and has never voted in an election. According to the Washington County Clerk, his parents are registered Republicans, both with active hunting licenses in part of the country known for its outdoor life near Zion and Bryce Canyon national parks. Social media photos posted by his family over the years show Mr. Robinson and his two younger brothers shooting and posing with guns. He graduated from high school in 2021 with a 4.0 GPA, but he left college after one semester. He was currently enrolled in an electrician apprentice program. The Times reports at the time of the shooting, he appears to have been living with at least one roommate in an apartment complex in St. George. That's about a 10 minute drive from his family home in the adjoining town of Washington UT. The police said they had interviewed a roommate of Mr. Robinson's who showed the messages from after the shooting in which Mr. Robinson described leaving a rifle somewhere and changing his clothes. Several of Mr. Robinson's neighborhoods at the apartment complex where he recently lived described him as withdrawn, saying that they rarely saw him apart from when he was walking to and from a gray Dodge Charger that he kept in the parking lot. He'd never talked to anyone, says Josh Kemp, 18, who lived across from Mr. Robinson's apartment. FBI Director Kash Patel says agents are still running down more than 11,000 leads. We are running out every single lead that we can.
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Michael McFaul
Every one of those leads will be run out. The arrest is a testament to dedication.
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Ali Velshi
Of good law enforcement being great and.
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Michael McFaul
Partnerships in law enforcement, which I've tried to highlight as my tenure at the.
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Ali Velshi
Director of the FBI. There is no better relationship for law enforcement than the FBI to partner with state and local authorities, and you've seen it here in these last few days. Tonight, the White House is standing by Cash Patel despite deep concerns about his leadership of the FBI. The New York Times reports the FBI director's actions have already invited scorn and scrutiny from the bureau's workforce and some senior officials at the Justice Department who think his behavior has eroded public confidence in the FBI. Mr. Patel's critics have also expressed concern that a wave of firings and forced retirements over the summer, Mr. Patel's team forced the retirement of Mehtab Syed, a highly regarded former counterterrorism agent appointed in February to run the Salt Lake City field office for reasons that remain unclear, according to former officials. End quote. Members of Congress are openly voicing fear for their own safety amid a rise in political violence. The New York congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, has announced that she was rescheduling a rally this weekend in Raleigh, North Carolina, because of safety concerns. This is what she said to reporters.
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
The security protocols and the ways that we think about it and conceive of it are for a bygone time.
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Ali Velshi
They're not designed for a stochastic era.
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
They're not designed for a digital threat environment era. And you can throw tons of resources, but if you are throwing tons of resources for a bygone time, we are still going to have a problem.
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Ali Velshi
Joining me now is Mark Santilla, MSNBC investigative correspondent, and Michael Feinberg, former assistant special agent in charge with the FBI. He's a fellow at Lawfare. Good evening to both of you. Thank you for being with us. Michael, let me just start with you, please, because I made some allusion to the fact that Cash Patel has fallen under A lot of criticism as a journalist who has to follow these stories as they unfold. I don't think I've ever been more confused by the FBI in the unfolding of this story. Cash Patel was very fast to take to social media and a lot of the information he provided turned out to be not particularly accurate or timely.
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Michael Feinberg
Yeah, I think your state of mild confusion was very much shared by the workforce when Patel was nominated to be the director based on his general lack of experience. And that mild confusion has risen among most agents to a full blown panic because that lack of experience is causing a lot of unforced errors in the way that the FBI director is choosing to deal with the public and with our partners. And a lot of the choices that he's made, even outside the communications realm, have resulted in an environment that is much less safe, where tragedies like the one that just occurred are unfortunately probably going to become more frequent.
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Ali Velshi
Mark Bottom line is they have somebody in custody at the moment. Talk to me about where we are in these. Where we are. I don't even know if we call it an investigation, where we are in this whole thing. Kash Patel says there are 11,000 leads. What's going on? Right.
