← The Rachel Maddow Show
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The biggest presidential corruption scandal in U.S. history'; Trump shocks nation with brazen grab
00:42:43
Rachel Maddow looks at Donald Trump's attempt to have $1.8 billion taxpayer dollars handed to him to distribute to his friends and allies, and debunks the notion that this money-grab has anything to do with suing the IRS. Rep. Jamie Raskin, who calls Trump's scheme "nothing but a racket," joins to discuss Trump's increasingly open, shameless corruption.
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Simplisafe Active Guard Outdoor Protection plan starting at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com licenses for alarm license information Tennessee 2012 really happy to have you here. I've got two quick announcements for you right at the top of the hour here. The first is I have a new book which I have not told you about at all. I haven't told anybody about it yet, but I just got the COVID from my publisher so for the first time ever I can show you what it looks like. Ready? Ready. Ready. Ready. Ta da. It is called Department of Fate, the Promise, the Power and the Collapse of America's Most Consequential Institution. This is my new book. It does not come out until November, so I will tell you more about it when we're closer to the date it comes out. Comes out November 10th, which is right after the midterms. I wanted to tell you about it though as soon as I got the COVID because if you would like to pre order it so you don't have to put it on your to do list. So you will get the book literally the day it comes out. You can do that as of today. You can pre order it by just opening up the camera on your phone and scanning that QR code on the screen. Or you can just go to mattoblog.com but again, it's called Department of Fate. It comes out November 10th. I have been working on this thing without talking about it for a very long time. I think this is going to be a particularly useful book right after the midterms. It's sort of a what do we do now Kind of thing. Anyway, you can pre order it. You can pre order it now and then I will you more about it as we get closer to the pub date. I'm going to do a book tour for it as well. I'll have a whole bunch of live events all around the country. So that's it. Department of Fate. My new book comes out in November. That's the first announcement. Second announcement is for something that happens much sooner in June next month. We're going to do a live event next month in one of my favorite cities on earth, a place that I lived in. And a very, very happy time in my life has a very soft spot. I have a very soft spot for it. I think of it as a where everybody's always glad to see you, even if they go out of their way to not show it. The event is called we the people, America 250 country at a crossroads. But it's going to be in Philly. It's going to be in one of my favorite places in the World, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Thursday, June 25th. I'm going to be interviewing the legendary civil rights lawyer and political oracle Sherrilyn Ifill live on stage at Philadelphia's historic Metropolitan Opera House. What are you doing for America 250? This is what I'm doing. This is going to be a big Ms. NOW event. There's a bunch of us from msnow who are going to be doing a bunch of different things. I'll be doing this big event with Sheryl and Ifill and yes, you can buy tickets through that QR code that's on your screen right now or you can go to Ms. Now. Ms. Now America 250 Ms. Now America 250. All right, so those are my two big announcements tonight. We are continuing to follow the news out of San Diego. Still developing story Three people have been shot and killed at the largest mosque in that city. It's the Islamic center of San Diego. And you know, it is often the case right after a mass shooting that there are initial reports that there were multiple gunmen. You learn to expect in this business that those initial reports are almost always wrong. It's almost always a single gunman and people only think there was more than one person shooting because of the chaos, chaos at the scene and because of frankly the astounding carnage that just one person can cause with a cheap modern semi automatic weapon. But in in this case today, unusually, the early reports that there were two shooters at the San Diego mosque, those reports appear to be true. Authorities say it was a 17 year old and an 18 year old who were both found dead near the scene having apparently died of self inflicted gunshot wounds after the two of them apparently mounted the attack on this mosque. The three people they killed include a security guard at the Islamic center who is being credited with stopping what could have been an even worse and more deadly attack. But this does appear to have been an attack carried out by two people, two teenagers acting together. Now, the authorities, including the local sheriff, have been briefing people this evening. We're going to bring you more from that San Diego scene and that San Diego story as we learn more. We're also watching the fast developing news on the new Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Democratic Republic of Congo, in case you have a hard time picturing it, it is a huge country in Central Africa. Democratic Republic of Congo, I think it's the second largest