Updated
Summary
Public opinion has shifted on gun laws. The Highland Park Parade shooting suspect is charged with seven counts of first-degree murder. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) joins Hayes to discuss guns in America. Sen. Graham, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, and other Trump allies are subpoenaed in Georgia Grand Jury Election Probe. The January 6 Committee announces new hearing next Tuesday. According to the polls, Sen. Warnock leads Herschel Walker by ten points. The Supreme Court agrees to hear case on state legislatures` power over elections.
Transcript
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: If shame were possible, these people should be absolutely ashamed. That is tonight`s “REIDOUT”. ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES starts now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voiceover): Tonight on ALL IN.
SACHA KLJESTAN, SOCCER PLAYER, LOS ANGELES GALAXY:: I`m not joking. I`m sick to my stomach about what`s happened in Illinois today. And I think we need to talk about gun control.
HAYES: The agony and the outrage following the Highland Park massacre. Tonight new charges on why there may actually be a case for hope. Then —
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why is the senator from South Carolina calling the Secretary of State in Georgia anyway?
HAYES: It turns out a grand jury has the exact same question. Tonight, new subpoenas for Senator Lindsey Graham, Rudy Giuliani, and other Trump world figures who were caught trying to overturn the Georgia election.
Plus, what we know about the new hearing the January 6 Committee just announced. And election lawyer Marc Elias updates us on his state-to-state fight against the slow-motion coup.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I`d actually like to ask everybody on the stage if they would agree we had a corrupt stolen election. Raise your hand.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
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HAYES (on camera): Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. Tonight, the suspect in the Highland Park mass shooting remains in police custody has been charged with seven counts of first degree murder, with dozens of additional charges expected in the coming days. According to police, he plotted for several weeks before opening fire at the Fourth of July parade, leaving seven people dead and nearly 40 more injured. Police say the shooter used an AR-15 style rifle which was legally purchased in the massacre.
Tonight, as I speak to you, Vice President Kamala Harris is heading to Highland Park accompanied by Mayor Nancy Rotering, Congressman Brad Schneider, and State Senator Julie Morrison as the country is once again observing the same maddening, sad ritual after another mass shooting.
Like we did after Uvalde, a shooting six weeks ago when 19 elementary school children and two teachers were slaughtered again using illegally acquired AR-15 style rifle and after the buffalo shooting just over a week before that when 10 people were shot and killed in a grocery store using an AR-15 style assault rifle, and after hundreds of other mass shootings in this country.
Yesterday`s tragedy was the 309th this year alone, again, depending on how you define that. And just during this past holiday weekend, the gun violence archive reports at least 220 people were shot and killed. There are also real signs amid this despair and anger that these shootings are having a radicalizing effect on the American public. That people are fed up that they think this is intolerable as they should and are demanding something to change.
You see it in the polling, that little tick up there, solid green line is for stricter gun laws, the blue for leaving them as is, the dotted green for less strict. Broad majorities now there at two-thirds of Americans supporting stricter gun laws. That`s up significantly from a decade ago. In 2014, it was down at 47 percent. You can hear it in the rhetoric from political leaders in Illinois yesterday standing outside the hospital where the injured were being treated.
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NANCY ROTERING, MAYOR, HIGHLAND PARK, ILLINOIS: Our community, like so many before us is devastated. It`s impossible to imagine the pain of this kind of tragedy until you`re confronted with it. Gun violence, mass shootings such as this cast a much wider net of agony than what the public is typically exposed to. It`s a crisis that devastates entire families and communities in a single moment. And we know it`s going to take a long, long time if ever to heal.
SEN. TAMMY DUCKWORTH (D-IL): We have to do more to keep our community safe. We have to get rid of assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and so many other additional common-sense reforms that wide majorities of Americans are crying out for. I just listened to the sound of that gunfire from one of the videos that was captured. And let me tell you that the last time I heard a weapon with that capacity firing that rapidly on the Fourth of July was Iraq. It was not the United States of America. We can and we should and we will do better.
GOV. JB PRITZKER (D-IL): If you`re angry today. I`m here to tell you be angry. I`m furious. I`m furious that yet more innocent lives were taken by gun violence. I`m furious that their loved ones are forever broken by what took place today. I`m furious that children and their families have been traumatized. I`m furious that this is happening in communities all across Illinois and America. I`m furious because it does not have to be this way. And yet we as a nation, well, we continue to allow this to happen.
