← The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell
The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell
'Stand up for our country': Rachel joins Lawrence to discuss her Kamala Harris interview
00:42:07
Tonight on The Last Word: Former Vice President Kamala Harris gives Rachel Maddow her first interview since the 2024 election. Also, U.K. charities remove Sarah Ferguson over a Jeffrey Epstein email. Plus, Alex Acosta faces questions over his Epstein “sweetheart deal.” And Tom Homan is probed for taking $50K from undercover FBI agents. Jen Psaki, Rep. Robert Garcia, and Ken Dilanian join Lawrence O’Donnell.
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- [00:00]
Narrator/Advertiser
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- [00:32]
Laci Mosley
What's poppin listeners? I'm Laci Moseley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it. Each week I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time. Wanna know about the fake errors? We got em? What about a career con man? We've got them too. Guys that will wine and dine you and then steal all your coins. Oh, you know they are represented. Cause representation matters. I'm joined by guests like Nicole Byer, Ira Madison ii, Conan o' Brien and more. Join the congregation and listen to Scam Goddess wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:09]
Rachel Maddow
Now it's time for the Last Word with the great Lawrence o'.
- [01:13]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Donnell.
- [01:13]
Rachel Maddow
Good evening, Lawrence.
- [01:14]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Good evening, Rachel. And that's not gonna do it for you right now. You just had the biggest interview of the year so far on msnbc. So, okay, tell us everything that you discussed during the commercial breaks.
- [01:31]
Rachel Maddow
I will say I am an awkward person who doesn't get along with people very well writ large. Just as a general thing about me, I'm a hermit, I'm a pineapple who lives under the sea. But I get along really well with Vice President Harris in the sense that I find her easy to talk to. And what that means is that when we're off camera, like when we were in the commercial breaks, the conversation kind of just kept going the way that it was on camera. We were talking about the what she was saying about Trump not bringing down prices and the issue about health premiums about to go up and Republicans not having any plans to go along with Trump not having any plans and Democrats needing to be able to articulate that and build up their stars more than they do and that there's so much good talent in the Democratic Party. So it wasn't anything juicier than what you got on the air. But she's really fired up and ready to go. I will say that.
- [02:28]
Lawrence O'Donnell
So I haven't read the book. And so that passage that you mentioned that has gotten a lot of controversial coverage where she talks about Joe Biden making the decision to run for a second term, and then it being up to him in the end to decide not to. And she uses the word recklessness in that passage. Tonight, in discussions with you, she includes herself in that recklessness that she's describing. Does that track with the text of the book?
- [03:01]
Rachel Maddow
Yes, it does. I mean, what she says is she expresses regret for not having done more, I think, to help the White House arrive at the right decision about President Biden's reelection campaign. But she also explains why, in the moment and in situ, she didn't feel like she could. She kind of makes the case, like me, of all people. I'm the one person who couldn't say, step aside, old guy. I need to be the one running instead of you. But she's definitely frustrated with the way that the president ways decisions were made around the president. She doesn't really criticize President Biden himself. She definitely criticizes the team around him. But, Lawrence, now that I know that you have not read the book, have you read the part that's about you?
- [03:50]
Lawrence O'Donnell
No, I have not.
- [03:51]
Rachel Maddow
Do you know this one part? Can I read it to you?
- [03:53]
Lawrence O'Donnell
I. Go ahead.
- [03:56]
Rachel Maddow
Okay. It's at page 22. The mythology of America says anyone can grow up to be president, but most people don't think that's really possible for them. Did I grow up as a kid with a dream to be president? No. My mother told me I could be anything, and I believed her. But president wasn't on my list. I was in my first year as a senator before it crossed my mind. Oddly, as a result of a throwaway remark, Doug and I were home in Los Angeles for the weekend, having breakfast at a popular hangout in our neighborhood, when Lawrence o' Donnell walked in. He wandered up to our table to talk about the dire consequences of a second Trump term. Quote, you should run for president, he said. I honestly had not thought about it until that moment. The idea took root in my imagination, and as a result of running against Joe for the nomination in 2019, I wound up as his VP. You did it. You were the one who first put the thought in her mind to run for president.
- [04:56]
Lawrence O'Donnell
So she reminded me of this in the middle of her presidential campaign, her first campaign, when she was running against that Democratic primary field. And she's reminded me of it a couple of times since then. So here' snow that it's of public information. It was really, really, really early, really early, because.
