Updated
Summary
On a 53 to 47 vote with all Democrats and three Republicans voting aye, Ketanji Brown Jackson is now set to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer later this year. United Nations suspended Russia from its seat in the Human Rights Council by an overwhelming margin. Pre-emptive action by the United States in recent weeks has apparently contributed to the stifling of Russian cyberwar efforts. Eric Boehlert passed away this week at the age of 56 when his bike collided with the train in his hometown of Montclair, New Jersey.
Transcript
KETANJI BROWN JACKSON, NOMINEE, SUPREME COURT: They taught me perseverance. They taught me that anything is possible in this great country.
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JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: That`s tonight`s “REIDOUT.” ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES starts now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voiceover): Tonight on ALL IN.
KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The Ayes are 53, the Nays are 47. And this nomination is confirmed.
HAYES: History in the Senate where Ketanji Brown Jackson is finally confirmed. Tonight, my exclusive guest, Senator Cory Booker.
SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ): Rise, Sister Jackson. Rise, Judge Jackson, all the way to the highest court in the land.
HAYES: Then, as the Kremlin finally admits devastating losses, Timothy Snyder on whether a complete defeat of the Russian military is the only way out of this conflict.
Plus, what we`re learning from the announcement, the U.S. secretly neutralized a global Russian cyberattack. And what we know about the Manhattan DA`s new statement about the ongoing criminal investigation of Donald Trump? When ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES (on camera): Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. In our country`s nearly 250 year-long history, there have been 115 Supreme Court justices, not that many. 108 of them have been white men. Today, the United States Senate made history by confirming the first black woman to sit on the Supreme Court. The room erupted in ecstatic applause when Vice President Kamala Harris, the first Black woman in that position, announced the results of the bipartisan vote.
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HARRIS: The Ayes are 53, the Nays are 47, and this nomination is confirmed.
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HAYES: It`s quite a scene there on the floor. The Democrats cheering, other people in the gallery there, the Republicans streaming out. Mitt Romney who voted for Ketanji Brown Jackson stayed and clapped as well. Now, Judge Jackson`s ascension to the Supreme Court has been a long time coming.
You know, it`s 55 years ago in 1967 that President Lyndon Johnson nominated the first Black justice to the court, the legendary Thurgood Marshall, and it is difficult to overstate how big a deal that was.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Historians will note this hour at the White House. In a Rose Garden ceremony, a 58-year-old great-grandson of a slave is nominated by President Johnson to be a Supreme Court Justice. He is Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall, acknowledged the best known Negro lawyer of the century. The President also calls his nominee best qualified.
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HAYES: The best-known lead Negro lawyer of the century. Justice Marshall was eminently qualified to serve. Of course, in 1940, he successfully argued his very first case before the Supreme Court at just 32 years old, a landmark case on police coercing confessions from criminal suspects.
He then became the founder and first executive director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, before President John F. Kennedy appointed him to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1961. In 1965, President Johnson chose Marshall to be a Solicitor General, the lawyer who represents the federal government before the Supreme Court, before nominating Marshall to the court itself two years later.
But despite these obvious manifest qualifications, I mean truly one of the greatest lawyers on the planet, Marshall faced transparently racist attacks from Southern senators who did not want to see a Black man on the court. Many of them were particularly incensed by the role Marshall played with the NAACP in the Brown versus Board of Education case which ended legalized school segregation.
Segregation Senators hoped to trip Marshall in a way that would make him unpalatable to the rest of the Senate. He faced questions that tried to paint him as soft on crime, playing into insidious racist tropes tying Black Americans to criminality.
And Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, one of the most notorious racists and segregationists in the history of the U.S. Congress, played the part of racist quiz show host asking Marshall obscure legal trivia questions like, do you know who drafted the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and “Under what legal theories was the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 supported by its proponents?”
Ultimately, Thurgood Marshall was confirmed on a bipartisan basis 69 to 11. The racist lost. Now, quite a bit, the country has changed in the time between Thurgood Marshall and Ketanji Brown Jackson or at least you`d like think it has. Jackson thought face some of the very same soft-on-crime smears that their predecessors lobbed against Justice Marshall.
[20:05:02]
In fact, journalist John Harwood made a pretty striking point. When Justice Marshall is up for vote, 16 of the 22 senators in 11 states of the Old Confederacy voted no or did not vote. During Judge Jackson`s final vote today, 18 of the 22 voted no.
In the end, though, just as with Justice Marshall, the opposition lost. Jackson was confirmed by a bipartisan vote. And at the close of those hearings for Judge Jackson, and after multiple 12-hour days of bad-faith attacks on the right, Democratic Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey took the opportunity to pay tribute to the historic nomination.
