Watch Rachel Maddow Highlights: Jan. 13

person one the leader of the oath keepers is a guy named stuart rhodes um and yes that is him with the eye patch you will be shocked to learn it had something to do with the unsafe handling of firearms yeah a little accident with a gun that's what happened to the eye but ever since the 2020 presidential election as 17 oath keepers were arrested and charged for attacking the capital in various capacities as some of those oath keepers pled guilty and signed cooperation deals with federal prosecutors throughout all of this time the oath keeper's leader with the ipad this guy stewart rhodes has been unavoidable for comment he has been loudly telling any reporter who gets anywhere near him that yes the election was absolutely stolen from donald trump and yes he absolutely encouraged oath keepers to be in dc on january 6th and yes he was there at the capitol that day communicating with his fellow oath keepers but he always takes pains to say that he definitely did not break the law because he is way too smart to have done anything illegal well today stuart rhodes was arrested just after lunchtime in texas that's his mug shot another oath keeper guy was arrested in phoenix around the same time and they along with nine other oath keepers who had already been arrested and charged in the capital attack in various capacities the 11 of them today were all indicted on the very serious charge of seditious conspiracy now seditious conspiracy is a charge that derives from the concept of sedition right it is a charge that prosecutors have been openly mulling since the very beginning of the investigation you might remember when the justice department used to do briefings for the public and the press and the immediate aftermath of the attack they talked not infrequently at those briefings about seditious conspiracy as a potential charge they did that right away but now it is of course more than a year after the attack this is the first time they have actually used it and the indictment unsealed today and seditious conspiracy basically means a conspiracy to commit sedition a a conspiracy against the government specifically the way that's written in the statute it's a conspiracy to stop the government from carrying out its laws by force here's how the indictment describes it they call it the plot to oppose by force the 2020 lawful transfer of presidential power quote beginning in november 2020 rhodes defendant stewart rhodes began disseminating messages on encrypted applications that encouraged his co-conspirators to oppose by force the lawful transfer of december 5th 2020 two days after the presidential election mr rhodes urged his followers to refuse to accept the election result and stated quote we aren't getting through this without a civil war too late for that prepare your mind body spirit on november two days later on november 7th 2020 the day that president trump was projected to have lost the presidential election mr rhodes wrote to fellow oath keepers quote we must now do what the people of serbia did when milosevic stole their election refused to accept it and march on mass on the nation's capital he spelled on mass wrong but that's okay mr rhodes appears to be um in those comments referring to the storming of the the serbian parliament in 2000 mr rhodes shared with his followers a video and step-by-step instruction guide to overthrowing the government that he said he received from a serbian activist that step-by-step guide specifically included storming the parliament in our country we don't call it the parliament we call it the capital because it's how it houses our congress but same idea the indictment continues quote on december 11 2020 rhodes sent a message to fellow oath keepers that stated that if president biden were to assume the presidency quote it will be a bloody and desperate fight we are going to have a fight that can't be avoided on december 25th merry christmas mr rhodes wrote quote i think congress will screw him meaning screw president trump over the only chance we slash he has is if we scare the sh out of them and convince them it will be torches and pitchforks time if they don't do the right thing but i don't think they will listen on december 31st happy new year an arizona quick reaction force team member messaged mr rhodes on signal that people were coming to washington dc and that quote everyone coming has their own technical equipment and knows how to use it adding a winky face emoji mr rhodes responded awesome the arizona oath keeper also said the group would have rifles and manpower on january 6th itself mr stuart rhodes and his fellow oath keepers did all go to washington many of them were apparently stationed with what they called these quick reaction forces just outside the district where they stockpiled weapons presumably ready to be able to access them on short notice and come blazing in and these you know these stacks of oath keepers began heading toward the capitol and up the capital steps become the sort of point of the spear for actually breaking into the seat of the nation's government according to today's indictment there was not one but two stacks of oath keepers who breached the capital at different places apparently one part of one of those stacks was specifically looking to try to find speaker nancy pelosi the indictment says quote just before 1 30 pm in response to a claim by an oath keeper's affiliate that antifa had breached the capital mr rhodes replied quote nope i'm right here these are patriots rhodes then wrote pence is doing nothing as i predicted all i see trump doing is complaining i see no intent by him to do anything so the patriots are taking it into their own hands they've had enough at approximately 1 30 p.m oath keepers affiliates on the chat group with mr rhodes posted messages about police officers deploying pepper spray at the capitol and questioned what the rioters hoped would happen if they got inside the capitol a person with rhodes at the time responded quote we are acting like the founding fathers can't stand down stewart and i concur mr rhodes followed quote hey the founding generation stormed the governor's mansion in massachusetts and tarred and feathered his tax collectors and they seized and dumped tea in the water they didn't