- [05:23]
Rachel Maddow
He was first elected in 2016, so this would have been a 2017. So Trump just having Been sworn in.
- [05:29]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Yeah. Well, so remember, so Kamala Harris is elected to the United States Senate on the same night that Donald Trump was elected president. So all Democrats going into that election day who might think about running for president all thought that was eight years away. Because Hillary Clinton's gonna be president for the next four years. She's gonna run free election. No Democrat has a decision to make for another six, seven years. At least that was. That's the way it was before they started counting votes on election day. So I actually saw her very, very soon after election day on a Saturday morning at that restaurant that she's talking about. And I didn't just barge in to her breakfast. She waved me over. Rachel, I wouldn't, you know me. She didn't make you sound like a creep.
- [06:23]
Rachel Maddow
She didn't make it sound like, you know, Lawrence o' Connor slinked over to us.
- [06:28]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Here's the really cool thing in that room, okay? And this is Los Angeles, and she's just been elected Senate. She has sunglasses on, and she's at the community table because she couldn't get a table for two the way like I could. Right. Cause they know me. And I really had the feeling, by the way, that in that room, even though she's just been elected senator and everybody in that room voted for her, very few people in that room had any idea who she was. Like, maybe nobody. And it might have been the sunglasses, but it's also California, and they're kind of distant local relationship to politics, even though they vote for people. And so what I knew was she was going to be under very, very intense pressure very quickly about, are you a candidate for president? And she's in a really weird position. And so what I said to her was, you have to run, and you have to run. Because the Obama lesson is it's never too early.
- [07:36]
Rachel Maddow
Yeah.
- [07:36]
Lawrence O'Donnell
And the Biden lesson is there is a second place. You have to run. And I left it at that and left them to their breakfast. You know, Joe Biden became vice president by running against Barack Obama for president. That is how people have. The Democrats especially, had been picking their running mates was someone who ran against them. And so, you know, there is a second place in presidential campaigns, and that is the vice presidency. And so that, I think, was based on the calendar when that happened. I'm pretty sure that was the very first time anyone had said anything to her about that.
- [08:21]
Rachel Maddow
That's the way that she describes it, as you being the first person to actually articulate it to her. So, I mean, she was a two term Attorney General at that point. The campaign that she ran to become the elected DA in San Francisco was the cinematic freaking thing you could possibly imagine. I mean, she'd been through some really interesting California political wars. But the idea of not just joining the Senate, but then you telling her immediately, no, now you're on the national stage, keep going, don't stop rising turned out to be a formative thing for her.
- [08:52]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Well, listen, if I didn't say it, other people were going to say it down the line. I mean I knew that it wasn't something that, oh, I only heard it in one place and it's just because of the calendar that I was literally the first person to say it to her. I'm sure. And what I was struck by in all those campaigns that you mentioned, Rachel, is, you know, here's somebody who won every campaign that she ran in right up to the United States Senate, you know, and her first setback was in that primary running for president. And so this, she was a winner in California politics. As you know, she was on this program for the first time when she was San Francisco District Attorney again when she was Attorney General. And, and I remember someone telling me, you know, before I ever knew anything about her, you know, someone in Hollywood telling me about her and talking about her, this was basically black political. Hollywood already knew about her and they were talking about her as the term they were using was the female Obama, meaning a black woman who could go all the way, who could go as far as Barack Obama. And then the first time someone brought me to see her speak somewhere, I saw that and I thought, well, yeah, she can absolutely go all the way.
- [10:10]
Rachel Maddow
Lawrence, what did you make of. I don't know if you saw it as you were sitting down, but I asked her at the very end, are you going to run for president in 2028?
- [10:16]
Congressman Robert Garcia
Yeah.
- [10:17]
Rachel Maddow
What did you make of her response?
- [10:19]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Well, that was the standard, you know, a computer could have done that response. That's somebody who has not, certainly someone who's not.
- [10:26]
Rachel Maddow
But she's, she has body language and you know, oh no, but.
