Updated
Summary
NBC News reports that Secret Service personnel were told three times to preserve communications on their agency phones. Today, a federal appeals court ordered immediate compliance in Georgia, with the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe versus Wade. That allows a 2019 abortion law passed by the Georgia legislature and signed by Governor Brian Kemp to go into effect immediately. The mother of the mass murderer in Uvalde, Texas was confronted today by mothers and other relatives of the children her son murdered. It was a chance encounter by the side of the road in Uvalde and was caught on camera by a Telemundo crew who was there.
Transcript
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Ayman.
And I was in Massachusetts this morning, not exactly in the neighborhood, but I was thinking about swinging by, but didn`t have the time, had to get out here and do this tonight. So here I am.
AYMAN MOHYELDIN, MSNBC HOST, “AYMAN”: Maybe next time.
O`DONNELL: Maybe next time. Thanks, Ayman.
MOHYELDIN: Thanks.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
Two words. There are two words that I really hope you remember from the next hour of what you are about to hear. These two words should be included in every story about the shocking developments this week at the Secret Service.
Now these are two words that I didn`t know last week, at the beginning of last week, but these two words don`t appear in almost all of the coverage of what is happening at the Secret Service. The two words are, James Murray.
James Murray is the person who Donald Trump appointed director of the Secret Service, when Donald Trump knew he was going to need the Secret Service for a lot more then protecting him from death threats. When Donald Trump made James Murray head of the Secret Service, Donald Trump knew he was going to need the Secret Service to help him hold on to the presidency.
We will be talking about other things in this hour. You will hear from Stacey Abrams, when she joins us, about the ban on abortion in Georgia, which went into effect today.
You will hear what happened in the Steve Bannon trial today, when federal prosecutors confidently rested their case after presenting just to technical witnesses.
And you will see and hear, the mother of the mass murderer in Uvalde, Texas, who was confronted by other mothers, today, mothers of the murdered children. Telemundo captured that confrontation on video and we will present it later in the hour.
But we begin tonight with James Murray, the director of the Secret Service who has remained in that position during the Biden administration, even though he was appointed by Donald Trump. The first director of the Secret Service appointed by Donald Trump was actually chosen by John Kelly when Kelly was the secretary of homeland security. The Secret Service is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security, and Kelly believed that his friend, a retired Marine Corps general, Randolph Alles, was the kind of outsider that the Secret Service needed to take a fresh look at the management of the Secret Service, which does much more than just protect the president with its $3 billion budget.
The Secret Service duties have always included policing counterfeit money, and now include highly sophisticated investigations up by the financial crimes involving electronic communications. Which makes it all the more ironic to put it mildly, that the Secret Service has lost the most important electronic communications in the history of the Secret Service. It is simply not at all believable, not even slightly believable, that the Secret Service got rid of the most important text messages in their history, because no one there knew that those text messages were important.
The breaking news tonight is that the Secret Service employees received not one, not to, but three separate notifications instructing them to preserve communications before an agency-wide technology replacement program went into effect in the weeks after the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
NBC News is reporting, quote, the first email about preserving records came on December 9th, 2020, from the Secret Service`s office estate planning, and they sack it was in January 2021, from the agency`s chief information officer, through a though a Secret Service official source didn`t provide an exact date. The senior official said, employees received a third email on February 4th, 2021, instructing them to preserve all communications specific to January 6.
The emails, quote, included reminders that federal employees have the responsibility to preserve their records and included instructions on how to do so, the senior Secret Service official said. It was James Murray`s responsibility to make sure all Secret Service texts sent and received on January 6 were preserved and he did not do that.
Donald Trump never liked John Kelly`s choice for director of Secret Service, Randall Alles. Director Alles struggled with something no Secret Service there were there before him ever faced, how to provide full-time Secret Service protection to a huge high rise building, in Midtown Manhattan, where the president of the United States claim that he still lives, but in fact, almost never visit. The Secret Service budget for protecting that building was higher than the cost of protecting any other home of a previous president and at the same time, the Secret Service budget was skyrocketing to protect Donald Trump on his constant golfing outings, locally, in Washington, and in New Jersey, and in Florida.
Add to that, the 18 members in the Trump family who were given Secret Service protection, and the protective budget of the Secret Service was quickly wiped out.
When “USA Today” run a story with the headlines, “Secret Service is going broke protecting Trump,” Donald Trump blamed the Secret Service director. Donald Trump fired him in April of 2019.