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Utah Law Enforcement Official
This is sort of what we've been told. This was not the finish line. It was the starting line to the next phase of the investigation. So agents and police officers will be working, detectives working throughout the weekend. Ally right now the 22 year old suspect is in custody. He's under close watch in a Utah jail. As you said, the police, police say he is believed to have acted alone. We're expecting he will face charges next week on Tuesday. We're told it's going to be a virtual hearing, which is not uncommon in high profile cases. For the safety of everyone involved, you don't want to move people necessarily. So a virtual hearing is what we're expecting on Tuesday. And so right now they continue working through more than 11,000 tips. Those are more tips than the FBI received during the Boston Marathon bombing. So as they continue to work through, they're trying to build that puzzle, put the puzzle together and see they're still looking at what the motive may have been. They're still working to that. So a lot of work will be done tonight and right through the weekend.
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Ali Velshi
Michael One of the things that was very clear when the governor of Utah was giving his press conference, he stated, he said, we don't know what the motive is. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez said something that a lot of people have been thinking about, and that is we are in an age of stochastic threat. We are in an age of digital threat. We're in an age where in the last few assassination attempts of prominent people, it's harder than it used to be to figure out where somebody is exactly on the political spectrum and what their motivations may have been.
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Michael Feinberg
Yeah, I'd say a few things in response to that. The first is you and your viewers are no doubt familiar with, like, the sort of horseshoe theory of extremism, where if you get enough to the margins of the right or the left, you start getting people who actually have a lot in common in terms of their distrust of our political system. But that commonality makes it really difficult to pinpoint where they are in terms of being likely to act on violent impulses. And adding to the difficulty is the fact that so much of what we learn about these people comes from activities that are protected by the First Amendment. So it's very tricky for law enforcement to get ahead of the threat and predict who's likely to carry out acts of violence while at the same time respecting the civil liberties enshrined in our Constitution for the rest of the public. Because none of us want to live in a world where law enforcement is just constantly combing social media of innocent civilians in the hope of identifying the few who are not.
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Ali Velshi
Mark, talk to me about. There was a lot of speculation because it was a long shot with a long gun, a shot that turned out to be quite accurate. There was speculation, is this person a professional shooter? Are they a sniper? There's a lot of talk about the fact that guns are very capable these days, and that kind of a shot is possible. Which brings us into this whole conversation that in a highly polarized environment, political environment, in a country with a lot of weapons, is this our future?
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Utah Law Enforcement Official
I think what's being looked at right now, just talking to law enforcement sources familiar with this investigation, is they don't know the ability of the suspect. They don't know how often, if he trained, how often he was using weapons or his knowledge of weapons. That's being looked at. If there was training. I think what they feel very confident in, in this situation is there was planning. The suspect knew the entrance the police commissioner was talking about. There was an open way to the stairway. He knew obviously how to get up the stair way, how to access the roof. And then you saw the video that was shown in the press conference of the suspect jumping off that roof and escaping, leaving the weapon in a wooded area wrapped in a towel. They Felt very secure, very confident that there was planning in this.
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Ali Velshi
Mark, thank you for your reporting on this. We appreciate it. Michael Feinberg, thank you for your analysis as well. Thanks to both of you. Well, during a press conference last night in this hour, the Utah governor, Spencer Cox said something unusual for an update on, on a domestic crime investigation. He warned the public about malign foreign actors. On social media.
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Utah Law Enforcement Official
There is a tremendous amount of disinformation. We are tracking our, our, our, our team, the state team, and I'm sure the federal team as well. What we're seeing is our adversaries want violence. Champ. China. We have bots from Russia, China, all over the world that are trying to instill disinformation and encourage violence. I would encourage you to ignore those, to turn off those streams and to spend a little more time with our families.
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Ali Velshi
Joining me now is Lieutenant General Mark Hertling. He's a retired commander of the US army in Europe. Good to see you, sir. Thank you for being with us. You know, on the face of it, that might be an unusual comment, but there's a little bit of history here. This particular governor has, has spent a lot of time and given a lot of thought to extremism in social media, these things that afflict young men, loneliness. He's onto something. This is an area that he knows about. It may not be connected to this particular shooting, but in his world, social media being what they call extremely online, creates a new type of threat here that is not the same as, you know, an assassin of, of old.