- [10:32]
Lawrence O'Donnell
That'S the answer you give when you might and you might not, you know, she absolutely might. That's the answer that says in effect, I guess the translation for that is I might. That would be the fair translation of that in American politics. And I'm so glad you asked it. It was one of the things as I was sitting there and it's the only thing, by the way, cuz I never, in your interviews, I'm Always just living in the interview. And as I was noticing the minutes, though, and I thought, is Rachel gonna ask her if she's gonna run? And you did. And so thanks for that. And I'm sure there's gonna be. That's gonna be one of the headlines that you create by that. But Rachel, and by the way, this was. I don't know if it felt this way to you, but certainly for me watching it, this was Vice President Harris at her best. You brought out the best about her, I think, in the way that she took on every one of these questions that you asked, the way she gave each one of your questions a fair response. She wasn't avoiding anything, except possibly that last one about are you going to run for president? It seems very unlikely that at this point her mind would be made up about that. I mean, how do you make your mind up about that without having some infrastructure to base it on? And we know she doesn't have any campaign infrastructure right now.
- [11:46]
Rachel Maddow
It is interesting. She's doing this very big book tour. She's doing this 15 city book tour she's doing. She says she's structuring it basically to do a lot of listening. Like, I think she's eager to get back out into the country and start talking to people and listening to people again to figure out if it's the right thing to do in part. And to figure out if it's the right thing to do.
- [12:06]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Yeah. And, yeah, this is the way to do it, I think. You know, we can remember the Colin Powell book tour, which literally in the 1990s had people lined up around corners and everyone thought this is the biggest book tour we've ever seen. And it was by far. And everyone thought he is going to run for president. And he didn't in the end. And so I think we'll know when and if she announces. I think it might be hard to tell at any point before that. But, Rachel, what else besides page, what is it 22 about me? What else did you discover in the book that I haven't read that you didn't have time for in the Hour?
- [12:52]
Rachel Maddow
Oh, there's a lot in it. I mean, the stuff that I'm really focused on as, you know, like, I'm not the world's greatest authority on Democratic Party politics. There's definitely a lot on how things work inside the Democratic Party, different Democratic Party sort of capabilities and incapacities. I would say certainly she is bordering on caustic when it comes to describing the political operation around President Biden. When President Biden was still running for reelection. She says that the political briefings that were run for the campaign, I think the actual phrase she uses is. Made no sense to me. She quotes one of her own staffers describing them as a dog and pony show. She's just caustic in terms of whether or not the political operation around President Biden was serving him or. And so that's interesting stuff, and it's important. I think it's important in terms of reckoning with what went wrong and the timing on everything. But I'm really also very interested. I mean, she's. Like you said, she was very successful in California politics, brought a really interesting and accomplished resume and history in politics and as a public servant to being a United States senator, which is what she brought to being a vice president. And therefore, I'm kind of interested not just in what she did before, but what her leadership prescription is now. And the other thing about which she is utterly caustic is the way institutions and powerful people have failed the country. Not just. She says, trump's doing what we knew he was gonna do and what she told us he was gonna do. And she's right about that. What has failed and what has been a surprise are the institutions in our country that we expected more from. And that diagnosis, I think, is really important. And it's important not just as, like, a caption for what's going on. It's the prescri. For what needs to be done to get us out of this mess. We need better institutions. We need better elites. We need better powerful people. And even if the Trump administration reacts to protests by sending in the Marines, Disney doesn't. And the other institutions that we've got that are failing. The law firms don't. Right. The universities don't. The other institutions that we've got that are failing are susceptible to public pressure and political pressure, and they ought to be being subjected to more of it because we need them. You can't just do it without them. We need our institutions and our elites to be not capitulating. And so that's the project of the American people who are trying to stand up for our country right now. And her articulating it that way is, to me, just really helpful in clarifying and cuts through a lot of the dross that we're otherwise talking about. Too much.
- [15:42]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Hey, Rachel, you know how we have those digital cameras, the digital. Digital clocks right under our camera? I normally look down and it says four minutes after the hour when we've had a long chat. It now says 14. So that's, that's a record. But, but before you go, before you go, because I know you have to go, I want to go back to the very first thing you mentioned in your hour, which is your new documentary about Andrew Young. I didn't know you were working on that. I'm fascinated by Andrew Young. He's one of the real political pioneers and he had a pretty big career before he ever got into politics. When, when will we see. It's on this network on a Friday night, I think you said it is.