country in all of Africa. It's bigger than Mexico. It's about two thirds the size of Western Europe. Drc Democratic Republic of Congo is just is huge. Ebola, of course, as you know, is a very deadly hemorrhagic fever. You might remember the Ebola epidemic that happened in 2014 that ended up killing over 11,000 people. It would have been many, many more than that, and it would have affected a much wider swath of the world had in 2014 the world class infectious disease experts at CDC and the World Health Organization not sprung into action to respond so effectively to that Ebola disaster, to identify cases, to test, to trace people's contacts, to make sure that sick people and ultimately even dead bodies were treated in such a way that wouldn't further the spread of the disease. Responding to Ebola is a really specialist thing where time is of the essence and specialized expertise and is just at the core of everything that needs to happen. We led those efforts in 2014. And those, of course, are some of the world class irreplaceable capabilities of the United States government that President Donald Trump decided to kill off immediately when he got back into office for his second term. And it's not like that stuff's gotten better since the initial rush to make sure those capabilities of the US Government were eliminated for some reason. I mean, currently, right now, as I speak, there is no director of the cdc. There is also no deputy director of the cdc. The person they put in charge of infectious disease policy for the whole US Government turns out to be a penile implant specialist. CNN reports now that his job before Trump put him in charge of infectious disease policy for the United States, his previous job included hosting a YouTube show called Erection Connection. It's not clear whether the Erection Connection guy has any Public health experience, but he certainly has a lot of experience making online content about erections. And so that is who Donald Trump trotted out to brief the country recently on how great he's doing leading America's response to the hantavirus threat that grounded that cruise ship this month. You feel better about that one, too. Does the hantavirus response really need a penile implant guy? It's the best we can do. We used to be the gold standard for this stuff worldwide. Now it's the erection connection guy. I mean, there's no Surgeon General of the United States right now. Trump has nominated, most recently for that job, somebody who sells online aphrodisiac tinctures. Okay. Trump's new acting head of the fda, for what it's worth, is a guy who has no public health background whatsoever, not even a doctor, but he is a guy who goes turkey, turkey hunting with Donald Trump Jr. So, okay, after Donald Trump and his top campaign donor, Elon Musk, put US Global health agencies into the wood chipper and made sure to pull us out of the World Health Organization for some reason, wouldn't you know it, now we have this new Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and it has already accelerated to the point of dozens of people already dead, hundreds of people known to be infected, at least two countries already involved before anyone got any sort of word or alert out that it was happening. I mean, the way things used to go with this, a nascent Ebola outbreak announcement would be like a case discovered somewhere or two suspected cases somewhere. This was 65 dead by the time anyone heard anything, and at least 100 people dead already today. And the race now to try to contain this thing is weeks and weeks and weeks behind. And the U.S. president has fundamentally disabled our ability to protect ourselves and to protect everyone from what now could be a massive outbreak of one of the scariest diseases in the world. Great job. And it's about to get worse. You know how the State Department has become kind of a junkyard in this administration? Honestly, anytime anybody gets fired from the Trump administration, they make them an ambassador. Right? You know, you want to get rid of the U.S. attorney in New Jersey so Trump's favorite parking garage lawyer can take that job instead. Okay, take the existing U.S. attorney to New Jersey and make that person ambassador to Namibia for some reason. Or Carrie Lake, the election denier from Arizona, who Trump put in charge of Voice of America, basically to shut down Voice of America, a judge ruled that Carrie Lake's whole reign there, her whole appointment there, was Basically illegal. The judge effectively nullified everything Kari Lake had tried to do. Think about that. Her job assignment at Voice of America was achieve total failure. But Kari Lake even failed at that. So what do you do if you fail out in the Trump administration? Well, they've just made her ambassador to Jamaica. Remember the auctioneer who had a side hustle advising people on a tax scam? Trump tried to put former Republican Congressman Billy Long in charge of the irs, where again, the job assignment for him was basically to dismantle the irs. But even when ordered to make that agency fail, Billy Long failed at that. And so then they named Billy Long ambassador to Iceland. Confirmed him today. Sorry, Iceland. I mean, it's never a good sign for any part of the government when it becomes the place you get dumped when you fail. But that's what the State Department under Marco Rubio has become. It's the garbage disposal