Updated
Summary
Rhode Island is now the second state after New York to pass gun reform legislation since the mass murder at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. President Biden spent 40 minutes on the phone today with Ukraine`s President Zelenskyy pledging to stand by Ukraine in Vladimir Putin`s war of aggression. The president promised more military aid to Ukraine. Vice President Harris held a meeting with legal experts on the possible overturning of Roe versus Wade. Interview with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD). Interview with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).
Transcript
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: In other words, MSNBC audiences are going to get even more Rachel tomorrow night.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST, “TRMS”: I`m cloning myself right now.
O`DONNELL: And you will once again be my lead in for tomorrow night`s 10:00 p.m. hour after I join you in the 8:00 p.m. hour in that earlier coverage.
MADDOW: Is it absolutely impossible for you to get your show prepped when we hold you on set until 9:00 p.m. and only give you that one hour off?
O`DONNELL: So, here`s the amazing thing, the time when we did that — and everyone at THE LAST WORD staff was amazed by this — the show was completely done, the 10:00 p.m. show was completely done before we started the 8:00 p.m. coverage. And it`s never been done before 8:00 p.m. —
MADDOW: Wow.
O`DONNELL: There`s something about deadlines, Rachel. There`s something about if, you put the deadline, there it works.
MADDOW: Do not tell THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW staff because they are going to put me on a spit and roast me. You have no idea how late I get everything done every night.
O`DONNELL: No one was more surprised than I was.
Rachel, we have Jamie Raskin joining us —
MADDOW: Oh, very good.
O`DONNELL: — as our first guest tonight. A member of the January 6th committee. I want to present to him a question that Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has, who is going to be joining us later in the hour. Sheldon Whitehouse wants to know, where did that John Eastman letter really come from? Did John Eastman write it? Did someone write it for him? Or did the person who gave it to John Eastman have someone else — where did it begin?
It`s a great question. And it`s one that I`ve overlooked until Senator Whitehouse focused on it. So, we will try to get some headway on that.
MADDOW: Yeah, the one member of the investigation you would like to ask about that is the one who is a distinguished constitutional law professor. And that`s the one you have got.
O`DONNELL: We are lucky.
MADDOW: I better go.
O`DONNELL: Thank you, Rachel.
MADDOW: Bye, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: Well, now, it looks like Clarence Thomas`s wife is going to need a great F-ing criminal defense lawyer because she is now implicated in exactly the same legal jeopardy — criminal legal jeopardy — that provoked exactly that advice from one Trump White House lawyer to another lawyer, who was trying to commit crimes for Donald Trump election crimes.
Tonight, the January 6 committee is reportedly considering how to deal with an issue that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been dealing with for failing to deal with for many years now, through political activism of Ginni Thomas, which may have repeatedly cross the line into criminal activism, in her attempts to violate election law and overturn the last presidential election.
“The Washington Post” is reporting tonight that the January 6 committee has obtained email correspondence between Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and lawyer John Eastman who played a key role in efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to block the certification of Joe Biden`s victory.
Last night, the vice chair of the January 6 committee, Liz Cheney, released video of Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann telling John Eastman the day after January 6th, to quote, get a great f`ing criminal defense lawyer.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ERIC HERSCHMANN, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE LAWYER: I said, good, John. Now I`m going to give you the best free legal advice you are going to get in your life. Get a great f`ing criminal defense lawyer. You are going to need it. And then I hung up on him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Virginia Thomas is now in the same legal boat that may now be a sinking ship, the same one as John Eastman and in need of the same kind of criminal defense lawyer.
[22:05:05]
“The Washington Post” reports that the committee`s members and staffers are now discussing whether to spend time during the public hearings, exploring Ginni Thomas`s role in the attempts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election. John Eastman once served as a Supreme Court clerk for Clarence Thomas. And Virginia Thomas is known to have stayed close — in close contact — with the former Thomas clerks.
Federal Judge David Carter ordered John Eastman to release documents that the January 6 committee, even though Eastman claimed attorney client privilege protect those documents. The judge ordered them release because, he says, that although he was acting as Donald Trump`s lawyer when he was advising Donald Trump, that Vice President Mike Pence could simply disregard electoral votes on January 6th, during Congress`s official count of the electoral votes, Judge Carter said that because the attorney client privilege does not cover possible planning to commit crimes, the documents that the committee obtained from Eastman could not be protected by the attorney client privilege.
