00:15 Chris Hayes This crown prince of Saudi Arabia sweeps into New York. 00:18 And where does he stay? 00:19 He stays at the plaza, which is owned, has a huge Saudi interest owning it. 00:23 But the rest of his retinue stays where? 00:25 Where in New York do they stay? 00:27 They stay at the Trump Hotel. 00:29 And the general manager writes a letter to the investors in the Trump Hotel saying we were headed for a loss in this quarter. 00:34 And then who shows up and spends a shitload of money but the Saudis? 00:40 Zephyr Teachout Absolutely. 00:41 And we just happened to have this letter, you know, good reporting by The Washington Post. 00:46 But what about the other letters? 00:48 I said this on air. 00:49 Chris Hayes I said the Qataris could go book 50 rooms and keep them empty for two weeks in a Trump property. 00:56 And no one would know. 00:57 And no one would know. 00:57 No one would know. 00:58 Zephyr Teachout And we have to know that. 01:03 Chris Hayes Hello and welcome to Why Is This Happening With Me, your host, Chris Hayes. 01:09 So the competition for the top five, top 10, top whatever, craziest, most unbelievable stories of the Trump era is fierce. 01:19 I mean, it is the nature of the era we live in and the president and his behavior and his administration's behavior that you're constantly encountering stories that you cannot believe in. 01:30 are happening. 01:31 You can't believe that this is what I'm reading. 01:33 This is what's happening. 01:35 And sometimes they're just silly or trivial, like the EPA administrator forcing his security detail to drive him from Ritz Carlton to Ritz Carlton, looking to purchase a specific type of Ritz Carlton lotion he likes, which is an actual story. 01:49 And sometimes they're much bigger and more significant. 01:52 And in my top five, top ten list is a story from a little while ago from ProPublica, which was about three members of the Mar-a-Lago club who have been effectively running the Veterans Administration for a year and a half. 02:08 One of them is Ike Perlmutter, who's the head of Marvel Entertainment and notoriously reclusive and is a Mar-a-Lago member. 02:15 Another was a Palm Beach kind of celebrity doctor to the rich. 02:19 And the other was a lawyer from Baltimore who also has a guest place in Florida. 02:23 And they're all Mar-a-Lago members. 02:24 And at a certain point, Donald Trump was like, go to town on that VA, whip it into shape. 02:28 And then just this ProPublica reporting is just gobsmackingly insane in which everyone in the VA is scrambling to meet the demands and jump to the snapped fingers of this troika of Mar-a-Lago club members who are telling them, like, how to run the VA and where you should privatize care and what your priorities should be. 02:47 This is the health system for nine million people. 02:51 People, nine million of the most, you know, sort of cherished, important members of American society, people who have served in the armed forces and through that service have been enrolled in the system that we have created and set aside specifically to address their needs. 03:06 And none of the none of these people have any expertise. 03:10 It's an astounding story. 03:11 But what it is more than anything, when you read it is my first thought is like, this is amazingly corrupt. 03:17 And I thought about that word, like, this is corrupt. 03:19 What do I mean by that? 03:20 Because at some level, it's not even clear what they're getting out of it. 03:25 There's some reporting the story that, like, one of them tried to shoehorn his son's app into some VA program. 03:32 Like, they're trying to do some VA things. 03:34 Like, my son's got an app. 03:36 Check out my son's app. 03:37 Maybe just get that app in there. 03:38 There's, like, another part of the story where they... 03:41 They put together some publicity event for a veterans charity where they ring the opening bell or closing bill of the stock market. 03:49 But there's like a bunch of Marvel people there, including Captain America and Spider-Man because Ike Perlmutter got involved. 03:54 Again, what's the quid pro quo here? 03:56 Like, I think these people just like running the VA. 03:59 They think they're doing some service. 04:01 But people paying the president hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to be members of his private club. 04:06 And because they do that, getting to run the health care service for nine million American veterans is an astounding, astounding abuse of the public trust. 04:17 It is an astounding betrayal of a basic set of social contracts we have about how we self-governed. 04:26 We all get together. 04:27 We vote for our elected representatives. 