In her book about the Secret Service, “Zero Fail: The Rise of the Secret Service” — “The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service”, Carol Leonnig, tells us that James Murray was not Donald Trump`s top choice for his next Secret Service director. Trump wants it to promote Tony Ornato, the leader of his personal security detail to director of the Secret Service.
Quote: Trump wanted to make Ornato director, but Ornato said he had other plans and suggested to the president that he hire his good friend James Murray, a 23-year member of the service. Trump hired Murray after an interview at lasting roughly ten minutes. The president soon after promoted his loyal detail leader Ornato to a political role that was unprecedented for the nonpartisan Secret Service.
At the president`s urging, Ornato took on the job of presidential political adviser as the deputy chief of staff in the Trump White House.
A ten-minute interview for his new Secret Service director. That interview may well have included the questions, who did you vote for president? Who were you going to vote for president? And do I have your complete and total loyalty at all times, for anything I might want to do?
This was the third year of the Trump presidency. Remember, in the first weeks of his presidency, when Donald Trump brought James Comey into the White House for a one-on-one dinner, Donald Trump was stunningly blatant about loyalty, in a discussion with Comey, who he didn`t even know, and had no reason to trust.
Donald Trump made it very clear, James Comey, what would be necessary for Comey to continue as FBI director. James Comey tells us that Donald Trump said, I need loyalty. I expect loyalty.
Tony Ornato had no doubt certified James Murray`s loyalty to Trump before Trump`s ten-minute interview with him. But we know that Donald Trump was not going to get that job to anybody who did not clearly pledge loyalty to Donald Trump. So we know that James Murray is a Trump guy in every sense important to Donald Trump or Donald Trump would not have promoted him to director of the Secret Service.
In April of 2019, all of the Democratic candidate for president had announced their candidacies and polling showed Donald Trump running far behind Joe Biden with Joe Biden at 51, and Donald Trump at 42. Donald Trump knew just like 2016, there was absolutely no way he was going to win more votes than the Democrats.
Donald Trump knew he was going to come in second with the voters, and his only hope was the Electoral College, and this time, Donald Trump didn`t want to take his chances with the Electoral College. If it came to it, Donald Trump was obviously willing to try to change the outcome of the election Electoral College, and it is exactly what he did, and that is what he was still trying to do on January 6.
Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Tony Ornato told her, in the White House, that Donald Trump tried to go to the Capitol, on January 6, to join the attackers of the capitol. Cassidy Hutchinson testified under oath, that Tony Ornato told her that Donald Trump physically struggling the Secret Service agents in the car when he was demanding that the car take him to the Capitol.
The Secret Service deleted every text message about that incident in the car, and everything else that happens on January 6, including possible text messages about Vice President Mike Pence.
[22:10:01]
Did Tony Ornato send a text message to Mike Pence`s Secret Service agents at the Capitol, telling them to take the vice president away from the Capitol? Did James Murray sent a text message saying that to the agents of the Capitol? To take the vice president away? Were Secret Service agents trying to remove the vice president from the Capitol for his safety, or were they trying to remove the vice president from the Capitol so that the vice president could not certify the Electoral College vote?
There could be answers to all of those questions in the text messages, deleted by the Secret Service, which could not have happened without James Murray`s permission. Donald Trump knew that the Secret Service director, that he chose in April of 2019, was going to be the Secret Service director on election day, I was going to be the Secret Service director and the next inauguration day, and that the Secret Service director might be asked to do things that no other Secret Service director in history ever had to do.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Someday, and that day may never, I call up on you to do a service for me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Whatever the specific words were in Donald Trump`s ten minute interview with James Murray before making director of the Secret Service, the subtext of it was, that line from “The Godfather”. Someday, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me.
Did James Murray do a service for Donald Trump by overseeing the deletion of all the Secret Service text messages on January 6? The January 6 committee can answer all of these questions by issuing a specific personal subpoena to James Murray for his under oath testimony, in a separate subpoena to James Murray for all of his Secret Service text messages, on January 6?
Today, the Secret Service told the committee that they had found exactly one text, that is relevant, to the committee`s investigation, out of the thousands more texts that the Secret Service now says we`re deleted.