- [16:22]
Rachel Maddow
It's going to be. Thank you for asking. It's Friday, October 17th. So I have this production company which is called Surprise Inside. Our first documentary was the one about Lev Parnas from Russia with Lev that premiered to a huge audience here on msnbc. It got nominated for an Emmy. It was something I'm really proud of. This is our second documentary project and it's the first of a couple projects I'm going to be rolling up before the end of the year, which are both, I think, I think of them as like my homework for what I need to get smarter about and what I want to learn more about, what I want to understand more deeply about what we need to do next as a country. And one of the things that we've got as a country in this time of need is we've got an inheritance from morally upstanding and successful movements like the civil rights movement. And we need to learn from them, not just as inspirations. We need to learn from them in terms of how they actually did the work to get done, what they got done. We need to know what it means not just to be impressed by their accomplishments, but to actually be in the middle of it, doing it. For all of its difficulties and the story of Andrew Young, the reason it's called Andrew Young the Dirty Work is it's about the fricking day to day dirty work and how hard it is to make these things work. And so it's the nuts and bolts, the nitty gritty side of the civil rights movement. As I said, it's the first of a couple of projects along these lines that I'm going to have coming out this year. But the first one is this documentary that comes out Friday, October 17th, here on MSNBC. The only way to get a sneak preview of it is to go to the MSNBC Live event on Saturday, October 11th. We'll be showing some scenes for it, but then the premiere is here on October 17th.
- [18:01]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Rachel, I love that shot of the young Andrew young that we just had up on the screen there. Rachel, thank you very much for for chatting with me longer than usual tonight. Really appreciate it.
- [18:12]
Rachel Maddow
Thanks for having me. Lawrence.
- [18:13]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Thank you. You just heard Rachel talk about what she doesn't know about the workings of the Democratic Party, how the Democratic Party runs a presidential election, all of that. And as it relates to Kamala Harris presidential campaign, Jen Psaki knows all about that. Jen Psaki is going to join us.
- [18:35]
Laci Mosley
What's poppin listeners? I'm Laci Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it. Each week I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time. Wanna know about the fake errors we got em? What about a career con man? We've got them too guys that will wine and dine you and then steal all your coins. Oh, you know they are represented because representation matters. I'm joined by guests like Nicole Byer, Ira Madison iii, Conan O' and more. Join the congregation and listen to Scam Goddess wherever you get your podcasts.
- [19:13]
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- [19:46]
Lawrence O'Donnell
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- [19:52]
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- [20:14]
Rachel Maddow
You can't get in the gutter with that guy because that is the way that he distracts from the fact that, for example, right now he promised the people who voted for him that on day one he'd bring down prices. And I do believe, Rachel, that's one of the main reasons that the people who voted for him elected him, because they believed he would do it. He lied.
- [20:44]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Joining us now is Jen Psaki, former White House press secretary and host of the Briefing with Jen Psaki on msnbc. Jen, there she is saying, you can't get in the gutter with that guy. Now, when I heard that, I realized that was one of the central strategic questions of any campaign against Donald Trump, for the Biden campaign in 2016, for the Harris campaign last time. And Jen, you are a veteran of presidential campaigns. I know nothing about them. I've never worked in or near a presidential campaign. How do you make that strategic decision about when do you respond to something from the gutter that Donald Trump lives in?
- [21:29]
Jen Psaki
Well, I think part of it is deciding what you're going to prosecute the case about. And Vice President Harris made a calculation when she was running. I mean, she ran on a lot of issues. She ran on democracy. She ran on abortion rights. She did talk about the economy. She laid out an economic plan. When you look at the outcome of the election, one of the things that I think would have been very challenging for her to know going into it, others made it feel differently was that. But a lot of the there were people who stayed home who felt left behind, who felt like their issues were not discussed, people who considered themselves part of the working class, who felt more heard by Donald Trump. So I think there's a question always about what you talk about and how much time you spend talking about it. What I also think was a unique challenge for her, and we haven't experienced this since Al Gore and Bill Clinton is running against the party that's in power when you were the nominee. I mean, she was Joe Biden's, of course, vice president. She's running against Donald Trump. But she's also trying to run on the parts of the legacy that she wanted to celebrate but also differentiate herself. That's incredibly challenging, which I think was something she talks about in the interview. And she also talks about a bit in the book as well.
- [22:43]
Lawrence O'Donnell
So, Jen, have you read the book?
- [22:45]
Jen Psaki
I have read the book.
- [22:47]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Oh, great. Okay. So what are your big takeaways from the book?