04:29 They then hire people to run a bureaucracy staffed by civil servants who administer programs that we all collectively agree to. 04:39 We don't just say like, hey, rich dude, do you want to run the VA because you're paying the president $200,000 a year or you met him on the golf course? 04:47 And yet everywhere you look in this era, you see corruption. 04:51 You see corruption everywhere you look in the Trump administration and not just in the Trump administration, in the way politics works. 04:58 I mean, there's 25, 26 million dollars was spent on the Neil Gorsuch confirmation in ads by a dark money group whose donors we don't know where the money come from. 05:09 What did they think they were getting out of it? 05:11 There's dark money flowing through the American political system like like it hasn't in probably 100 years since the Gilded Age. 05:19 And it's not just corruption in politics. 05:22 It's broader than that. 05:23 I mean, when you look at the behavior of entities in the private sector, what brought on the financial crisis, we are living in an astoundingly corrupt age. 05:32 And Donald Trump seems to be the apotheosis of that age. 05:36 I mean, no one better embodies the venality, almost the pettiness of corruption, like the sitting president of the United States. 05:48 There's a person who you may have heard of who has been thinking and writing and banging the drum about corruption for a while, and she's currently running for office. 06:00 And her name is Zephyr Teachout. 06:01 She's she's a really interesting person. 06:03 I've known her for a while. 06:04 She's been on the show. 06:05 She worked on the Howard Dean campaign. 06:07 She's also a lawyer and a law professor. 06:09 She teaches law at Fordham University School of Law. 06:12 And years back, she kind of threw her hat in the ring to give a primary challenge to Andrew Cuomo, kind of from the left. 06:19 Surprised a lot of people, did much better than anyone anticipated. 06:22 Then she ran for Congress in 2016 in the Hudson Valley. 06:26 She lost to a Republican there. 06:28 And this year she's running for attorney general of New York, attorney general for New York. 06:32 a position recently occupied by Eric Schneiderman, who it was revealed through incredible reporting in The New Yorker by Ron Farrow and Jane Mayer, is accused of being a violent, sadistic, horrible creep to a series of women in his life. 06:49 He resigned, I think, within 24 hours of the publication of that article, leaving the position occupied by a woman named Barbara Underwood, who was the Solicitor General, who became the Attorney General, but she is not going to run 07:00 To be the permanent attorney general, which means there's this wide open race for attorney general that's happening in New York and Zephyr G. just running. 07:08 And there was a very interesting there's a very interesting item the other day in the paper that said that Donald Trump is paying particular attention to the race for attorney general in New York. 07:20 Which makes a lot of sense because the attorney general in New York is kind of the chief corruption cop in the state of New York and the jurisdiction that Donald Trump's businesses reside in is New York. 07:33 And so it would make a lot of sense that a president who has never divested from his businesses, who's entangled in God knows what kind of improper dependencies and favors and promises and debts, would be worried about who is going to be the chief corruption officer in the state of New York where his business is located. 07:56 And it was for that reason that I thought the best person to talk about corruption in the Trump era, from the emoluments clause and lawsuit to Trump Org, to what we are seeing happen at the agencies in Washington, D.C., was Zephyr Teachout. 08:10 Zephyr actually wrote a book called Corruption in America, in which she goes all the way back. 08:16 You're going to hear all the way back to the founders. 08:18 And what she discovers is that corruption is one of the, if not the central problems 08:26 the founders were obsessed with. 08:28 How to identify it, how to stop it from happening, how to put structures in place that make it impossible for the government to rot from the inside from corruption. 08:39 One has to wonder what the founders would make of where we are now. 08:51 You wrote a book which has a great title. 08:54 It's like the setup for a joke. 08:55 The title is Corruption in America, which is like, how many shelves does it take up or like how many volumes? 09:01 Crosstalk Exactly. 09:02 Chris Hayes Corruption in America. 09:03 And I thought maybe the best place to start the conversation is just this really kind of elemental question, which is like, what is corruption? 