of the Trump administration. But did you ever wonder why there's so many ambassador jobs open and available for these failures to take as their next job? Like, why didn't we already have an ambassador to Namibia or Jamaica or Iceland? We don't really have ambassadors to, to anywhere. The Wall Street Journal just reported that of the 195 total ambassador jobs that the State Department is supposed to fill all over the world, the number of ambassador jobs that are vacant is 115. There's 195 of these jobs. They have left 115 of them vacant because that's what the State Department is now. That's how much we care about diplomacy and our reputation around the world. The few ambassadorships they have filled. Right. If they're not for people who have failed out of other jobs, they've been make work jobs for discarded or otherwise embarrassing members of the Trump family, like Jared Kushner's dad who went to prison, who's now ambassador to France, or Donald Trump Jr. S girlfriend who got ambassador to Greece as a consolation prize when she and Junior broke up. I mean, the State Department is a junk drawer now. It is a, it's like a, it's one of those scrap yards where they smush down cars into little cubes. Under Marco Rubio, the State Department is where broken things go. I mean, it's, it's, it's yet another sign that the State Department is not much of a priority, that Marco Rubio is supposed to be working full time as Secretary of State there. But they have nevertheless also found found ways to keep him busy with other jobs, including being the national archivist and being the Head of USAID and being the National Security Advisor and being the Viceroy of Venezuela and all these other jobs they have been making up for him. While Trump's son in law Jared and the President's real estate friend Steve fly around the world instead of the Secretary of State during what sure looks like a we accept Venmo version of private for profit diplomacy. And now, on top of all of these layers of failure, they have just made another change. So that what remains of the CDC's capabilities in global health, what remains of CDC's capacity to do good stuff around the world to protect people from things like infectious disease outbreaks for programs like pepfar, for example, the HIV program started by George W. Bush that has saved more than 25 million lives. The remaining CDC capacity to do good global public health work, a very, very necessary thing that nobody else in the world can pick up because we have let it for so long. That is all. Now later this year going to be taken over by Marco Rubio State Department. They are going to further drastically reduce what remains of the CDC presence overseas to replace it with the Department of Failure, the Junkjour Department, Marco Rubio's Department of State. And this is happening right as we're learning that we've already cut our global health capabilities so much that we have just been blindsided by surprise. The biggest Ebola outbreak in more than a decade, which already appears to be rapidly expanding in multiple countries before anybody got any sort of start on trying to contain it. It's the kind of thing you might want to ask the Health and Human Services Department chief spokesman for a comment on. Except oh yeah, he just quit. So there's nobody in that job. He quit last week apparently in protest of Trump's demand that the FDA should approve fruit flavored nicotine vapes that appeal to children, make America healthy again. Right? Don't worry though. The President himself can handle a lot of this health stuff himself. He does appear really focused on it in a very specific way. Headline Trump bought stock in drugmaker as his government boosted its obesity drugs just before taking unprecedented action to boost the flagship obesity drug of the drug company, Eli Lilly. Trump bought hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock in Eli Lilly. This happened while he's president. Joe Biden didn't trade stocks while he was in office. Barack Obama didn't trade stocks while he was in office. But Trump is apparently trading stocks while he is in office. And since we got his financial disclosure about those stock trades late last week detailing this bizarre and incredibly energetic stock trading that the President has been doing while he has been president. Now, with each passing hour, we're getting more and more reporting coming out about how his stock buying as president tracks with things he's doing as president to boost the value of those stocks. I mean, it's just incredible. So in January, Trump buys hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock in Nvidia. Then a week later, his Commerce Department approves the sale of Nvidia trips to China. Also in January, Trump buys between 50,000 and $100,000 worth of stock in AMD, which is another chip maker. One week after he buys it, his Commerce Department approves AMD doing business in China as well. Following month, in February, Trump buys millions of dollars worth of stock in Dell. Dell computers, right? Dell Technologies. Nine days after he buys millions of dollars worth of stock in Dell, Trump veers off script in a speech in Georgia to tell the crowd, literally, quote, go out and buy a Dell computer. Then in March, he buys up a whole bunch of stock in a company called Thermo Fisher. Repeated purchases of Thermo Fisher. Judd Leggum at Popular Information