Updated
Summary
The Department of Justice charged the longtime leader of the Proud Boys Enrique Tarrio and four of his top lieutenants with the extremely rare charge of seditious conspiracy. Noah Bookbinder joins Hayes to discuss the evidence against Donald Trump and his allies over the January 6 insurrection. Ohio Republicans repeatedly ignore rulings on new maps despite state supreme court rulings. San Francisco`s district attorney faces recall. The U.S. has seen 34 mass shootings since Uvalde massacre.
Transcript
REP. KAREN BASS (D-CA): Well, as of right now, neither one of us is going to get to 50 plus one. And so, I am absolutely prepared for one-off. And you should know, in terms of the entertainment industry —
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Yes.
BASS: We are all — I mean, that is Los Angeles, so I have very significant entertainment endorsements well. John Legend, Samuel Jackson, Magic Johnson.
REID: Well, what I`m — yes, ma`am. Well, I`m going to have to go because I have now endorsing going to the next show. Congresswoman and LA Mayor candidate Karen Bass, thank you very much. I really appreciate it. That`s tonight`s “REIDOUT.” ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES starts now.
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CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voiceover): Tonight on ALL IN. Brand new seditious conspiracy charges against leaders of the Proud Boys, as Proud Boys take over the Republican Party in a major American city.
Tonight, what we know about the widening DOJ case and how the forces of violence and authoritarianism continue to take hold in America.
Then, three days before the first Primetime hearing, how the January 6 Committee is building the case that Trump committed a crime. Plus, Marc Elias on the Republicans` brazenly illegal power grab and a key swing state. And the growing demands for solutions as the spate of mass shootings continues unabated when ALL IN starts right now.
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HAYES (on camera): Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. The insurrection on January 6 was a blatant attempt to use force to destroy American democracy and the rule of law. That`s what made that day so uniquely terrifying, such an existential threat to the Democratic order.
The organizers and rioters wanted to topple the rightful government and install a wrongful one using mob violence to do so. The President egged them on as some of the people closest to him participated in the planning. In a variety of wannabe paramilitary groups viewed January 6 as a testing ground for precisely this undertaking, for using force, violence, intimidation and the threat thereof to overturn the democratic order.
Well, today, we saw a big development in the case against one of those groups, the Proud Boys. The Department of Justice charged the longtime leader of the Proud Boys Enrique Tarrio and four of his top lieutenants with the extremely rare charge of seditious conspiracy.
As the indictment alleges, “The purpose of the conspiracy was to oppose the lawful transfer of presidential power by force.” Tarrio and his co- defendants allegedly carried out that conspiracy in many ways, including “directing, mobilizing, and leading members of the crowd onto Capitol grounds and into the Capitol, storming past barricades, Capitol Police, and other law enforcement officers in efforts to disrupt the proceedings of the Capitol and assaulting law enforcement officers.”
This is now the second time the Department of Justice has brought charges of seditious conspiracy in the wake of the January 6 attack. Earlier this year, they indicted the founder of another extremist group, Elmer Stewart Rhodes III and 10 other members of the Oath Keepers.
And as we can see these seditious conspiracy charges keep coming in, this is the life or death question for our democracy for all liberal democracies. Does the rule of law and the will of people the people decide what happens or does force and violence prevail? In the past, when we`ve seen democratic societies collapse into authoritarianism or fascism, it has been because of the rise of groups that flatly use force and violence and intimidation and menace as a means of controlling politics.
And January 6 was not the last time we`ve seen that attempted in this country. In fact, in many places, it has been the kickoff. In South Florida, the Proud Boys have gripped the Miami Dade Republican Party, as the New York Times puts it. “At least a half dozen current and former Proud Boys have secured seats on the Miami-Dade Republican executive committee seeking to influence local politics from the inside. They have deepened existing divisions and injected an unusual degree of aggression into routine dealings.” Think about that sentence.
The Times reports that this is part of a broader strategy that Proud Boys put into place in the wake of the insurrection to lower their profile as members faced investigations and charges. “The group dissolved its national leadership and encouraged chapters to get involved in local issues with the goal of amassing support in advance of this year`s Midterm elections.”
And it is happening on Enrique Tario`s home turf. Beginning in 2018, he led the South Florida chapters of the Proud Boys before coming national chairman. And like Tarrio, at least two of the Proud Boys with seats on the local Republican committee are facing criminal charges stemming from their involvement in the insurrection.
