Updated
Summary
Protests continue in Ohio over the death of a 25-year-old black man named Jayland Walker at the hands of police. The investigation into the Highland Park mass shooting continues. A major development occurs in Fulton County`s investigation of Trump`s efforts to find enough votes to overturn Georgia`s elections. New details emerge about the next January 6 Committee hearing. WNBA star Brittney Griner appeals to President Biden directly for help, as she faces trial in Russia.
Transcript
MARQ CLAXTON, BLACK LAW ENFORCEMENT ALLIANCE: There`s no way to get around it.
Until we are willing — or until have a conversation about the role that race plays in these incidents, there is no resolution to them. And I will predict that we will be back to this place again shortly, having another discussion about another black man shot in a similar way, in short order, if God spares our lives.
JASON JOHNSON, MSNBC HOST: Marq Claxton, thank you very much.
“THE REIDOUT WITH JOY REID” is up next.
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Tonight on THE REIDOUT:
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REID: What the hell is happening in this country?
And it`s not just the mass murders. There are so many other reasons for the constant fear and dread that we`re all feeling. One of those reasons, the latest case of police overkill, a 25-year-old black man named Jayland Walker killed in Akron by 60 bullet wounds as he ran from police.
Also tonight, a major development in Fulton County`s investigation of Trump`s efforts to find enough votes to steal Georgia, and new details about the next January 6 Committee hearing.
We begin tonight with this very strange place that we find ourselves in on the day after July 4, Independence Day, a day that turned out to be tragic and violent for the community of Highland Park, Illinois, where seven people died and almost 40 were injured in approximately the 319th mass shooting so far this year, on our way to another record.
The young white male shooter who previously posted creepy videos seeming to set the stage for his act of terrorism was charged tonight with seven counts of first-degree murder after taking up a position a rooftop with a high-powered rifle and aiming down at a Fourth of July parade.
Here`s NBC`s Jay Gray.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
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JAY GRAY, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): More than 70 rounds fired from a high-powered rifle raining down on families gathering for a Fourth of July parade, the panic a day later replaced by an eerie silence and haunting images of chairs and children`s toys left behind by those rushing to escape the killing spree, messages in chalk from children who were there, but can`t fully understand, their parents now caught in the emotional crossfire.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mentally exhausted, mentally shooken, anxious, scared, fearful, and enraged. This will be running through our heads for forever, because it`s a nightmare that is stuck in our heads forever.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Police said today that, in 2019, a family member reported the suspect, telling police that he said he was going to — quote — “kill everyone.”
The police removed 16 knives, a dagger and a sword from his home. However, he was still able to legally purchase multiple weapons after that, including the AR-15-style weapon he used to fire 70 shots into a crowd. Police say they have not determined a motive yet.
Meanwhile, in Boston, the khaki-wearing white nationalist Patriot Front marched through the city on Saturday, injuring one black man during a scuffle in the process. And, yesterday, citizens in Akron, Ohio, protested the truly shocking 90-shot overkill of a DoorDash delivery driver named Jayland Walker, who was just 25 years old, and who died unarmed with some 60 bullet holes in his body after police claim they saw a gun discharged from his vehicle during a routine traffic stop.
A warning: This video is unsettling.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Show your hands! Show your (EXPLETIVE DELETED) hands!
(GUNSHOTS)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: All of this as more than 100 million women and queer folks with uteruses too woke up to yet another day in America basically as state property in the more than 20 fully or partially Republican-controlled states that the Supreme Court`s conservative majority unleashed to literally take physical control of half the population.
And the court majority is flexing its unelected power rather brazenly to further not a judicial or constitutional, but seemingly a religious agenda. That is unprecedented in a country that is separated from the crown that leads a national church. And it`s not just them.
Their party, the Republican Party, spent the past few days asserting that little girls, 10-year-old little girls who have been raped should bear the children of their rapists. This is an actual 10-year-old girl from Ohio who had been raped by her relative and who had to be taken to Indiana to terminate a pregnancy, which was the result of the abuse. Indiana has not shut abortion rights down yet. It is still a free state, for now.
[19:05:06]
America`s 10-year-olds are also at the mercy of mass shooters when they walk into their fourth grade classrooms, because this court has decreed that guns have more rights than children or women, while police, per the court, have no affirmative obligation to save you or your kids, just themselves. That is the excuse they use in Akron. They thought their lives were in danger.