09:11 How do we define it? 09:12 Zephyr Teachout Yeah, corruption is when people in public office use that public office for private or selfish ends. 09:22 This is one of the most central debates in the last 40 years in law. 09:29 What is corruption? 09:30 This is what we've seen in the Supreme Court is a fundamental struggle over the definition. 09:35 So the definition I just gave you, using public office for private ends, 09:40 is a definition that goes back thousands of years, was certainly the way that the founders of our country understood corruption, and they took it very seriously. 09:50 In the last few decades, there's been a rising alternate definition of corruption, one that... 09:56 I radically disagree with, but has been advocated by now a majority of the Supreme Court, although it used to be the minority of the Supreme Court, which is that corruption is essentially when there is some kind of explicit quid pro quo exchange between someone in public office and someone else saying, I will divert this train because you're giving me 50 bucks. 10:20 Chris Hayes Right. 10:21 So the so the narrower definition, which comes out of the Supreme Court's ruling about the conviction of Bob McDonnell, who is the Virginia governor. 10:28 Yeah. 10:29 That depends on an explicit. 10:30 It's basically like selling a pair of socks. 10:33 Right. 10:33 Like you have to sell your office the way you sell a pair of socks in order to pass the the bar the Supreme Court set in that case. 10:41 Zephyr Teachout Yeah. 10:42 I mean, the deep flaw here is that what you start to see, and you see this in the majority in opinion in Citizens United, you also see the seeds of it in Justice Roberts in a decision in 2007, which is the decision that really sparked me on this path. 10:57 Like, oh, there's this amazing, important debate about the meaning of corruption that will have real consequences in our law. 11:04 Unfortunately, the consequences have come to pass. 11:06 What they said is anything else is too fuzzy. 11:10 Corruption is just quid pro quo corruption. 11:14 And, you know, Latin words, Latin phrases make it sound like it's really precise, like. 11:18 You're relying on this ancient language. 11:23 Chris Hayes As our forefathers of Romans declared. 11:27 Zephyr Teachout But the truth is, it's not always clear when there's quid pro quo corruption either. 11:32 So there's a false sense. 11:33 Yeah, that's a good point. 11:34 So there's a false sense of certainty around the modern definition. 11:37 A sense that like, oh, we're going to be fine if we just narrow it in this way and anything else is too difficult. 11:44 Right. 11:44 But the truth is, even when you're selling socks with winks and nods, there have been real questions, and these are real questions in criminal trials around corruption, around even quid pro quo corruption, even like bribery trials, where... 11:59 Well, was that wink a yes or not? 12:02 Chris Hayes Okay, so that's interesting. 12:04 So what you're saying is this desire to get away from this fuzziness, self-described desire on the part of the thinkers and the judges who are moving towards this narrow definition... 12:16 is that we want something hard and concrete. 12:19 And I said, okay, hard and concrete, like selling a pair of socks. 12:21 And you're saying, like, there is no getting rid of the definitional problem. 12:24 There's going to be fuzziness. 12:25 It's like my wife has this joke about, it's not her joke, I think it's with her law students about, like, you know, how do you get rid of the close calls at first base, like move first base a little closer? 12:35 Right, right. 12:36 It's like, well, no, that's not the way it works. 12:39 Wherever it's going to be, there's going to be a close call at first base. 12:42 And your point is, what I'm hearing from you, is you can't define away some of the fuzziness ambiguity in these questions. 12:49 Zephyr Teachout Yeah, and so instead we should go to the real core meanings and the core purposes. 12:53 Like, what are these laws about? 12:55 And the reason this really matters is there's been this shell game in the Supreme Court. 12:59 There are two kinds of corruption cases. 13:02 Some cases, like the McDonald cases, are interpreting bribery laws. 13:08 And some cases are interpreting campaign finance laws. 13:11 I think of it as one set of rules are these bright line rules, like speed limit rules. 13:18 Campaign finance rules say you just can't take over $5,400 in a cycle. 13:24 And then bribery laws are... 13:26 really saying, was there something deeply wrong in this particular transaction? 13:31 And what the court has done is narrow the definition of corruption in each arena. 