Clarence Thomas is the only Supreme Court justice who voted to block documents from Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows being delivered from to the January 6 committee at the time that Clarence Thomas try to block those documents from being transmitted it was not publicly known that his wife was in frequent communication with Mark Meadows and that her communications could be included in the documents that Justice Thomas was trying to hide from the committee.
That episode alone makes Clarence Thomas the most corrupted Supreme Court to justice in our lifetimes. And it makes Virginia Thomas the most corrupted and possibly criminal wife of any Supreme Court justice in history.
Clarence Thomas`s Supreme Court career began in scandal at his confirmation hearing, when he was accused of sexual harassment. It may now be on the verge of ending in crimes. The possible election crimes and conspiracy crimes that may have been committed by his wife, who told Mark Meadows, after January 6th that she was disgusted with Vice President Mike Pence. That was her word, disgusted, because Vice President Pence followed the law. Ginni Thomas was disgusted by that.
And after the certification of the electoral vote by the Congress on January 6th, Virginia Thomas wrote to Mark Meadows: We are living through wet feels like the end of America.
Now surely, surely Clarence Thomas knew how his wife felt after Joe Biden`s election became finally, officially certified by Congress on January 6th. Surely, Virginia Thomas did not share her most intimate feelings about the election only with mark meadows. Surely, she told her husband that we are living through what feels like the end of America. And still, Clarence Thomas did not recuse himself from the Mark Meadows documents case that potentially involved his wife`s own communications.
Tonight, what`s the wife of a Supreme Court to justice in need of a great criminal defense lawyer, we are living through what feels like the end of the Supreme Court as we know it.
Today, Marc Short, who served as Vice President Mike Pence`s chief of staff, said that Mike Pence knew from the beginning that he had absolutely no power to overturn the election.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARC SHORT, FORMER CHIE FOF STAFF TO VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: I think what was very clear is the vice president has always been a constitutional conservative. And I think he knew what his constitutional duty was that day. He knew it from the beginning. And I think he was clear with the president and so is our office, clear about what we viewed his role as.
I think for any-limited government conservative, I don`t think you would want the notion of our founders would have thought that one person would be bestowed with that much authority, to overturn an election result.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland. He`s a member of the House Select committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol and he served as lead impeachment manager in the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump.
Congressman Raskin, thank you very much for joining us tonight. We really appreciate it.
I want to begin with what the Washington Post has breaking news tonight.
[22:10:01]
And that is, they are reporting that you are considering how to deal with these revelations about Clarence Thomas`s wife, including this latest revelation that she was in contact with John Eastman. That the committee is considering whether to include material about that in the public hearings that you`re having.
What can you tell us about the committee`s approach to this evidence about Clarence Thomas`s wife?
REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): Well, not much, Lawrence. You know, we are not commenting on specific witnesses and specific investigative lines. I will say that we are committed to getting all of the facts related to everything that happened, and delivering them to the people.
I just saw “The Post” article moments ago. I kind of hoped they would have led with the article about Judge Nichols smashing decision, which completely rejected the Steve Bannon`s attempt to attack his indictment by the Department of Justice and the contempt holding by Congress. But the court became one in a whole series of courts to reject an attack on the integrity of the select committee and the congressional investigation. So we feel, again, vindicated by that, of course — none of these cases have made their way up to Clarence Thomas or anyone on the Supreme Court yet, except for that original one where Thomas was the lone dissenter in that 8- 1 decision.
O`DONNELL: If there are cases involving the committee or involving any aspects of the presidential election that make it to the Supreme Court, should Clarence Thomas recuse himself?
RASKIN: Well, I mean, in the terrible ethics rules governing the Supreme Court, it is up to each justice to decide for himself or herself whether or not to recuse, based on a conflict of interest or an apparent conflict. It`s the only court in the land which essentially doesn`t have anybody overseeing their decisions. So, obviously, I would reserve judgment on any movements that we would make in terms of something like recusal. But I will tell you, as a legislator, I thought this is a problem for several years. And it is something that is moving through the House judiciary committee right now, to try to get the Supreme Court to bind themselves the way every other court in the land has a real procedure for asserting a conflict of interest, that would compel a judge or justice to recuse himself or herself.