These gangs, which is what they are, who played an integral part in the violence storming of the Capitol on January 6 have now shifted their tactics to infiltrate local politics so there`ll be no need to dress up and bulletproof vests and assault cops next time. It doesn`t mean that militias and gangs and extremists, political extremists on the right are no longer dangerous. In fact, we just saw shocking case of political violence, what appears to be political violence in Wisconsin, where a man who is reportedly a member of a militia assassinated a retired judge.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: State investigators suspect this man, Douglas Uhde, shot retired Judge John Roemer to death. Law enforcement say they entered the home after negotiations failed. They found Romer dead and say he had been tied up with zip ties. Uhde, police say, shot himself but survived and is in critical condition at a hospital. The men had a connection. Court records show Roemer sentenced Uhde to six years in prison in 2005 for armed burglary and firearms charges. A law enforcement source says they found a hit list in Uhde`s car. Governor Tony Evers was a target.
HAYES: Right. So, the assassination of a judge, right? That is the kind of thing that happens in a society where the rule of law is under threat. There were some other high-profile members of government on that hitlist as well, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Governor of Michigan Gretchen Whitmer.
Now, keep in mind, Whitmer was previously targeted for kidnapping plot in which several of the suspects were members of a far-right want to be militia group. All these threats and acts of violence are as Congressman and member of the January 6 Committee Jamie Raskin has often put it, outside the constitutional order. In fact, they are an assault on the constitutional order.
This movement is deeper and more insidious than any “normal violence” or a “normal politics,” right? Because the use of violence as a tool of force in the political sphere towards the ends of undoing self-governance is a unique threat as January 6 was, and it is an ongoing one.
As Republican congresswoman and vice-chair of the January 6 Committee Liz Cheney told CBS News this weekend.
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REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): It`s an ongoing threat. You know, we are not in a situation where former President Trump has expressed any sense of remorse about what happened. We`re in fact in a situation where he continues to use even more extreme language, frankly, than the language that caused the attack. And so, people must pay attention. People must watch and they must understand how easily our democratic system can unravel if we don`t defend it.
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HAYES: As we look towards the January 6 Committee`s first public hearings this week, it`s important to remember the enduring truth of what happened that day and why we cannot just let it go or turn the page and move on. The bullet dodged. The lesson of the insurrection is that democracies are fragile. They can be taken over or destroyed from the inside by forces of violence and authoritarianism and menace. And that`s the threat that remains before us still.
Ryan Reilly is and NBC News Justice Reporter. He`s been covering the investigation into the January 6 rioters, including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. And he joins me now. Ryan, this is a big development today. The second seditious conspiracy set of charges from the Department of Justice, the first one towards the Oath Keepers, this one towards some Proud Boys. Tell me about what we`re learning from these indictments.
RYAN REILLY, NBC NEWS JUSTICE REPORTER: Yes, so the gist of this was actually in the previous indictment. But there is this really interesting moment on January 6, on the evening of January 6 where Enrique Tarrio, the head of the Oath Keepers takes responsibility, the Fed say, for January 6. He`s prodded by somebody else who`s saying that, you know, we did this. And he responds, yes, we did, in fact, do this.
And what`s really interesting about this is, if you remember back to the timeline, on January 5 is when actually Enrique Tarrio got out of DC jail after he was arrested for a few months earlier during another Trump event burning — he was alleged to have burned a flag. So, he was arrested that day. The Feds had his phone on January 5. So, he didn`t have any way of communicating.
And that`s the night when he meets up with the head of the Oath Keeper Stewart Rhodes in this underground parking garage actually, underneath the NBC bureau in D.C. as it would have it. And that`s when they actually make that initial meeting right there. So this is a big development. Definitely a new group they`re using these seditious conspiracy charges against. And it`s especially interesting coming ahead of this primetime hearing on Thursday.
HAYES: Yes, I want to just read from that portion of the indictment. Person one sent two text messages to Tarrio that read, brother, you know, we made this happen. I`m so proud of my country today. Tarrio responded, I know.
At 7:44 p.m., the conversation continued with person one texting, 1776 mother effers. Tarrio responded, the Winter Palace, which I believe is a reference to the Bolshevik Revolution and Lenin storming the Winter Palace in 1917. Person one texted, dude, did we just influence history? Tarrio responded, let`s first see how this plays out. As it happened, 15 minutes later, they reconvene.