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HAYES: I was struck by that rhetoric for political leaders, again, just hours after the shooting, standing outside of the hospital demanding gun safety in the immediate aftermath of yet another mass shooting. It reflects a sense of urgency a lot of the American public has as well, and you can hear it everywhere. Yesterday, Chicago White Sox Pitcher Liam Hendriks, guy who grew up in Australia, said the shooting made clear that something needs to change.
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LIAM HENDRIKS PITCHER, CHICAGO WHITE SOX: Obviously, I read about it on the way here, and it`s something that you never want to read. But unfortunately, in this day and age, it`s becoming all too commonplace. I think the access to the weaponry that is being kind of used in these things is that something needs to change, something needs to be done, something needs to happen because there`s way too many people losing their lives.
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HAYES: An American soccer player Sacha Kljestan of the Los Angeles Galaxy use the post-match press conference yesterday to rail against inaction.
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KLJESTAN: I`m actually going to keep this really brief and not answer any questions about the game. I`m not joking. I`m sick to my stomach about what`s happened in Illinois today. And I think we need to talk about gun control. You guys can write about the game if you want, but I don`t really give a shit. Our kids get shot up and we say thoughts and prayers, and it does nothing. And then we talked about it on social media, and then it does nothing. And then our government does nothing. And then someone gets shot up again.
So, it`s sick, it pisses me off. And I`m like — I can`t even think about anything else but that. I got — I don`t even know what to say. I`m not a politician, but I`m a human being and my kids are — I fear for them when they go to school, and then it pisses me off. And I think if it doesn`t piss you off, and you don`t want new gun laws in this country, then there`s something wrong with you. So, I guess that`s all I have to say.
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HAYES: Now, there are some real tangible evidence of politics around this issue might actually be changing. For instance, the very fact that just last month, the 50 fittings — 50 Senate actually passed a gun bill with some really meaningful and significant provisions is a reflection attitudes in this country are shifting. It had been 20 years since any gun safety legislation and pass.
And if you don`t believe me, just ask Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky who told reporters after the bill — the bipartisan bill passed, “It`s no secret we`ve lost ground and suburban areas. We pretty much own rural and small town America. And I think this is a sensible solution to the problem before us, which is school safety and mental health. And yes, I hope it will be viewed favorably by voters in the suburbs that we need to regain in order to hopefully be a majority next year.”
It`s pretty straightforward from McConnell. And it`s not just politicians and athletes, regular voters know something needs to be done. So, what one Highland Park resident Dr. David Baum who witnessed yesterday shooting and helped triage the victims told me yesterday?
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DR. DAVID BAUM, WITNESS TO HIGHLAND PARK SHOOTING: What`s safe? Is it safe to take a child to a water park? Is it safe to take them to his day camp? Is it safe to go to synagogue, the people who are gone were gone immediately. They were gone immediately. And you know, I might be repeating myself, but you know what, nobody should have to be blown up by high- powered rifles from a top — fourth floor of a building. It`s just too much. It`s too much and something`s got to change.
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HAYES: Senator Dick Durbin is a Democrat of Illinois. He called yesterday`s shooting in his state senseless and horrific, and he joins me now. Senator, it`s good to have you on. I`m sorry it`s under these circumstances. I imagine you`ve been speaking with folks from Highland Park all day. And I just want to get your sense of how things are now 24 hours later.
SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL): It`s combination of shock and anger. Shock to think of the possibility that you would take your children or grandchildren to this Highland Park, Fourth of July parade in one of the safest communities in our state, maybe in the nation, and have them subjected to this kind of random violence, killing people, and injuring so many others. People are still in shock over that.
When I went there today, you can still see on the ground as you`re showing on your screen there, things that are left behind by these people as they ran away from the scene of the crime, and also anger. For God`s sake, where is it safe in America? Where is it safe to take our children? Can we send them to school? Can we take them to the theater? Can we send them to a concert? Can we send them to the grocery store?
Everywhere you turn, another mass shooting. They`re fed up with it and I am too. It`s about time we came to our senses. The idea that we can send and sell in this country, military assault weapons capable of shredding the bodies of the victims is just senseless. It has nothing to do with the Constitution or the Second Amendment.
[20:10:15]
HAYES: Vice President Kamala Harris, talk today about reiterating the Biden-Harris administration`s call to remove the liability shield which there`s really nothing else like it in American law. It protects gun manufacturers. Take a listen to what she had to say.
