Watch Rachel Maddow Highlights: Jan. 12

uh true to form though republican congressman jeff fortenbury of nebraska just this week announced that he too is going to run for re-election even while he is under federal indictment and awaiting trial on multiple felony counts you know hey it worked for congressman chris collins and congressman duncan hunter republican voters reelected them while they were awaiting trial too why not jeff fortenberry that said donald trump is no longer president so the end game here is less certain after duncan hunter and chris collins were convicted and sentenced to long federal prison terms then president donald trump pardoned each of them if republican congressman jeff fortenberry is also convicted like collins and hunter will uh were um jeff fortenberry will have no such ace in the hole there is no donald trump there now to pardon him so if fortenbury is convicted republican house leader kevin mccarthy gets to look forward to the you know the awkward dance of this serving republican member of congress prepping for his prison term and you know having to make him resign and all of that it's become almost a regular part of kevin mccarthy's job by now three times in just the last five years this has happened to him and now again it looks like it might be happening to him again which i mean honestly this is like getting hit by lightning while you're winning the lottery on a blue moon on your birthday like this is just not normal but this is kevin mccarthy's life the great florida political reporter mark caputo works for nbc news now quite a coup for nbc to have landed him there really is nobody like mark caputo in florida political journalism today and today mr caputo is the sole byline on this scoop from nbc news although i should mention um the legendary nbc justice correspondent pete williams contributed reporting to this as well dateline orlando florida quote congressman matt gates's ex-girlfriend testified today before a federal grand jury investigating him for sex crimes a major development that suggests the u.s department of justice may be moving closer to indicting congressman gates the ex-girlfriend whose name is being withheld by nbc news to respect her privacy has been in talks for months with prosecutors about an immunity deal under a possible deal she would avoid prosecution for obstruction of justice in return for testifying in the investigation into whether gates in 2017 had sex with a 17 year old female for money and whether months later he and others violated a federal law prohibiting people from transporting others across state lines to engage in prostitution gates has not been charged with the crime he has denied all accusations the attorney for gates ex-girlfriend tim jansen declined comment about the case wednesday today when he was spotted by an nbc news reporter entering the federal courthouse in orlando with his client a department of justice spokesman declined comment gates did not respond to a request for comment but a legal source excuse me but legal sources familiar with the case say congressman gates is being investigated for three distinct crimes sex trafficking a minor violating the man act which prohibits taking women across state lines for prostitution and obstructing justice i imagine that was a dyspeptic moment uh for republican leader kevin mccarthy today right you can just ima like oh to be a fly on the wall at the next republican caucus meeting can you guys please stop with the criming just for a little while just for a hot minute trump is not here to keep you all out of prison anymore enough with the felonies you guys hit pause save me so the day was already not going great for the house republican leader kevin mccarthy today but then at four o'clock this afternoon it got worse when the january 6th investigation posted this letter to kevin mccarthy himself it is a letter inviting him to please provide information to the investigation quote dear leader mccarthy we write we right to request your voluntary cooperation with our investigation on a range of critical topics including your conversations with president trump before during and after the violent january 6th attack you have acknowledged speaking directly with the former president while the violence was underway on january 6th this information bears directly on president trump's state of mind during the january 6th attack as the violence was underway the select committee is aware that notwithstanding the unacceptable violence that day you nevertheless agreed to support continued objections to the electoral votes from multiple states late in the evening of january 6 and into the morning of january 7th the select committee wishes to question you regarding communications you may have had with president trump president trump's legal team representative jim jordan and others at the time on that topic congressman jim jordan really uh quote it appears that you may also have discussed with president trump the potential that he would face a censure resolution impeachment or removal from office under the 25th amendment it also appears that you may have identified other possible options for president trump including his immediate resignation from office relatedly the select committee is concerned about the potential for continued violence after january 6 provoked by president trump's false claims that the election was stolen the committee is aware of communications among white house staff and president trump's supporters regarding the potential for further violence for example and this is new today fox news host laura ingraham texted white house chief of staff mark meadows on january 12 2021 quote remarks on camera discouraging protests at state capitals especially with weapons will be well advised given how hot the situation is again that text reportedly from a fox news host to the white house chief of staff the committee continues during this same time period you shared this concern about the president's stolen election claims with your local news organization saying quote it's raising the ability for greater violence the letter then goes on to ask congressman kevin mccarthy to meet with the investigators the first week of february they also quote back to him a statement he made to a local news station in california just a couple of weeks ago indicating uh in response to a question that he would speak to the investigation he told that local news source quote i have been very public i wouldn't hide from anything that said just tonight literally just in the past few minutes it has been handed to me since