- [22:53]
Jen Psaki
The book, Rachel said this during the interview. It's very funny. She has a sense of humor in there. I don't know. There was an excerpt she read which made Brian Fallon, who was probably sitting at home, probably his face go red from hearing that story told again, about a period of time when Donald Trump, remember, questioned whether Kamala Harris was actually black or not, which is a ludicrous moment. She is very the story is told, the book is told through a series of vignettes. So it's kind of different anecdotes in each chapter. What I felt reading the book was she's got some things to get off of her chest. She is angry, she's disappointed, she's hurt, she's funny, she's passionate. She's so many things that are wrapped up in the voice you hear in this book. And sometimes with each chapter that ended, you wanted more. But there is a real candor about what she felt during moments in a historic campaign that has never happened before. No one's been asked to run a campaign in 107 days. And she was. So you hear that through the book. But there were moments I wondered where. I will say one thing. You probably read the afterword always. I always read the afterword because you always sometimes learn things from people about what they're thinking, why they wrote the book. She says something in the afterword. She talks about how she felt like she could make change through working in institutions and that maybe she questioned whether that's true anymore. And I think that's such a central question to what we're all grappling with right now. And Rachel talked with her about that sort of question in the interview as well. But whether institutions need to be changed, whether they can protect us anymore, whether that is the way for us to kind of survive through this moment, which I thought was a particularly interesting part of the book as well.
- [24:38]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Jen Psaki, who was there when much of this was happening, thank you very much for joining us.
- [24:43]
Jen Psaki
Thank you, Lawrence.
- [24:45]
Lawrence O'Donnell
And coming up, another member of the ridiculous British royal family is in trouble tonight because of a friendship with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. And the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee listened to the closed door testimony of Alex Acosta about Jeffrey Epstein. And Congressman Garcia had trouble believing Alex Acosta. Congressman Robert Garcia joins us next.
- [25:15]
Laci Mosley
What's poppin, listeners? I'm Laci Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it. Each week I talk with var special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time. Want to know about the fake eras? We got them. What about a career con man? We've got them too. Guys that will wine and dine you and then steal all your coins. Oh, you know, they are represented because representation matters. I'm joined by guests like Nicole Byer, Ira Madison iii, Conan o' Brien and more. Join the congregation and listen to Scam Goddess. Wherever you get your podcast, you open the fridge.
- [25:54]
Jen Psaki
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- [25:57]
Rachel Maddow
Greasy Pizza?
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- [26:03]
Lawrence O'Donnell
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- [26:06]
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- [26:13]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Keep the flavor.
- [26:14]
Jen Psaki
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- [26:22]
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- [26:58]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Yesterday, a British newspaper broke the news of a 2011 email from the former wife of the little brother of the King of England who was a dear friend of the sex trafficker and raper of children, Jeffrey Epstein. It turns out the King's little brother Andrew, who reached a settlement with Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre after Virginia Giuffre accused Andrew of sexual abuse when she was a teenager, is not the only member of that royally ridiculous and morally bankrupt family to have embraced the international raper of children, Jeffrey Epstein. Andrew's former wife, Sarah Ferguson, was revealed in the British press over the weekend to have sent an email after Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to criminal sex charges in Florida in 2008. An email to Jeffrey Epstein Sarah Ferguson's email to Jeffrey Epstein, three years after his guilty plea, when he was still a very active international sex trafficker and raper of children, praised her dear friend Jeffrey Epstein for being a, quote, steadfast, generous and supreme friend to me and my family. BBC News is reporting that several organizations immediately cut ties to Sarah Ferguson. The BBC reports Julia's House, a children's hospice, was the first to remove Sarah Ferguson, Prince Andrews ex wife, saying it was inappropriate for her to continue in the role. The Teenage Cancer Trust, Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, Children's literacy charity, national foundation for Retired Service Animals and Prevent Breast Cancer also announced they had dropped the duchess as patron. The British Heart foundation said she would no longer be its ambassador. Last week, FBI Director Kashyap Patel said that Alex Acosta was responsible for what he called, quote, the original sin that was his term, original sin in the federal investigations of Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking. On Friday, the House Oversight Committee took closed door testimony from that same Alex Acosta, who was rewarded by Jeffrey Epstein's old friend Donald Trump with the position of Labor Secretary in the first Trump administration. Immediately after that, that under oath interview on Friday with Alex Acosta, the top Democrat on the committee, Congressman Robert Garcia, who will be joining us in a moment, said this.