reports that Trump repeatedly buys up Thermo Fisher stock. And then he goes and visits Thermo Fisher on a presidential visit. And on this presidential visit to Thermo Fisher, he praises the company repeatedly as an incredible company. He says as president that he wants other pharmaceutical companies to start working with Thermo Fisher. He buys their stock, and then he goes out and boosts the company as president. Judd Leggum also notes that that same day, March 11, same day as the Thermo Fisher visit, that same day, Trump bought hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock in Apple. And then that same day he bought the stock, he did another event where he singled out Apple and Apple CEO Tim Cook for praise. Apple, a great company. Then after that, Trump buys between 50 and $100,000 of micro. Okay, between 50 and $100,000 in micron stock. The very next day, he calls into the Fox News Channel and tells them, micron, it's one of the hottest companies. Then it's Palantir. CNBC reporting. Trump makes seven separate purchases of Palantir stock. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Palantir stock. Then he gets on Truth Social and praises Palantir. Palantir Technologies, great capabilities and equipment. He literally even posted the stock ticker abbreviation for Palantir right after he bought hundreds of thousands of dollars of their stock and got online to boost it, giving people the stock ticker abbreviation to make it easier for them to go buy some Palantir to boost the value of the stock he just bought before he said this online. I mean, this just appears to be just fantastically, kaleidoscopically corrupt. Congressman Jamie Raskin is here tonight to talk about it and also about the $1.8 billion that Trump says he's taking out of the US treasury so it can be doled out as like rewards or something to people who are Trump allies. Everybody's expecting that will include people who violently stormed the US Capitol on his behalf to try to keep him in power after he lost the election at the end of his first term. Jamie Raskin is coming up on that in just a moment. After thousands of people turned out in Selma, Alabama, and Montgomery, Alabama, this weekend to walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to rally and reflect on the Supreme Court effectively overturning the Civil Rights act of 1965. As Republicans in every state of the former Confederacy move to eliminate every or almost every black congressional district in the south. As Republicans consider not just new congressional maps, but now new state legislature maps that could eliminate nearly half the majority black legislative districts in the South. We're also going to be watching primaries tomorrow in states including Alabama and Kentucky and Georgia in particular. There's a sleeper race in Georgia that has not had a lot of attention but is really firing people up in Georgia. Georgia Democratic turnout in early voting is reportedly spiking ahead of Republican turnout in advance of that sleeper race and others in Georgia tomorrow. We're going to have more on that coming up for you tonight. Plus, tonight we're going to talk with the da the Hennepin County DA from Minnesota who has just brought assault charges under state law against a federal ICE agent. The ICE agent who fired gunshots through a door into an occupied house during Trump's attack on Minneapolis earlier this year. There's now a nationwide arrest warrant out for that ICE agent after the DA in Hennepin county brought charges against him. We're going to be talking with that DA that comes as Indiana this weekend saw protests and rallies in 28 different communities all across Indiana, all protesting ICE operations in Indiana and ICE holding people in an Indiana state prison that's called the Miami Correctional Facility. This weekend, people rallied in Roxbury, New Jersey, as well, where locals there are celebrating a settlement agreement last week in which ICE promised to not do any construction at the warehouse in Roxbury, New Jersey, that they bought to become a Trump prison camp. This is a very red part of New Jersey, but locals there have been fighting that thing tooth and n been from the very beginning and even with this new agreement that they are celebrating, this new agreement they have obtained to effectively stall out any prison construction there for months, if not years, locals in Roxbury, New Jersey, are still out there protesting, still pushing it, showing they are not going anywhere, they are not backing down until this thing is dead for good. In Social Circle, Georgia, that little town has now filed its own lawsuit against the Trump administration to stop a Trump prison camp from going in there. We've seen state lawsuits in New Jersey and in Michigan and in Arizona. Now we've got a city lawsuit from Social Circle, Georgia. These folks a few days ago in New York City protested loudly, hoping to embarrass and shame a parking garage company in New York City that has been leasing space to ICE just to park their vehicles. You see the signs and the banners there. ICE parks here and ICE parks kidnap vans here. Trying to shame that company out of doing it, trying to raise awareness about collaborating with ICE and the companies that do it. There's so much going on right now. There's so many developing stories we're following tonight. We got a lot to get to tonight. Gonna be a busy night.