i started this segment it has just come out kevin mccarthy has just put out this statement saying that he will not cooperate with the january 6th investigation he says in part quote as a representative and the leader of the minority party it is with neither regret nor satisfaction that i have concluded to not participate with this select committee's abuse of power that stains this institution today so we shall see um the the lead of the january 6th investigation chairman benny thompson said today that he actually expects that kevin mccarthy will agree to provide information he said that they don't anticipate even having to subpoena him now kevin mccarthy has come out and said that uh he he is uh he's not going to cooperate we shall see how this resolves the question of whether or not members of congress let alone leaders uh in congress can be subpoenaed by this committee appears to be settled as a constitutional matter it appears to be uncontroversial as a black letter as a black letter matter in terms of constitutional law the problem is that it's never been done before and any time a new precedent like that is set a lot of people are reluctant to go there and nobody quite knows how the fight over it will happen by the end of this week it will be a month exactly since congress sent to the u.s justice department a criminal referral recommending federal prosecution of trump's white house chief of staff mark meadows um they are recommending that he be prosecuted for criminal contempt for his refusal to comply with compulsory measures including the subpoenas that he's received from the january 6 investigation now the january 6 investigation and then the full house recommended prosecution um for the same reason for steve bannon trump adviser steve bannon when he defied subpoenas to testify now in the bannon case it took the u.s justice department just three weeks after they got the referral for him to actually decide that they were going to prosecute him and to obtain the indictment that they obtained against him it took three weeks with bannon it's been longer than that already for meadows it's been longer than that already that the u.s justice department the federal prosecutor's office in d.c has been considering this referral to prosecute trump's white house chief of staff for the same thing again it'll be a month even by the end of this this week but so far we've heard nothing about what the justice department's going to do the reason i say that is increasingly on my mind is because for the last few days here we have been reporting on emerging evidence that in not one not two not three not four but five in at least five different states republicans appear to have forged fake documents um purporting to be the electoral slates from these five states they put themselves forward officially as if they were the real duly elected electors to the electoral college from their states when they in fact were not in each of these five states it was joe biden who won the election so those states sent biden electors to cast the state's votes in the electoral college but nevertheless in michigan wisconsin georgia nevada and arizona at least republicans filed fake documents claiming that those states had actually picked trump electors who were going to cast the state's electoral college votes for trump in the last few days here thanks to reporting from nicholas wu at politico.com and thanks to public records requests filed by the watchdog group american oversight we have been able to obtain and show you all five of those forged documents from republicans in those five states crucially what we've noticed is that this doesn't seem to have been an instance in which five disparate groups of people in five different states all had the same forgery idea coincidentally at the same time and they just independently all happened to do the same thing if you actually look at the false documents that these five states or that republicans in these five states sent into congress and sent into the national archives the documents match each other exactly same font same spacing same exact wording because of that i mean maybe it all proved to be a coincidence but it does appear to have been a coordinated effort at the very least it appears that somebody distributed a template to republicans in these five states and potentially beyond telling them that this is how they should create these forged documents well the whole reason we're on to any of this is because it appears that this is something that the january 6th investigation is looking into we're sort of reverse engineering one of their lines of inquiry as best we can but as such look at the mark meadows connection i mean what i'm about to show you this doesn't say that the effort to coordinate these forgeries in five states came from the trump white house but if you look at the contempt report that the january 6 investigation created about mark meadows it does seem to indicate that when he was serving as white house chief of staff he was somehow involved in this this is from the contempt referral on mark meadows quote the select committee seeks information from mr meadows about issues including the following quote mr meadows received text messages and emails regarding apparent efforts to encourage republican legislators in certain states to send alternate slates of electors to congress a plan which one member of congress acknowledged was quote highly controversial and to which mr meadows responded quote i love it mr meadows responded to a similar message by saying we are and another such message by saying quote yes have a team on it this is also from the letter the january 6 investigation sent to mark meadows lawyer about a month ago now when they were fighting with him about his cooperation just before he was referred for prosecution to the justice department that letter told mr meadows his lawyer this quote mr meadows has also produced documents you apparently agree are relevant and not protected by any privilege at all those documents include a november 7th 2020 email discussing the appointment of alternate slates of electors as part of a quote direct and collateral attack after the election so again we have learned recently that one of the things these guys did to try to falsify the election results and keep trump in power and prevent the newly elected president from assuming office one of the things they did was that they got republicans in multiple states to create and file forged paperwork to be the real electors from states that actually biden won we believe now that we've seen