In Florida today, college professors are required to submit to the government their political leanings, so that Supreme Court — supreme chairman Ron DeSantis can declare himself satisfied that there are enough right-thinking men and women on staff.
Teachers who are gay or lesbian or bi have been forced back into the closet, for fear of violating the don`t say gay law. Corporations are on notice that they had better not speak up in opposition to the governor, or else. Trans people are under brazen attack, with DeSantis floating the idea of ordering Child Protective Services to investigate parents who take kids to Drag Queen Story Time.
Schools are being stripped of history lessons, while teachers are being told in summer training sessions in Florida, in the unfree state of Florida, that the slaveholding founding fathers actually hated slavery, and that there is no separation of Christian church and state.
And Florida is just one of the red states waging this particular cultural revolution.
America is in a very different place in July of 2022 than it was even a year ago. We are less free, we are less safe at the store, at school, in church, at a parade. We are further down the road to authoritarianism and living in a constant state of terror.
Oh, yes, and our former president very nearly pulled off a coup supported by a majority of his party. And the same religious arch conservatives on Supreme Court who now threaten the freedom to marry, to purchase birth control, to be free from religious dogma, and to vote are poised to decide a case that could make the next Republican coup legal.
And now for the really bad news. It is not clear that our current politics is capable of stopping any of this, of turning it around and giving us an actual Independence Day. So what are we supposed to do?
Tonight, we`re going to walk you through some of these stories and try to make sense of them in search of that answer, starting with that July 4 horror in Illinois.
And with me now with NBC News senior reporter Ben Collins, Jill Wine-Banks, former assistant Watergate special prosecutor and MSNBC legal analyst, and Rosa Brooks, professor at Georgetown University Law School and author of “Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City.”
Thank you all for being here.
Jill Wine-Banks, I understand you are from not far away from this catastrophe that took place in Illinois. We have released the victim — names of the victims.
And, here, I will put their names up, Katherine Goldstein, Irina McCarthy, Kevin McCarthy, Jacquelyn Sundheim, Stephen Straus, Nicolas Toledo, Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, and an unknown victim.
Your thoughts on just this constant state of terror and fear that has stalked your community now, and is simply stalking all of us.
JILL WINE-BANKS, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: As everybody in the country feels, it really hurts when it hits so close to home.
I know people who were shot. I know one person who died. I shouldn`t say I actually know her, but friends of mine are friends of hers. She was a member of their temple.
And it is very distressing to see this. I know someone who saved a child who was wandering bloody. And it turned out he was taken away from them by his grandparents, because his father was killed in the shooting. And it`s time to say that no one in America needs an assault weapon.
It`s something the military needs. It is not something that people need. And whatever mental issues the shooter here had — and it`s clear that he did — even if he didn`t, he didn`t need that gun, and he got it legally.
So it is time to say that the laws that we have passed are not adequate. We need additional laws. And I personally am going to become much more involved in helping to make sure that our laws are changed. Illinois isn`t bad, but the rest of the country needs to really stop this.
And many of the guns in Illinois come from Indiana, where the laws are very lax.
REID: And, Rosa, that is something — that`s something you hear often from when the right sort of tries to go after Chicago. This is a suburb of Chicago.
It is not — it didn`t take place in Chicago. They say oh, Chicago, Chicago, Chicago, which, by the way is not the most unsafe city in America, but they use that as a crutch. But there is no city that`s not Chicago, right?
Whatever you want to think of cities that have a lot of unfortunate gun death, it`s everywhere. There is no safe place to go. This is a very affluent largely Jewish suburb of people — the kind of idyllic kind of place that you would think of in America. You`re not safe there. You`re not safe in Uvalde, Texas. You`re not safe literally anywhere, Buffalo, New York, in a store.
[19:10:08]
And so Tom Nichols wrote a really great piece where he talked about the fact that this is terrorism, in the sense that it does the same thing terrorism does. It makes you feel unsafe everywhere. You have to think, is this the day when I go to this park when I`m going to get shot? You have to think about that all the time.
And having more police there doesn`t do any good. That doesn`t change anything. Now, what do you make of this sort of sense that we now essentially live at the mercy of whoever can go into the store and buy an AR-15 and decide to shoot whoever`s available?
ROSA BROOKS, AUTHOR, “TANGLED UP IN BLUE: POLICING THE AMERICAN CITY”: Yes.
Joy, I have worked in conflict zones around the world. And I was thinking – – as you showed the footage from Highland Park, I was thinking, boy, those sounds are like the sounds you hear in war zones.