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KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: An assault weapon is designed to kill a lot of human beings quickly. There is no reason that we have weapons of war on the streets of America. We need reasonable gun safety laws. And we need to have Congress stop protecting those gun manufacturers with the liability shields. Repeal it. Repeal it.
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HAYES: That`s specific proposals does seem like a fairly clever and straightforward way to go at what is a very difficult problem when you think about 400 million guns in this country.
DURBIN: It certainly is. If the gun is inherently dangerous, as a military assault weapon is, ordinarily, manufacturers would be subject to liability in civil court, maybe beyond that. But because the gun industry had control of Congress at a moment and put in this provision which exempts them from the same standards of liability which virtually every other manufacturer faces, then they can`t be tested on the question of whether it is inherently dangerous. I agree with it.
HAYES: There`s some interesting comments from Mitch McConnell which we spoke about before you were on in which he was — he was pretty frank about the politics of this. And I thought it was a sort of interesting admission on his part to basically he said he supported the bipartisan gun safety legislation that was hammered out between Chris Murphy and John Cornyn for straightforward political reasons.
There are voters that he wants to reach and get back to voting for Republicans who care about this issue and he wants to take it off the table for them. And I wonder if that gives you — what do you make of that, and what it means for the political calculations in Congress in the aftermath of another one of these horrific shootings?
DURBIN: Well, let`s talk about the calculation in November. And I understand completely what Mitch McConnell is saying, and he`s brutally honest about that. He does not want to talk about the overturning of Roe vs. Wade in November. He does not want to talk about lessening the power of the Environmental Protection Agency to protect our clean water and clean air.
He does not want to talk about the horrific killings and these mass shootings that are killing innocent people in every corner of America with these horrendous military weapons. He wants to focus on whether Joe Biden pulled out of Afghanistan too soon, whether inflation can be dealt with successfully by Republicans as opposed to Democrats and a couple other discrete issues.
Anytime you change the subject from his agenda, he wants to end the conversation. So, it`s up to us, those of us who believe that these issues are critical, and the Supreme Court has brought them forward, we cannot ignore them, to make sure that Americans know. If you don`t like the way things happened in Highland Park yesterday, if you don`t like the Supreme Court decision on overturning Roe vs. Wade, if you happen to believe that we should aggressively make sure that we lessen pollution in this country and reduce the prospects of global warming, then for goodness sakes, you need to vote. You need to vote in numbers unprecedented in all fair elections.
HAYES: Let me counter that or just push back a little bit when you look at the gun laws in the state of Illinois. Obviously, a progressive state, Democratic governor, two Democratic senators, the assailant was able to acquire this gun legally in the state of Illinois. And it`s not a state like, you know, Texas or other places, particularly the American south that have relatively lenient gun laws. What does that say to you about the gun legal regime that we have?
DURBIN: Well, part of our problem in Illinois is we`re not alone. We are surrounded by states with much more flexible standards, and unfortunately, some of them look the other way. And many of our crime guns have been traced directly to the states. But having said that, the obvious answer is these guns, these military assault weapons shouldn`t be for sale to anyone.
I can`t tell you how many we have in America because I can`t get a good estimate, but it`s between 10 and 20 million AR-15s in this country. Remember that, 10 to 20 million. And we have 400 million firearms all together. Please tell me when I meet with them all the time in Chicago and across our state, we are awash in guns. If you want to know why we have this random violence, well, this terrible incident was taking place in Highland Park. There were five people saw a shot on the Southside of Chicago last night too.
So we have this going on constantly. While this terrible incident was taking place in Highland Park, there were five people saw a shot on the Southside of Chicago last night too. So we have this going on constantly because we have too many guns. They go way too far in terms of the numbers and the gravity of the results of their being used in these crimes.
[20:15:22]
HAYES: All right, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, I appreciate you taking some time with us tonight.
DURBIN: Good to be with you, Chris.
HAYES: Still ahead, a big announcement from the January 6 Committee and new subpoenas from prosecutors in Georgia for Trump`s cronies and a sitting United States Senator. That`s all coming up next.
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[20:15:00]
HAYES: Today, a U.S. senator — sitting U.S. senator was issued a subpoena by a special grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, and it relates to a criminal investigation and potential interference in the state`s 2020 elections. Nearly two months before Donald Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and told him infamously to “find 11,780 votes,” Raffensperger went public about a suspicious call from South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.