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Well, the reviews are in, and they're pretty much unanimous. I mean, quote, one of the single most corrupt acts in American history. Quote, corruption unparalleled in American history. Quote, the most brazen theft and abuse of taxpayer dollars by any president in American history. Quote, the largest single act of grand larceny in American history. Five stars. Most corrupt thing ever. People are grasping for words to adequately describe the unprecedented nature and magnitude of what President Donald Trump is attempting to do right now. And this isn't even about the whole stocks fiasco we just talked about a couple minutes ago, which has also been revealed over the last few days, in which the president appears to have been buying stocks in companies right before he actively took steps as president to boost those companies multiple times, millions of dollars. I mean, that. That might be the biggest presidential corruption scandal in American history were it not for this other thing breaking at the same time about the same U.S. president. This. This 1.8 billion taxpayer dollars, $1.8 billion in taxpayer funds that Donald Trump is liberating from the US treasury to pay out to his friends and allies. And look, I know there's a lot of coverage today that has described this fund. First of all, they're describing it as $1.7 billion. That's $1.8 billion. But you're also seeing a lot of descriptions, a lot of headlines about this thing describing this fund as some kind of settlement of Trump's ridiculous lawsuit against the irs. With all due respect to my friends in the bleaker mainstream US Media, I gotta say that coverage and those headlines need to be refreshed. Because while Trump, you know, talked about his grievance against the IRS as a pretext to explain what he wanted to do here, the way this has worked out, it's basically totally unrelated. This pot of money, this $1.8 billion, is not actually meaningfully connected to Trump's supposed grievance against the irs. His lawsuit against the IRS is gone. Trump dropped it. So this $1.8 billion, this is not like a settlement that's being overseen by a judge or something. It is just something that Donald Trump told the government he control give him. And so now the government he controls is going to put almost $2 billion into a fund for him at the Justice Department. And Trump's attorney general will control the money. There is no judge involved. Neither the courts nor Congress is approving any settlement or overseeing any part of this. This is just Trump getting a bunch, a ton of taxpayer money to dole out. Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin today called it, quote, nothing but a racket designed to take taxpayer dollars out of the treasury and pour it into a huge slush fund for Trump at DOJ to hand out to his private militia of insurrectionists, rioters and white supremacists, including those who brutally beat police officers on January 6th. Joining us now is Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland. He's the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee and a constitutional law professor. Congressman Raskin, it's really nice to see you. Thank you for making time.
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B
Great to see you, Rachel.
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Is there anything else like this in US History?
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Nothing like it. It's thoroughly illegal and unconstitutional. Of course. Congress never voted to set up a $1.776 billion political slush fund for the President and we never would pass such a thing. So it's a complete violation of congressional appropriat. Moreover, even if Congress wanted to do such a thing, which we never would, it would be unconstitutional because the 14th amendment says that money cannot be spent out of the federal FISC for the purposes of repaying people for insurrection or rebellion against the United States. And look, but this is what, this is his MO now with all of these political slush funds, that's what the Board of Peace is. They took 1.5 billion from the State Department. That was money that was supposed to be for disaster relief. Then he sets up this Board of Peace. He gets a billion from the Qataris, a billion from the Saudis, and so on. We don't know anything about it. Is it public, private, profit? Not for profit. Registered in America, registered in Qatar. We don't know anything about it other than Donald Trump is chairman for life. He controls all that money. So that in itself is a violation of the foreign government emoluments clause, cuz all those foreign states and kings and princes are giving money. And the domestic emoluments clause, which says the President is limited to his salary in office and cannot derive any other money from the US treasury, but the whole administration now is just corruption, highway robbery every day.