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Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Yeah, I'll correct you a little bit, Ali. It's not a new type of threat. What I'll tell you, Having spent over 12 years in Europe during my career in the military, this was something that would come through in our intelligence binders every single day in terms of what Russia and China was doing in terms of malign activities. You know, and I will tell you, even with looking at open source resources over the last couple of days, and truthfully, I kind of look at these kind of events not from a domestic standpoint, but what are our enemies and friends thinking overseas? And what I'll tell you is that Russia immediately began amplifying and reframing the narrative. Senior Russian officials on rt, the Russian television immediately started to blame leftists and Ukraine supporters. It's a classic reframing technique. Dmitri Medvedev and Kirill Dmitriev, two key Russian speakers on rt, began posting on their social media accounts within hours with overt state messaging, Russian state messaging. And while there isn't any technical ties to botnets. What I'll tell you, looking at real classified data, not open source several years ago when I was still in the military, I guarantee you that the Russian state adjacent media began immediately echoing that narrative and using it against this in terms of misinformation and mal information. Then there's the follow on misinformation surge that results from all sorts of botnets, not just ones from overseas, mainly Russian, but other botnets that will pick it up and start miscaptioning videos, giving false suspect IDs, fabricating headlines that spread across platforms. All of this is fertile ground for influence actors to amplify. I've seen it before. Our, our old Cyber Information Security Agency used to monitor this, but they have been slashed through the DOGE efforts.
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Ali Velshi
I'm going to ask you for a moment about what the purpose of the influence efforts are. Newsweek reports that China has actively leveraged US Social crises, including shootings, racial injustice and political polarization to push narratives of dysfunction. In the Aftermath of the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, Chinese state linked accounts amplified divisive content, further deepening societal risks. Researchers identified a network dubbed spamouflage in which Chinese linked accounts impersonated US Voters, denigrated politicians and spread divisive messages. Here's my question for you, General. Why? What does China get out of it or Russia?
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Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Yeah, it's easy. It divides us from our allies. China wants to divide us, show how US the US Is deteriorating. Russia wants to do the same thing when Russia. I'll go back to Russia for a second. Ali. When they invaded Ukraine in 2022, I listed five different strategic objectives that Mr. Putin had. Four of them had to do with what he wanted to do with Ukraine. The fifth one was to divide internal to the United States and divide the United States alliances with NATO. So that is that it's an easy way to conduct warfare. It's, it's information asymmetric warfare. And the Russians and the Chinese and others have been doing it for years.
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Ali Velshi
Super cheap and virtually no barrier to entry. General, please stay with us. We're going to continue a conversation about what's going on in Russia and in Europe in a moment. Coming up, NATO is stepping up its defenses after an unprecedented incursion by Russia into Polish airspace. Remember, Poland is a key NATO ally as Vladimir Putin continues to show no fear at all of Donald Trump. That's next. As America has been focused on the breaking news here at home this week, the world is watching a significant and serious escalation between Russia and NATO. After more than a dozen Russian drones entered Polish airspace overnight on Tuesday, prompting NATO to scramble fighter jets to shoot them down in what Western officials described on Wednesday as a dangerous escalation of the war in neighboring Ukraine. This was the first time in the history of NATO that alliance fighters had engaged enemy targets in allied airspace, officials said. The drone incursion prompted Poland's government to invoke Article 4 of the NATO treaty, a rarely used mechanism triggered when a member is under threat, according to the New York Times. The times reports today NATO's top leaders announced new efforts on Friday to step up air defenses in the alliance's eastern flank after Russia drones that flew into Poland this week revealed how easily the war in Ukraine could spill over borders. Increased air patrols, ground based interceptor systems, sensors and heightened surveillance will be mobilized, officials said. Military operation called Eastern Sentry will initially focus on Poland, but can be shifted elsewhere in the region as needed. Last night, Donald Trump said Putin's unprecedented incursion could have been a mistake. What's your reaction to Russian drone incursion into Poland?