Deleting those texts is a violation of law. James Murray knew that when he allowed them to be deleted. The Secret Service is one of the most sophisticated cyber operations in the federal government. The Secret Service specializes in investigating financial cybercrimes. The Secret Service knows what`s legal obligations are in keeping electronic records, and the Secret Service violated the law.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said today that the Justice Department investigation of the attack on the Capitol, and they attempt to overturn the election, will not hesitate in bringing criminal charges against anyone who they can prove violated the law. The attorney general stress no person is above the law. He didn`t say Donald Trump`s name, but that is what everyone understood that he meant, and that also means that no Secret Service director is above the law.
When James Murray is put under oath by the January 6 committee, or possibly by federal grand jury, he will be asked a long range of questions about the Secret Service electronic records, protocols, he will be asked many questions about what happened to the Secret Service text messages on January 6.
And he should also be asked very direct personal questions. How many text messages did you, James Murray send and receive, on your Secret Service phone, on January 6? Who sent you text messages? And who did you send text messages to on January 6? What did those text messages say?
The Secret Service sent out a directive to everyone in the Secret Service to preserve all relevant text messages on their phones, did James Murray follow his own directive, or did James Murray personally allow all of the text messages on his Secret Service phones, on January 6, to be deleted, or did James Murray do that himself?
Did he delete the text messages from his own Secret Service phone? Did the director of the Secret Service personally do that? Is that the service that he did for Donald Trump?
James Murray was hoping to slip out of town quietly at the end of the month and start his new career in the high-paid world of corporate security. He is scheduled to begin his new job as the head of security for Snapchat in August.
Whoever is handling the preservation of electronic records at Snapchat now, is doing a better job of it than James Murray will be able to do.
Here is someone who James Murray used to work with.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAN BONGINO, FOX NEWS HOST: This is one thing and one thing only. This is an attempt to silence conservatives like you and I, from communicating, before the 2022 election, that`s all that this is.
[22:15:05]
And it`s a message being sent to anyone who supports Donald Trump either now, or in the future. That is open season on you. It`s haunting season for your private communications. Don`t you dare talk about your intentions, or coordinate, or do anything to get Republican elected again, because Liz Cheney will make sure, that they subpoena you and make your life really miserable. That`s all this was.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: That guy was a Secret Service agent.
Dan Bongino was a New York City police officer who then joined the Secret Service, where he worked for 11 years while James Murray and Tony Ornato were also working in the Secret Service.
Where they friends with Dan Bongino? Are they friendly with him now? `Is Dan Bongino the public voice of what members of the Secret Service, like James Murray actually think?
There is a very serious problem at the Secret Service now. This is the worst crisis facing the Secret Service since the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22nd, 1963, and the director of the Secret Service has not said one word about it, not one word. There has been much justifiable outrage that the chief of the Uvalde school`s police force, went silent after the mass murder at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
This is the same thing. The director of the Secret Service facing the worst suspicions that have ever been focused on the Secret Service, in its history, and the director of the Secret Service, James Murray, says absolutely nothing about it? Not one word of explanation? Not one word of defense? Not one word of a promised to find out what`s has been happening at the Secret Service?
We have never seen a problem like this at the Secret Service. It`s a very serious problem at the Secret Service, and James Murray is part of that problem, or, James Murray is the problem.
Joining us now is Neal Katyal, former acting U.S. solicitor general and an MSNBC legal analyst.
Neal, the Secret Service story gets worse with every passing day. I was part of makes it worse is the silence of the director of the Secret Service.
NEAL KATYAL, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: A hundred percent, Lawrence, and I`m so grateful for that very long monologue you did because it was absolutely appropriate. This is frightening. It`s scary, and the idea that somehow the Secret Service accidentally purged all of these text messages strikes me as highly implausible to use your phrase earlier tonight, not believable.
I mean, we are talking about text messages with significant data trails. It`s not like a Secret Service all of a sudden started communicating via Snapchat. And by the way, how on brand does it for the Secret Service Director James Murray, to go and work for Snapchat, which the company is known for disappearing messages. It seems like he is unfortunately pretty good at that.
I do you think we have to consider the timing of the request, and when the texts were deleted. We obviously don`t know what happened here, but the fact that all of these text messages were deleted after they were requested, it raises a bunch of eyebrows. I`m growing a third eyebrow just reading these stories.
I think the most important point is that we are not talking about some random guy off of the street, your grandpa being bad at technology. The Secret Service agents are highly trained professionals in electronic communications. The idea that multiple agents all simultaneously failed to back up their data after receiving multiple warning emails, and knowing that the inverse information is being requested by the inspector general, I mean, that seems really farfetched. So, I agree with everything you said.