fire on them but they street fought that's where we are now next comes our lexington it's coming just one more thing i just want to share with you from today's indictment because it actually continues beyond january 6th there's a section of the indictment titled co-conspirators continue plotting after the january 6th attack on the capital quote throughout the evening of january 6 2021 the co-conspirators discussed the need to continue fighting to stop the lawful transfer of presidential power in the weeks after january 6 rhodes purchased a large volume of firearms and related equipment the indictment then lists thousands of dollars tens of thousands of dollars worth of sights and bipods and scopes and mounts and backpacks and gun grips ammunition firearms parts gun cases holsters and gun maintenance equipment all purchased by mr rhodes at that time you see the dates there january 10 january 11 january 12 january 13 january 14 through 19. adding up all the purchases listed in the indictment that rhodes made of firearms and related equipment over that short burst of time he spent something like forty thousand right around january 6 just on weaponry quote on inauguration day january 20th 2021 one oath keeper messaged another quote after this if nothing happens it's war civil war 2.0 around this time quote mr rhodes message messaged others to organize local militias to oppose president biden's administration for the oath keepers january 6th was not the end point it was apparently the beginning of a new phase of their fight against the government as of today 11 of them are facing seditious conspiracy charges which is a serious felony count brought by us federal prosecutors in washington d.c well now as we've been reporting this week um 16 michigan republicans went on to sign their names to fake elector documents claiming that trump was the rightful winner of michigan's electoral votes claiming that they were therefore the rightful electors and should be counted as such they sent those documents to the national archives to the united states senate to be counted as part of trump's electoral tally this is the same weird republican forgery scheme that was apparently being run in at least five states and what appears to have been a coordinated effort it is now starting to catch the attention apparently of of multiple investigations that are looking into the effort to overturn the election and the attack on january 6th the person who's in charge of michigan's elections is secretary of state jocelyn benson she and her staff have reportedly spoken to the january 6 investigation in congress including to provide information about the forged elector documents in her state we know that from a public records request filed by the detroit news but we also know this according to a spokesperson for the attorney general's office in michigan uh this matter the the fake elector assertion these forged documents from michigan republicans this is according to a spokeswoman for michigan attorney general dana nessel this is part of an ongoing investigation in the state of michigan joining us now are both jocelyn benson secretary of state in michigan and dana nessl who's michigan's attorney general secretary benson general nessel thank you both for being here i really appreciate you both being here i know it's incred it's it's a coup to have either one of you but to have you both is is a real pleasure thank you thanks for having us whose as much because i know i'm not a mature sensitive to that well now attorney general let me let me start with you um we have had questions since we started to realize the scope of this scheme as to whether or not this it implicates any criminal acts whether or not it's legal to forge an election-related document like this to assert yourself to be an a public official effectively uh when you're not is this potentially a matter for the for for criminal investigation yeah absolutely it is and i will tell you that we've been evaluating charges uh for nearly a year now based on these activities as soon as we became aware of that so i will say under state law i think clearly you have forgery of a public record which is a 14-year offense an election law forgery which is a five-year offense but what we have decided to do with the investigation in light of the fact that of course we have seen as you've pointed out multiple times now uh various different false slate of electors from seven different states and what seeming seems to be a coordinated effort between the republican parties in various different states we think this is a matter that is best investigated and potentially prosecuted by the feds and as such just today we referred this matter to the western district the us attorney's office for them to evaluate it and we hope that maine justice and the department of justice will become involved and use the information they already have to better understand exactly what happened that day so that federal charges can be evaluated so you your office attorney general's office in michigan has referred this matter for potential prosecution to the federal prosecutor's office in michigan as of today as of today we've been evaluating what we were going to do with it and we had thought that it was very possible that we'd be bringing charges but and then we still might we still might and of course there's no double jeopardy if you were to bring both state and federal charges for the same offenses but obviously this is part of a much bigger conspiracy and our hope is that the federal authorities in the department of justice and um united states attorney general merrick garland will take this in coordination with all the other information they've received and make an evaluation as to what charges these individuals might face i mean i can think of many forgery of a public record for the purposes of defrauding the united states or conspiracy to commit an offense to defraud the united states and there's so many others but that will be up for the feds to decide and attorney general nessa let me just ask you as a as a legal matter you've already referenced this in relation to the idea that this might best be prosecuted as a federal matter because it happened in multi multiple states but if if we are able to figure out if the country is able to