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The way that you are describing it, including your reference to the emoluments clause and other means by which this seems pretty illegal even to somebody who's not a lawyer, makes me think that these things ought to be stoppable in court. I mean, who has standing to challenge the Board of Peace slash fund that you were just describing, or indeed this new one that they're trying to set up at doj.
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B
Well, it won't surprise you to learn that the Roberts Court has made it extremely difficult by erecting the standing doctrine, political question doctrine, sovereign immunity, you name it. Making it extremely difficult. In addition to the fact, of course, that they've said that the President is not subject to criminal prosecution for actual crimes he commits under the auspices of his office at this point. Everything must be tried in order to try to restore the rule of law in the country. We can't leave any potential tool just sitting on the table. We've got to try to attempt everything. But we must start by trying to get at least four or five Republican colleagues to come over to our side to say this is utterly lawless and authoritarian and it cannot stand. And a couple have made noises like that. But those are people who are in tough reelection races and they might be trying to send the signal they've got a problem with it. You've got a Republican running in your district who's saying, yes, this is problematic. Ask them, will they sign their name to co sponsor a bill to block this outrageous expropriation of the tax dollars of the people for completely political purposes to give to proud boys, oath keepers, rioters and insurrectionists, the people who beat up police officers. That's what this is about. It's about funding or pre. Funding Donald Trump's private militia.
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C
It strikes me that regardless of who they ultimately try to give this money to, it is interesting that they have chosen a vehicle at the Justice Department to use for this. And you've, I thought, I think, made some very good points about the fact that it's a real thing. And we should understand what the judgment fund is at the, at the doj. This is a fund that's created by Congress for a specific purpose. Right. It's not supposed to be a pool of money available to be stolen by anybody who feels like taking it. What is that fund for that Trump is essentially going to be plundering for this other project?
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B
Well, it used to be that if someone successfully sued the federal government, that Congress had to vote to appropriate money to pay for the damages to pay for their verdict. And then Congress said, we're spending half of our time just on litigation against the federal government. We'll turn it over to the Department of Justice. We'll set up this ongoing appropriation that's open, called the judgment fund. And that is for actual judgments, verdicts, damages levied by a court against the United States or an honest, good faith settlement of claims that would have Won in court. Okay. And of course, like everything else, we've never had a problem with this up until Donald Trump because he sees a pot of money and the dollar signs go off in his eyes, and he sees it as a slush fund. And so now they want to convert this fund that has always been used honestly in Democratic and Republican administrations for the settlement of lawsuits or just the payment of verdicts to create this anti weaponization fund, which is the most Orwellian title you can imagine. It's all about weaponizing the tax dollars of the American people to support Donald Trump's private militia. If these people had real viable causes of action against anybody, they would go to federal court. And the ones who have gone to federal court have lost their cases overwhelmingly. And you can't find a single case of somebody whose criminal conviction was reversed on appeal after they assaulted a police officer on January 6th or were convicted for seditious conspiracy, which means conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States. If they had a real valid cause of action, they'd be in court getting it. But of course, Trump wants to take it out of the courts and put it under this little committee of mysterious appointees, and he has, who are gonna be exclusively responsible to him. Again, it's just a complete ripoff of the taxpayers, and everybody can see what's going on.
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C
It's such a good point that if there was any sort of legitimate case that somebody had been victimized by some wrongdoing of the government, there are means by which that gets adjudicated. Testable, constitutional means, transparent means that we have ways of doing that. This is not. This is not the way that. Not the way that you do it. Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, you are always very welcome here on this show anytime, but particularly when we are dealing with something of this magnitude with this many constitutional implications. Nobody better to be here but you. Thank you, sir.