O`DONNELL: I mean, you know, what happened to all the data in ongoing criminal investigations that they were conducting which have nothing to do with the presidency? They have so much jurisdiction that has nothing to do with the protection of the presidency, and one of that data was lost. No explanations about any of that.
And even if there were no requests at all for the data on January 6th, wouldn`t you, as director of the Secret Service on January 7th at the latest, put out a directive saying, everybody preserve everything that happened yesterday.
KATYAL: A hundred percent. The preservation order would be the most standard thing in the world to do. The fact that it was not done is already suspicious.
As you say, Lawrence, if they could do it here about January 6th, when obviously everybody knows that the Secret Service were the folks on the ground, guarding Pence, guarding the president, you know, that`s obviously relevant information.
[22:20:02]
If they could delete that information, heaven knows what they can`t delete you. I mean, you know, this like — if they do this for the most significant investigation ever, what are they doing for the rest?
I am very upset at the Republicans right now, because these are the people that lost their minds over Hillary Clinton`s server, and saying, oh, you know, possibly, data was deleted, or something like that. Here we have an armed invasion of the Capitol, some of the most important evidence in the investigation has now been deleted, and there are crickets. We`re not hearing words of them.
O`DONNELL: Neal Katyal, thank you for starting off our discussion tonight.
KATYAL: Thank you.
O`DONNELL: And joining us now, Claire McCaskill, former Democratic senator from Missouri, an MSNBC political analyst. Also with us, Jill Wine-Banks, who served as an assistant Watergate prosecutor. She`s an MSNBC contributor.
And, Senator McCaskill, we also learned today that there were four — count them — four House committees who requested this same data before January 6th.
CLAIRE MCCASKILL, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: So, there are so many things here, so many layers. I was glad Neal mentioned Hillary`s emails, because what is the irony here? Where is the leadership of the Secret Service? Why are they not having a press conference to address this crisis in the agency?
Frankly, why hasn`t James Murray been fired? I mean, if you do not understand — these were government phones, these are people that are sophisticated federal agencies when it comes to cybersecurity.
There is no excuse for the stuff being deleted. None. And so, the assumption that is going to be made is that there was really bad stuff on those phones.
Now, can it be recovered? Some of it might be able to be recovered. But this story is going to have a long tale. This is not over by any stretch.
There are some people that are going to be in big trouble over this.
O`DONNELL: Jill Wine-Banks, your reaction to this. And the way — it gets worse every day, which is just a stunning thing. You think it`s bad as it can be, and then tomorrow, there`s more information about it.
JILL WINE-BANKS, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Lawrence, you laid out a really good explanation of what is going on. It is getting worse with each passing day that silence remains.
First of all, all government records have to be observed. You can`t just randomly decide that I will get rid of them. And the fact that the Secret Service, who has the technical expertise, could possibly have accidentally lost these records is totally incredible. It`s so incredible — you know, I look at the days before the 18-1/2-minute gap in Watergate.
And this was a two-day gap, and is 144 times longer. But it`s also obviously deliberate. There`s no way, I think as Claire said, you can`t believe this just happened by chance. It had to be not deliberately, and if it can`t be recovered, it was done by real professionals who could get into the cloud, and delete all other copies of it, the “to” and the “from”.
The fact that it was just on those two days is really suspicious. We know from Watergate, and from the chief of staff Haldeman`s notes that the missing 18 minutes was exactly the time that the conversation turned to Watergate. We know from the timing that January 5th and 6th were days when there would`ve been a lot of messages about protecting or not protecting the president and the vice president.
And I think not enough attention is being paid to what was going on with the vice president. The fact that it was possible that the Secret Service was going to whisk him away, at the direction of James Murray, and two words that I won`t forget, I promise you. That they`re going to whisk him away, never to lead him to return to fulfill his constitutional responsibilities to oversee the counting of the ballots.
That`s something that we need to know. Who made that order to get out of there? Was it James Murray? Was that the president to James Murray? Was it the president directly to Ornato? We just don`t know.
And the good news is, agents can be called to testify. There are witnesses to every single one of these communications. The best evidence, of course, is the text messages.
And the quickest and easiest way to get the information is from a compilation of text messages. But with a lot of time and diligence, both the committee and the Department of Justice should be investigating this. It should not be just the committee. These are crimes.
The Department of Justice has an obligation to act on this, as does the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security.