And that to me is what`s so interesting here. This is 7:45, right, because we`ve talked about this. If your goal that day was for Donald Trump to remain in power against the will of the people, and by any means necessary to prevent the lawful transition of power, when it looks like possibly the storming of the Capitol has produced that outcome, maybe they fled, maybe they`d gone to secret locations, maybe they can`t come back, that is goal achieved as opposed to wow, this got out of control. And you really see it in these alleged texts.
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REILLY: You do. I mean, they were four hours out. They thought that midnight was sort of — there`s a giant clock that as soon as it struck midnight, there was Cinderella, this was all over, right? That`s what they had that the approach that they sort of took to this.
HAYES: Right.
REILLY: So, that was this date, the time that they were trying to get past. So, you know, obviously that didn`t happen. But I think that, you know, Tarrio`s communications that they are going to be very interesting, because we didn`t have his phone. Who was sort of in charge? There was this, you know, this — here he had set up this mechanism for what was going to take place according to this indictment.
Now, the details of it, I think, were sort of up in the air. But there was definitely this effort to use force, it seems like, based on the indictment, to stop the transfer of power. That was sort of the end goal. And there is this reference, in that — in that document you just showed to this 1776 document which just talks about this idea of them occupying Capitol buildings.
And there is a message that Tarrio sent out that night and specifically references that Patriots are in front of the Rayburn Building, which is one of the buildings surrounding the Capitol. So, you know, that`s a pretty solid tie to this, along with all these other communications from these Proud Boys talking about what exactly they are planning to do.
HAYES: Very quickly, do we know who person one who sent those two text messages is?
REILLY: It`s in the Proud Boy universe? I don`t know if I can go on air and say it. It wouldn`t be at this point. But yes, it`s in that Proud — certainly someone in the Proud Boy universe.
HAYES: All right, Ryan Reilly, thank you very much. I appreciate it.
Barbara McQuade is a former US Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. She`s a professor from practice at the University of Michigan Law School, and she joins me now. I want to read this portion of the indictment because it just so sort of forthright, right, about what we`re what happened here. The purpose of the conspiracy was to oppose the lawful transfer of presidential power by force by opposing the authority of the government of the United States, and by preventing, hindering or delaying by force, the execution of the laws governing the transfer of the power. That`s a — transfer of power.
That is heavy and high stakes and a little bit pretentious, but really is a perfect summary of what we saw happen on that day.
BARBARA MCQUADE, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: Absolutely, Chris. And you know, it does to some extent mirror the statutory language. That is, it requires the use of force to oppose the authority of the United States. But then it provides some detail about what it was they were trying to do. And, you know, as this text messages revealed, as you just quoted, that was the goal.
They even go on to say they have to certify today. If they don`t make it before the day is over, it`s invalid. So, they clearly — that was clearly the goal here. And the superseding indictment add some additional detail to demonstrate that that was indeed the goal.
HAYES: In both these cases, I mean, these can be difficult cases, right, seditious conspiracy cases. And we`ve got some high-profile examples of them resulting in acquittals in the past. Obviously, the Department of Justice has taken its time and diligence here, because we`re, you know, more than a year out from this.
But I guess from a legal perspective, how important is this charge and these sets of charges against these entities as more than the lone wolf who broke into the Capitol?
MCQUADE: Yes, I think that`s a really interesting point here, Chris, because all of the allegations here are really nothing different other than some additional details about these text messages from the prior indictment. In this case, this is a superseding indictment over a prior indictment. And in that one, they were charged with conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding.
Both of those statutes that conspiracy to obstruct and the seditious conspiracy are both punishable by up to 20 years in prison. So, there`s not much difference in terms of the punishment that you get. And it`s easier to prove the conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. You just have to show that they`re trying to, you know, stop it or create chaos, you have to show that the purpose was the one you just quoted about stopping the transfer of presidential power and the additional use of force to do so.
But I think it is important for prosecutors to call a spade a spade. This was something far worse than let`s go around — let`s go in and you know, mess it up for a little while and in the way many people do in many proceedings. It`s criminal, but it is — it doesn`t rise to this level which brings with it I think, a disloyal to the United States this element of political violence that you`ve been talking about of trying to seize democracy and presidential power by force. If you don`t like the way the elections come out, just, you know, show up at the Capitol and use force to get — to get your way.