- [29:39]
Congressman Robert Garcia
It's very clear that Alex Acosta ran a deeply flawed investigation of the Epstein case. That's clear. He also would not admit that Mr. Epstein received a sweetheart deal, which has been widely reported and agreed upon since. That deal was actually made by Mr. Acosta and his team. So he would not admit, in fact, stands by the decision to have given Mr. Epstein a sweetheart deal, which was only 18 months and which during that time he went on to abuse multiple women that he raped during that time. What he was supposed, of course, have been in jail by the team, by Acosta. We asked him directly if he actually understood that during the sentence that Jeffrey Epstein received that he went on to abuse other women. And he would not answer that question. He said he was not aware that that actually happened, that he could not confirm that that actually happened. That has been widely reported. And so he is completely not credible. And he's completely has been clearly involved in the broader cover up that is happening right now, clearly being directed by the White House and the Attorney General.
- [31:00]
Lawrence O'Donnell
And Florida Congressman Maxwell Frost, a member of the committee, said this. Mr. Acosta, at least to us in this deposition, essentially said he didn't have faith in the victims, their stories and.
- [31:15]
Narrator/Advertiser
Their ability to tell their own story.
- [31:16]
Lawrence O'Donnell
And their own testimony, which is deeply disturbing to all of us sitting in there. Not just that, but it seems like Mr. Acosta really had no idea about what was going on in his own office during this investigation, during the deliberation on this, on what is the most.
- [31:33]
Narrator/Advertiser
High profile case that his office handled.
- [31:35]
Lawrence O'Donnell
During that time period. Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Robert Garcia of California. He's the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, leading this investigation. For the Democratic side of the committee, Carson Garcia, do you have reason to believe that Alex Acosta did not tell you the truth?
- [31:57]
Congressman Robert Garcia
Well, I'm definitely not convinced that he was completely forthcoming with the committee. He was just sidestepping questions, would not answer other questions. And what he did answer was really disturbing. And the American public should know that Alex Acosta, knowing all that has happened since that deal he gave to Jeffrey Epstein would not admit that he gave him this deal that was not only clearly, by all of our standards, a sweetheart deal, but he could not admit that Jeffrey Acosta then went on to abuse and rape other women and girls. He essentially said that he was not aware that he did not have complete evidence of that. And so this idea that Mr. Acosta, who had a line prosecutor that made a 80 page recommendation with 20 other co conspirators that have would have been also the public would have also known that what they would have done, how they were involved in trafficking, what they did to other women and girls, that they were abusers themselves. That line prosecutor made a recommendation to Mr. Acosta and his office and that line prosecutor and the recommendations were rejected by him directly. And so why did Mr. Acosta turn his back on the recommendation to not just go after Epstein, but other co conspirators? That's a question he would not answer and one that we need to get to the bottom to by the release of the whole files.
- [33:23]
Lawrence O'Donnell
So last week, Kash Patel blamed Alex Acosta for the easy plea bargain that Jeffrey Epstein got that allowed him to continue for years to traffic in children and rape. And it sounds like in Alex Acosta's testimony, he may be blaming the victims for not being, in his judgment, good enough witnesses to bring into federal court. Is that essentially what he was saying?
- [33:53]
Congressman Robert Garcia
I think that's a fair assessment. I mean, essentially what Mr. Acosta was saying is that there wasn't enough evidence that he couldn't, you know, that he even alluded that sometimes it was a different time, it was a different era, and that, you know, victims wouldn't come forward or they didn't want to share their whole story, which we know is complete bs because the actual lead prosecutor on the case wanted a strong federal trial, wanted a strong federal prosecution, and had laid out this whole case in front of Mr. Acosta. I actually asked Mr. Acosta directly, I said, did you have faith in your lead prosecutor? Did you think your lead prosecutor was a good attorney, had a good reputation? And he admitted that, yes, that he thought that his whole team, including the lead prosecutor, were good lawyers, yet he would not take their advice. And so how do you go from this master prosecution that his team wanted to make to an 18 month sweetheart deal where essentially Epstein gets to leave every single day out of work, release, not really serve that sentence and then go on to rape more women and girls. And Mr. Acosta stood by that deal. He had no regret, he has no regrets about that 18 month BS sentence that Epstein got. And so we actually have a lot more questions, not just for Mr. Acosta, but for a lot of other folks involved as to why he decided to make this deal.