13:36 But what they'll do is they'll say, when we're dealing with campaign finance, they'll say, oh, don't worry that we're narrowing it here. 13:43 We'll deal with the corruption problem with aggressive prosecutions. 13:46 Chris Hayes Right. 13:47 So, like, no, I hear you. 13:48 That stuff is nasty. 13:50 We're going to go after that stuff. 13:51 But not here. 13:52 But not here. 13:52 But not here. 13:53 Zephyr Teachout Right. 13:53 Yeah. 13:54 And then in McDonnell itself, narrowing the statutory understanding of a bribery, the court says... 14:02 Don't worry, there are other ways we can deal with this problem, like those bright line ethics rules. 14:08 So in each case, the court is shifting responsibility. 14:12 And so there's a double erosion in both areas of law. 14:16 And the result is, one, we have far fewer constraints against corruption in the bright line law area, which is something I care a lot about. 14:25 And we have fewer tools for prosecutors. 14:27 Chris Hayes Right. 14:28 I mean, so the McDonald case is interesting because I want to just, if people are following this conversation and don't remember the facts, I'll just lay them out briefly. 14:36 So he's the governor of Virginia. 14:38 He's getting all kinds of gifts from this sort of rich benefactor. 14:41 Right. 14:42 Zephyr Teachout Rolex watch. 14:43 Chris Hayes Yeah, it's got a real kind of like Paul Manafort kind of feel to the whole thing. 14:49 Zephyr Teachout Well, this is pre-Trump. 14:50 Right. 14:51 And this is pre-Trump, and now it's routine to see this kind of grotesque, like, what, you're really doing something that obvious? 14:57 Chris Hayes Yeah, he's getting Rolex watches. 14:59 Zephyr Teachout But at the time, it was like... 15:01 Shocking. 15:02 It was shocking. 15:02 You're getting Rolex watches for. 15:04 Chris Hayes And in exchange, this guy's peddling like essentially snake oil, like some vitamin supplement. 15:09 And the governor is leaning on people at state agencies to basically take meetings. 15:14 Zephyr Teachout Exactly. 15:15 Chris Hayes That's essentially the facts. 15:16 The Supreme Court basically says taking a meeting. 15:20 Can't be the quo in the quid pro quo. 15:22 Zephyr Teachout Yeah. 15:23 So it came down to when you think of the basic structure of bribery laws, there is a thing given in exchange for a thing done. 15:32 And so different cases are about one of those three questions. 15:38 Was there a thing given? 15:39 Yeah. 15:40 Chris Hayes In this case, that clears. 15:41 We know. 15:42 We've got pictures entered into evidence at trial of the watch. 15:45 Zephyr Teachout Right. 15:46 So sometimes there's like questions. 15:48 Well, is it enough of a thing if it's like getting your niece's friend into college? 15:53 Those kinds of. 15:54 Chris Hayes That's interesting. 15:55 Zephyr Teachout Right. 15:55 So is it a thing given? 15:57 Is it an exchange? 16:00 And so that's where a lot of the explicitness comes in. 16:04 Is there some kind of. 16:07 conversation or something that a jury can make a reasonable inference that it was an exchange it wasn't just you happen to give this thing in exchange for that and the third is what was the official act so this mcdonald case is about the official act what does the official act have to be in order for it to be considered a violation the court says it is not an official act to just set up meetings 16:35 And that goes against about 500 years of precedent. 16:41 Chris Hayes Well, I'm glad you said 500 years of precedent because one of the things I liked about, I've read parts of Corruption in America, and it's like the joke about sex work, you know, the world's second oldest profession. 16:51 It's like from the moment there's governance, there's corruption. 16:55 And people write about it. 16:57 They joke about it. 16:58 There's like vulgar cracks about it. 17:00 Like everyone knows, like people are on the take. 17:02 And like it's just like essential fundamental problems. 17:05 Zephyr Teachout It is the central fundamental problem. 17:08 And we'll go back in history for a second. 17:10 But when I was trying to figure out why the court was going this way, you know, why there had been this big shift. 17:17 And by the way, it wasn't just the Supreme Court and it wasn't just 17:20 conservatives on the court. 17:22 There was this move after the 70s away from the language of corruption in elite academic circles as well. 17:29 That corruption was sort of too morally laden a term. 17:33 Corruption requires looking into someone's soul and making judgments about their intent. 