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BOOKER: You faced insults here that were shocking to me. Well, actually not shocking. But you are here because of that kind of love. And nobody`s taken this away from me. So, you got five more folk to go through, five more of us. And then you can sit back and let us have all the debates.
So, I`m going to tell you, it`s going to be a well-charted Senate floor because it`s not going to stop. They`re going to accuse you of this and that. Heck, in honor of your — the person who shares your birthday, you might be called the communist. But don`t worry, my sister. Don`t worry, God has got you. And how do I know that? Because you`re here. And I know what it`s taken for you to sit in that seat.
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HAYES: Senator Cory Booker is a Democrat from New Jersey. As you just heard, he questioned Judge Jackson during the hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. And of course, he voted to confirm her today.
Senator, I have heard many people quote after that exchange, that I`m not letting anyone steal my joy line, which has become, I think, a sort of mantra in very, very stressful and often very dark times. How are you feeling today?
BOOKER: Look, I feel overjoyed. So, nobody`s told the joy, but look, you have to understand, there`s a lot of Americans who carry private pain and hurt from experiences in their lives where they were disregarded, demeaned, degraded. I think a lot of people connected with this incredible judge, now justice, who endured outrageous insults in some of her questioning, even though she was more than qualified not only to be in the room, perhaps more than qualified to many people in the room.
And I just — I just — today is a day of healing for a lot of people. Today is the day of triumph for a lot of folks. And it`s definitely a day of celebration to see this glass ceiling shattered in what is a Jackie Robinson moment for America.
HAYES: You know, I think it became clear — I don`t think there was a ton of suspense about whether she would get all 50 votes on the Democratic caucus, particularly Manchin came out and said so, but I think it wasn`t — there wasn`t a lot of fear about that. There was I thought genuine suspense about whether she would get any Republican votes. And she did get three Republican votes.
It struck me as quite significant that she did, that this was a bipartisan vote. What do you think? Were you surprised by that? Are you grateful for those votes?
BOOKER: I`m deeply grateful. And I have to say, you know, Mitt Romney voted against her in — for her Circuit Court nomination. And so, he really had to step out to do this. And I thanked him on the floor after the final tally was said.
And, you know, again, she is a person not only that got bipartisan support and dime of deep and tribalism, or any Republican that steps across the line faces fierce backlash, but she`s also somebody that got to that room with the support of the largest police union in the country, that represents the majority of police officers.
You had conservatives coming out not just to endorse her. But even, and I read from a conservative columnist that said, I`m not — I wouldn`t support her, but the attacks on her are demagoguery and wrong. So, here`s a person that just is so qualified. I mean, that`s the thing about her. She`s so extraordinary. Even during the hearings, and maybe I just notice, it was hard for me not to be overwhelmed with emotion and joy, just watching her sit there before all of us and show us the truth of who she was.
HAYES: Yes, you know, I said this before and I`ll say it again which is that, you know, the Venn Diagram of people that are very smart, incredibly capable and competent and people who are good at talking and explaining things, like, there`s lots of people who aren`t that good at talking and are super competent. There`s some people who are super incompetent and are good at talking. Those ones are dangerous.
But I was — it was very striking to me what a formidable and charismatic presence she was just at that — at that level at the hearings.
BOOKER: Yes, Chris, I`m telling you, behind closed doors, when she met with individual senators, I had more than one Republican come up to me and say, wow, she resonates. You connect with her. She is a gifted soul. And I think that people knew that. And those that came at her in a foul way, and again, it wasn`t the majority of Republicans, it was a handful, those folks really had to go deep into the sore to ignore the truth of who was before them.
[20:10:21]
HAYES: The reason that we`re here today, there`s a bunch of things that happen that produce this outcome, the come from behind, upset, improbable victories in Georgia being among them to win those two Senate seats to secure a majority. But want to play you what then-Candidate Joe Biden said back in February 2020 about his peace pledge. He made a very transparent promise about if he`s elected, the next Supreme Court vacancy. Take a listen.
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JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And the fact is what we should be doing and we talked about the Supreme Court, I`m looking forward to making sure there`s a Black woman on the Supreme Court to make sure that in fact they get a representation. It`s not a joke. It`s not a joke. I pushed very hard for that.
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HAYES: Not a joke, Senator. Not a joke, literally, seriously. And he — and he did it. And there was a hue and cry raised about this, right, at the outset, which I think that kind of went away when the actual nominee came. But what do you think about the arc of that pledge to delivering on it to having this day?