[22:25:01]
O`DONNELL: Claire, there is a line that is attributed to Keith Kellogg in the White House on January 6, when there is a discussion of moving Mike Pence, and moving him from the capitol. Kellogg is quoted as saying about the Secret Service, you know, if they take him out of there, they`ll take him to Alaska, or something like that.
It is a line that has much more resonance than it has in the past. Why would someone in the Trump White House, in that position, believe that the Secret Service was in Donald Trump`s pocket and would be part of disrupting the actual certification of the Electoral College vote?
MCCASKILL: And why was Pence so adamant about not going with them, Lawrence?
O`DONNELL: Yeah.
MCCASKILL: Think about that.
I think about what is going on in Pence`s mind because if Pence believed this was just about his safety, I think that he might have gone temporarily to another location. But you have to think, maybe Pence was thinking what we`re thinking, that there is an effort here to get me out of the building and keep me away from the building so that I cannot certify these votes, because that`s obviously the goal of the day for team Trump.
And you know, the sad thing about this is that all of the institutions that Donald Trump has degraded during his time — you know, I remember thinking of the Secret Service, the times that I`ve been around, them and I`ve been around many times in the my career. How reassuring it was that they were not political.
This is real, serious, permanent, corrosive damage that has been done to this institution. There needs to be a cleanup here. There needs to be a new set of management. There needs to be a new set of ethics, and there needs to be a re-commitment to this agency not being political.
O`DONNELL: Claire McCaskill and Jill Wine-Banks, thank you both very much for joining our discussion tonight.
MCCASKILL: You bet.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
Up next, a few hours ago, a federal court put charges six-week abortion ban into effect immediately today, making Georgia another state where abortion is effectively illegal. Stacey Abrams, candidate for governor, will join us, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:32:00]
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: Today, a federal appeals court ordered immediate compliance in Georgia, with the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe versus Wade. That allows a 2019 abortion law passed by the Georgia legislature and signed by Governor Brian Kemp to go into effect immediately.
Joining us now is Stacey Abrams, Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia.
What happens to women in Georgia today?
STACEY ABRAMS (D), GEORGIA GUBERNATORIAL NOMINEE: Today, women in Georgia lost the right to choose their futures. We are now being governed by one of the most extreme abortion bans in the nation. The six-week abortion ban, which means that women lose their right to choose before they know they are pregnant. And this is happening in the state where we have 82 counties without an OB/GYN. That is more than half the state.
We have 18 counties that have no general practicing doctor that does family medicine. Nine counties that do not have a doctor at all. We are in a state of crisis in our health care. And Brian Kemp and Republicans have made it dangerous, in fact, made it lethal for women to live in the state of Georgia.
O`DONNELL: What happens going forward? Of course, the one solution, longer term is electing you as governor. Electing Democratic legislators in Georgia to change this state law.
In the meantime, what can you tell the women of Georgia that they can do?
ABRAMS: Sadly, the only thing they can do is travel to another state. And the closest state is North Carolina. It`s 203 miles to leave the state of Georgia and reach a state where the right to an abortion, the right to full reproductive care is still available.
And so sadly, we are going to watch women risk their lives. We`ve seen it happen in Texas, where a woman was investigated for a miscarriage. We`ve seen what happened in Ohio. We`ve seen what happened across this country. Women being forced into ectopic ruptures because doctors are afraid to treat ectopic pregnancies. Women are in danger.
And what is so disturbing to me is that because he did not commit treason, Brian Kemp is being treated as either anti-Trump moderate or a fiscal conservative. He is neither.
This is a hard right, he is a hard right, religious extremist who has decided to force women either into pregnancy or into jail. Those are their choices now. And that is wrong in the state of Georgia. It`s wrong for America. And we need a governor who is committed to doing what is right.
And that`s why I encourage everyone to go to StaceyAbrams.com to learn more about my plan to protect the women of Georgia.
O`DONNELL: Is there — Planned Parenthood and organizations who are supportive of abortion services — are they developing a strategy for helping women get out of the state?
[22:34:50]
ABRAMS: They are. The organizations on the ground have been doing their best. But Lawrence, the challenges we are surrounded by these crises — Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, Tennessee, Florida, South Carolina — we are in a landlocked situation where the right for a woman to control her body no longer exists.
What the Supreme Court did, and what the 11th circuit suborned today was essentially saying that women in Georgia are now second-class citizens. The citizenship has been diminished, simply because we live in the state.