O`DONNELL: Let`s listen to what your vice chair, Liz Cheney, said on video about what Donald Trump was told was illegal. Let`s listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): President Trump had no factual basis for what he was doing. And he had been told it was illegal. Despite this, President Trump plotted with a lawyer named John Eastman and others to overturn the outcome of the election on January 6th.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: She said, he had been told it was illegal. Will you be presenting evidence in the public hearings of who told Donald Trump that it was illegal?
RASKIN: Yes. In just a matter of hours from now, you will hear, just as you heard the people telling Donald Trump as a matter of fact that he had lost the election by more than 7 million votes, and 306 to 232 in the Electoral College — you heard that from the attorney general of the United States and you get it from his own campaign manager. You heard it from lots of people.
You are going to hear from multiple people who say that they heard that this thing was a big joke. I`m thinking of it as the big lie, the big rip off. And now the big joke. The big joke is, for more than two centuries, vice presidents have overlook the fact that they have the power to wave a wand and vaporize the votes of tens of millions of people.
Of course, that`s ridiculous. Nobody has ever thought the vice president has the power to just unilaterally extra-constitutionally reject the Electoral College votes that have come in through the governor certificates of ascertainment. And it was perfectly clear, as a matter of law as well as a matter of fact that Donald Trump lost the election and that it was over and that the vice president had no such powers.
When we got to the floor at 1:00 on January 6th, Vice [resident Pence had distributed a memo to all of us, explaining very carefully why he had no such power.
O`DONNELL: So will the testimony be that Donald Trump was told that it was illegal for Mike Pence to do that? Or was he also told that it was illegal for you, Donald Trump, to urge him to violate the law?
[22:15:08]
RASKIN: We are going to have to pay attention, closely, to the witnesses – – certainly, the former. I`m not sure about the latter. Of course, it doesn`t make any difference, because ignorance of the law is no excuse. It`s very clear, I think, to any reasonable person, that the vice president does not have the power to unilaterally pick the president of the United States. And I think Donald Trump well understood that.
Whether or not he was told he could get in trouble for that, I don`t know. Again I`m not quite sure how relevant that is because all of us are bound for the legal consequences the constitutional consequences of our actions, regardless of whether or not we know exactly how much time we might do for violating our legal duties.
O`DONNELL: As you know, the Senate Judiciary Committee did its own examination of what was going on in the Justice Department in those final days of the Trump Justice Department, where there was that issue of elevating an obscure environmental lawyer to be acting attorney general, to carry out this plot. And it was that letter that is referred to, sometimes, as the Eastman letter, the letter that they wanted the acting attorney general to send to Georgia and other states telling officials they are to simply negate Joe Biden`s victory in those states and submit a Trump slate of electors for the Electoral College.
Senator Whitehouse has been trying to find out where the letter originated. Do we know whether John Eastman wrote the letter? Do we know whether it was written in the Justice Department, exactly where that letter originated?
RASKIN: Well, it`s providence is a matter of some curiosity, and there are different theories out there. So I don`t want to opine about it, because we are only dealing with actual facts, things that can be documented. I will say that it appears — and I`m going to pay very close attention to the hearing tomorrow — but it does appear that John Eastman rejected, perhaps around a year before, the very theory that he proceeded on, in 2020.
He had before taken the exact opposite position. So, whether he just had a change of heart and he saw the light when he thought this was the only opportunity to throw a Hail Mary pass, or whether someone else appeared, I don`t know. It will be interesting to try to follow that.
But in any event, John Eastman did become the legal architect of the Green Bay Sweep. He was the one saying, let`s throw everything at them. Let`s see what we can do in the Department of Justice to get them to cry corruption, to give Pence the opportunity and the pretext for rejecting Electoral College votes, we`re turning them to the states and then either just declaring a victory in the Electoral College for Donald Trump or kicking the whole thing into the House of Representatives for a contingent election. He became identified with it regardless of whose original brain child it was.
O`DONNELL: Yeah. And I just want to make it clear for the audience, it was Jeffrey Clark in the Justice Department who want to send that letter. And the question is, where did that letter originate from.
Before we go, I want to cover what Congressman Loudermilk said today after that video was released by your committee showing the tour that he led, which he originally said he didn`t do, on a time when no one was supposed to be — no visitors were supposed to be allowed anywhere in the capitol complex, not just the capital building, but anywhere inside the campus. It`s that video.