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BRAD RAFFENSPERGER, SECRETARY OF STATE, GEORGIA: During our discussion, he asked his balance clean match back to the envelope, the absentee ballots can be matched back to the envelope. I explained our process after went through two sets of signature match. At that point they were separated. But then Senator Graham applied for us to audit the envelopes and then throw out the ballots for counties with the highest frequency error of signatures. And that — I tried to, you know, help explain that that`s — because we did signature match, you couldn`t tie the signatures back anymore you have to those ballots.
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HAYES: Senator Graham disputed Raffensperger`s claims but not the phone call itself.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you clarify this conversation you had with the Secretary of State in Georgia? Did you or did you not ask him to throw out votes?
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): No, that`s ridiculous. I talked to him about how you verify signatures.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why is the senator from South Carolina calling the Secretary of State in Georgia anyway?
GRAHAM: Because the future of the country hangs in the balance.
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HAYES: Now, Senator Graham, along with other members of Trump`s legal team will have to tell their story apparently do a criminal grand jury in Georgia. Tamar Hallerman is a senior reporter for the Atlanta Journal- Constitution. She`s the journalist who first reported on those new subpoenas today, and she joins me now.
First, Tamar, just to sort of reset for folks that have maybe forgotten about this grand jury, remind us of what this grand jury is and what it`s investigating.
TAMAR HALLERMAN, SENIOR REPORTER, ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION: Absolutely. So, this grand jury was seated in May. It`s 23 Fulton County residents, as well as three alternates, and they`re tasked with investigating efforts to meddle in Georgia`s 2020 election. They`re going to be hearing testimony from a lot of state and local folks, but as we saw tonight, some folks connected with the Trump campaign as well. And it`s their job at the end of the day to recommend whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should press charges against a former Trump or any of his — former President Donald Trump or any of his allies.
HAYES: These are — the sort of who`s who of Trump World, the Graham one really stuck out to me because I will be honest, at some point, I knew that he had made that phone call. It had gotten a little memory hold for me. So, when I saw it today, I was like, all right, that`s right. And I want to just read from the subpoena here.
Witness, meaning Lindsey Graham, made at least two telephone calls to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, members of his staff in the weeks following the November 2020 election in Georgia. During the telephone calls, the witness question Secretary Raffensperger and his staff about reexamining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump. What does this subpoena require of Senator Graham?
HALLERMAN: Well, it requires him to show up in Fulton County, Georgia in downtown Atlanta on July 12. Him and six other folks, close allies of the former president, are — have been requested to appear that day. It`s unclear exactly how many of them will show up or if any will try and fight the subpoenas by citing some form of immunity, attorney-client privilege perhaps for some of these Trump campaign lawyers.
But perhaps there`s a potential that Senator Graham could try and cite some sort of legislative immunity. The U.S. Constitution, its Speech and Debate Clause, protects some member — you know, members from talking about their legislative duty and some of their motivations behind their committee work, debates on the floor, but this is a whole different ballgame.
HAYES: Yes, I appreciate you`re — floating that constitutional theory. I mean, the Speech and Debate Clause, which is an interesting part of the Constitution generally applies to floor speeches and sort of like things around that. So, this would be a novel application of that. But it speaks to something institutionally to me that`s fascinating here.
I mean, you know, we talked about the part of justice, we`re talking about the January 6 Committee, this is just the Fulton County DA. You know, there`s thousands of counties across the U.S., right? This is the head prosecutor who has, you know, potential evidence of a crime happening in her jurisdiction that she is now pursuing. And these very big, powerful and important people have been subpoenaed and, you know, it`s sort of a test to the rule of law, right? I mean, they can`t just not show up, I imagine.
HALLERMAN: Yes, but it`s possible they could try and slight — you know, cite some sort of immunity to block a lot of, you know, answering a lot of questions. It`s something we`re seeing with some of our local state legislators here in Georgia who are citing similar privileges.
HAYES: Oh, you`re saying before this — before this grand jury?
HALLERMAN: Yes, absolutely. We have a former state senator, one of the folks who was the most embedded in the Stop the Steal movement. He was the one who invited Rudy Giuliani to come testify for almost seven hours here in Georgia, our Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan. They`re citing a more kind of institutional argument that the Georgia Constitution has a similar provision to the Speech and Debate Clause that really bars them from being able to testify.