- [35:03]
B
Thank you, Rachel.
- [35:05]
C
All right, we got much more news ahead tonight. Stay with us.
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- [36:27]
C
so the initial Homeland Security Department press release said an ICE officer had feared for his life. And because he feared for his life, he fired a defensive shot from his service weapon. That story very quickly fell apart. Traffic camera video released by the city of Minneapolis very quickly debunked that assertion from Homeland Security. This was back in January, in the middle of the federal attack on the city of Minneapolis. This was a week after an ICE officer fatally shot Renee Nicole Good. It was 10 days before a Customs and Border Patrol a group of Customs and Border Patrol officers shot Alex Preddy and killed him. So this was between the Renee Goode and Alex Preddy shootings. An ICE agent in Minneapolis shot yet another man, and Homeland Security initially said they were conducting a targeted traffic stop to apprehend a guy, and that guy sped away from the scene. He led officers to his home where he crashed his car and tried to run inside. Homeland Security said that the man and multiple others then violently assaulted an ICE officer using a snow shovel and a broom handle. And then, only then, fearing for his life, being attacked with multiple shovels and tools, did the ICE officer involved fire his defensive shot. Well, in the traffic camera video, you can see the man in question standing outside his home. He has a snow shovel in his hand right before the car chase in question ends with a crash outside his apartment. He wasn't actually even the person ICE had been chasing in their supposedly targeted operation. But the video also clearly showed the man put the snow shovel down before There goes the shovel. Where's the shovel? Oh, there it is. The video shows him putting the snow shovel down before ice ever arrives. And it lays there in the snow. He never picks it back up. The man ICE actually had been chasing the man's roommate. Did crash his car, did try to run into their apartment, but he slipped, and the ICE agent following him jumped on top of him. Then for approximately 12 seconds, the man can be seen trying to separate his roommate from the ICE agent. But at no point do you see the ICE agent get hit with anything. And it's only after the guy and his roommate have run away and they are inside their house does the ICE agent shoot. The ICE agent shoots through the door. The bullet passes through the front door into one of the man's leg, and ultimately the bullet lodges itself in the wall of a child's bedroom. ICE agent shot into an inhabited apartment. Now, despite the circumstances surrounding this incident, the federal government tried to charge the victims of that shooting with felonies for the supposed snow shovel assault. That didn't happen. They did drop the charges when their story began to unravel. At that point, local authorities in Minnesota realized they were going to have to seek justice themselves. Well, today, the county attorney in Hennepin County, Minnesota, Mary Moriarty, charged, filed charges against the ICE agent in question. Charged him with four counts of second degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime, meaning claiming that the guys who they were shooting at was actually committing crimes against them. In a statement, ICE officials said that federal prosecutors were investigating the ICE agents alleged false statements, but called the state prosecution, quote, unlawful and nothing more than a political stunt. Joining us now is Hennepin county attorney Mary Moriarty. Ms. Moriarty, thank you very much for being with us tonight. I appreciate you being here.
- [40:05]
D
Thank you for inviting me to be with you.
- [40:09]
C
Let me ask you, first of all, if I explained all that. All right? And if you could also tell us the status of the victim here. Julio Cesar Souza Sellis. This is the man who was shot in the leg by ice. We understand that he was not grievously wounded by this, but what can you tell us about his condition? And feel free to correct anything that I got wrong in terms of the way I explain this. Sure.
- [40:34]
D
Mr. Sosa Solis is actually the man standing there in the front lawn or the front yard who was holding the shovel, who tossed it aside when he and his friend ran into the house. As you said, the ICE agent shot through the door and hit him in the thigh. Fortunately, it was a kind of a flesh wound that went through and through. But what was shocking, as you said, is that that bullet traveled through a closet and lodged in the wall of a child's bedroom. So Mr. Sosa Solis went to the hospital. He received treatment. He's fine.