Your committee released that video today. And Congressman Loudermilk said it was a totally innocent — he came out today saying it was a totally innocent group of people. And in the spot where they appeared to be taking pictures of a staircase or a doorway that no one would take pictures of, it was actually some kind of gold seal there that was interesting and worthy of a photograph.
Do you know what is in the photographs that those people were taking? When they were with the congressman there?
RASKIN: No. I have not seen those. I am not sure we are in possession of those. We should be clear that Congressman Loudermilk has not been accused of anything. We asked him to come and talk because we had interest in what he did know.
But that video raises a lot of questions in the minds of various people. And, of course, there was another video found of one of the people who is on the tour, on January 6th, and he was very much traveling with the MAGA crowd and had an interaction with another guy in the crowd, who had fashioned his American flag into a weapon, and said that it was for a special person and they chortled about that.
[22:20:21]
So — but I certainly am very interested in this and think that there might be some evidence there. Of course, this is one small detail in a huge picture of lots of people being involved in the ultimate mob violence that beset the capitol.
O`DONNELL: Yeah, Rachel covered this extensively in the previous hour. And one of the man who was on tour with the Loudermilk next day on January 6th is on video threatening Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Congressman Nadler, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and threatening them —
RASKIN: AOC.
O`DONNELL: Yeah, threatening them with violence and that was all shown in the previous hour.
Congressman Jamie Raskin, thank you very much for joining us tonight. We really appreciate it.
RASKIN: You bet.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
And coming up, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has that question that he`s hoping that the January 6 committee can answer. And Senator Whitehouse`s home state of Rhode Island is not waiting for Washington to pass gun safety legislation. The Rhode Island legislature passed it late last night. Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse will join us next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:26:06]
O`DONNELL: The Senate Judiciary Committee was the first to investigate the attempted coup in the Trump Justice Department in which environmental lawyer Jeffrey Clark posing as an election law expert suddenly tried to convince Donald Trump to appoint him acting attorney general, so that he could send a letter to government officials in key states won by Joe Biden, telling them the lie that the Justice Department found election fraud in those states and that Republican officials in those states should simply send Trump electors to the Electoral College, instead of the legitimate Biden electors.
Senate Judiciary Committee Sheldon Whitehouse wants to know the true origin of the letter. It doesn`t appear that Jeffrey Clark actually wrote it himself. He seems to have received a draft of it from another recently arrived Republican lawyer at the Justice Department, who is also not an election expert.
Senator Whitehouse told “The Washington Post” the other day, that it certainly could be a symptom of a much larger and more coherent plan then has currently been disclosed.
Senator Whitehouse`s state of Rhode Island is now the second state after New York to pass gun reform legislation since the mass murder at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. The new legislation raises the legal age to purchase any firearms and ammunition in Rhode Island from 18 to 21. It bans the open carry of loaded shotguns in public, and bans ammunition magazines containing more than ten rounds of ammunition.
Members of the Rhode Island general assembly debated the legislation late into the night, last night, with protesters for and against the legislation in the gallery watching. Governor Daniel McKee will sign the new laws.
Today in Washington, Senator Whitehouse participated in a Senate Judiciary hearing in the impact of gun violence on children, where he defended Rhode Island`s new gun laws.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE (D-RI): We don`t allow people under 21 to buy beer. So why do they need to buy firearms and ammunition? That`s a little hard to explain, particularly in the wake of what we`ve seen recently. And for the life of me, I can`t imagine, as a gun owner myself, why you need open carry for a loaded long gun in this society. So, I think we are seeing some signs of progress at the state level.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Joining us now is Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. He is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Senator, let me begin where you were today in the hearing, on gun safety and Rhode Island`s experience overnight in passing these new laws.
What is this going to mean for Rhode Island?
WHITEHOUSE: Well, the issue of guns is just as passionate and emotional in Rhode Island as everywhere else. I thought it was a terrific moment when our general assembly, in full public, and in a very lively debate, came down and made three, I think, very sensible, important decisions that you`ve already described. So, I`m proud of my home state legislature right now.
O`DONNELL: And I want to get to your concerns about what was going on in the Justice Department in late December, when there was an attempted up there, with Jeffrey Clark trying to take over the Justice Department, with this letter that he was willing to send with his signature on it. But you suspect it didn`t originate with him.