17:38 And we can deal with things in a much more practical way. 17:41 There was, in short, I think a genuine sense 17:45 crazy one that this eternal question had been largely solved and we could see I mean this is really post wall coming down especially the triumphalism of the triumphalism of the early 90s 18:01 Chris Hayes Francis Fukuyama's end of history gets published right around then to basically say, look, the world has now achieved a consensus about liberal democracy as the fundamental. 18:10 Zephyr Teachout Right. 18:11 And we got the basics right. 18:13 Chris Hayes Yeah. 18:13 Zephyr Teachout And so we'll fiddle around the edges. 18:15 But this old fundamental thing isn't a problem. 18:19 And you see some of this language in Supreme Court opinions where. 18:23 there is, yeah, corruption's a problem, but so is stealing pipes from people's houses. 18:30 It's this minor problem, not what the founders thought, which is basically the most fundamental existential threat that will never go away and that you constantly have to fight against and you have to do everything you can to protect against. 18:44 So Hamilton, in the Federalist Papers, describes the Constitutional Convention 18:50 saying, we did everything we could to erect every practicable obstacle to corruption. 18:58 Because that's the threat. 19:00 We're not going to have self-government if we don't protect against corruption. 19:04 Or as somebody else said, if we don't protect against corruption, we will soon be at an end. 19:09 It's like this... 19:10 Looming sense. 19:12 And corruption is, rupt comes from the Latin, I'm not a Latin scholar, so this is, I'm relying on other experts here, but ruptore, the idea of breaking, and co is within oneself, so it's internal breaking. 19:26 So one of the things that you see in the founding era and something I think we're returning to right now, which is the sense that the greatest threat to democracy is internal breaking of itself, not the external warriors who might come in and invade. 19:46 Chris Hayes Right. 19:46 We rot from within. 19:47 Zephyr Teachout We rot from within. 19:49 Yeah. 19:50 Chris Hayes And corruption in that sense. 19:51 Right. 19:51 Because there's an interesting like that we use the term in different venues. 19:56 Right. 19:56 I mean, to me, I think about corruption in a broader sense than just the specific legal corruption. 20:01 vis-a-vis the law and public office, right? 20:04 I was a fellow at the Saffir Center for Ethics at Harvard with Lawrence Lessig in his lab on institutional corruption. 20:10 There's a sort of look at corruption in non-governmental spheres, right? 20:14 So Enron. 20:17 Crosstalk Absolutely. 20:17 Chris Hayes Mortgage brokers. 20:18 And there's where you get that sense of, like, moral rot, right? 20:22 People start to cut corners. 20:23 They start to say, like, you look at the emails that are floating around from, like, mortgage brokers during the boom, and it's like... 20:30 Who cares what the fucking value of this thing is? 20:33 We're just going to ship it out. 20:36 You got Enron transcripts of them being like, shut down that power plant, jack up the prices, like granny's going to pay through the nose. 20:43 And that's moral rot. 20:44 That's rot. 20:46 That's what's happening in those institutions, whether it's a market, a company, anything. 20:51 Zephyr Teachout One of the things that is so important, critical, I think, in reading not just the founders, but thousands of years, as you put it, discussion about corruption, is that you can't talk about the problem of corruption without talking about human nature. 21:08 Whether you're talking about private or public corruption, when you read the notes from the Constitutional Convention, one of the things that comes up over and over is temptation. 21:19 And they're really concerned about temptation because they start with, okay, we've got to prevent corruption. 21:25 So... 21:26 We understand what humans are. 21:29 We have to actually, in order to prevent corruption, we've got to talk about what a human being is and what the incentives are. 21:35 And people can't bear that much temptation. 21:38 So the job of building structures, building a constitutional structure, 21:45 is not just to punish those who behave badly, but actually to protect people from their own temptations. 21:53 And this real investigation into human nature also relates to your discussion about Enron, that once you're in a culture where everybody's law-breaking, 22:03 It's just human nature to start saying, well, everybody else is doing it, so I will too. 22:09 And if we're really going to take this corruption threat seriously, you can't do it as this hyper-technical, just looking at people as widgets. 22:18 You actually have to get into people's deep incentives and motives and the human spirit. 