- [35:21]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Congressman Robert Garcia, thank you very much for joining us tonight. Thank you. Coming up, MSNBC investigative reporters Kendallane and Carol Leonig broke the huge story that led to this front page New York Times headline, Trump Justice Department closed investigation into Tom Homan for accepting bag of cash. That's right, the border czar and a bag of cash exposed by MSNBC's Kendallanean, who will join us next in a stunning piece of investigative reporting this weekend that has been picked up by every major news organization in the world, MSNBC's Carol Lennig and Ken Delaney reported. In an undercover operation last year, the FBI recorded Tom Homan. Now the White House Borders are accepting $50,000 in cash after indicating he could help the agents who were posing as business executives win government contracts in a second Trump administration, according to multiple people familiar with the probe and internal documents reviewed by msnbc. The FBI and the Justice Department planned to wait to see whether Homan would deliver on his alleged promise once he became the nation's top immigration official. But the case indefinitely stalled soon after Donald Trump became president again in January, according to six sources familiar with the matter. In recent weeks, Trump appointees officially closed the investigation after FBI Director Kash Patel requested a status update on the case, Two of the people said Tom Homan has refused to comment to MSNBC on this reporting. MSNBC reports the federal investigation was launched in western Texas in the summer of 2024 after a subject in a separate investigation claimed Homan was soliciting payments in exchange for awarding contracts should Trump win the presidential election, according to an internal Justice Department summary of the probe reviewed by MSNBC and people familiar with the case. Here is what Tom Homan was saying publicly at that time.
- [38:04]
Tom Homan
Trump comes back in January. I'll be honest, he was coming back and I will run the biggest deportation operation this country's ever seen.
- [38:13]
Lawrence O'Donnell
And at the time that Tom Homan said that he was running a consulting business advising businesses on how to obtain government contracts related to border enforcement, MSNBC reported undercover FBI agents posing as contractors communicated and met several times last summer with a business colleague who introduced them to Homan and with Homan himself, who indicated he would facilitate securing contracts for them in exchange for money once he was in office, according to documents and the people familiar with the case. On September 20, 2024, with hidden cameras recording the scene at A meeting spot in Texas. Homan accepted $50,000 in bills, according to an internal summary of the case and sources. Randall Eliason, a former chief of public corruption prosecutions in the U.S. attorney's office in Washington, D.C. said that people who are not yet public officials cannot be charged with bribery. He also said, quote, but they can be charged with conspiracy to commit bribery. In a conspiracy charge, the crime is the agreement to commit a criminal act in the future. Donald Trump's criminal defense lawyer, Emil Bovet, who became Donald Trump's acting deputy attorney general, played a key role in stopping the criminal investigation of Tom Homan after Donald Trump took office, MSNBC reports. Shortly after Trump's inauguration, in either late January or February 2025, former acting deputy Attorney General Emil Bove was briefed on the case and told Justice Department officials he did not support the investigation, according to two people familiar with the case. And tonight on Fox, Tom Homan was offered an opportunity to respond to MSNBC's reporting, and he did not dispute a single fact reported by msnbc. Here's everything he said about it.
- [40:31]
Tom Homan
Look, I did nothing criminal. I did nothing illegal. And there's hit piece after hit piece after hit piece. And I'm glad the FBI and DOJ came out and said, and, you know, said that nothing illegal happened and nothing, you know, no criminal activity you're talking about. Guys spent 34 years enforcing the law. I mean, I left a very successful business that I ran to come back and work for a government again. I'm back on a government paycheck. Not only did I sacrifice my family sacrifices, I make sacrifices every day. I got more death threats than anybody. I got a security team around me. But guess what? My kids don't. My wife don't. I mean, I haven't lived with my wife in months because I don't want her to be here right now with all the threats. So after all the sacrifices, after serving my nation for all these years, they want to come out and dirty me up. And it's not going to end. There's a hit piece on me every two weeks. But keep coming, because you know what? Tom Holman isn't going anywhere. Tom Holman isn't shutting up. And Tom Holman is going to keep doing what he's doing because working with President Trump is the greatest honor in my life. We're making this country safer again every day, and we're going to keep doing it.