And there are people all over the world who have lived during armed conflicts in daily terror: When does the mortar fall on your house? When does the soldier or the tank come down the street and just kill you?
And we are now living in that world too. And we have brought it on ourselves, right? I mean, we can`t say, oops, it`s the Russians` fault, they shouldn`t have invaded us, or, oops, it`s al Qaeda.
This is us. This is this is 100 percent us. And it`s because we are essentially slaves to a document that was written more than 230 years ago by a tiny group of white slave-owning men. And we cannot break out of the bondage that we have imposed on ourself from feeling like we have to — everything by our Supreme Court is decided in reference to this ancient document, which is just not serving us well.
It is causing enormous problems and enormous tragedies at this point.
REID: And, Ben, I have been reading a couple of — you have two great pieces up on NBCNews.com, and I hope people will read them.
But I think the thing is, one of the things that founding fathers did not anticipate is sort of where a good chunk of a certain demographic of Americans are mentally and emotionally right now.
I remember, back in the `80s, when this “Faces of Death” video circulated around, this thing that was online that people would sort of ghoulishly watch, because it just showed people basically dying or being killed, a politician blowing his brains out, stuff like that.
But there is like a cultural attraction to that among a certain demographic of young men. If you look at the demographics of these mass shooters, they kind of track. These are young men between 18 and 22. They`re largely young white men. There`s a lot of them in the — quote — “incel” community, meaning they can`t get any sexual relationships going.
They`re sort of loser types that you could sort of stereotype them as, and they have a fixation on violence, on other people`s violence, of watching other people commit violence, and then repeating and reenacting that kind of violence.
Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I think we`re missing that. This guy had, like, Trump affinities, but it`s not, like, Trumpism. It`s a Trump. It`s something bigger than that.
BEN COLLINS, NBC NEWS SENIOR REPORTER: Yes, Joy, the difference is, “Faces of Death,” after you watched “Faces of Death,” you didn`t immediately go to a place where tens of thousands of other people who had just watched “Faces of Death” were there to comment on it and say, hey, maybe we could do this thing from “Faces of Death,” right?
That was the difference between the `80s and now. We have the Internet now. These people have — who are otherwise literally disconnected from everyday life, have no real-life community, find a community in that space instead, find a community in the mass murder space, have idols.
This guy`s, like, Michael Jordan is Dylann Roof kind of figure, right? His — the people he was idolizing, the people who was comparing statistics to were mass killers. That`s the difference here. And the other thing is, he`s protected. He`s more protected than the guy walking down the street at that parade, right?
The police had visited him a couple of times. They took away his swords. He still bought more guns. He is very — he was able to do exactly what he wanted to do. He had months to plan it. His last video, where he posted a graphic depiction of being shot by the police after shooting up a school, where he rented a set to do that and dropped bullets in the school, and someone`s videotaped him doing that, and nobody said anything?
That was in January. That kid is the kid that America is protecting right now. We`re not protecting the kid who is walking around, the 2-year-old who`s walking around looking for his mom and dad, who literally were murdered, like Irina and Kevin McCarthy, at that parade.
We`re protecting the guy who is doing the mass killing with our documents, with our law, until the very moment he does the killing. So we have to rethink this, because nobody — even the young people that I know that want this to change, they are not seeing anything possible to stop it.
They know exactly what`s happening. They know that kid is more protected than they are. And they don`t know how to stop it, because no leader is saying, here are some things we can do. There is nobody in this country right now who has the ability or has the ideas to stop this.
[19:15:10]
But there are plenty of people trying to perpetuate this, make money off of it, run for office off of it. All of those things are still available. They continue the grief. They continue the pain in this country. You can still make money on that.
But you cannot run for office, you cannot make money, you cannot do good in this country trying to provide solutions. You just get harassment. That`s all it is.
REID: Right.
And, Rosa, so, I mean, the thing is that people don`t understand that you can literally just walk into a sporting goods store and buy a semiautomatic rifle, because rifles are less regulated than pistols. Like, if you wanted to commit some mayhem with a pistol, it would be very hard. You have to do a background check. You don`t with this.
And so, partly, it is the laws. There have always been unstable people who have weird fetishes for violence and have dark thoughts. But this is the only country where somebody who thinks like that can literally, within five minutes, all they need is their I.D. saying they`re 18 to buy the most deadly weapons, whereas they couldn`t even accomplish it if they wanted to do it with a pistol, because they wouldn`t be able to get it.
BROOKS: Yes. No, it`s completely crazy.