And I think that is what makes this so morally repugnant and such an affront to our democracy that I think it is important. Even though there may not be a strategic advantage legally, I think it`s really important to have that kind of moral indignation and social condemnation that comes with a charge like this.
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HAYES: Yes. I had the exact same thought particularly because of the sort of statutory sentencing that this was, in some ways, almost expressive, right? I mean, it`s the Department of Justice saying like, this is what this thing was that we all witnessed.
And I thought it was particularly interesting and important that that language is being applied in that fashion in the superseding — this superseding indictment three days before we`re going to have public hearings in which the eyes of the country will be focused to some extent on what happened that day. And the nature again, as Jamie Raskin, and others, and Liz Cheney have articulated, the nature of the frontal assault on the most basic foundation of our democratic order.
MCQUADE: Yes. I mean, this attack alone was incredibly damaging to our country, incredibly dangerous to our country. And for some members of Congress to sort of, you know, shrug it off as if it was no big deal, let`s get back to work, I think we all need to have a reckoning about that.
And then even beyond that, this indictment shows that the Justice Department understands that this isn`t just about collecting convictions, and saying, look, we prosecuted 800 people. It is about holding people accountable for what they did, and trying to deter people from doing it again. So, bringing these more serious charges, I think speaks to the seriousness of the harm.
HAYES: All right, Barbara McQuade, thank you very much.
Those public hearings, as I just mentioned, are finally here. Starting this week, the January 6 Committee will reveal to the nation what their investigation uncovered. A central question I have is whether they can show that Donald Trump committed a crime in his attempt to steal the election.
According to my next guest, that shouldn`t be a problem. Everything you need to know before the hearings and what you should be watching for when they start after this.
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HAYES: 72 hours from now, the January 6 Committee will hold its first Primetime public hearing on the insurrection. Today, the nonprofit think tank, Brookings Institution released a great new primer for the hearings that covers the committee`s work, the known facts about the case, and what criminal charges might be possible.
Now, that is something I`ve thought about a lot, the criminality of Donald Trump, something I`ve wrestled with on this program. And in this report, the authors lay out the evidence that Trump is guilty of conspiring with outside counsel, John Eastman, the author of the coup memo, and administration lawyer Jeffrey Clark, among others, to defraud the United State. Government.
Noah Bookbinder is one of the authors of that report. He`s the president of the nonprofit watchdog organization, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and he joins me now. Noah, I found the arguments in here clarifying because at some level, there`s an intuitive sense in which what we watched, right? And the second impeachment hearing of the President was a reaction to the fact that this was — this was a crime in some non- technical sense, right?
It was — I mean, if this isn`t a crime, nothing is. But in a technical sense, lay out your case for the crime you believe was committed that the facts support.
NOAH BOOKBINDER, PRESIDENT CITIZENS FOR RESPONSIBILITY AND ETHICS IN WASHINGTON: Sure. I mean, you`re absolutely right that the big picture is really important here. That you had an attempt to overturn a free and fair election, and reverse what the American people voted for. But there`s also an actual crime, and we lay out in detail actually two of them.
One of them is conspiracy to defraud the United States, which makes it a crime to — for a group of people to work together to undermine a lawful function of the United States government. So, you have to show that they agreed on it, that they had an intent to do something — to do something wrong, to do something that they understood to be not the way that it was supposed to work, that they undermined a function of the U.S. government, and that they took some kind of action to advance that.
And all of those — there`s no very significant evidence that all of those things happened. That, you know, there were — there were real functions of the government at issue here. There was, of course, the certifying of the Electoral College vote. And there was also the function of the Department of Justice that is supposed to make sure that elections are run without fraud and without suppression and run in a legal way.
And Donald Trump worked with people like his lawyer, John Eastman, like Jeffrey Clark in the Justice Department to undermine that function. And then the key thing is really proving intent, proving that they understood that Donald Trump lost the election and they did this anyway. They understood that they weren`t allowed to do the things that they were doing. And we think there is overwhelming evidence of that. Obviously, we have to see what the committee produces in the coming weeks, but we think there`s already a great deal of evidence of that.
The other pieces is obstruction of government function, which goes back to that same idea.