BOOKER: Well, the pledge to be said simply this. There have been not just now but generations of Black women that were more than qualified to be on that court, probably more qualified than some people that got on that court. But for generations, they saw a sign that you need not apply, you will not be considered.
But this was a president acknowledging we have a depth of talent in many sectors. And I`m going to change history here and reach deep into the well of talent of Black women and affirm the truth, which he did, he succeeded, in showing America about how spectacular of talent we have in the Black community, the Black — amongst Black women.
And so, it was a great moment on a campaign a la Ronald Reagan who did that by announcing he would do a woman on a — during a campaign, but even more so that Biden followed through on it and made such a transcendent selection.
HAYES: I don`t want — I don`t want to steal your joy, but I do want to end on this question. She will — this summer, she will ascend to Justice at the end of this term. She will be in a minority of six to three in terms of the nominees on the court. We don`t know what will happen at any given outcome.
But there`s widespread anticipation that this term could be really brutal. I mean, we could see the overturning of Roe. You sit on the Judiciary Committee. What is your message to progressives, to Democrats about how to think about this court as we prepare for a series of decisions that could have truly, truly ghastly impacts on people`s lives?
BOOKER: Well, elections have consequences. And I`ve watched over the years how the extreme right has invested, rallied, pushed, and fought to make sure their agenda now is before America. And it doesn`t represent the majority of America. Heck, five of the Supreme Court justices on the Supreme Court were nominated by a president that did not win the majority.
And it should be a lesson to us if elections matter, fundamental rights, like we see these laws being passed in states where women who are survivors of rape and incest, they`re bounties out on them if they get — if they go to get an abortion.
And so, we have to dig in now more, be prepared for what`s to come. But understand that the next election and the one after that, and the one after that, are building blocks to who`s going to have the majority of the court and years ahead. The far-right has been very good at changing the court. Even Republican nominees now are no longer the kind of moderate justices of the past. Now, you have people trying out by going as far to the right as they can on a lot of these areas of jurisprudence.
So I hope every progressive understands what`s at stake and what we`re staring at right now as a result of us losing narrowly a lot of elections.
HAYES: Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, thank you for making some time for us tonight.
BOOKER: Thank you for having me.
HAYES: Coming up, Manhattan`s district attorney says despite what you may have heard, his criminal investigation into Donald Trump is still very much active. We`ll talk about the significance of that announcement.
Plus, Putin`s top spokesman admits for the first time that Russia has had significant troop losses in Ukraine. What does that mean for the future of the conflict going forward? That`s next.
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HAYES: It`s not even been a week since we first learned about Russia`s apparent war crimes in Bucha, Ukraine, and the country is still grappling with the aftermath of it. Earlier today, United Nations suspended Russia from its seat in the Human Rights Council by an overwhelming margin. It is the first time a permanent member of the Security Council has ever been removed from a major U.N. body, something that Moscow actively lobbied against going as far as warning smaller countries that anything short of a vote of support will be viewed as a betrayal.
And this banishment comes as even Russian President Vladimir Putin`s spokesman conceded in an interview with Sky News that things are not going well for their military.
[20:20:02]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You`ve lost thousands of troops. You`ve lost six generals, hundreds of tanks and other equipment. It`s a humiliation really, isn`t it?
DMITRY PESKOV, PRESS SECRETARY FOR VLADIMIR PUTIN: No, no. It`s a real understanding of what is going on.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But what is wrong about what I`ve just said?
PESKOV: Well, nearly everything. Nearly everything.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, you`ve lost thousands of troops. Yes, let`s go through it. You`ve lost thousands of troops. How many troops have you lost?
PESKOV: We have — we have significant losses of troops and it`s a huge tragedy for us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Significant losses of troops, a huge tragedy for us. That`s the first time the Russian government has done anything to admit their military is struggling, that they have lost significant numbers of troops. It raises the question, is a complete Russian military defeat the only way out of this conflict?
Timothy Snyder is the Levin Professor of History at Yale University, permanent fellow of the Institute of Humane Sciences in Vienna, author of eight books, including On Tyranny:” Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, and The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, and America. And he joins me now.
And Professor Schneider, I had you on my podcast this week, and you said something that has stuck with me since you said it. In fact, I relistened because of something you said, which is that your belief is that outright military defeat of Russia by Ukrainian forces, essentially aided by the West, is the only actual way out of this conflict and some kind of enduring peace. Explain to me why you think that`s the case.