HAYES: Fascinating. How — I mean, this sort of a judgment call and I`m not — you know, you`re a very good reporter, and you`ve been reporting on this. So I don`t want you to get out past what you feel comfortable saying. But I guess as I look at this from a little bit of a remove and follow your reporting, as well as others, it`s like how seriously I should be taking this enterprise?
HALLERMAN: I think quite seriously. The Fulton D.A. has shown she`s not going to flinch when it comes to calling these very powerful people. She`s even suggested that she`s not scared to potentially call Donald Trump as a witness to come testify if she believes that`s right. And she told me she`s not scared to indict him or anyone in his inner orbit if she thinks that, you know, the elements of a crime have been reached.
And she`s shown that she`s willing in her career to go against public school teachers in Georgia go against, you know, folks who are relatively popular, but using the power of her office, she says, to follow the law, and, you know, maintain the law. So, I would take her very seriously.
HAYES: We should note that just to get the full list here, you have Senator Lindsey Graham, but also — and Rudy Giuliani, some very familiar figures, like for instance, John Eastman, of course, who we believe to be under some form of criminal investigation by the federal government. He was recently searched by them. You got John — Kenneth Chesebro, who was who was also a lawyer associated with Eastman. Jenna Ellis, Cleta Mitchell, these are the — this was sort of the group of lawyers that were both in Georgia and other places most associated with Stop the Steal, all of whom now have been subpoenaed to testify.
HALLERMAN: Absolutely, and I`ve kind of put them into two buckets. The first are folks who testified on December 3, 2020 in front of the Georgia Senate Committee hearing. Many of them waved a lot of conspiracy theories and kinds of claims that were quickly proven to be false by state officials. Giuliani, of course, headline that. Also, several of them are connected to this effort to kind of line up and draft alternative Republican electors in Georgia, even though the Democrats were the ones who had the legitimate electors.
HAYES: All right, Tamar Hallerman who again has been a fantastic reporter on this story down the Atlanta Journal-Constitution throughout. thank you for making some time for us.
HALLERMAN: Thank you.
HAYES: Coming up, the latest details on the brand new January 6 hearing just announced. And who is now talking to the Committee? That`s next.
[20:30:00]
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HAYES: At the end of last week surprise January 6 Committee hearing with former aide to Trump`s chief of staff Mark Meadows, Cassidy Hutchinson, Chairman Bennie Thompson called on other witnesses to follow her example.
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REP. BENNIE THOMPSON (D-MS): I want to speak directly to the handful of witnesses who have been outliers in our investigation, the small number who have defied us outright, those whose memories have failed them again and again on the most important details, and to those who fear Donald Trump and his enablers. If you`ve heard this testimony today, and suddenly you remember things you couldn`t previously recall or there are some details you`d like to clarify, or you discovered some courage you had hidden away somewhere, our doors remain open.
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HAYES: Over the weekend, Congressman Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the committee said that some people have already answered that call.
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REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL): Every day we get new people that come forward and say, hey, I didn`t think maybe this piece of a story that I knew was important. But now that you guys are — like, I do see this plays in here.
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HAYES: And just as we`re learning more, people are coming forward. Today, the Committee announced that they will have another hearing a week from today. It will focus on the participation of white nationalist groups like the Proud Boys.
Betsy Woodruff Swan covers the committee at Politico where she`s a national correspondent, and she joins me now. Betsy, that announcement today took us a little bit by surprise. There`s some talk about this happening. What do we know about this hearing that`s coming up now?
BETSY WOODRUFF SWAN, NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT, POLITICO: What we expect is that this upcoming hearing, which is set for next week, is going to kind of zero in on the extremist groups who were really responsible for the kinetic violence at the Capitol Building on January 6. It`s been widely reported that this particular hearing, which we`ve known was in the mix for some point in the timeline for quite a while, is going to essentially be helmed by Congressman Jamie Raskin. This has been the big project that he`s been working on.
This hearing is also interesting, because it`s probably the only opportunity or the only risk moment for the committee to take a look at the major tech platforms that we know have been a focus of their investigation. We know that committee issued a subpoena and not a friendly subpoena to some of the largest platforms including YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, as well as others several months back basically demanding more information from them and suggesting that those companies are withholding things they needed to know.