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Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Could have been a mistake, could have been a mistake. But regardless, I'm not happy about anything having to do with that whole situation, but hopefully it's going to come to an end.
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Ali Velshi
Today, Donald Trump went on Fox and said this.
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Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
I mean, I'm not going to defend anybody but the Polands, they were actually knocked down and they fell into an.
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Ali Velshi
Area, but he shouldn't be close to Poland anyway. And remember this, this is a Europe.
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Michael Feinberg
Problem much more than our problem.
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Ali Velshi
Republican senators seem to know what's happening here, although it's not clear they've got the courage to act on it. The Hill reports that Republican senators are urging President Trump to give them the green light to vote on a Russia sanctions package in the wake of Moscow's incursion into Poland's airspace and Russian President Vladimir Putin's seeming disinterest in ending the war with Ukraine. Joining me now, Michael McFaul, who served as the US ambassador to Russia for President Barack Obama. He's an MSNBC international affairs analyst. Lieutenant General Mark Hertling is back with us. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us. Ambassador McFaul, you wrote in substack that President Trump and his administration need to clean this up. Now is not the moment to even hint at NATO disunity or allow critics to make suggestions that Trump is yet again afraid to confront Putin. Trump should use this moment to finally show strength, both in words and actions. Trump and his administration frequently invoke Reagan's peace through strength as their Motto too. It's time to make that commitment credible. Not how this started. Right. Could have been a mistake. I mean, it's entirely possible it could have been a mistake, but that was the first reaction out of the mouth of the President of the United States. As opposed to, if Russia has gone into a NATO country, it's upon all of us to act. Exactly. It could have been a mistake.
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Michael McFaul
Well, we have a giant intelligence community that can help us determine that our allies, including our Polish allies and the Foreign Minister, Rodick Sikorski, was crystal clear before President Trump said it could have been a mistake saying that it was not. So that contradiction is the problem. We need to have one message in NATO. And by the way, we are a member of NATO. It's not just a Europe problem. I think that's extremely dangerous when the President begins to talk in that way. So we need one message and I would hope he clean it up. I would hope they speak to in one way. And then we need action. The President keeps saying, I'm not happy, I'm not happy. I'm not happy about this, I'm not happy about that. Well, do something about it. You're the President of the United States of America. You are the leader of the most powerful country in the world. You have actions available to you, do something about it. And sanctions is one option. Announcing a new military assistance package to Ukraine is another. But do something.
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Ali Velshi
Act.
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Michael McFaul
Don't just shrug your shoulders and say, I'm not happy.
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Ali Velshi
General Hertling, things have been happening, they haven't been NATO wide and they haven't been involving the United States. But France has sent a number of fighters, fighter jets, to Poland. Poland spends, I think, the largest part of its GDP of any NATO country on defense. They're well equipped to handle this thing. This does seem to be drones. They were intercepted. Well, so. So I'm not sure whether this is an attack, but the President of Poland tweeted the Russian provocation was an attempt to test our capabilities and responses. It was an attempt to check the mechanism of action within NATO and our ability to react thanks to the wonderful Polish pilots and our allies. Poland, which is in NATO, he has to underscore here, will neither fear nor be frightened by Russian drones. Arguably, while this may not be NATO's finest moment, the Europeans did seem to act quickly.
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Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Yeah, Ali, what I'll say is there have been these kinds of reactions since about 2006. There's something called the Baltic Air policing where aircraft are constantly looking at the ways Russia is coming into NATO airspace. There's also something called the North Sea Naval Response Force, also naval ships, NATO naval ships that constantly patrol. And the reason they do it is because, and I'll repeat what I said during the first segment, what Putin is doing is straight out of the longstanding playbook that he has. He probes, he pushes, and then he waits to see the reaction. I saw this in many years in my service in Europe, and I'm sure Ambassador McFaul knows it much better than I do. This new drone incursion technique, which Poland wasn't the first. Russia also did this in Moldova and Romania, but not with 19 drones, which they did against Poland the other night. That's not a mistake. Let me make that clear. That's deliberate. And it's part of Russia's new below a threshold aggression technique. It's not enough to trigger a Full NATO Article 5 response, but just enough to intimidate. Russia wants to confuse and they're publicizing their intent. And the Poles, the Baltic countries, the Nordic countries, all know that. But in doing these kind of things, Putin benefits twice. He gathers information and intelligence on what NATO will or what not or will not do.