And a constitutional right, a fundamental right should not depend on your state lines and your geography. We have seen this before. When states rights become determinant of your human rights, that is simply the calling card that says the state has the right to deny you your humanity, to deny you your citizenship. And that`s what happened today in the state of Georgia.
O`DONNELL: Stacey Abrams, thank you very much for joining us tonight. We really appreciate it.
ABRAMS: Thank you.
O`DONNELL: Thank you.
And coming up, Texas State Senator Roland Gutierrez will join us next on a day when the mother of the mass murderer in Uvalde, Texas, was confronted by mothers of the children he murdered. That`s next.
[22:36:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O`DONNELL: The mother of the mass murderer in Uvalde, Texas was confronted today by mothers and other relatives of the children her son murdered. It was a chance encounter by the side of the road in Uvalde and was caught on camera by a Telemundo crew who was there.
Here is some of what the mother of the murderer said toward the end of the confrontation before local police protectively escorted her away.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ADRIANA MARTINEZ, MOTHER OF UVALDE SCHOOL SCHOOTER: I know my son was a coward. You don`t think I don`t know that? I know. You don`t think I`m carrying all that with me? You don`t think I don`t know. I know. And I`m sorry.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: One of the relatives of one of the children who was killed told Telemundo the mother of the murderer is not innocent.
(VIDEO CLIP OF DANA MENDIOLA, GRANDMOTHER OF UVALDE VICTIM AMERIE JO GARZA TALKING TO TELEMUNDO)
O`DONNELL: Joining us now is Texas State Senator Roland Gutierrez. He represents Texas`s 19th district which includes Uvalde.
Senator, what were your feelings when you saw that confrontation on video today?
ROLAND GUTIERREZ (D-TX), STATE SENATOR: It was just sad. Sad, Lawrence. I mean we know that killers aren`t just born. They develop over time, and sadly and unfortunately this young man had a very, very difficult upbringing because of his mother`s choices. Others around him, that just did not do right by him. And unfortunately, caused him to become the person that he is.
But you know, we have got to get — we are past that moment right now. And we`ve got to look at trying to get answers for these families. So that`s what I`m looking forward to. Trying to find answers and accountability.
O`DONNELL: And in wrap (ph) you sent a letter today to the lieutenant governor, raising the very important question. How can Texas state police investigate themselves? Which is the current plan for evaluating how the state police forces operated on that day in the school?
GUTIERREZ: You know, Lawrence, you`ve been doing this a long time. You have been covering these issues for a long time. When police have an officer involved shooting, internal affairs steps in. They begin investigating themselves almost immediately.
Here we are 55 days out and they finally decide, ok, we`re going to now investigate ourselves to see if we did all of the policies that we were supposed to do to see if we broke any law. At the end of the day we know that they failed.
Steve McGraw called this an abject failure of policing. It`s an abject failure of the Department of Public Safety as well. He wasn`t very adamant about that. He was very good at pointing the fingers at others.
But the fact is state troopers stood there in that hallway and did nothing. I want to know who they were talking to, who their superiors were on those phones that they were talking to when they did absolutely nothing.
They failed these children. Operation Lone Star, a plused-up immigration task force failed these children. Greg Abbott`s task force failed these children.
O`DONNELL: And there were, I believe, 91 state police officers at the school, and they want you to believe that they were deferential to the five person police force run by Chief Pete Arredondo of the school police force.
Why would a giant state police force come in there, and defer to an obviously incapable, tiny police force?
GUTIERREZ: And that narrative, Lawrence, was created on day two. On day two that narrative was created because he knew then that his force was an abject failure. He knew that his guys failed. He knew that those guys didn`t get in.
Like yes, he created false narrative after false narrative. Blamed Arredondo, blamed the police — local police, blamed the teacher for putting a stone on a door, which we know she didn`t do.
[22:45:00]
GUTIERREZ: They (INAUDIBLE) — they leaked information to the media in different ways just to cover their own behinds. And at the end of the day, the one thing that that report tells us is that each and every one of those police departments, including and especially those that were better-armed and better-equipped, better training — this is a paramilitary force on our border. 1,800 additional units, 150 in this region, 91 in that school, all from Operation Lone Star. And they failed.
The abject failure was indeed the Department of Public Safety as well. And there`s no two ways about it.
O`DONNELL: State Senator Roland Gutierrez, thank you very much for joining us once again tonight.