22:24 Chris Hayes Yeah. 22:24 human spirit, human motivation, cultures, institutional settings, the way people relate to each other. 22:30 It's almost religious language, but like moral rot, like people falling into sin is the way I think about it. 22:39 Because they are tempted and temptation is eternal. 22:42 Zephyr Teachout Yeah. 22:43 And then you can see why in the last 30, 40 years, even liberal academics got kind of nervous around this language. 22:51 Like moral rot? 22:53 poison disease there's often language of disease around corruption the way that it infects one person and then infects others because you see somebody at the top of an organization have a spirit of cutting corners that does infect people below but that isn't that doesn't fit with the hyper economics trend within social sciences to try to put everything in the widget box right 23:20 Chris Hayes The founders are worried about this. 23:22 They think about it a lot. 23:24 Zephyr Teachout That's an understatement. 23:24 I mean, yeah, they're kind of obsessed. 23:28 Yeah, right. 23:29 They talk about it almost every day. 23:31 And there's almost like a corruption discussion machine every part of the Constitution had to go through. 23:39 So there's a discussion. 23:40 How big should the districts be? 23:43 And then there's a necessary discussion. 23:46 Well, do big or small districts lead to more or less corruption? 23:50 So with every topic, every structural topic, there's a corruption talk. 23:56 Like, should we have... 23:58 the presidential electors all vote on the same day. 24:02 That went through the corruption conversation. 24:04 And the theory was, well, if they all vote on the same day, they're less likely to be corrupted because the coordination costs would be too great to get to the electors all around this vast country, given our roads. 24:16 So I just use that as one example. 24:18 There's like, you propose something, and then it's like, how does it do on the corruption scale? 24:22 Then there are some clauses which are particular anti-corruption clauses. 24:27 And the emoluments clause is then one of the original explicitly anti-corruption provisions. 24:33 Chris Hayes So they think a lot about corruption, right? 24:35 They erect a republic. 24:37 They do a pretty good job of writing a constitution. 24:39 Let me just say, I'm not a sort of founder's fetishist. 24:43 It's great. 24:44 There's lots of good stuff, lots of bad stuff. 24:46 It's all the complicated thing. 24:48 I think as I get older, I do appreciate the endurance of some parts of it more and more. 24:53 I'm less sort of filled with youthful zeal or youthful judgment about the things I got wrong because I got a lot of things wrong. 25:00 Zephyr Teachout Yeah. 25:00 Yes, like a lot pretty wrong. 25:02 I mean, slavery and the Constitution. 25:05 Chris Hayes Yeah, right. 25:05 Like some of the worst crimes against humanity ever committed by a civilization or republic are enshrined in the document. 25:11 All of that is scarce to say. 25:13 So they write it. 25:14 They write the document. 25:15 And then they have a government that goes up based on this. 25:20 And there's a lot of corruption. 25:22 I mean, I have to say, I recently I recently read the Grant Chernow book. 25:26 And it's really funny that period, particularly like post. 25:30 This was just a real kind of heyday of corruption in American life. 25:33 Post Civil War through like Gildedate. 25:36 It is unbelievable. 25:39 The entire federal government is being run like the Chicago machine. 25:43 Crosstalk Yes. 25:44 Chris Hayes It's just totally corrupt. 25:46 Grants got like wealthy benefactors buying them houses left and right all the time. 25:51 They're just buying them houses like you want a house here. 25:53 You want a house here. 25:53 They like they all have business before the federal government. 25:56 Crosstalk Yeah. 25:57 Chris Hayes They're handing out jobs left and right in the post office so that, you know, you you vote for me. 26:01 Your uncle gets a job like it's astoundingly corrupt. 26:05 Zephyr Teachout Oh, absolutely. 26:06 And I also just want to say, I don't start at all with the assumption that we should just take their words. 26:12 I'm not an originalist. 26:13 I'm not even close to an originalist. 26:15 The investigation did make me change my approach and appreciate some of the wisdom. 26:21 But it started with a little bit of anger, to be frank, is that if the Supreme Court was going to pretend to be originalist, 26:28 and not talk about corruption, then it was just being wildly dishonest. 26:32 And that's what had been happening for a few decades. 