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Ali Velshi
Right.
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Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
He sees response times, and he showcases for his domestic audience that he can push NATO without any consequence. And that's why I REINFORCE what Ambassador McFaul said just now. We have to do something, and we have to do it quickly.
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Ali Velshi
Ambassador Max Bout wrote in the Washington Post. He said the hypothesis that this was more than an accident is buttressed by the pattern of Russian military activity in Ukraine since the failed summit in Alaska on October 15 between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. That meeting enhanced Putin's international legitimacy and persuaded Trump to retreat, at least temporarily, from his threats of sanctions. Though Trump claimed that the summit was a step toward peace, Putin seems to have read it as a signal to ramp up his aggression. And what happened this week seems to be a continuation of that ramping up of aggression.
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Michael McFaul
Yeah, I agree with Max. I agree with Max. That is he has been ramping up his attacks on civilians in Ukraine. The President likes to say he wouldn't have started this war on his watch. President Trump says that it's actually not true. The war started in 2014 and continued in Eastern Ukraine for the entire first Trump presidency. But since President Trump has returned to the White House, the war has escalated, the attacks have escalated, and now you have this incursion in Poland that's on Trump's watch. So he can no longer continue to say he is deterring Putin. And I think he needs what my colleague here at Stanford, George Shultz, the former secretary of state for Ronald Reagan before he used to always say he referred to a Pershing moment and he was referring to the 1980s when Ronald Ergin had rhetoric. But then he deployed Pershing's at great political cost with our NATO allies to show that he was credibly committed to NATO and deterring the Soviets then. And Shultz used to always say we need a Pershing moment to get Moscow's attention, to get Putin's attention. I think more than ever, President Trump needs a Pershing moment to show that he is credibly committed to defending NATO. And maybe then Putin might get serious about negotiations because right now he's not.
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Ali Velshi
Guys, thanks very much for your analysis tonight. Go ahead.
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Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
General, I'm sorry, if I can add one more thing, something we need to watch in the next few months. Russia and Belarus are preparing for the next ZAPAD exercise, which they conduct every four to five years. And these kinds of incursions will increase unless we do something about it. I'm actually surprised they're going to do this. This is the same exercises they conducted before they invaded Ukraine. I didn't think they'd be capable of doing it, but they are already preparing for that exercise.
- [27:56]
Ali Velshi
We'll keep our close eye on it. Thank you very much, Michael McFaul and the retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling. Thank you both. Coming up, Brazil refused to be intimidated by Donald Trump, despite Donald Trump using tariffs to try to influence the Brazilian justice system. Brazil's former president Yair Bolsonaro was convicted of plotting a coup and sentenced to 27 years in prison. That's next. Businesses that are selling through the roof like Untuck it, make selling and for shoppers, buying simple with Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. And with shop pay, you can boost conversions up to 50%. Businesses that sell more sell on Shopify. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout Untuck it uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com podcastfree all lowercase. Go to shopify.com podcastfree to upgrade your selling today.
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- [29:55]
Ali Velshi
When a president tried to overthrow a democratic election, the courts acted. That's exactly what happened in Brazil yesterday. Brazil's supreme court sentenced the 70 year old former President Jair Belsonaro to 27 years in prison. Prison for leading a failed coup after losing the 2020 election to the current president, Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva. The plot culminated in violent riots when Bolsonaro supporters stormed government buildings on January 8, 2023, one week after President Lula's inauguration. Bolsonaro's top allies, including his former defense and justice ministers and senior military leaders, were all convicted alongside him. Bolsonaro, who is currently under house arrest, has denied any wrongdoing, but a recent poll shows 52% of Brazilians believe he attempted a coup in the United States. That's how Bolsonaro's ally, Donald Trump reacted to Bolsonaro's conviction yesterday. It's very surprising that that could happen.