figure out who did this i mean this was a paint by numbers fill fill-in-the-blank template um that all of these republicans used in five at least five different states to do this if we can figure out who distributed the template who put them up to this who told them how to do it does that change anything about the potentially criminal nature or the seriousness of this i think it does and i think that you're talking about a conspiracy really to overthrow the united states governor i mean at the end of the day that's what we're talking about so why i think it's so important to refer this to the federal authorities is because for a lot of these individuals and and the irony of course is that many of those people that you saw outside the the state capitol on december 14th that you showed footage of they're the loudest who complained of election fraud and yet here they have committed ostensibly the the most significant case of election fraud ever in our state's history um but you know i think it's important that once those individuals see that they could possibly be facing prison time uh i do think we're gonna see some people flip and we'll get some further information as to who orchestrated this in the first place who told these people to do this in exactly this fashion uh and i think it may go all the way to the top just to play dumb here a little bit for a second i think i know the answer to this secretary benson but tell me tell me true is is this the sort of thing that has happened before in the state of michigan is this something that you have ever seen in your role as the chief administrator of elections in the state is this is this something that just looks weird to us from a national perspective but actually people try this kind of thing all the time no uh and you know for good reason uh i mean this is you know we up until uh early 2020 had seen a great deal of respect and deference to our voters which was really upended in the chaos and confusion that uh you know we saw surrounding the 2020 post-election process so this is unprecedented we're in unchartered territory you know i know both of us have been asked a lot as this has come out uh what was legal what was illegal and i think it's important to emphasize here that this is all unprecedented uh but it also underscores why it's so important for us to not just uh ensure truth continues to emerge as to just how far folks were willing to go to overturn a free and fair election just because they didn't like the results because we not only need to see justice and accountability in this matter for those who broke the law but we need to work to put protections in place to ensure we do not see a repeat of these nefarious tactics in future elections so this is um this is the dissent this is um from the start of the descent from justice elena kagan just to sonia sotomayor and justice stephen breyer i i bring this to you tonight because every once in a while the descent is just destined to ring louder in history than the ruling and this has all the markers of that tonight every day covet 19 poses grave dangers to the citizens of this country and particularly to its workers the disease has by now killed almost 1 million americans and hospitalized almost 4 million it spreads by person-to-person contact in confined indoor spaces so causes harm in nearly all workplace environments and in those environments more than any others individuals have little control and therefore little capacity to mitigate risk covid19 in short is a menace in work settings the proof is all around us since the disease is onset most americans have seen their workplaces transformed so the administrative agency charged with ensuring health and safety in workplaces did what congress commanded it to do it took action to address kovid's continuing threat in those spaces osha the occupational safety healthy excuse me the occupational safety and health administration issued an emergency temporary standard requiring either vaccination or masking and testing to protect american workers the standard falls within the core of the agency's mission to protect employees from grave danger that comes from new hazards or exposure to harmful agents osha estimates and there is no ground for disputing that the standard they proposed would save more than 6 500 lives and prevent over a quarter million hospitalizations just in six months time yet today the court issues a stay that prevents the standard from taking effect in our view the court's order seriously misapplies the applicable legal standards and in so doing it stymies the federal government's ability to counter the unparalleled threat that kovid poses to our nation's workers acting outside of its competence and without legal basis the court displaces the judgments of the government officials given the responsibility to respond to workplace health emergencies quote we respectfully dissent justices elena kagan sonia sotomayor and stephen breyer dissenting today from the ruling by the conservatives on the supreme court which did block the osho workplace safety rule for large employers that would have required workers to either be vaccinated or to get regularly tested now in a separate ruling today the court did leave in place the vaccine requirement for people who work in a healthcare setting but if you don't work in a healthcare setting if you're stacking shelves or you're on the factory floor or working in a big open plan cubicle farm and your workplace doesn't want to try to protect you from a covid rich environment well the supreme court just blocked the biden administration from helping you the supreme court just blocked the biden administration from being allowed to require that your workplace be made more safe it's not necessarily an unexpected ruling given how right-wing the supreme court is right now and how weird and scientifically uninformed the conservative justices questions were during the oral arguments but but now it is done [Music] you

Channel: MSNBC

Views: 491,395

Keywords: MSNBC, MSNBC latest, Politics, News, oath keepers, january 6, GOP, trump supporters, electors, michigan, 2020 election, trump, fake electors, capitol attack, maddow, rachel maddow

Id: 0SFFobhPAtg

Length: 19min 37sec (1177 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 14 2022