Of course, the key focus when it comes to those companies is how much do the people running them know about the way that their platforms are being exploited to prepare for not just violence, but also insurrection on January 6. The tech companies don`t come up in this hearing. I think it`s unlikely that they`ll come up live at all. So, that`s something to keep an eye out for.
[20:35:30]
HAYES: That`s interesting. There`s some news today about an individual named Sarah Matthews who is a former Deputy Press Secretary for President Trump when he was president. It was interesting because during Cassidy Hutchinson`s testimony, I saw Sarah Matthews basically tweet saying, look, believe me, Cassidy Hutchinson is a trustworthy person, and she (AUDIO GAP) something to that effect. She has now been subpoenaed to testify at a public hearing as early as next week. What do we know about that?
SWAN: Sarah Matthews is unlikely to be part two of the Cassidy Hutchinson project. She just wasn`t as senior in the White House, wasn`t in the, you know, “in the room” as often as Hutchinson was, certainly didn`t have the access to very senior people that Hutchinson did. That said, of course, we don`t know what we don`t know. She was a White House official. She worked in the press shop. She would have been connected to the White House`s internal and external communications on January 6, and she resigned in the immediate wake of the violence, citing the attack on the Capitol building.
Without question, she`s an interesting person. She would bring a new voice. She has been cited in prior hearings. I think they`ve played brief clips of her, but she`s somebody who certainly hasn`t had main character status that so many other witnesses have had. And the fact that they`re bringing her in live suggests they think she has something important and new to tell that we don`t know about.
HAYES: Yes, that struck me too, exactly along those lines particularly, you know, when you look at the other folks that they`ve brought in. Let`s talk a little bit about the witness tampering. The — you know, there`s — there was, of course that, you know, really striking conclusion of the last hearing in which Liz Cheney reads these messages, right, that had been conveyed to potential witnesses from reporting by yourself and others that seem to identify Cassidy Hutchinson is a recipient of one of those.
There`s some talk now that Cheney has spoken about this week and a possible criminal referrals for that. I think we have some sound on that. Here`s what she had to say.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, the committee will or will not make a criminal referral?
REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): We`ll make a decision as a committee about it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, it`s possible there will be a criminal referral —
CHENEY: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: — which would be effectively the committee saying that he should be prosecuted in this evidence that we`ve —
CHENEY: I mean, the Justice Department doesn`t have to wait for the committee to make a criminal referral. And there could be more than one criminal referral.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: I was struck by that. And obviously, they have used criminal referrals as a tool of investigation in other places where they`ve had non- compliant, people who have refused subpoenas like Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro. What do you make of that?
SWAN: So, this is a little bit of the cart going ahead of the horse, just to be candid. We know that committee is very much currently investigating the possibility of witness tampering of improper influence. We know Cheney kind of studiously in that final statement that she made didn`t actually use the term witness tampering, which is the legal term. That`s something that was used by other committee members after the hearing.
And we know that in those final, very dramatic and cryptic minutes, Cheney specifically said, we are currently looking at this. And if you have information, please come talk to us. So, this question about are they going to make a criminal referral that`s based on what they know right now, in my view — look, all of this stuff is certainly interesting, but they`re being very, very public about the fact that they are really, really in the moment looking into this.
What else I can tell you that amplifies that is that the two messages the committee showed on screen were both based on material that Cassidy Hutchinson shared with the Select Committee in her very last fourth and final deposition. That`s the deposition that was significant enough that it triggered the entire emergency hearing situation that of course now has played out the way that it has. Just to reiterate, this is new stuff. This is ongoing stuff. The question of whether or not the committee will get to the point of being able to make a criminal referral is going to be predicated entirely on what they discover, what new material, what new context, what new perspective comes through in the next couple of weeks.
HAYES: All right, Betsy Woodruff Swan, thank you so much for that. I learned a lot.
SWAN: Thanks, Chris. I appreciate it.
HAYES: Still ahead, the latest threat to American democracy and how Marc Elias and others plan to stop it. Plus, there`s some good news in the Georgia Senate race. That`s next.
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[20:40:00]
HAYES: All right, so the political environment for Democrats right now, particularly incumbents is rough. Just a few months after the midterm elections, President Joe Biden`s approval rating is low, inflation and gas prices are up. But the thing is, the future is unwritten. Nothing is set in stone in politics or in life. And in the Georgia Senate race, we`re seeing a reminder that not everything is determined by those big structural external factors. And in fact, candidate quality really does matter.