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HAYES: Right. And that one seems almost even more straightforward. I mean, clearly, if nothing else, what everyone was doing that day was attempting to obstruct the government function. In this case, the function being peacefully transferring power from one administration to the other.
BOOKBINDER: That`s right. And you can`t even get more granular than that. It is — you know, the Vice President is supposed to come in there on that one day to certify that the votes that the electors have already sent in are correct, and that this is the result of the election. And, you know, then they get on with the transfer power.
And even before you get to the violence, you had all of these efforts that Donald Trump was involved in to try to get a new slates of electors in the states to try to get the Justice Department to announce that there was fraud and to try to convince states, therefore, to withdraw their electors and put four different ones.
You had Donald Trump calling and trying to get to the Secretary of State in Georgia to find votes so that there could be a different — a different result there. So, in a lot of ways for these, for these offenses, you don`t even need the violence. Obviously, the violence is incredibly disruptive to our democratic system. But these conspiracies were in play well, before any of that happened.
HAYES: Yes, that`s a really good point. You also make this point that I thought was really interesting about the committee laying down an explicit marker. You say this. “There are advantages to the committee laying down a clear and unmistakable marker of its conclusions.” Just a few years ago, the Mueller report was misconstrued as an exoneration of Donald Trump precisely because it did not draw any formal conclusions about liability. The January 6 Committee, again, if it believes the facts warrant, it cannot risk similarly being misunderstood and misrepresented.”
What is — what does that mean tangibly? Like what do you think they need to do and say?
BOOKBINDER: I think ultimately, they need to say the evidence says that these crimes were committed. Because you know, what happened with Special Counsel Mueller is he laid out painstakingly all of this evidence of crimes that were committed, really obstruction of justice. But because he wasn`t willing to make that conclusion, Donald Trump and Bill Barr and others were able to come out there and say, well, they didn`t find a crime. If they had found a crime, they would have said that. And of course, if you really read the report, you`d see that it`s all in there.
But the January 6 Committee can`t make that same mistake. They have to call it for what it is so that all of this really powerful evidence that I think we`re confident they`re going to present is seen for what it is and is not misinterpreted as somehow exonerated when in fact it is deeply, deeply damning.
HAYES: Noah Bookbinder, thank you very much for your time tonight. I appreciate it.
BOOKBINDER: Thanks so much for having me.
HAYES: Coming up, Marc Elias on the ongoing efforts to steal elections happening out in the open. How Republicans are getting away with using a gerrymandered map ruled unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court after this.
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HAYES: You do not have to physically storm the Capitol to assault democracy. In fact, the extra-legal seizure of power continues to be one of the major aftershocks of January 6. It`s happening across the country including in Ohio where state Republicans are straight up ignoring the legal system and basically getting away with it.
You see, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected the Republican state legislator`s drawn maps, the State House maps as for their own houses, right, multiple times. They wrote in one decision, “Substantial and compelling evidence shows beyond a reasonable doubt the main goal the individuals who drafted the second revised plan was to favor the Republican Party and disfavor the Democratic Party. Under the second revised plan, if the statewide votes but 50-50 for Democrats and Republicans, Democrats would be expected to win or approximately 44 percent of the House seats. In contrast, Republicans would be expected to win 53 percent of the House seats.”
You can see how that would really, really like mess up the mechanisms of self-governance in the state of Ohio. The majority of Republican Ohio Supreme Court — again, the majority of Republican Ohio Supreme Court found that if the maps drawn by Republicans were used and the vote was even, dead even, Democrats would only win 44 percent of the house seats and Republicans would win plus-nine.
Republicans ignored those rulings from their state court and pressed on any way, asking federal courts to intervene on their behalf. And sure enough to Trump-appointed judges just did that, ruling Ohio voters will use those maps that were repeatedly ruled unconstitutional in a special primary election in August for State House and Senate candidates.
Marc Elias is the foremost election lawyer in the country, the founder of Democracy Docket. He`s been involved in the litigation to overturn these Ohio maps since the beginning. His latest piece is titled Republicans Are Plotting To Subvert Elections Right Before Our Eyes. And Mark Elias joins me now.
Marc, the Ohio situation really sticks out to me just because it`s been pretty flagrant. The maps have been knocked down several times by a Republican state Supreme Court and their response to it has been basically just to like, ignore the state court. And now, they found some relief. It seems like in federal court.