And the irony, of course, is that the theory behind rifles being more readily available than handguns is that they`re used for legitimate things, such as hunting. But nobody`s hunting deer with an AR-15. If you hunt a deer with an AR-15, you`re going to have hamburger. You`re going to have an…
REID: Right.
(CROSSTALK)
BROOKS: … deer, right?
I mean, the harm that people can do with things like AR-15 is just — is just staggering. I mean, you talk to military veterans, talk to police officers, and they will all say these, these are weapons of war, essentially. These are not weapons that people are using for any legitimate purpose. They are weapons that people use to commit mass slaughter, period.
REID: And very quickly before, before we go, Ben, I just have to come back to you just one more time.
Law enforcement isn`t understanding this, right? I mean, they`re — everyone is trying to look for a way to sort of backpedal and fix in reverse, whether it`s gun laws, et cetera. People aren`t understanding these communities. Is anyone watching them? And is there anything you can do? With the First Amendment out there, it`s very difficult to police this stuff.
COLLINS: Yes, I think they`re just catching up to things like white nationalist militant groups, like Patriot Front or Proud Boys, who stupidly group together admit who they are and wear uniforms and get in the back of a U-Haul together and all that stuff.
And that is pretty easy to track. You can infiltrate that. They have marked message boards where they know exactly where they`re going, if you were the feds, right? This is very different. This is these are people who think that they are lone wolves. They`re not. They all think the same. They all do the same terror acts.
So it`s very hard to get into these things. There`s no single nomenclature for this kind of nihilism. It`s a really difficult law enforcement struggle.
REID: It is. And it`s domestic terrorism on a — and doing what terrorism does, having everyone feeling constantly terrified.
Ben Collins, Jill Wine-Banks, Rosa Brooks, thank you all very much.
Up next on THE REIDOUT: a lot of the unanswered questions from police in Akron, Ohio — a lot of unanswered questions from police in Akron, Ohio, but one thing we do know, a young black man was running away from police is dead from 60 bullet wounds.
The REIDOUT continues after this.
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[19:22:49]
REID: A state of emergency and a curfew are in effect in Akron, Ohio after days of protests over yet another deadly police shooting of a black man in this country.
Bodycam footage released Sunday shows eight officers on foot in pursuit of Jayland Walker, before unloading their service weapons on him. This followed a brief high-speed car chase over a traffic violation, in which the officers alleged they saw a muzzle flash come from Walker`s moving vehicle.
Now, here`s the bodycam footage. Warning: It`s disturbing.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Show your hands! Show your (EXPLETIVE DELETED) hands!
(GUNSHOTS)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: An attorney for the Walker family says officers fired 90 times. And authorities say he suffered 60 wounds. That is 60, 60 words.
Those officers involved have been placed on administrative leave, according to department policy. At the press conference, the police department advanced which should now sound like a familiar claim at this point, that the 25-year-old DoorDash driver turned toward the officers and moved into a — quote — “firing position,” which would have been rather a waste of time, since Walker was unarmed.
And while a gun was found in his vehicle, that happens to be legal in the open carry state of Ohio. And even after Walker was lying on the ground, bleeding out, riddled with dozens of police-fired bullets, the officers who emptied their clips on him placed him in handcuffs, according to “The Akron Beacon Journal,” as if, while dying, he somehow posed a threat to them.
Joining me now, Jaladah Aslam, president of the Youngstown Warren Black Caucus, and former Detroit Police Chief Ralph Godbee.
Thank you both for being here.
Where to begin?
Ms. Aslam, let`s talk about how the community is dealing with this nightmare.
JALADAH ASLAM, PRESIDENT, YOUNGSTOWN WARREN BLACK CAUCUS: Well, thank you Joy for having me.
First of all, I`m in Youngstown. We`re 48 miles from Akron. And they`re — I`m actually there a lot. I was just there two weeks ago for an event. It`s just unreal. And for those of us who are active in the community and who have been dealing with the whole issue of community and police relationships for quite some time, this is just another example of how a black individual is treated differently than a white individual.
[19:25:14]
I mean, we just watched someone who shot into a parade and killed six people was taken without violence. A young black man on a traffic stop somehow posed a threat and was killed, gunned down by — with over 60 wounds to his body.