26:36 And so at least if you're going to pretend to be originalist, you better go back. 26:40 But then I was struck by some of the profundity of the genuine challenge of how do you have representative government that isn't just bought and sold? 26:49 Chris Hayes And yet they use this document to erect a republic that once it gets up on its feet is pretty damn corrupt. 26:56 Zephyr Teachout Well, you could think of it, you almost think of it like whack-a-mole. 27:00 The era you're talking about is incredibly corrupt. 27:03 But there's moments that are more and less corrupt in time. 27:05 And we're certainly living through a moment that is, if not peak corruption, pretty close. 27:11 You know, it's high peak corruption. 27:14 And I think that's important because I think there's two tendencies sometimes. 27:18 One is this very dangerous, frankly, you know, white nationalist tendency to say, oh, wouldn't it be great if we went back to the 19... 27:26 30s, you know, without explicitly being sentimental about segregation, longing for this perfect time that did not exist. 27:38 But there's another danger, too, which is to say it's always been terrible and it's always been equally terrible. 27:42 And there really have been times of greater and lesser corruption in American history. 27:47 And so the whack-a-mole part is you can't ever stop being vigilant. 27:51 And the threats are going to come in different ways at different times. 27:55 In the 1880s, there's just really explicit, for instance, vote buying. 28:00 Fancy people in town, their votes were worth more. 28:03 Middle class people, their votes were worth less. 28:06 And the way they did vote buying is you'd say, you promised to vote for so-and-so and I'll pay you the equivalent of 250 bucks because you're a fancy guy in town. 28:14 and then pass them a ballot, and the ballots had different colors. 28:20 In fact, they had some ballots with bright, flaming pink borders. 28:25 So then you'd have watchers watch you walk to the ballot booth with your bright, flaming pink ballot, and they'd know that you had fulfilled your part of the bargain. 28:37 Chris Hayes That is amazing. 28:38 The first thought, as you talked about vote buying, in my head I'm like, well, how do you get the receipt? 28:42 Exactly. 28:43 You'd be like, yeah, dude, totally. 28:45 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 28:46 And then you go to his opponent and you're like, yeah, totally, I'll vote for you. 28:48 And then you've got $500 and nobody knows. 28:50 Zephyr Teachout And nobody knows. 28:51 Right. 28:52 Chris Hayes But they thought of that. 28:53 Zephyr Teachout Secret ballot. 28:54 The secret ballot is one of the biggest anti-corruption tools. 28:59 It swept the country. 29:00 in about a decade. 29:02 Chris Hayes Wait, so before that, there was not a secret ballot. 29:05 Zephyr Teachout No. 29:05 Chris Hayes I never thought, now I'm going to sound like an idiot. 29:08 I never thought of, to me, it was always a privacy thing, or a kind of First Amendment protection thing. 29:15 I no one gets to see who I vote for because that is mine and mine alone. 29:20 And also, we don't want to create any kind of regime that discriminates against people based on their political preferences. 29:28 That's part of liberty and freedom. 29:30 It literally never occurred to me. 29:32 Zephyr Teachout It's an anti-corruption law. 29:35 It takes over the country. 29:37 It's called the Australian ballot. 29:42 Anyway, there's a series of threats. 29:48 And when there's a truly engaged public, there's a possibility of responding to the whack-a-mole. 29:55 The error of the last 30 years is the sense that we didn't even need to be engaged in the whack-a-mole at all. 30:01 And a series of creeping changes, including changing the way we really fund elections, have led us back to a pretty dangerous moment in terms of corruption. 30:13 Chris Hayes My way of thinking about American history is that the kind of Gilded Age period, particularly sort of 1890s through, I guess, the teens is kind of like peak American corruption. 30:25 Is that would you say the same or are we beating it now? 30:29 Zephyr Teachout Oh, I think we're pretty close, but it's both peak American corruption and just a horrific time. 30:36 I always think if I ever need motivation for action, I always think, what would it be like to be to live in 1899? 30:43 We fought a civil war and African-Americans over the last few decades have lost substantial economic and political rights across the board. 30:54 Chris Hayes That they had. 30:55 Zephyr Teachout That they had. 30:56 That they had. 30:57 Chris Hayes People bled and died for. 30:58 Zephyr Teachout Yeah, exactly. 30:58 The suffragists have been out in force. 31:02 No right to vote for women. 31:04 The anti-monopolists have been protesting. 