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Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
That's very much like they tried to do with me.
- [30:56]
Ali Velshi
Imagine that. It is surprising that a Supreme Court would do that. In July, Donald Trump imposed a 50% tariff on products imported from Brazil, like your morning coffee, as his attempt not to grow more coffee in the United States, but to discourage the prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro, whom he claims is the victim of a witch hunt. He said all of this out in public. Will Americans have to pay more for Brazilian imports for the next 27 years until he's released from prison? We don't know. Now, in Trump's many ongoing court fights here in the United States, Trump is asking a federal appeals court to remove the Federal Reserve governor, economist Lisa Cook, before the Federal Reserve is set to begin a two day meeting on Tuesday. A very, very important meeting, because they're going to make a decision about whether to cut interest rates. For the first time in a long time, Trump and his allies have lobbed unfounded claims against Lisa Cook, who has not been charged with any wrongdoing, the New York Times reports. In a reply filed hours later, lawyers for Ms. Cook urged the court to reject that request, warning that it would plunge the Fed's meeting into turmoil while carrying the real potential of impacting domestic and foreign markets, end quote. The three judge panel has ordered the Justice Department to file any reply to Lisa Cook by this Sunday at 3pm if the court rules against Trump, the case could likely end up before the Supreme Court. The Times continues. Mr. Trump has spoken openly about his desire to remake the roster of the central bank with political loyalists who share his views on interest rates. This week, he gained an early victory in the Senate, where Republicans took the first steps toward confirming Stephen Mirren, one of Donald Trump's top economic advisers, to fill an opening at the Fed created by the sudden departure of Adriana Kugler. The expedited timeline could open the door for Mr. Mirren to be confirmed in time for next week's meeting. Joining Me now, Barbara McQuaid, former United States attorney and law professor at the University of Michigan Law School. She's an MSNBC legal analyst. She's the author of Attack from How Disab Information Is Sabotaging America. Thanks for being with us, Barbara. Let me talk about this situation with Lisa Cook. More information continues to come out. If one were prosecuting Lisa Cook, the idea is that she'd have had to do something unlawful and that there might have been some benefit that accrued to her as a result of that. A lot of research indicates a the benefit did not accrue to her. She didn't end up getting an interest rate that was lower than the prevailing rate rate for a primary residence. But it does turn out that data that's been released, forms that have been released, say that she did actually indicate the proper use of the properties on her forms. So this is looking like a weaker and weaker case for the government.
- [33:45]
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Yeah, that's right, Ellie. That she did not claim a homestead exemption on one of the properties and also listed that it was to be a vacation home as opposed to a primary residence. So it looks like there is some contradiction in her own documents. You know, if you were trying to pull one over on the bank and getdefraud them to get better terms, you would probably be very careful to line up all of your documents to tell the same story. She didn't do that. One of the things about bank fraud that's necessary to prove in a case like this is an intent to defraud, that is to obtain money by false pretenses. Sometimes people do that. I've prosecuted cases of mortgage fraud where people were hiding assets and doing other intentional things to get better terms from a bank. At this stage, we've all we know is this one statement that appears to conflict with another. That's not enough to prove a case of mortgage fraud. Certainly more investigation would be necessary. But this new evidence that you just mentioned would seem to contradict the idea of any intent to defraud.
- [34:48]
Ali Velshi
One of our attorneys, Abby Lowell, was saying that there may have been contradictory information. And of course he was. She was referring to the fact that anybody who got a mortgage understands that there are, you know, lots and lots of places where you seem to have to put in very similar information. And you're right, if you were looking to be fraudulent about it, you'd want to be fairly accurate about this. That said, Janet Yellen said something interesting the other day, and she said the thing that the president is relying upon to be able to fire a governor of the board of the Fed for cause generally relates to the job, not something else. What do you know about that?