TIMOTHY SNYDER, LEVIN PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, YALE UNIVERSITY: I think — I think it`s pretty simple logically. If Russia wins the second stage of the war in the Donbass, then they`re going to keep going. If there`s some kind of stagnation, that`s a continuation of the war. The only way for this to end is for Putin to feel subjectively that his position is threatened. And the only way for him to feel that subjectively is for Russia to be defeated on the battlefield.
I think the problem that we have is that we`re not used to winning. We don`t expect the Ukrainians to win. We`re not used to winning. But whether we like — you know whether we`re used to it or not, it`s the only way to end this war. If you want peace, you want a victory, and you want that victory to be just as quick as it can possibly be.
HAYES: What flows from that logically? I mean, we — so I think everyone agrees that we are in a second phase of the war. We`ve seen Russian troops pull back from Kyiv. They were clearly attempting to encircle it, to take it. We`ll talk about the atrocities left in their wake that are being documented in a second, but things have shifted to the east.
And they`re clearly very focused on essentially this sort of crescent of the country in the Donbass where there`s been fighting since 2014, all the way down to Crimea, which they seized in the same year. What should the West be doing?
SNYDER: Well, what flows from that is that we need to have a paradigm shift away from talking about things like stagnation and escalation, and be thinking in terms of ending the war and winning it. We`re looking at a second phase of this war, as you say. I think the Russian offense will probably start in about 48 hours. I believe that Mr. Putin is sincere when he talks about wanting to win by May the ninth, which means that there`s a critical month ahead of us.
What logically flows is that the West should be sending as many arms and all kinds of assistance just as quickly as it can in the hope that this can be brought to an end. I mean, that`s the logical conclusion from all of this. The Donbass is a kind of tragedy. I mean, the Russians are now trying to take cities which they were also trying to take in 2014.
The tragedy of all this is that nobody in Moscow actually cares at all about the Donbass and there are very few Russians who care at all about the Donbass. But they`re fighting for it because they think they have to win some kind of victory. And the only way for this to end is for them not to win that victory.
HAYES: You wrote a remarkable book called Bloodlands which is about precisely this part of Europe, Ukraine and the area sort of sandwiched particularly in World War Two between Hitler on one side and Stalin on the other, and the atrocities that were committed there by each of those individuals.
What do you — what is your reaction as a historian of this area when you see and read the accounts of what has transpired in places like Bucha, and Borodyanka, and other places outside Kyiv?
SNYDER: Well, number one, I mean, it`s just — it`s very obvious, but I can`t help but point out that the Russians seem to have forgotten that when they won the Second World War, the Ukrainians who are on their side. I mean, that has strategic implications but also has moral implications.
This Russian business of calling the Ukrainians Nazis and fascists as the Russian army is perpetrating exactly the kinds of policies that we remember Nazism and fascism for is not — it`s not just perverse, it`s like — it`s like the second version of the crime itself.
But the thing that I`d like to add about this is that the Bloodlands is essentially a history of how Ukraine was colonized by, you know, late European colonial projects, The Soviet — the Soviet project which led to starvation and famine, the Nazi project which led to millions of deaths in Ukraine, and it was one of the contract contributors to the Holocaust.
You said earlier that Russians withdrew, which is true. But I think what`s special about 2022 amidst all of this horror, is that the Ukrainians have won the battle for Kyiv. I mean, they`ve asserted themselves as existing, as a nation and a state that does things that other people didn`t expect Russians and Americans alike. And in that way, we`re in a new historical epic, and we`re out of the epic that I described in Bloodlands.
[20:25:45]
HAYES: So, you think — I mean, this I think is very important that we are watching something happen here. Again, being determined by the outcomes on the battlefield, which I think is — you`re right, there`s a sort of discomfort with that — it coming down to who is better at killing whom, essentially, in the liberal imagination, surely, that something — some kind of new epoch in this part of the world is being birthed here on the battlefield in Ukraine.
SNYDER: Yes. I mean, you know, the American Left specializes in being right and losing, and the American right specializes in being wrong and winning. And it`s important every once in a while to be right and to win. And, you know, just think about the converse. Think what happens if the Ukrainians lose. Think what happens if they`ve never fought. You know, our democracy and democracies around the world will be rocking on their heels right now.
So, it`s not just about Ukraine, in Russia, it`s also about the rest of us. We all of us need for Ukraine to win on the battlefield. And I agree with you. I wish it were some other kind of contest. But here we are, this is the way things are, and what we need to have happen is for there to be a victory so this war, which we hate, can end.
HAYES: You know, there`s a very glib sports cliche, right? That`s why they play the game when we used to determine the fact that unexpected things sometimes happen. Obviously, the stakes here are orders of magnitude larger and pressing in people`s lives.