What is it that you are suspecting about the origin of this letter?
[22:29:54]
WHITEHOUSE: Well for starters, Jeffrey Clark was described by his own Trump appointee colleagues as not competent. The body English in the judiciary committee hearing that I attended expressed real disdain for the guy by other Trump appointed folks in the Department of Justice. He ran the environmental section, which in the Trump Department of Justice, is a job that requires you to do nothing. And he had been lifted up to the position of acting civil division chief by the mere fact of vacancies as people left the Trump administration.
So, this is not a guy with elections law experience, a lot of respect in the department, any background that would qualify him to write a letter like this. So finding out what a real source of the letter was, given that unlikelihood, I think becomes an investigative priority.
And I believe that that is being reviewed by the Department of Justice and by the January 6 Commission.
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: And you have done extensive work about this vast network of a dark money funded, anonymously funded operations that work on the Republican side of these kinds of questions, on the Republican side of Supreme Court nominations, and on the Republican side of Justice Department interests in general.
Do you suspect that this kind of idea of just sending letters, telling legislators in states that they can simply throw out the Biden electors and replace them with the Trump electors that they have chosen themselves.
Do you suspect it originated out of that dark world?
WHITEHOUSE: It could well have. Both Jeffrey Clark and his associate in the Department of Justice, who may have produced the letter for him, instantly landed when they left the Department of Justice in dark money funded organizations.
So, it`s an important investigative thread to pursue. And speaking of important investigative threads to pursue, you will recall how Chief Justice Roberts went to DefCon 1 over the leak of the Alito abortion opinion and demanded investigations and said it was a betrayal of the court. If you look at the Ginni Thomas situation right now, that you were describing earlier, it seems to me that when you have the spouse of the Supreme Court justice now repeatedly connected with an insurrection against the country, and now connected with an individual who is so deeply in trouble that a White House — a Trump White House legal counsel advised him to get a criminal defense attorney, that if you are going to go to DefCon 1 over the leak of a draft opinion, you might want to consider going to DefCon 3 or 4 or even 5 and start investigating within the court what they heck is going on here.
So, there is another big investigative gap in this space. And it`s the Supreme Court being unwilling to look at its own problems as regards Justice Thomas.
O`DONNELL: You know, we have used — we`ve worn out the word “unprecedented” in the Trump era, beginning at some point in 2015, in that presidential campaign. But I have been struggling to find the words to impress upon this audience tonight how unprecedented the Virginia Thomas situation is.
The history of possible crime amongst Supreme Court justices` wives is exactly zero in its entire history, right up until this year, with Ginni Thomas` involvement in this insurrection. And she herself specifically advocating crimes, advocating the same kind of violations of law that Donald Trump was advocating.
WHITEHOUSE: Yes. I think weren`t people supposed to be taken out on a barge off Guantanamo and shot without due process? The whole thing is pretty extreme.
But where it comes back to the court, and where it comes back to something that if you take the court at its own word, that it should be the only one to look into its situation, it should be the only one to clean up its mess, it seems to me that it is time to look at this mess because of Justice Thomas` vote that would have disabled or diminished the ability of the January 6 Commission to look into evidence that we now know would have led to his wife.
[22:34:44]
O`DONNELL: Should Justice Thomas, at minimum, if not resigning from the court, be publicly announcing right now his recusal from any cases that could involve the presidential election or the transition of power or January 6 in any way?
WHITEHOUSE: That would be a stunningly obvious and proper thing for him to do. The fact that it has not happened casts an additional cloud over the court. And again, the fact that Justice Roberts will go to DefCon 1 and call in the marshals and declare an investigation and say the court`s been betrayed because a document leaked and then do absolutely nothing on this set of facts is another very, very unfortunate situation for the court.
O`DONNELL: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, thank you very much for joining us again tonight. Always appreciate it.
WHITEHOUSE: Thank you.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
And coming up President Biden spent 40 minutes on the phone today with Ukraine`s President Zelenskyy pledging to stand by Ukraine in Vladimir Putin`s war of aggression. The president promised more military aid to Ukraine.
Former ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul will join us next.
[22:35:55]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O`DONNELL: President Biden spent 40 minutes on the phone today with Ukraine`s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. President Biden pledged the United States, quote, “will not waver in our commitment to the Ukrainian people as they fight for their freedom.”