- [35:24]
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Yeah, you know, it talks about malfeasance. And I think there is a suggestion that it means that in the capacity of your role as a governor on the board of the Federal Reserve, you have done something untoward that creates just cause for removal. This instance is something that occurred before she was on the board and would relate to personal misconduct. Now, the language is probably fuzzy enough that it gives the president some room for deference there, but I think it's a fair point that it doesn't seem to relate to anything having to do with her qualifications for the job.
- [35:56]
Ali Velshi
That said, the Supreme Court has indicated that while they're giving Donald Trump permission to remove certain agency members and heads, that the Federal Reserve is different. Now, that was in relation to something to do with the chair of the Federal Reserve Board. It's not clear how this relates to governors, but the Supreme Court has had some history of seeing this, the Federal Reserve, as different from other federal agencies.
- [36:22]
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Yeah, they say it goes back to its origins, you know, originally back in the days shortly after the founding when there were problems with the currency and the Treasury. Alexander Hamilton created the First National Bank. It was followed by the Second national bank, but those were quasi private organizations. And that's what the court seems to have have relied on when distinguishing the Federal Reserve from other independent agencies like the nlrb. Or the Federal Trade Commission. It has said that the Federal Reserve is different. And Ali, I can't emphasize enough how important it is that we maintain the independence of the Federal Reserve. We set interest rates through the Federal Reserve based on the expertise of economists who are looking at the long term interests of the United States, not the short term political whimsical whims of the President.
- [37:09]
Ali Velshi
Yeah, they're truly wonky people and I mean that in the best way. But other countries, central banks are modeled around this idea where the terms of central bank officers don't correspond with presidential terms so that they try and be as apolitical as possible. And Fed people will tell you it's not that they don't get it right, that they get it right all the time, but they are independent. If they get it wrong, they get it wrong for independent, not political reasons.
- [37:36]
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Yeah, that's right. And we know that President Trump has been loudly complaining about interest rates. And why is that? I don't know that he cares about the long term interests of the United States, which could play out over the coming decades. But what he's likely thinking about is what's it like for the midterm elections? Can people get home loans?
- [37:53]
Ali Velshi
Right.
- [37:53]
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Are interest rates low? Because that's likely to reflect favorably on him that he is leading the economy to a good place.
- [38:00]
Ali Velshi
Right.
- [38:00]
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
And in fact, in fact, what we really want is for people who are independent of that political process to use their expertise to decide what's in the best interest of the country. And so that's why this fight, I think, is so critically important to the future of our country.
- [38:14]
Ali Velshi
Barbara, you are an expert on literally everything. I just love talking to you. It's always feel very safe that you know, Barbara's going to know the answer to this because you are the kind of person who does all your homework. And I appreciate that. Barbara McQuaid, we always appreciate your time. Coming up, the economic damage from Donald Trump's tariffs is showing in the new inflation data. That's next.
- [38:33]
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- [39:44]
Ali Velshi
The September Federal Reserve meeting kicks off next week as new economic data shows rising prices. The Washington Post reports the Labor Department said yesterday that higher housing and food prices put a strain on consumers wallets last month while overall inflation rose to a 2.9% annual rate. Separately, applications for weekly unemployment Benefits jumped to 263,000 last week. That's the highest since October of 2021. The Twin reports could present a thorny challenge for the Federal Reserve, which meets next week to consider its first rate cut of the year, a move that President Donald Trump Trump continues to push, CNBC reports. If Fed officials had any doubt about cutting, the jobless claims report may have sealed the deal. However, hiring has slowed through the year. Layoffs have also been tame, indicating more status quo rather than a material weakening in what the chair, Jerome Powell repeatedly has termed a solid labor market. We know that Donald Trump wants interest rate cuts. He talks about it all the time. On Tuesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked Donald Trump's firing of this woman, the Federal Reserve governor, Lisa, who's voted with Jerome Powell against cuts in the past, much to Trump's public consternation. If the ruling remains in effect, Cook would be able to participate in the highly anticipated two day meeting. Joining me now is Betsy Stevenson. She's a professor of economics at the University of Michigan. She was the chief economist for the U.S. department of labor under President Barack Obama from 2010 to 2011. Betsy, it's great to see you. Thank you for being with us. This is the proverbial pickle for economists and for the Federal Reserve. You have inflation not where you want it to be, not terribly high, but 2.9% is about 9.10of a percent higher than the Fed would like it to be. And on the other hand, you have a slowing job market. That's the Fed's not ideally built for both of those things to be happening at the same time.