Democratic senator Raphael Warnock is one of the most exceptional interesting members of the Senate in recent history perhaps ever. He grew up in public housing, rose to become senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. That was Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senior`s congregation. Warnock has continued to do that job by the way while serving as U.S. Senator and since defeating Republican Kelly Loeffler in a special election last year.
This November, Senator Warnock is running for a full term, and he`s facing off against the Trump-endorsed former football player, Herschel Walker. The Republican nominee has no real qualifications to be a United States Senator and is lived in Texas, not Georgia for decades. And new polling shows Senator Warnock has now opened up a 10 point lead over Walker 54 to 44 percent.
Now, please take that with a grain of salt. I do with all polls these days. We seem polling messes. But let`s say you knock off a bunch of points, consider a dead heat right now. A dead heat is a notable sign in a brutal environment. A lot of people in Georgia are looking at Herschel Walker who just won his Republican primary and saying, I don`t think this man should be a U.S. senator.
Now, Walker has a long history of telling outlandish lies from claiming he was an FBI agent to promoting a mist that kills the COVID virus. He has greatly exaggerated his academic history as well as his success in business. Earlier this year, Walker questioned evolution because ape still exist. Walker has also been the subject of very serious allegations of abuse. His ex-wife accused him of violent behavior including pointing a gun to her head and threatening to blow her brains out.
A judge issued a protective order against Walker, banned him from owning weapons for a period of time. Herschel Walker has also just not been running a particularly good campaign. For instance, he refused to participate in any of the primary debates. He just didn`t show up. And now that he`s the nominee, anytime that a reporter can get close enough to him to ask him a basic straightforward question about what he believes, what he would do a senator, then he sounds like this.
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HERSCHEL WALKER (R-GA), SENATE CANDIDATE: You know, Cain killed Abel, you know, and — you know, that`s a problem that we have. And I said, what we need to do is look into how we can stop those things. You know, they talked about doing a disinformation, what about getting a department that can look at young men that`s looking at women, they`re looking at just social media? What about doing that, looking into things like that, and we can stop that way. But they want to just continue to talk about taking away your constitutional rights.
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HAYES: OK. Despite all that, this race will almost certainly be down to the wire. There are a number of candidates Republicans have nominated who, like Herschel Walker are really quite uniquely bad. And that does offer Democrats some serious hope because again, nothing in politics is foreordained. Never forget that.
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HAYES: Donald Trump`s big lie that the 2020 election was stolen is still at the center of Republican politics, especially at the state level in state primaries. We`ve seen this play out from state to state. The Republican frontrunner to be the next governor of Arizona, Kari Lake, last week at a primary debate, she used the big lie to bludgeon her opponent who is not an election denier.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You`ve called Joe Biden an illegitimate president. Was that mean?
KARI LAKE (R-AZ), GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: He lost the election and he shouldn`t be in the White House. We had a corrupt election. I`d actually like to ask everybody on this stage if they would agree we had a corrupt stolen election. Raise your hand. Did we have — did we have — this is a simple question.
I would like to — I`m not going to play your stunt.
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HAYES: She`s got not going to play the stun, although the stunt sort of happened, right? This is a state level race. The January 6 hearings have shown how much pressure was put on state level officials to overturn the elections. And the hearings also shown how officials like Republican Arizona Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers, a fellow Arizona Republican, who resisted that pressure, ended up playing a key role in saving our democracy.
But now, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could essentially make it easier for rogue state officials to carry out the coup the next time around. Marc Elias is the foremost election lawyer in the country, the founder of Democracy Docket. On this upcoming case, he told The Washington Post Republicans are “learning where the pressure points and vulnerabilities are in our election systems and refining their tactics.” And he joins me now.
Marc, I have to say that people that I follow who are not people given to hyperbole or panic sound panicked about the fact the court has taken this case. Explain what this case is and why people are so worried about it.
MARC ELIAS, ELECTION LAWYER: Yes, so Chris, thanks for having me back. And I am usually among those people who are not panicked by any one case before one court. I always counsel against assuming that any one court decision is going to dramatically change the landscape. But this case is different. Because this is a case that Republicans are trying to use to advance a fringe theory that has never been adopted before. That says that state courts, reviewing state statutes and actions of state legislators cannot apply their own state constitutions.
This is a radical, radical idea that we would strip state courts have the ability of protecting voters using their state constitutions.