President Biden announced another $1 billion dollars in military assistance for Ukraine today. In a new video tonight, President Zelenskyy thanked the United States for its support and praised the heroism of the Ukrainian people, saying, quote, “The Ukrainian army proved that courage and wisdom on the battlefield together, with the ability to tactically defeat the enemy gives significant results. Everyday, I fight for Ukraine to get the necessary weapons and equipment but courage, wisdom and tactical skills cannot be imported. Our heroes have it.”
And joining us now is Michael McFaul, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014 in the Obama administration. He`s an MSNBC international affairs analyst.
And Ambassador McFaul I apologize to you — I will focus it to you in that this program has been unable to reach within our hours to Ukraine coverage while we have been covering, you know, covering the shooting and the mass murder in Uvalde, the January 6 Committee.
So, could you just bring this audience up to date on the state of the war and what we need to know about Vladimir Putin`s war of aggression in Ukraine tonight.
MICHAEL MCFAUL, MSNBC INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Lawrence, thanks for that big question.
First of all, I want to frame it big. If you think about the big objectives that Putin tried to achieve in Ukraine, he has failed in most of them. He failed to turn Ukrainians into Russians. He just call them Russians with accents. That unity did not happen. He failed to de-Nazify the country — that is, to overthrow Zelenskyy. That did not happen. He failed to demilitarize the country. That did not happen. He failed to take Kyiv and other major cities. That didn`t happen.
But he is achieving success on the battlefield today in Donbas in eastern Ukraine. It`s a horrible, bloody war. It`s a war of attrition. It`s fought with artillery and rocket fire going back and forth. Dozens of Ukrainians and Russians are dying every single day.
They are making incremental advances, the Russians are. And that`s why President Zelenskyy needs more weapons, he needs more firepower from the west. And that`s why today`s call and the new billion-dollar aid package was a significant development in the war.
O`DONNELL: Let`s listen to what General Mark Milley said about the state of the war today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GENERAL MARK MILLEY, CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: The numbers clearly favor the Russians in terms of artillery. They do outnumber, they outgun and outrange — you`ve heard that many, many times. And they do have enough forces.
But the Russians have run into a lot of problems. They`ve got command and control issues, logistics issues, they`ve got morale issues, leadership issues, and a wide variety of other issues.
So the Ukrainians are fighting a heroic fight. This fight down the Donbas has been going on since the 16 April. And the advances that the Russians have made have been very slow, a very tough slog, a very severe battle of attrition — almost World War I like. And the Russians have suffered tremendous amounts of casualties.
O`DONNELL: Ambassador McFaul, is it now a matter of keeping the Ukrainians equipped as well as possible?
MCFAUL: Absolutely. It has been from the very beginning. By the way, Lawrence, I would say it has been for years, right? Think about had we provided all these weapons years ago — maybe this war wouldn`t even have started.
But today they need more weapons, they need more ammunition, they need longer fires, right? You heard General Milley say that. Right now, the Russians have the advantage on the battlefield. And they need our weapons and weapons from other NATO countries to correct the balance of power on the battlefield in Donbas.
And I think it needs to be clearly stated, there will be no peace negotiations while the Russian army is advancing. And right now, Putin`s army is advancing. And so, until we can stop that, until we can help the Ukrainians to stop that advance, there won`t be any peace in Ukraine.
O`DONNELL: Everyone should be following Ambassador Michael McFaul on Twitter as I do, because when we do not have time to cover what`s happening in Ukraine, Michael McFaul always is, every day. Thank you very much for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it.
[22:44:59]
MCFAUL: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
O`DONNELL: Coming up, Vice President Harris held a meeting with legal experts on the possible overturning of Roe versus Wade. One of those experts was law professor Michele Bratcher Goodwin and she will join us next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:49:49]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We all believe and know that our nation was founded on certain principles that we hold dear, principles of freedom, liberty, and self determination.
And I do believe that all of those principles are at stake when we look at the leaked draft opinion about what this decision may end up being. I do believe that we should prepare for the right to privacy to be attacked and under attack with this decision.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: That was vice president Kamala Harris at a meeting she held with experts on the consequences of the Supreme Court overturning Roe versus Wade.