- [41:32]
Lawrence O'Donnell
And of course, because it's fox, Mr. Homan was not asked the simple question, did you take $50,000 in cash. Joining us now is Ken Delaney, an MSNBC justice and intelligence correspondent. Ken, thank you very much for joining us with this stunning report. We just showed you everything, everything that Tom Homan said about this tonight on television. And it's worth noting he did not deny accepting that cash in what FBI records seem to indicate was done on video.
- [42:09]
Narrator/Advertiser
Lawrence, it's good to be with you. Yeah, that's right. That was notable that he didn't deny it, because just a few hours ago, Caroline Levitt from the podium at the White House did deny it, and she chastised a reporter who asked about it and said, get your facts straight, he didn't take the money. Which perplexed us because as you laid out there, we have substantial sourcing on this, and we've seen a document describing the case. And really, no one we've talked to is raising any question about the fact that they are saying that Tom Homan accepted $50,000 in cash in a Cava restaurant bag, by the way, but the White House denied it. But now Homan, given a chance to deny it, to say, I didn't take the money, or this was all a big misunderstanding, he didn't do that. He simply repeated the tenor of the statements that we got originally over the weekend from the FBI and the Justice Department in the White House, which is they said that this was reviewed. They acknowledged the investigation. They said that it was reviewed by prosecutors who found no credible evidence of wrongdoing. And then the White House went further and accused this of being a deep state probe motivated for political reasons by the Biden administration. I should say there's no evidence of that. This was an investigation that arose in the Western District of Texas. It was undertaken by career FBI agents and career prosecutors. And ultimately, when Tom Homan was appointed the border czar, it was taken over by the Public Integrity Section in Washington, the people who are in charge of political corruption investigations. And then it was essentially briefed to the incoming Trump administration and Emil Bovey at the Justice Department. He was first told about it, and that was before Tom Homan was actually hired. So they knew about it and they hired him anyway, and they made the case go away. They essentially closed it. And I should add, Lawrence, that you laid out the scenario, the timeline, pretty well, but this thing arose out of a separate investigation unrelated to Tom Homan. There was an undercover investigation going on already. But as you said, an associate of Mr. Homan's suggested that if these undercover FBI agents posing as businessmen wanted to get contracts in a second Trump administration, they could pay Mr. Homan. And so a meeting was set up. Again, these are FBI agents posing as business executives meeting with Tom Homan. And they extracted a promise from him to help get contracts when he served in the Trump administration in exchange for money. And of course, as you said, he wasn't a public official at that time. Donald Trump hadn't even been elected. But there were some inside the Justice Department who believed that he could have been arrested and charged at that moment because, you know, he was guilty of a number of offenses, they thought fraud, conspiracy to commit bribery. Some legal scholars have noted that you can't conspire with government agents. But there, as you said, there, there were other people involved in this with Mr. Homan that could have formed a conspiracy. But at the end of the day, it was decided to wait. It was decided that a stronger charge would be bribery. And if they waited to see what Homan did when he took office and if he fulfilled the promise of granting contracts to these people who paid him the money, that they would have a solid bribery case. But when Donald Trump won the election, it seems that investigative steps stalled entirely. Even before Trump took office, there was reticence within the FBI and the Justice Department to proceed on this case. It was considered a hot potato. They knew they would eventually have to tell the Trump team about it. They knew that Homan was their shining star and was going to be appointed to a senior job overseeing immigration. And that's exactly what happened. When they informed the Trump administration, it was very clear that this case wasn't going anywhere. And just a few weeks ago, it was formally closed, having withered for several months with no action.
- [45:59]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Lawrence and Ken, it seems like a relevant point that the job Homan was given does not require Senate confirmation. Therefore, no formal and in depth FBI background check, which is the standard for Senate confirmation. They bypassed that with his important investigative reporting on Tom Homan taking $50,000 in cash. According to FBI reports. MSNBC's Kyndilanian gets tonight's last word.
- [46:32]
Laci Mosley
What's poppin, listeners? I'm Laci Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess. The show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it. Each week I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time. Wanna know about the fake errors? We got em. What about a career con man? We've got them too. Guys that will wine and dine you and then steal all your coins. Oh, you know, they are represented because representation matters. I'm joined by guests like Nicole Byer, Ira Ma, and the third Conan o' Brien and more. Join the congregation and listen to Scam Goddess. Wherever you get your podcasts.