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MARC ELIAS, FOUNDER, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: Yes. Look, I think you get to ignore the state Supreme Court once or twice, and it`s considered ignoring. By the time you get to the fourth time and the fifth time, it`s worse than ignore. They don`t care.
You know, I was listening to your earlier guests talk about January 6, and at its heart, what January 6 was an attack on democracy because elections were inconvenient. Donald Trump didn`t like the elections because they were inconvenient because the will of the voters went against him. And what you see in Ohio is that Republicans in Ohio don`t want to have fair elections, because those would be inconvenient, and they might not win.
So, I`m not comparing line drawing and gerrymandering with violent insurrection. But the Republican Party is captured right now from top to bottom with an anti-majoritarian impulse that should make everyone listening to this terrified.
HAYES: Yes, it`s also like, it`s such a — it`s such a — it`s so insidious, right? These are the state legislators, OK. They`re drawing their own maps. And to the extent they could draw them so that they give their own party a plus-six advantage, right? Like, good luck, you know, you`re basically drawing yourself into control and perpetuity in a state that you could probably expect to win fair and square anyway.
ELIAS: Right. And as you say, this was a finding not of a — of a nonpartisan Supreme Court where a democratic aligned Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court in Ohio runs on partisan election and it is a majority Republican Supreme Court. And they found not once, not twice, not three times, not four times, but five times that the lines that the Republican legislature drew for itself violated the state constitution. And so, that`s why I say it goes way beyond ignoring the court. And it`s something much more than that. HAYES: What happens next? I mean, I guess, again, I get lost in the federal civil procedure here in terms of like, it got enjoined, and they`re going to use the maps. And does that mean it`s going to actually happen? Like, what happens next in the Federal Court system?
ELIAS: Look, for the state of Ohio, unfortunately, the lines that we have are the lines they`re going to use for November. But I want to remind you, and remind your audience, and remind the Republicans, that 10 years ago, I was in this exact same situation talking to people on TV and I told them that we were not done yet. And I`m here to tell you, we`re not done yet.
The litigation in Ohio will go on. The litigation and Alabama will go on. The litigation in Texas, in Georgia, every place where Republicans thought that they would run out the clock for 2022, they won`t be able to hide behind that for 2024 and beyond.
HAYES: Right. And that`s key because again, this is a decennial process every 10 years. The census comes out, the maps get redrawn. And your point is, even if you don`t win in time for the maps this time, it doesn`t mean that you just stick with them for 10 years. One of the places that you`ve been looking at is Florida. So, you`ve got the Supreme Court is leaving the DeSantis congressional map which has been challenged, which gets rid of a majority African-American district in contravention to what the state Republicans that actually cooked up. And that now, I guess, we think that will be the map that holds this fall?
ELIAS: It will be the map that holds this fall. Again, as you say, the Republican legislature went about passing a map that was not my cup of tea by any stretch of the imagination. It may not have been legal. But it was at least arguably legal. And DeSantis told them no dice, that they either passed is unconstitutional map or no map. And eventually the spineless leaders of the Republican State House and State Senate seated and pass this map.
It clearly violates the state`s constitution, and that litigation will go on. But Chris, Florida is a good example. 10 years ago, they passed them out that was unconstitutional under the state amendments and they had that map for two years. And then we kept litigating and eventually that map was returned.
So, Democrats did OK in this so far in redistricting, I think they`ve gained something like 10 safe districts versus the 2020 results. But what we saw in 20 — over the course of last decade, I suspect we`ll see here because as these cases go forward, we will rack up more and more victories for voters and the maps will get fair.
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HAYES: Yes. And just as a final point here, I mean, I think sometimes you know, line-drawing, gerrymandering and map drawing can feel like remote and bureaucratic. In the end, if you`ve got the control of the districts, you can turn a 40 percent minority in a 40-60 place. You draw the lines in that way and we`re basically a permanent majority. Like, you — the power there is to essentially you can keep yourself in power. This is why the Supreme Court`s one person one vote jurisprudence starting with Baker v. Carr is so important precisely because this abstract remote bureaucratic I draw lines on a map is like the way that you can keep minority in power and why this litigation has been so important.
Marc Elias, as always, great to have you. Thank you.
ELIAS: Thank you.
HAYES: Coming up, the right wing`s scapegoat for the rise in gun violence and the California recall election that could have national implications. Why you should be watching? After this.