But there is a universe in which Zelenskyy and his retinue (INAUDIBLE), and the government collapses. And people have no comp — I mean, there`s a world in which it doesn`t go this way. And Russia is essentially occupying Ukraine as a colonized power now, and we`re looking at a totally different set of circumstances that hasn`t happened because of the actions they`ve taken there. And I think it`s important to keep focused on that.
Timothy Snyder, thank you very much.
As I mentioned before, we also spoke for this week`s episode of why is this happening. And I got to say, it was a really informative conversation. It changed a lot of the way I`m thinking about the conflict. I think you could check it out wherever you get your podcasts.
Still to come, as New York`s Attorney General says Donald Trump should be held in contempt. Manhattan`s district attorney says his office is exploring new evidence in its own criminal investigation.
Plus, remember when the U.S. government was out there warning of an imminent Russian cyberattack? Tonight, new reporting on the secret mission that appears to have disrupted that block, next.
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[20:30:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAKE SULLIVAN, U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: We`ve been warning for weeks and months, both publicly and privately, that cyberattacks could be part of a broad-based Russian effort to escalate in Ukraine. We`ve been working closely with Ukrainians to harden their defenses. And we will continue to do so in the days ahead.
We`re also coordinating with the private sector, companies like Microsoft, both in Ukraine and here in the United States in case there are potential cyberattacks that unfold in the coming months here. Of course, it`s possible that Russia could conduct a series of cyberattacks. That`s part of their playbook. They`ve done it in the past and other contexts.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: One of the most formidable threats in the Russian arsenal of war and chaos-making has so far not been a major factor. We`re learning now that pre-emptive action by the United States in recent weeks has apparently contributed to the stifling of Russian cyber war efforts.
Yesterday, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the Department of Justice had secretly neutralized malware from networks around the world before Russia could strike. The malware would have, “enabled the Russians to create botnets or networks of private computers that are infected with malicious software and controlled by the GRU, the intelligence arm of the Russian military.”
The New York Times are now reporting the “Secret court orders allow the FBI to go into domestic corporate networks and remove the malware, sometimes without the company`s knowledge.”
Kate Conger is a technology reporter for New York Times and one of the reporters on that story. She has been reporting on Russian cyber capabilities as well as the Biden administration`s response. And she joins me now.
You know, Kate, for your story published yesterday and you got the much sought after in the Times building push alert on the phone for the peace. I know that`s like — that`s like the new a one, right? When you`re the story there, you get the push alert. And I saw it and it said, well, you know, the U.S. took out this mower and I`m like, oh, was it just hanging around and they knew it was there and then they pressed the button? Like, explained to me what this was and how the U.S. was able to defuse it.
KATE CONGER, TECHNOLOGY REPORTER: So, you`re actually right. They didn`t know that it was there. And the U.S. government warned in February. They said, hey, we`re seeing this malware. It`s infecting a lot of private computer networks. Please do something to remove this malware from your machines if you notice that you have it.
And they said that they took this extra step of going into remove it themselves because the majority of companies that were infected by this malware had not taken the remediation steps to stop it.
[20:35:00]
HAYES: Maybe this is a dumb question but I`ll ask anyway. Like, how do they have eyes on that, right? Like, there`s all these companies out there, they`ve all got servers, how does the government know which malware is where and which companies have it and haven`t addressed it?
CONGER: Right. So, they`re — these Russian hacking groups are tracked very, very carefully by the government and by cybersecurity researchers. And so, a lot of intelligence is gathered about what they`re doing and where they are trying to attack next.
And so in this case, the government was able to track where this malware had been installed, and go in and remove it. And what they`re taking down is really just the command and control infrastructure of the malware, not every single place where the malware was infected. These botnets can be very large. And so, what the government did, in this case, is just kind of cut off the malware at the very top.
HAYES: So, the fear here is that this malware essentially would give — make sure that you get your earpiece in there. The fear here was —
CONGER: Yes, sorry.
HAYES: No, all good. All good The malware would essentially give the GRU- like access to the back ends of these — of the cyber infrastructure of these corporations. Was that — was that the idea?
CONGER: Right. Well, so, because Russia didn`t actually get a chance to use this malware before the botnet was taken down, we don`t know exactly what their intent may have been. It`s possible that they could have used this to launch a large-scale attack and just send malicious traffic to websites and knock them offline. It`s also possible that they could have used this to, you know, go into some of these companies and exfiltrate data.
HAYES: You write about in the piece about these court orders that allowed them to essentially go into the companies and kind of do it for them that had not addressed the problem. Is that — do we know? Is that something that`s been used a lot? Was this a first time for that? What the deal with that?