- [41:43]
Betsy Stevenson
That's right. So it's difficult for The Fed to figure out what it should try to do, should it try to bring prices down. And the way you would do that is to try to reduce demand, get people to buy fewer things, get, including getting businesses to buy fewer things, invest less. And you would do that by raising rates. If you want instead to try to boost the economy so that more things are being produced, so that there are more jobs, you would want to cut rates and try to get people to get out there, spend more, both companies and people. And I think that that sort of tension though really reflects an underlying tension that is the key, which is what can the economy produce right now in a world in which the tariff policy and the immigration policy have effectively shrunk our capacity?
- [42:42]
Ali Velshi
Right. You're a labor economist. So this is an important point to understand. The idea that we are deporting people or at least scaring people from working has a distorting effect on the labor market at the moment.
- [42:57]
Betsy Stevenson
Right. So you know, they're not great estimates out there, but the best estimates we have say that net migration is actually negative. So we have fewer foreign born workers than we had, you know, six months ago.
- [43:11]
Ali Velshi
Right.
- [43:11]
Betsy Stevenson
And you might say, great, let's let Americans get those jobs. Jobs, except for not all immigrant labor is a substitute for American labor. In other words, sometimes immigrant labor plus native labor is really sort of useful for producing things. So you can think about a lot of immigrant labor is really at that bottom rung on the ladder, the lowest skill works. And if you can get that low skill work really cheap, then you can afford to hire more high skill workers to work with that low skill work. And together they'll produce things like new houses, construction. What we're seeing is declines in employment and construction that might be directly related to some of this immigration cut down. We're also seeing declines in employment and manufacturing, which comes from the fact that manufacturers are facing higher input prices because they import a lot of the things they use to manufacture. And so this policy that was supposed to help America build things again is actually doing the opposite.
- [44:25]
Ali Velshi
Betsy, in a world where, and I don't want to diminish how complicated the Fed's work is because they really do look at charts and then they, they have arguments and debates and votes to make these decisions. What trumps what right now does the weakening job situation augur for interest rate cuts more than the higher inflation augurs for keeping interest rates where they are?
- [44:47]
Betsy Stevenson
I think that this is a time of greater uncertainty than we have really ever had before because no one actually knows what does full employment look like in this modern economy where we have have this new economy where we're importing fewer things and we have fewer foreign workers? I'm going to tell you personally what I would do. I prioritize people having jobs over inflation. So if I'm going to put a balance on the risks, I am going to put a thumb on the scale to protect people's jobs because people face real tragedies when they lose jobs. So I would cut more. And here I'm going to tell you the crazy irony. I think that's sort of Lisa Cook leans more my way. She's kind of more of a let's think about the jobs. And that is kind of ironic because the reason President Trump doesn't like her is not because she wouldn't cut rates in the way he wants, but because he doesn't want someone to be cutting rates in order to prioritize employment. He wants someone to be cutting rates cuz he says cut rates.
- [45:56]
Ali Velshi
And therein lies the rub of this whole thing.
- [45:59]
Betsy Stevenson
You might think that's not a big difference. There's actually a huge difference.
- [46:03]
Ali Velshi
Every economist I've spoken to has said when the Federal Reserve loses its independence, trust in the American dollar and trust in the American economy suffers a blow that is almost irreparable. Betsy, great to see you as always. Thank you for joining us tonight. Betsy Stevenson is the University of Michigan professor of Economics and former chief economists economist for the Department of Labor. We'll be right back. On tomorrow's Velshi Band Book Club, we will discuss the children's book the 1619 Project Born on the examining the issues of race and identity. It tells the story of a young girl who receives a family tree assignment in school. I'll be joined by the co author and illustrator of the book, Renee Watson and Nicholas Smith at 10:00 Eastern tomorrow here on MSNBC.
- [46:46]
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