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HAYES: Tomorrow is another big election day which we`ll be covering here on ALL IN. This time, voters are heading to the polls in California. We`ll be watching the Los Angeles mayoral race where longtime Republican Rick Caruso, a billionaire real estate developer is running as a Democrat.
Now, Caruso is the front runner in the race and I would say that`s thanks in large part to the absolutely obscene amount of money he is spending. His campaign has spent about $40 million as of the beginning of June, while his closest competitor, Democratic Congresswoman Karen Bass has spent about $3 million.
We`ll also be watching tomorrow`s recall race in San Francisco where big- money donors are looking to take down reformist district attorney Chesa Boudin. And while these may look like a local issue at first, you know, you don`t live in San Francisco, it has enormous, enormous repercussions nationally.
Now, Boudin is an interesting guy. He`s a Rhodes scholar. He is part of this sort of crop of new generation prosecutors across country like Larry Krasner in Philadelphia and Kim Foxx in Chicago who came to power looking to sort of change the way prosecutors` offices work with an eye towards ending our reliance on both over policing and crucially, mass incarceration, just feeding people through the system into jails and into prisons.
Now, Boudin has also got a remarkable story. His perspective is shaped by his own experience with the justice system, growing up with two incarcerated parents. So, Boudin is set to end the tough on crime theatrics of the prosecutor`s office. But there have been some real snags along the way. Shoplifting is one example. It`s an area where crime does appear to be up in the city of San Francisco.
Although the San Francisco Chronicle reports the trend is in keeping with the rest of the state because again, we`ve seen that kind of thing happen to lots of places. And it`s difficult to argue the severity of the problem warrants the amount of breathless coverage is received, particularly from right-wing media.
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BRIAN KILMEADE, HOST, FOX NEWS: It`s a free for all in San Francisco. We`ve been reporting about this since Fox and Friends this morning. Crime and looting are out of control.
GREG GUTFELD, HOST, FOX NEWS: And San Francisco Walgreens has had to close 10 locations at least due to rampant unchecked shoplifting. Now, they`re the only ones in the Bay Area not selling drugs.
TUCKER CARLSON, HOST, FOX NEWS: In the city of San Francisco, one of the prettiest places in continental United States, law and order has been effectively suspended thanks to left wing prosecutor, so called quality of life crimes essentially no longer exist.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: I should know that Walgreens thing they`re talking about, it turned out to be a much more complicated story. The stores were going to be closed for other reasons as well, or at least there was some suggestion they were.
Now, critics also pointed the fact in San Francisco, that the murder rate is up slightly in San Francisco, which is of course horrible. But also, of course, as you have no doubt heard, violent crime, including shootings, homicide, is up in big cities across the country. In fact, the San Francisco Chronicle did some good work here. They gathered data from a number of cities with populations similar to San Francisco.
And when you put it in a comparative cohort, you can see it at the red line at the bottom of the graph up ever so slightly from 2019. It is nothing like the dramatic spike in homicides in other similarly sized cities like Washington DC, Indianapolis, Indiana, and Columbus, Ohio.
And again, while Boudin`s critics say his policies are to blame, those cities, the ones that have seen spikes like that, they don`t have left-wing prosecutors who are seeking systemic reforms. Something else is going on. Something is driving this nationwide rise in crime and interpersonal violence and that something is clearly larger than any one prosecutor.
And that something is complex, I think. One thing I would suggest the number of guns certainly has something to do with it, as does the shared trauma of the pandemic and disruption coming out of it. But blaming Chesa Boudin and the left at large and reformers and people who want to reduce the US`s incarceration rate from being the highest in the world, that has become very useful for the forces that explicitly want to take us back to mass incarceration and broken windows policing.
Like Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who at least is honest. He says the U.S. the most heavily incarcerated country in the world has an under incarceration problem. Those folks, and there are lots of them and growing, they want to throw even modest reforms away. They want to lock even more people in prison. That`s always the solution. And the first step towards that reactionary backlash is getting rid of reformers like Chesa Boudin.
[20:50:00]
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HAYES: Since our show on Friday night, there have been 13 more mass shootings across 10 states taking the lives of at least 17 people. In Virginia, South Carolina, and Texas, shootings at graduation parties killed two people and wounded 17. In Philadelphia, three people were killed and 11 were injured when gunfire erupted in a crowd. There were shootings outside nightclubs in Chattanooga, Tennessee in Mesa, Arizona.