REID: Yes, let me play a protester outside of the mayor of Akron`s home saying that very thing today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PROTESTER: Right or wrong, he didn`t deserve to be shot 66 times like that. I mean, for a traffic stop? Really? You have to gun him down? Get his license plate and run it. And then you can pick it up later. You didn`t have to chase him down the expressway.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Ralph Godbee, former Chief Godbee, this is something that must be explained, because it makes no sense to anyone that I can think of why you would need eight officers to pursue someone for a traffic stop. Even if they thought they saw a muzzle go off in the car, you`re following the car, which means you know the license plate number.
If he gets out and runs, simply running from you is not a reason to literally open your clip that many times; 90 shots fired for one guy running away from you on foot? Make it make sense.
RALPH GODBEE, FORMER DETROIT, MICHIGAN, POLICE CHIEF: Joy, you cannot make sense out of nonsense. And you`re going to hear a lot of police-speak, feared for my life, I thought he had a weapon.
But the actual facts don`t support the narrative. And it`s amazing that the people that write the narrative are the living officers. And the dead assailants or suspects, citizens that are African-American, they don`t get a chance to speak their reality.
It is just unfathomable to have 90 shots fired. We`re talking about 60 that took effect, because, legally, those officers have to account for every single round and the intent with that round that comes out of those guns. So you have got to count for 90 shots, number one.
Second and I think most importantly, eight officers fired, but five officers didn`t. And I`m always issued to know why the five didn`t, because seven of the eight officers that fired their guns, if the reports are correct, they had less than four years on the job.
We can`t afford to have adrenaline junkies with guns that go on police chases for a broken taillight and it ends in the death of a citizen. The death penalty is not what`s prescribed for a traffic violation. And it`s nonsense, Joy. And there has to be some type of national intervention, because you keep seeing this same scenario over and over and over again, do the same thing the same way, expecting a different result.
It`s insanity. And police leadership has to stand up with this as well. And we have to be held accountable, because you just can`t make sense out of this.
REID: And to stay with you for just a moment, Chief Godbee, the thing that brings the Uvalde case and the Akron case together is that, in both instances, you saw police acting for the same stated reason, that they feared for their lives.
GODBEE: Yes. Right.
REID: The police said they wouldn`t go in, in Uvalde because, well, hey, that guy had a gun. We could have gotten shot.
GODBEE: Yes.
REID: One of the honest police officers just came out and said that on TV.
And in this case, they`re saying, well, they freeze the thing and they say, well, he made a furtive movement. He seemed to be bending. We feared for our lives. There was no threat to the community in the case of Jayland Walker.
GODBEE: There wasn`t.
REID: He didn`t threaten anybody but them. And in the case of Uvalde, they said, well, we`re not going to go in there with those kids because we could get shot.
GODBEE: And, Joy, we can`t have it both ways.
REID: Can you explain why is — the police are allowed to prioritize — how are police allowed to prioritize their own lives over the lives of the public?
GODBEE: Well, we have made the articulation for a justifiable shooting so tilted heavily in favor of the officers.
And, Joy, there`s another point that we cannot ignore. And your guest said very articulately. The white assailant that killed seven people, injured another 30 with a semiautomatic rifle, he`s taken into custody without incident. The black person who did not have the weapon on him is killed, and he did not cause the level of harm or any harm that is known to the community than that other shooter did.
So you have got to look at race. That`s the only differentiating factor is the race of the two people. And this is important, because the FBI articulated that there`s an infiltration of white supremacists in law enforcement.
The majority of the law enforcement officers in this country are white males. There has to be a purging. And it has to start at the national level. We cannot just continue to say it`s the officers` fault. It`s the system`s fault. And if we don`t fix the system, we`re going to keep getting the same results over and over again.
[19:30:05]
REID: Yes.
GODBEE: Race absolutely matters in these cases.
REID: And for those who are trying to say, well, the shooter in Illinois surrendered to police.
No, he also ran from police. He also fled from police. They just didn`t merc him.
REID: Miss Aslam, I`m going to give you the last word on this.
What does the community want to see? Because calling for more training, more funding, that feels like a completely empty request. That doesn`t change anything, because this is the training. This is the training.
For people that you have spoken with in the community — I know you have been in touch with the local NAACP and others — what do they want to see happen? Or is this just going to be yet another lawsuit, another settlement, more taxpayer money being paid because of police misconduct?
ASLAM: Well, I think part of it is what Mr. Godbee just said, was, you need to look at who`s on your force.
I mean, I think that there is a — they need to be very, very restricted about who becomes a police officer. I mean, some of the officers that were involved in George Floyd`s murder literally just stopped working at a fast- food restaurant, and now they`re making a decision about whether or not someone`s life matters enough to take them into custody vs. kneeling on his neck and killing him.