CONGER: No, the FBI has done this before. In fact, they did it in 2018 to remove another malware that was installed, the very similar way, similar threat actor. And they took the same steps in 2018 as well to remove that.
HAYES: How —
CONGER: I`m so sorry. I`m losing you once again here.
HAYES: No, it`s OK. It`s all good. I think you got — I think you have now. Do you have me now?
CONGER: Say that one more time.
HAYES: I think you have now. So, final question for you. I think in the broader sense, it feels like hopefully, and I don`t want to jinx anything, that this sort of cyberattack threat is a dog that has not barked in this particular conflict. And I wonder as someone who`s been reporting on this piece for a while, like what your assessment is of the accuracy of that and why it is ultimately.
CONGER: So, I actually don`t think that`s quite true. I think we have had a lot of warnings about seeing large scale attacks in Ukraine. And some of the fears that the administration had have not come true, right? We haven`t seen the power grid be taken down for instance.
But there have been targeted and steady attacks on communications infrastructure in Ukraine. And you know, the fear is that those attacks would come to the United States as well. So, I think we are seeing some of the types of attacks that we would expect to see from Russia in this circumstance.
HAYES: All right, Kate Conger at the New York Times, I`ve been really learning a lot from your reporting. So, thank you for joining us tonight. I appreciate it.
CONGER: Thank you so much.
HAYES: After a top Manhattan prosecutor quit saying the district attorney decided not to prosecute Donald Trump, today, his old boss pushed back saying the investigation is still in progress. That`s next.
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[20:40:00]
ERIC BOEHLERT, MEDIA CRITIC: Fox News is a closed society. They do not have anyone on Fox who disagrees with them. None of these people venture into the public square to have actual debates. So, they lie without consequence and they`ve done it for years. And it`s just gotten more and more extreme.
They`re absolutely boxed in. But they don`t care, right? They know they can lie to their viewers. Their viewers expect to be lied to. And so, this is their cushion that they`ve always had.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: That was media critic Eric Boehlert doing what he did best during his last appearance on this very show just a few months ago. Eric Boehlert had an incredible career, coming to prominence at a really crucial time in the development of progressive media. He began monitoring right-wing misinformation during the George W. Bush years, especially after 9/11 and the run-up to the Iraq War.
That was when the virulence and destructive force of Fox News was married to a larger insanely uncritical media apparatus all marching us towards a horrible war. And at the beginning, it felt like there was no pushback. But over time, a new media ecosystem grew up on the blogosphere, as it was called this time, on this network in this hour, and with the founding of the nonprofit group, Media Matters, all working to try to rebalance the scales away from that lockstep monoculture.
And one of the most prominent people to come out of that world was Eric, Eric Boehlert, writing first for Salon, and then for Media Matters. Boehlert`s method began simply by just watching Fox News and talking about what he saw. These are some of those early pieces rebuking Fox for its dishonest coverage in close ties to the Bush White House.
And bowler regularly shared his pressing insights as he foresaw much of what we have seen come from the right in recent years.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BOEHLERT: This is a rush to the gutter from the right 48 hours after, you know, the Supreme Court nominee and we`re talking about if she`s a racist or not based on a sentence from a speech eight years ago. This is really pathetic.
[20:45:11]
If you think back during inauguration week, Rush Limbaugh made headlines because he said he hoped Barack Obama failed. And looking back that is now incredibly benign.
Andrew Breitbart, Fox News, they pretend they`re sort of creating the people`s journalism. They don`t even know what it is. They have no respect for it. They don`t follow any of the standards or guidelines.
Vigilante and malicious style rhetoric has become a cornerstone of the movement and certainly of conservative media. And there are consequences and responsibilities when you can`t — when you sort of broadcast that hate 24/7.
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HAYES: After spending more than a decade at Media Matters, Eric Boehlert`s latest project was an independent newsletter he launched called Press Run where he continued to share his observations into the way that both the right-wing media ecosystem and the mainstream media work.
We often benefited from his thoughts and expertise when he joined us on this show. And I, along with so many others were just shocked, gutted, and saddened to learn that he passed away this week at the age of 56 when his bike collided with the train in his hometown of Montclair, New Jersey.
The tributes have poured in including from former Daily Show Host Jon Stewart, who said he greatly admired his passion and tenacity. And Hillary Clinton who wrote that she will miss his critical work to counteract misinformation and media bias. What a loss.