[20:55:00]
A 14-year-old girl was killed early Saturday morning at a party in Phoenix. Three wounded and one killed in Grand Rapids, Michigan were wounded there. Three killed in Saginaw, Michigan. All these were tragedies, but none were headline grabbing mass shootings like the one that we saw recently in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo in the past couple weeks.
But here`s the thing. Most mass shootings as terrible as they are, do not grab attention. Many are interpersonal disputes that 10 or 20 years ago might have led to a fistfight, but now become a gunfight instead because that`s what happens in a country with more guns and people.
Aftab Pureval is the mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio. He`s a Democrat. He`s among the 255 bipartisan group of mayors who signed a letter urging Congress to act on gun violence in the wake of the Uvalde and buffalo mass shootings. And Mayor Pureval joins me now.
Mayor, first maybe, let`s start with what Cincinnati is like, a midsize to smaller city. But cities across the range of sizes and densities and region and geography have seen an increase specifically in most worryingly in gun violence. Are you seeing that and what do you attribute it to?
AFTAB PUREVAL, MAYOR, CINCINNATI, OHIO: This is absolutely a national problem. It`s happening in Cincinnati. It`s happening in cities all across the United States. And what we`re seeing here in Cincinnati is two factors that`s really leading to the gun violence. Number one, the universal accessibility of guns on American streets. And number two, as you mentioned in the lead-in, the inability of everyday citizens to resolve differences the issues that would have resulted in a fistfight because of the universal accessibility of guns are now leading to a gunfight.
So, what we`ve seen in Cincinnati and in cities across the country is an evolution of the gun violence. Decades ago, it used to be centered around low-income or communities experiencing crime. Now, it`s unfortunately everywhere.
HAYES: There — you also have a state structure in the state of Ohio which is quite permissive in its gun laws, particularly compared to a place like maybe New York or California. And you had Mike DeWine, the governor, signed a bill allowing permitless concealed carry, which, if I understand it correctly, means anyone can carry a handgun at any time anywhere in the state of Ohio. Is that right?
PUREVAL: That`s right, without any training. You know, we talked about gun violence in the opening, mass shootings are touching all states, Ohio included, Cincinnati included, and particularly, probably most notably, Dayton, Ohio. In 2019, the summer of 2019, a gunman opened fire in the city of Dayton, using an assault rifle, murdering nine and injuring 27 in 32 seconds.
Leaders from around the state, national leaders came to Dayton and said, enough is enough, we`re going to do something. And instead of doing anything to reduce the number of guns on our streets, lawmakers in Columbus are making it worse by taking away the training and by allowing people to conceal carry anywhere they want to.
Law enforcement was against this. My response to that is it`s madness. It`s absolutely madness to put more guns on our streets to exacerbate the problem even more.
HAYES: There are people who will say, particularly think people that are sort of committed to this kind of gun maximalist view, that what you`re doing right now is a kind of blame-shifting, kind of scapegoating which is, you know, Democrats in big Democrat cities, they`re the ones who have a problem with gun crime or crime more broadly. And they`re trying to push blame off on gun manufacturers, the NRA are law abiding citizens. What do you say to that?
PUREVAL: Mayors don`t have time for that crap, right? 255 mayors from across the country, including Republicans, signed this letter urging senators to take action, urging them to stop the violence, to help us give us the tools as mayor`s to reduce the violence in our cities.
Look, mayors across the country are doing what we can, innovative things like the city of Kansas City is suing gun manufacturers here in Cincinnati. We`re working with ATF, the Department of Justice, to use data backed science in order to take implicit bias out of it and put more violent criminals behind bars. We`re also sending mental health professionals to non-violent 911 calls, but we can`t do this alone.
We need state action. We need federal action because this is a federal problem. You know, all the rhetoric all the blaming, that`s for — that`s for DC. Mayors have to drive results in our cities and Republican and Democratic mayors are saying we need help from the federal government and from our capitols to take guns off the street, not put more guns on the street.
HAYES: Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval, thank you very much for your time tonight, sir.
PUREVAL: Thank you.
HAYES: That does it for ALL IN on this Monday night. “THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW” starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Chris. Thank you, my friend. Much appreciated.
HAYES: You bet.
MADDOW: You bet. And thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. I`m happy to have you here.