I can tell you that we here in the Youngstown area, we have had police — discussions with the police community over the last year about trying to improve community and police communities relations…
REID: Yes.
ASLAM: … trying to prove the tactics that they use.
REID: Yes.
ASLAM: Let`s have a real talk about accountability.
REID: Yes.
ASLAM: And, for the most part, it`s been going well.
But for me as a black mother, despite all my community activity, explain to me why Jayland…
REID: Yes.
ASLAM: … who is that same age as my son — I have a 25-year-old son.
REID: And me. I do as well.
ASLAM: Explain to me why my son`s life is not important.
REID: Yes.
ASLAM: I mean, there`s no justification for this.
REID: Yes. Yes, absolutely.
And if you need to unload your clip at somebody because they are running from you, you probably should find a different profession, because you really should not be a police officer.
ASLAM: This is not the job for you.
REID: Jaladah Aslam, Ralph Godbee, I`m sorry. I wish we had more time. Thank you both very much.
Still ahead: big developments in the ongoing January 6 investigations, including grand jury subpoenas for some of Trump`s closest allies from Fulton County, Georgia.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:37:00]
REID: We have breaking news from the House January 6 Committee tonight, which announced a date for the panel`s next public hearing, a week from today, on January 12.
This weekend, committee member Adam Schiff reviewed — previewed the topic.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): Our very next hearing will be focused on the efforts to assemble that mob on the Mall, who was participating, who was financing it, how it was organized, including the participation of these white nationalist groups like the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and others.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: It comes as another investigation into attempts to overthrow our democracy took a huge step forward.
A Fulton County, Georgia, special grand jury investigating team MAGA`s interference in Georgia`s 2020 election issued subpoenas to Senator Lindsey Graham and Rudy Giuliani. In addition, several key members of former — the former president`s legal team received subpoenas, including coup memo lawyer John Eastman, attorneys Jenna Ellis, Cleta Mitchell, and Kenneth Chesebro, and conservative pundit Jacki Pick Deason.
Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis launched the probe in February of last year. “The Atlanta Journal-Constitution” reports that today`s subpoenas are the closest that 23-member grand jury have gotten to the former president`s inner circle. The grand jury cited Giuliani`s 2020 testimony to Georgia lawmakers citing false evidence of voter fraud.
As for Lindsey Graham, the subpoena noted that he made at least two calls to Secretary of State Brad 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.
For more, I`m joined by Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Maya, always great to see you.
Let`s go to this subpoena to Rudy Giuliani. I want to start — we`re going to circle back to January 6, but let`s go to this Georgia set of subpoenas. This is what the subpoena says: “There`s evidence that the witness` appearance and testimony at the hearing was part of a multistate coordinated plan by the Trump campaign to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere.”
What do you make of these subpoenas, not only of Rudy Giuliani, but — and John Eastman and Jenna Ellis, but also of Senator Lindsey Graham?
MAYA WILEY, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: Well, look, what we`re seeing is a criminal investigation that started inside Georgia talking to the folks who are witnesses, the folks who received the phone calls or the pressure tactics from Trump and his allies, right?
And we know that Rudy Giuliani actively engaged in the discussions that led up to January 6. We know that from any number of places, but also from his testimony that the Georgia legislature rejected.
And we know, in addition — I mean, this is — remember, there`s also the civil lawsuits going on, which is the defamation suits against Rudy Giuliani for claiming that the Dominion voting machines were basically part of a conspiracy to ensure that Donald Trump didn`t win the election he lost.
But what we know from his deposition is that he made it clear he didn`t have any facts to support the claims and the conspiracy theories he was making to the Georgia legislature to do something outrageous, tell them to do something they didn`t have the power to do, which was interfere with the governor`s certification of an election.
[19:40:14]
So, it is…
(CROSSTALK)
REID: And let me just remind — absolutely.
Let me just remind folks of what they wrought. This is Ruby Freeman`s testimony about being targeted by Giuliani and Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUBY FREEMAN, FORMER GEORGIA ELECTION WORKER: I have lost my name and I have lost my reputation. I have lost my sense of security, all because a group of people starting with No. 45 and his ally Rudy Giuliani decided to scapegoat me and my daughter Shaye to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: And I`m wondering if, down the road, people like Giuliani and Trump, and maybe even Lindsey Graham, who participated in this charade, could face civil litigation, could face civil liability for what they did to somebody like Ruby Freeman and her daughter.