In addition to his insightful work, Eric Boehlert was also just an unfailingly kind, gentle, sweet person but loved, beloved by those who work with them those who admired his work, and of course, most of all, by his wife and two children he leaves behind. I learned a lot from him, and he is going to be deeply, deeply missed.
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[20:50:00]
HAYES: There are two — well, at least two ongoing investigations on Donald Trump`s business practices just in the state of New York. First is that state civil case where today Attorney General Letitia James said she would seek to hold Trump in contempt for failure to turn over documents as he was ordered by a judge. The filing also asked the judge to fine Trump $10,000 a day until he turns over the material.
The other investigation, of course, is the criminal case being headed up by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Now, the last news we got on that was two weeks ago. It was a big deal. We were in the midst of the war in Ukraine. We didn`t do it on the show.
But what happened, and you might have seen this, is that one of the senior prosecutors who was on the case had actually come out of retirement, I think, to work on the Justice case, frustrated by the Office`s slowness to bring an indictment and perhaps decided they weren`t going to indict, submitted his resignation letter and that became public. This is a big story.
The guy`s name is Mark Pomerantz. And in that letter, he declared the team that has been investigating Mr. Trump harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes. He did. No cases perfect. Whatever the risks bring the case may be, I am convinced that a failure to prosecute will pose much greater risks in terms of public confidence in the fair administration of Justice.
At the time, there was concerned that the new Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, had lost interest in the case. Today, Bragg released a statement of his own insisting the criminal investigation into Donald Trump is still ongoing. The team working on this investigation is going through documents, interviewing witnesses, and exploring evidence not previously explored. Bragg finished by pledging to publicly state, “Whether we conclude our work without bringing charges or move forward with an indictment.”
Rebecca Roiphe serves as Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan, now teaches law at New York Law School. And she joins me now. It`s great to have you here in person.
REBECCA ROIPHE, FORMER MANHATTAN ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY: Nice to be here.
HAYES: OK, there`s a lot to get to here. First of all, your reaction to the Bragg statement today, which felt s a little unusual. This is not normally the kind of thing a prosecutor puts out.
ROIPHE: Right, it`s totally unusual. I mean, prosecutors normally don`t speak in the middle of an investigation. They speak through an indictment or they fail to indict but it`s not unheard of. The thing that I think is odd is that there was this incident that you just described where the seasoned prosecutors who had been brought in just left in this loud, sort of noisy way announcing that they were somewhat upset with Bragg`s determination of what was going on with the case.
So, given that, it seems a little bit odd. And it also seems to be like pretty unlikely after this very well-known, very respected prosecutor determined that, you know, he had a case, that they would then have more evidence, more witnesses, which would, in fact, convinced the DA that there was in fact a case there. So, given that —
HAYES: It feels like clean-up.
ROIPHE: I mean, it feels like cleaned up. It feels like this was a public relations disaster. It was awful for DA Bragg. It was awful for the office. And this is a way to make it look as if they`re turning over every stone.
HAYES: So, I`ve talked to a bunch of different people who have different views of the Pomerantz memo, and there`s sort of two different views. One is the DAs office in the — in New York is scared of Donald Trump. They`re being wimps. It`s a scary case to bring. You might lose it. It`s — you`re going to have the scrutiny of the world on you. And Pomeranz went in there and they got the goods and they declined to do it and Pomerantz is bad.
The other is that there`s not really a case there, that Cy Vance, the previous District Attorney, kind of hung Alvin Bragg out to dry by punting it across administrations. Pomerantz had come out of retirement to do this, so of course, he`s going to want to indict. And this was a little bit self- serving for Pomerantz`s.
[20:55:01]
ROIPHE: Right. I mean, I don`t know what the answer to that is. I`ll say one thing from my experience, which is the person who`s going to try the case is more concerned about how good a case you have than the person who is going into the grand jury and doing the investigation.
So, that does lead me to believe since I think it was — it`d be highly unlikely that Pomerantz was actually going to try this case that he might have been willing to be a little bit more aggressive than somebody else who was actually going to receive the case and have to try it.
So I don`t know. But that`s where I stand. I think, you know, it probably was a tough case. Or possibly, also, the charges weren`t that significant, because that`s another thing that you know, how would it look to try — you know, to bring charges against the former president for falsification of business records, if you can`t prove that they`re — you know, that`s a victimless crime more or less. So, if you can`t prove that there`s something else bigger going on.
HAYES: Yes, although I do look at Marilyn Mosby and her husband, Nick Mosby in Baltimore, who are essentially being right now right federally indicted for that. And I don`t — you know, again, if you read the indictment, it looks pretty convincing. Most indictments do. I don`t know — innocent till proven guilty.