GUTIERREZ: Thank you, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: Well, the prosecution made its case against Steve Bannon with just two witnesses. Who will testify for the defense? Glenn Kirschner was in the courtroom today. He will join us next.
[22:45:57]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O`DONNELL: Today, prosecutors in Steve Bannon`s trial completed their case after calling just two witnesses, indicating that the case is as simple as it has always appeared to be. Steve Bannon refused to comply with a subpoena to testify to the January 6th committee and that means that all the prosecution has to prove is that it was a legal subpoena and Steve Bannon did not show up.
Joining us now is Glenn Kirschner, former prosecutor and an MSNBC legal analyst. He was in the courtroom at Steve Bannon`s trial today.
And Glenn, two witnesses — one a counsel to the January 6 committee saying yes this was our subpoena. Here is the date that it says on the subpoena, he was supposed to show up. And then and FBI witness — what did the FBI witness accomplish for the prosecution?
GLENN KIRSCHNER, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: Well, you know, he introduced to the jury some of Steve Bannon`s posts on a platform called GETTR, where he was bragging and boasting about willfully defying the congressional subpoenas. So that was a little bit of icing on the cake.
Nobody can accuse these prosecutors of over trying the case, I actually think they tried it brilliantly, proving Steve Bannon`s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, with just two witnesses.
O`DONNELL: And so the defense case tomorrow, the question in all trials, will the defendant testify?
KIRSCHNER: You know, Lawrence, I think there is one thing that perhaps all Americans can agree on. Steve Bannon loves to run his mouth. Not just on his podcast, but he has been putting on an absurd little dog-and-pony show every day after trial, on the courthouse steps where he is railing against and trolling everybody from Bennie Thompson to Dr. Fauci to Joe Biden and others. I mean he is the most aggrieved man on the planet.
So it`s going to be really interesting because tomorrow is his big day. He gets to take the witness stand, he gets to tell his story, and he gets to rock the mic, as the kids say.
It will be really interesting to see if — and I`m going to use the word brave — if he is brave enough to take the stand, and to try to field cross-examination questions, from a really strong, adept prosecutor named Amanda Vaughn (ph), she is they lead counsel in the case. She has performed brilliantly.
And I don`t think Steve Bannon can withstand cross-examination from AUSA Vaughn because there are a lot of areas that are very ripe for cross- examination.
O`DONNELL: Are there any other potential defense witnesses?
KIRSCHNER: The defense did not tip its hand in opening statement. They did not promise the jury that they would present any witness by name. So I think that their case is actually going to sort of peter out. I don`t think they`re going to have much by the way of an affirmative defense.
So I really do think it all boils down to whether Bannon wants to take the stand, put on a show, try to make a circus of the proceedings. If I had to bet — and I`m not a betting man, $1 is my limit — I would probably bet a buck that Steve Bannon does not take the stand tomorrow.
O`DONNELL: So if he doesn`t take the stand, and there are no other witnesses, it is conceivable that the defense could just rest and just go to closing arguments? What would be available to them in a closing argument if they did that?
KIRSCHNER: What they`ll do is they will have to urge the jurors to just disbelieve some of the testimony they heard from two really professional, accomplished, credible witnesses. I mean these two witnesses were unimpeachable.
But I will say, Lawrence, is because the government has the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and because that burden never shifts to the defense. And the defense never has to present any evidence, it`s not that unusual for a defense team to rest without presenting evidence and then argue, you know what ladies and gentlemen? We didn`t have to present any evidence because the government failed to meet their burden of proof and here is how.
The problem is, the here is how, they have nothing available.
O`DONNELL: Yes. I mean we have always said it`s kind of an open and shut case, and that`s the way it played out in court.
[22:55:00]
KIRSCHNER: Yes, he willfully defied the subpoenas. He bragged about it. He did it. Why? To cover up for Donald Trump, which would be some really ripe cross-examination questions if he does testify. But this — you know, nothing is a sure thing, but this is the proverbial open and shut case.
O`DONNELL: Glenn Kirschner, thank you for being in the courtroom for us today. Thank you very much for joining us tonight.
KIRSCHNER: Thank you, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: We`ll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[23:00:00]
O`DONNELL: Tonight`s LAST WORD is a name. James Murray, the director of the Secret Service who presided over the illegal deletion of all of the Secret Service`s text messages on January 6th.
“THE 11TH HOUR WITH STEPHANIE RUHLE” starts now.