WILEY: They certainly could, absolutely.
But here`s the thing. There`s a question under Georgia law about whether this is tampering with a poll worker. I don`t know how the grand jury or the district attorney will view it, but it is a crime. And part of what this grand jury is investigating could be anything from solicitation of election fraud.
But that includes predicate crimes that might be a racketeering charge. There is a Georgia racketeering law. That racketeering law, the Supreme Court of Georgia has said can apply to an elected official trying to hold onto their seat. That means that there could be — this could be considered an enterprise for racketeering purposes.
And this could be one of the predicate acts, is the intimidation of poll workers.
REID: Let`s go to the January 6 commission.
Cassidy Hutchinson, this is what she said in her deposition about the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CASSIDY HUTCHINSON, FORMER AIDE TO MARK MEADOWS: I recall hearing the word Oath Keeper and hearing the word Proud Boys closer to the planning of the January 6 rally when Mr. Giuliani would be around.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Now, if the hearings then move to that, if that`s what we`re going to be looking at them — if that`s what we`re looking at in the next hearings, how much would the previous hearings that tie Trump directly to the violence, to him knowing that these were armed people, how much liability does that place it at his door, criminal liability, potentially?
WILEY: Well, look, there`s already a ream of evidence that suggests the crime of interfering with obstructing Congress doing its job, right? That`s the vote count.
I think the thing here is, you could imagine any kind of solicitation to sedition as a possible charge or charges. Remember that Donald Trump, it`s really astounding that Donald Trump during the campaign called on the Proud Boys, that we know that Roger Stone, who was part of his inner circle on the events of…
REID: Yes.
(CROSSTALK)
WILEY: … January 6, they were his bodyguards, the Oath Keepers.
REID: Yes.
WILEY: So, there`s a lot of evidence there.
REID: “Stand back and stand by” is what he told the Proud Boys, rather than, don`t come anywhere near this Capitol.
Maya Wiley, thank you very much.
Up next: WNBA star Brittney Griner appeals to President Biden directly for help, as she faces trial in Russia, telling him she is terrified that she may never make it home.
We`re back in a sec.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:48:15]
REID: WNBA star Brittney Griner and her family are pleading directly to President Biden to find a way to bring her home from detention in Russia.
A handwritten letter from Griner was delivered to the president on the Fourth of July holiday.
In it, she wrote: “As I sit here in a Russian prison, alone with my thoughts and without the protection of my wife, family, friends, Olympic jersey or any accomplishments. I`m terrified I might be here forever.”
Griner`s wife, Cherelle, echoed those fears this morning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHERELLE GRINER, WIFE OF BRITTNEY GRINER: It breaks my heart when I hear her say that, because B.G. is probably the strongest person that I know. So she doesn`t say words like that lightly. That means she truly is terrified that she may never see us again.
And I share those same sentiments.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Griner has been detained in Russia for more than four-and-a-half months after being arrested in a Moscow airport for allegedly — allegedly — possessing cannabis-derived vape cartridges.
Griner`s trial began last week. She faces up to 10 years in prison and is expected back in court for a second hearing on Thursday.
For more, I`m joined by Errin Haines, editor at large for The 19th.
And, Errin, this letter was absolutely heartbreaking. I will read another line from it: “On the Fourth of July, our family normally honors the service of those who fought for our freedom, including my father, who was a Vietnam War veteran. It hurts thinking about how I usually celebrate this day, because freedom means something completely different to me this year.”
What was — has this letter, to your knowledge, been received by the White House? And what do Brittney Griner`s family and friends want Biden to directly do?
ERRIN HAINES, EDITOR AT LARGE, THE 19TH: Oh, well, Joy — a spokesperson with the National Security Council yesterday reiterated their support for Brittney Griner, said that they would be — that they have been and will continue to work mightily to get her out of Russian detention.
[19:50:02]
But, obviously, these negotiations are very precarious, very — a lot is hanging in the balance. And it`s — as we sit here today — well, yesterday, as millions of her fellow Americans kind of celebrated the country`s birthday and independence, her freedom is hanging in the balance and her future is very uncertain.
I mean, this is an American citizen who the State Department has said is being wrongfully detained. She`s a superstar athlete. And, as she pointed out in her letter, she`s the daughter of a U.S. veteran. Somebody like her dad was likely at the White House yesterday marking Independence Day.
And yet she is on her 138th day, as of today, of Russian detention, and she is back in court on Thursday for a trial that we know is probably going to last at least a couple of months, and, from there, a conviction, and who knows how long she may still have to be in Russia.