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HAYES: And just to get some context here. This case emerges out of North Carolina, but we`ve seen in North Carolina and many states, either states have adopted referenda or state ballot initiatives or state constitutional changes that control how the state is going to do things like gerrymandering, that say that you can`t partisan gerrymander. And what we`ve seen in state after state, Ohio is a place that you`ve been litigating that we`ve put a lot of attention, we`ve seen in North Carolina.
What`s happened in state after state is Republicans have basically said, screw you state law, we`re going to maximize our electoral strength through gerrymandering. And again, then what often happens, has happened in North Carolina I believe, and Ohio and other places, is the state Supreme Court sometimes dominated by Republicans comes in and say, you can`t do this, that`s a violation of state constitution. Republicans want to make that impossible, is that right?
ELIAS: Correct. And not just in the redistricting arena, it would be bad enough to say that the North Carolina State Courts can`t hold the state legislature to the state constitution and drawing congressional districts. It`d be bad enough that were true with the Ohio Supreme Court and the redistricting process there for Congress. But this would affect state courts like Montana that has struck down voter suppression laws in that state under the state constitution, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Minnesota, Michigan, the list goes on and on.
What Republicans want to do is take a vital tool out of the toolbox for those people trying to protect democracy, and that tool or the state courts using state law and state constitutions to hold their state legislatures accountable to those laws.
HAYES: And we should just be clear about that — I mean, I hope we`re spelling this out clearly, because it`d be a little complex. But just to give an example here, I mean, what`s so dangerous about this is if the state legislature draws its own districts, and it draws it in such a way that say, a Republican Party can get 57 percent of the seats with 45 percent of the votes, then they`ve used this kind of anti-democratic means to kind of barricade themselves in power. And then the Supreme Court comes along and says, sorry, those guys are essentially unreviewable. They can do whatever they want. You`re in a pretty like a vise grip of minority rule then.
ELIAS: Right. And Chris, remember, it was only in 2019 that the U.S. Supreme Court said you cannot challenge a partisan gerrymandered map in federal court, OK. There`s no way to challenge partisan gerrymandering in federal court. That was a five-four decision by the Supreme Court. But Chief Justice Roberts said in that opinion, don`t worry, you`re going to be able to go to your state courts, and some state courts will allow you to pursue partisan gerrymandering claims that will protect you from extreme partisan gerrymandering.
Well, that`s North Carolina. North Carolina State Supreme Court said we`re going to protect the citizens of North Carolina from this extreme form of partisan gerrymandering, using our state constitution, because that`s what Chief Justice Roberts told us to do. And yet now, we`re back before the U.S. Supreme Court on whether the state Supreme Court of North Carolina can use the state constitution to protect voters.
HAYES: And to connect it back to what we saw in 2020, there`s two connections here. One is that the fringy is version of this theory put forward by John Eastman who is now facing, you know, possible criminal investigation is that the state legislators can basically do whatever they want. They have what he says plenary power, absolute power to basically say, you wink from the voters who just elected Joe Biden estate. No, we`re not doing that.
And then the kind of softer version of that was the Josh Hawly`s and the Ted Cruz`s who sort of dressed up the coup in this fringe theory that said, well, state legislators and state courts particularly made all kinds of changes to the time place and manner the elections were had because of COVID. That`s a legitimate. We want to strike the votes. But those were arguments on the fringe of coup and insurrection that are pretty related to what the plaintiffs are trying to do here.
ELIAS: Yes. So, as you know, Chris, and much of your audience knows, I was involved in litigating more than 60 cases against Donald Trump and his allies in the post-2020 period. And this independent state legislature theory came up time and time again and court after court, democratic appointees, Republican appointees, said nonsense. But this is the single most important doctrine for the Trump Republicans to advance.
This is at the heart of what John Eastman and Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump`s other band of misfit lawyers tried to advance. And we won`t be so lucky next time if they`re able to use this doctrine to strip from state courts the ability to hold their legislators in check.
HAYES: All right, we`re going to keep our eyes very closely on this because I think this is one of the most important things we`ve seen before the court. Marc Elias, as always, a pleasure to have you on. Thank you, sir.
ELIAS: Thank you.
HAYES: That is ALL IN on this Tuesday night. “MSNBC PRIME” starts right now with Ali Velshi in Highland Park, Illinois. Good evening, Ali.