Our next guest, Professor Michele Bratcher Goodwin, was in that meeting with the vice president. The next decision announcement day at the Supreme Court is Tuesday of next week when the court could announce a ruling overturning Roe versus Wade.
Joining us now is Michele Bratcher Goodwin, chancellor`s professor of law at the University of California Irvine. She is the author of “Policing The Womb: Invisible Women and Criminalization of Motherhood”.
Professor Goodwin, thank you very much for joining us tonight. What did you tell the vice president in that meeting?
MICHELE BRATCHER GOODWIN, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IRVINE: In that meeting I spoke with the vice president about the historical arc of privacy, and how the constitution protects individuals from involuntary servitude and as well about the coming criminalization and civil punishments that we will be seeing as states implement the trigger laws. The trigger laws after this decision may end up banning abortions in half the states of the United States.
And also what this means in terms of technology. The tracking devices, that prosecutors may try to use, to determine whether women have gone out of state to be able to seek reproductive health care or abortions in other states.
O`DONNELL: Is there any historic, or constitutional precedent for the idea that a state can pass its own law, and then say that it is somehow enforceable when you are in another state?
GOODWIN: So, you know Lawrence, what we see now is the coming of a different kind of Jim Crow, a kind of Jane Crow revisited. You know, during the period of Jim Crow, there were states that tried to enact any number of laws to suppress the citizenship of black people. And some of that also included tracking if they traveled interstate, and who they traveled interstate with.
And so, some of these kinds of actions won`t be new, but still nefarious, still harmful, and of course it is absolutely outrageous. We have seen the Supreme Court turn a blind eye in many ways on supremacy, such that states are seeking to enact laws that would trump federal laws. We have never seen that before, it is absurd. Or when states have tried that, they have always failed, but not in this new era.
O`DONNELL: What were the — what would you say are the most important points that were discussed in the meeting from the several different perspectives that were offered?
GOODWIN: I think the first thing is that privacy and liberty are at stake. And that one can`t trust the guardrails that Justice Alito in the leaked draft opinion says will still be protected, such as contraceptive access, or such as marriage equality, or even interracial marriage. There are already members of state legislators that are saying that they are going after those things next.
Also, the possibility of extraditions. States saying that if they believe that birth begins at conception, then going after doctors in other states who perform abortions under the theory that there has been murder, manslaughter, first degree murder, et cetera.
So these were amongst the issues that were talked about, and what this might mean for families that want to build using assisted reproductive technologies. How does that fit into this new future?
Many of the kinds of things that Justice Alito might have suggested we shouldn`t worry about, we really should, and I think the vice president wants to be prepared for that rightly so.
O`DONNELL: You have written about what this kind of change in law can mean to girls. That is the word that is never used, and certainly no Supreme Court justice used the word “girls” when they were talking about this in argument because there can be 12-year-old girls, there can be 13-year-old girls who suffer incest, rape, and find themselves pregnant.
Talk about what this kind of change, and the repeal of Roe versus Wade by the Supreme Court, what it can mean to girls.
GOODWIN: Well, I`m glad that you brought that up because in this leaked draft opinion, Justice Alito speaks nothing about rapes, speaks nothing about incest, but the new plateau of these antiabortion laws are that they make no exceptions for cases of rape or incest. So a girl who seeks to terminate a pregnancy after a rape could be punished for trying to do so.
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GOODWIN: And the Supreme Court has given no attention to that whatsoever. In many ways, you see the kind of horrific path and pattern that we have seen in other countries that we would separate ourselves from, that we`d say well those are countries that engage in human rights abuses, but that is where we will be.
O`DONNELL: Professor Michele Goodwin, thank you very much for joining us once again on this important subject. We really appreciate it.
GOODWIN: Thank you, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: Tonight`s LAST WORD is next.
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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O`DONNELL: Programming note, I will join MSNBC`s special primetime coverage of the January 6 hearing tomorrow starting at 8:00 p.m. Eastern with the honorable Rachel Maddow presiding.
At 10:00 p.m., we will have our regularly scheduled edition of THE LAST WORD right here where we will no doubt continue the end of discussion of tomorrow`s public hearing of the January 6 Committee and possibly other breaking news of the day.
That is tonight`s LAST WORD.
“THE 11TH HOUR WITH STEPHANIE RUHLE” starts now.