REID: You know, and the family — and even when I spoke with her wife, Cherelle, I mean, they make the point that intervention is by the president directly. And meeting with the president directly is what helped get Trevor Reed home, who was detained in Russia for years, and that — so, that is why they want the personal meeting.
Reverend Al Sharpton has called for a prayer visit. He`s urging the president and Secretary Blinken to bring himself and fellow faith leaders to Russia, so that they can pray over Brittney in person in prison, so that they can see her and speak with her.
But you have heard other people who have been very critical. Griner`s coach, Vanessa Nygaard, has compared her situation to male superstars, saying: “If it was LeBron James, he`d be home? In a statement about — it`s a statement about the values of women. It`s a statement about the value of a black person. It`s a statement about the value of a gay person, all those things. We know it, and it hurts a little bit more.”
The family seems to understand that meeting the president personally is the thing that gets them over the top. Do they also — are they also thinking about the cost, right? Because there was a trade for Trevor Reed, and the person that allegedly Russia wants to trade Brittney Griner — would allegedly perhaps trade her for is a pretty bad guy.
Do they understand the full ramifications of that, of a trade?
HAINES: Yes, but they also understand that that is a lot of times how this works, and that it`s not necessarily a pure process, in terms of trading with somebody that may be equal to us in terms of how we think about democracy, how we even think about how the legal system works.
I mean, this Russian drug court is very different from anything that we would see over here today, as I`m sure Cherelle Griner could tell us, somebody who is studying for the bar even as we speak, right? And so you have certainly high-profile people trying to raise awareness around the fact that, yes, if Brittney Griner were one of our male athlete superstars, would we even be here, really kind of raising that question.
REID: Yes.
HAINES: This week actually presents a huge opportunity for momentum around awareness and potentially action around the case.
You have Brittney Griner sending this letter directly to the president. Her team, the Phoenix Mercury, is going to have a rally for her on Wednesday. She`s back in court on Thursday.
REID: Yes.
HAINES: And then the WNBA All-Star Game is coming up this Sunday. What are they going to be doing on her behalf to raise awareness and keep attention on this case?
REID: Yes.
One would think that the meeting would happen. I know about 1,000 black women are demanding that at least meet with this — with the family and do that direct meeting.
Errin Haines, thank you very much.
Up next: a horrifying glimpse of America`s new post-Roe landscape, as a 10- year-old rape victim, 10 years old, is victimized again by her state government.
We will be right back.
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[19:57:48]
REID: It is hard to imagine anything more cruel, more disturbing than forcing a child, a 10-year-old still playing with fidget toys and tablets, to carry her father or her brother`s child to term or forcing her to travel across state lines for an abortion.
And yet here we are. Already, a 10-year-old rape victim had to travel to Indiana for the procedure after Ohio`s six-week trigger ban came into effect. Over in Brazil, where abortion is highly restricted, another 10- year-old rape victim was urged to continue the pregnancy, the judge asking, could the girl stand to be pregnant a little while longer?
Now, though the case occurred in Brazil, it is a glimpse of the cruelty that`s already emerging right here at home. But what lies ahead is not just about returning to the pre-Roe era. It`s actually far worse, due in part to technology.
As Jia Tolentino wrote in “The New Yorker”: “Search histories, browsing histories, text messages, location data, payment data, information from period tracking apps, prosecutors can examine a lot of it if they believe that the loss of a pregnancy may have been deliberate.”
It`s also worse because of increasingly open radicalism by the Christian nationalist right, where mostly men push bounty hunter abortion bans and leave little to no mercy for child rape victims, who must now endure labor and childbirth, one of the most painful physical traumas a body can endure, with all the potential medical complications and the risk of dying, which is much higher here in America than in other developed countries, let alone the psychological damage, because the cruelty is the point.
And the trauma can be irreversible, particularly for a child, something Jamie Beverly — Janie Beverly noted in the harrowing story she shared at a reproductive rights rally in Pikeville, Kentucky.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JANIE BEVERLY, FORMER NURSE: When I was a nurse, I watched an 11-year-old girl give birth to a baby that belonged to her brother.
I saw heartaches. I saw heart attacks. I saw cancer. I saw horrific things. But I never saw anything more brutal, more unbelievable than watching an 11-year-old girl give birth.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: If shame were possible, these people should be absolutely ashamed.
That is tonight`s REIDOUT.
“ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES” starts now.