But like you look at that case, and you think, would that same case be brought against Donald Trump?
ROIPHE: Right. I mean —
HAYES: I mean, that`s the thing, right? Like, we get into the situation where prosecution decisions are made. There`s a bunch of things people are thinking about. And when you`re sitting in the line that evening arraignment with turnstile jumpers, you`re not like, well, they`re going to bring huge gun lawyers against, right?
ROIPHE: Right.
HAYES: You`re going to plea all these people out. Like, this is a different calculation.
ROIPHE: It is a different calculation. I mean, the key thing, at least when I was in the office was, look, we want to treat everybody exactly the same. And — but right —
HAYES: I`m rolling my eyes, because —
ROIPHE: Totally because it`s easier said than done. I mean, that`s so hard. And how could you look at this case? And what would you compare it to? And how can you treat it like every other case. But that`s what they`re trying to do. And I`m sure that that`s what both Pomerantz and DA Bragg are trying to do. But it`s just you know — and it`s not that weird for two prosecutors to come —
HAYES: To disagree, right.
ROIPHE: — to different conclusions about a case. That`s not —
HAYES: An in Pomerantz`s defense, I mean, he actually says that, right? I mean, he says in the resignation letter something along the lines of — you know, he says I believe Donald Trump is guilty of numerous felony violations in connection with the preparation and use of his annual statements of financial condition.
But he also goes on later to say like, I just think we have a different good faith view. Like, he doesn`t say Bragg is being corrupt or a wimp because you`ve made a determination, I`ve made a different one.
ROIPHE: Right. I mean, he also wanted that to be public. I mean, that`s another thing.
HAYES: Well, clearly, yes.
ROIPHE: So, you know.
WATTERS: Yes. They didn`t have his computer to get that resignation letter.
ROIPHE: No. Right. And I mean, he could have, you know, left quietly but he did — he chose not to. And that`s because he wanted to make a statement to the public because he felt like this is damaging to our criminal justice system that we`re not able to bring this case, and he thought he was able to do it.
So, here`s a thought I keep having about Donald Trump and the law. Sometimes I think like, am I — do I just want some — do I have a thirst for vengeance for — not vengeance, but a thirst for accountability that the criminal justice system fundamentally isn`t going to provide for this individual? That`s one thought I have. Like, am I succumbing to some emotional desire for locking up politics?
But I don`t — but I also think at the same time like, this is a flagrantly lawless individual who has traipsed across jurisdiction and jurisdiction doing flagrantly lawless things, confessing to said lawlessness, and getting away with it in a way that just seems like completely born of the fact that he`s powerful and people are scared of him and his lawyers.
ROIPHE: I think it really does look that way. And I think that`s upsetting and frustrating to a lot of people. And as Mark Pomerantz said, it`s damaging to the criminal justice system. That said, you know, in any one of these given cases, as I`ve been saying over and over again on your show and elsewhere, it`s really hard to prove these criminal cases.
And it`s not, you know, that he`s getting any kind of special treatment. It`s just that there are tons of people who get away with this kind of thing. And you know, that is upsetting. We just don`t hear about that.
HAYES: See — OK, that actually, I think, is an interesting synthesis of the two views, right? Which is like, it`s partly because of who he is, but it`s partly the kinds of lawlessness he appears to be engaged in is lawlessness that`s generally not that prosecuted, and in some ways difficult to prosecute in a broader sense.
ROIPHE: Exactly. Exactly. And that makes — you know, there`s a reason why our laws are drafted the way they are. And it`s because, you know, lawful activity looks very similar to lawless activity, and where does one draw the line. And you really want to make sure that you`re prosecuting the people who have crossed that line.
So, you prosecute the people who have way crossed that line. And many people think that Donald Trump is that person, and I`m sympathetic with that view totally. But, you know, it`s hard. It`s hard to bring those cases. So, reasonable minds can differ. Bragg thought that there wasn`t a case, Pomerantz thought there was. Bragg is still digging. You know, my guess is, bottom line, he`s not going to find anything there.
HAYES: I have to say that one of my conclusions of covering this now, Trump for five years, whatever it is, like, what`s going on generally in the world of like, New York real estate? Like, how lawful a world is that over there, you know? Like, I just — it just seems like maybe this guy is like — I mean, he clearly is like an outlier in some ways, but maybe not that much of an outlier.
Rebecca Roiphe, it`s great to have you here in person. Thank you so much.
ROIPHE: Thank you. Nice being here.
HAYES: That is ALL IN on this Thursday night. “THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW” starts right now with Ali Velshi in for Rachel. Good evening, Ali.