- [41:11]
C
In addition to filing charges today, you issued an arrest warrant, a nationwide arrest warrant for the ICE officer in question, because he's now facing these very serious charges from your office. How does that work with the federal government, presumably working at crosscurrent with you here? How do you expect that this is going to proceed in the days ahead with this warrant out for his arrest?
- [41:39]
D
So there are a couple of different options there any time we issue a warrant, and we would have in this case if it was not an ICE agent as well, because of the serious nature of the charges. But this ICE agent has a choice. He can turn himself in and make what's called a first appearance in state court, and that would start the process, or he can be arrested by law enforcement, local law enforcement, and go through what's called an extradition process. That simply means we in the state of Minnesota are asking the state that he is arrested in to hold him so that we can come and get him and bring him back here to face these charges.
- [42:21]
C
What do you make of the statement that I just read part of from the Homeland Security Department, officials at ICE saying that there is a federal investigation into this agent, and they described these charges that you brought today as a political stunt? What do you make of their investigation? What do you make of their charges against what you and your office have done today?
- [42:44]
D
It's pretty senseless, as people may recall. Todd Lyon, head of ICE, actually said that two ICE agents lied under oath, and one of them was Mr. Castro. The ChargersThe very serious charges that they did lodge against both of these gentlemen were dismissed with prejudice, which means they cannot be refiled again because of their lies. So here you had the federal government acknowledging that they charged these two men wrongfully and that their own ICE agents lied. Yet when we charge these same ICE agents, they claim it's some kind of political stunt. The other thing about it is we certainly would hope that they were doing an investigation. I don't know how long it takes to do an investigation about the fact that those agents lied, since Todd Lyon actually concluded that a while ago. And so their statement makes no sense whatsoever. And we certainly hope that they will charge in federal court and hold this person accountable, the same way we would hope that they would do a thorough investigation in Renee Good and Alex Preddy's cases. And if they're not going to do that, the least that they can do is stop obstructing our ability to do those investigations and give us their evidence.
- [44:02]
C
Mary Moriarty, Hennepin County, Minnesota attorney having brought these charges today against this ICE agent who fired through a door into an inhabited building, we're really interested in this case. Please keep us surprised. As this proceeds, I imagine there's going to be some twists and turns. We'd love to have you back to talk about it again.
- [44:22]
D
Thank you so much.
- [44:23]
C
All right. Thank you. We'll be right back. Stay with us. So, as you know, tomorrow's election day in several states. Lots of important races to watch. But there's two specific races I want to put on your radar that haven't had as much attention as they could have. And they might be really important. They're both in Georgia. It's two state supreme court races. And I still think it is crazy that we elect judges anywhere, but we do. And because of the way Georgia's judicial elections work, these races tomorrow aren't primaries. This is it. Whoever wins these races tomorrow is going to end up on the Georgia Supreme Court. Now, Georgia Supreme Court is technically nonpartisan, but right now that court is dominated by conservatives who were appointed by Republican governors. Two of those Republican appointees are up for reelection tomorrow. And no sitting Georgia Supreme Court justice has lost a reelection challenge in over a century. But tomorrow, there are two candidates who are making a really strong effort to try to do just that. Their names are Miracle Rankin and Jen Jordan. They both have gotten big endorsements from people like former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Kamala Harris. If, if those two challengers win, it would not only change the composition of the Georgia State Supreme Court, which is a huge deal in its own right, but it would also, I think, change the way Georgia voters think about Supreme Court elections going forward. It would also be a big sign of Democratic enthusiasm in a really important state where both the governorship and the U.S. senate are up for grabs this year in terms of early voting. Already more than a million people have voted early in Georgia. Democrats have outpaced Republicans by about 15% of the votes cast. I'll say that again. Democrats have outpaced Republicans by 15% of the votes cast in early voting already. It's going to be fascinating to watch this one. Polls close 7:00pm Eastern Time tomorrow in Georgia. Watch this space. All right, that's going to do it for me tonight.
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Tennessee 2012.