the documents from five of the states and they all match almost exactly we surmise based on that that this must have been some kind of a coordinated effort that somebody gave all these republicans and all these states a template for how to do it in so doing incidentally all those republicans in all those states who signed their names to these forged documents they may have opened themselves individually to potential forgery charges or other charges related to falsifying election-related documents which is a state crime in every state in the union and is a federal crime as well we know from the january 6 investigation that trump's white house chief of staff mark meadows was apparently involved in multiple communications about such an effort that he said he had a team on it that we're doing it that he loved it and we know that the justice department is currently weighing the possibility of a criminal prosecution against him in part over his refusal to talk about exactly that other than that how was your day so this is interesting we've got late breaking news tonight out of the great state of arizona which never disappoints in news terms all right i was speaking earlier in the show tonight about a story that we've been on for a while now the story of republicans appearing to have forged fake documents after the 2020 election putting themselves forward officially as if they were the real electors from their states when in fact they were not in each of the five states that we've been able to find the documents from in michigan wisconsin georgia nevada and arizona republicans filed these fake forged documents claiming that those states had actually picked trump electors who were casting the state's electoral college votes for trump when in fact the real electors from those states were biden electors republicans forged these documents they submitted them we believe both to congress and to the national archives to try to pass them off as the real deal we've been trying to get a hold of some of these people who signed their names to these forged documents to learn more about this apparent coordinated scheme particularly since we noticed that all of the forgeries from those five states appear to be very similar similar enough that it looks like they were part of a coordinated multi-state effort we're still working on our part of that but tonight nbc's great station in phoenix and a reporter from the arizona republic caught up with one of the people who signed on to this document in arizona his name is jake hoffman he's a republican state representative in arizona you can see here that's his kind of amazing signature on the forged fake elector form from arizona a cameraman from kpnx and an arizona republic reporter named richard ruales caught up with mr hoffman today and this is what happened when bram wants to ask a real question happy to have a conversation with him okay thank you sir richard i had a couple people here that being one of yourself as uh so in unprecedented times unprecedented action is occurred there is no case law there's no precedent that exists as to whether or not a an election that is currently being litigated in the courts has do standing which is why we felt it appropriate to provide congress and the vice president with dueling opinions did you have direction from anybody in doing this was it you eleven yourself to doing this or did someone give you advice on the manner in which you can do it so i'm simply i was one of the electors right i'm not in charge of the elector so you would how did you hear about you you wouldn't drew here you would need to ask them how did you hear that how did you hear about the plan were you just told to be someone that you would need to ask the party chair but you're the you're the person who received the call you showed up right how did you know to show up that day so as i said you can go ahead and ask the party chair the logistics of it asking how you got a phone call to go somewhere you're welcome to talk to them about this do you not know how you arrived at a place thank you i i appreciate your time you really not know how you got a call have a great one the other question i was hoping and a reporter from the arizona republic there um richard ruales um catching up with uh that man who signed that forged document again the camerawork there from kpnx uh the nbc affiliate in in phoenix i'm supposed to call the party chair to ask her how you got a phone call to go somewhere do you not know how you arrived at a place do you really not know how you got a call we're still working on this story but now lots of other people are too we're to get to the bottom of this okay what you're about to see in here is not true it is not real medical advice and you should not take it as such i am showing it to you because of who is saying it this is the leading republican u.s senate senate candidate from the state of georgia with his own amazing news about mist mist a dry mist that can apparently end this whole nightmare the whole world has been going through do you know right now i have something that can bring you into a building that will clean you from covert as you walk through this this dry mix as you walk through the door it will kill any cover on your body epa fda approved when you leave it will kill the virus as you leave this air product then i have something you can go and spray down this product do you know they don't want to talk about that they don't want to hear about that i have something a dry mist a dry mist that would clean you from covid it's epa and fda approved but they don't want you to hear about it former football star herschel walker in an interview he did with ex fox news personality glenn beck in august 2020 that interview in which mr walker announces his dry mist cure for kovid it was dug up today by the daily beast because mr walker is no longer just a former football player who appears on conservative media podcasts he's now the trump-endorsed leading republican senate candidate for the state of georgia in this year's election and there is no magical spray that stops covid there's no epa fda approved thing that when you leave a room it kills the virus [Music] you

Channel: MSNBC

Views: 269,148

Keywords: MSNBC, MSNBC latest, Politics, News, matt gaetz, gaetz investigation, kevin mccarthy, gop, republicans, trump, 2020 election, january 6, january 6 committee, herschel walker, georgia elections, arizona elector, electors, arizona, maddow, rachel maddow

Id: VfWbwan3ZOU

Length: 20min 12sec (1212 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 13 2022