31:07 Just a handful of companies run the country. 31:11 I do think of that as pretty bleak times. 31:15 Pre-1865, worse. 31:18 But in terms of corruption, the Gilded Age is pretty bad. 31:22 But we are reaching levels of inequality that are similar to that. 31:25 So if you look at the corruption access on its own, I don't think you can untangle all these things. 31:30 you see a lot of parallels so the gilded age the phrase this comes from a lot of different things but also mark twain's book in twain's book he talks about well he doesn't talk about because he's a great writer so it's just novelistically shows this bizarre split in language 31:53 Elites don't think the same things are corrupt that non-elites think are corrupt. 31:58 And elites have just convinced themselves that this is the way things work. 32:03 And I think you see the same thing now. 32:04 I think people on the street know that lobbying leads to a lot of corruption. 32:09 They don't need like... 32:10 A lot of convincing that money in politics is the root issue. 32:14 That's not a complicated question. 32:16 And then when you talk to political elites, they're like, but this is the way we do things. 32:21 Chris Hayes Dude, I was at a dinner once with like a bunch of, I think it was Larry Lessig came and gave a talk to a bunch. 32:27 It was in D.C. and it was like a bunch of political scientists and like thinkers and think tank types. 32:31 We're just making the point that like Congress is fundamentally structurally corrupt because of the way it raises money. 32:37 Yeah. 32:37 Which is like, yes, obviously, obviously the case. 32:42 And it was just like the level of skepticism and outright hostility to this obvious basic idea that any person who spends any time at all around the system sees was astounding to me. 32:57 And it really was. 32:57 They had kind of like everyone had created this sort of reverse engineered set of Rube Goldberg conceptual machinery. 33:04 To erase what was happening in front of your face. 33:06 Zephyr Teachout The most common sense thing. 33:08 If you are dependent on the wealthiest 1% to get elected, you will serve their interest. 33:14 This is like... 33:15 Chris Hayes Let me say this. 33:17 There are actual academics who study this, of course, and there's a huge literature on it. 33:20 And there is lots of interesting and surprising political science findings that look for the kinds of corruption you would think sort of input and output and don't find it. 33:30 And I don't want to like be like, oh, that entire literature is worthless. 33:34 Like, I'm not saying that. 33:35 It seems to me like there's like a missing the forest for the trees a little bit. 33:39 Zephyr Teachout Yeah. 33:39 Chris Hayes I mean, that's happening. 33:41 Zephyr Teachout We can go deep into that. 33:43 But basically, it's imagining votes is the way that power is expressed. 33:48 Crosstalk Right. 33:48 Zephyr Teachout It actually goes back to the initial conversation about McDonald. 33:51 It's imagining that, like, something that looks and feels like very official action is the way that power is expressed. 33:57 Chris Hayes Right. 33:57 And that's how they measure the output. 33:58 So they say, well, here are the donors here and here are the votes the congressperson took. 34:02 And actually, we don't see a huge correlation between X and Y. 34:04 Zephyr Teachout Where, in fact... 34:06 That's not the way it works. 34:07 No, it isn't even close to the way it works. 34:09 Prioritization is everything. 34:11 Chris Hayes Yeah, Lessig's got this great example, right, where it's like, if you come to Congress and you care about two things, and only two things, you care about reforming capital gains taxes and infant mortality for poor women, and you care about both those things, guess what? 34:28 There's going to be a lot of people to help you with your obsession with capital gains taxes. 34:35 And you're going to spend more and more time and get a lot further doing that than with your infant mortality for children of Portland. 34:41 Zephyr Teachout And one of the things that I think we're seeing now is that... 34:46 Just to be clear, I think there's all kinds of problems with the phrase gateway drug, but I'm about to use it. 34:51 Crosstalk Okay. 34:53 Zephyr Teachout Legal campaign contributions then become a gateway drug to illegal activity. 34:59 Chris Hayes See, it's funny you say that and then you had to apologize to it because you just very neatly acted out precisely the sort of self-tension around the discourse around corruption you were describing earlier. 35:09 Yeah. 35:10 Which is that it's inherently moralistic. 35:12 Yeah. 35:12 You've got to have some sense of right and wrong, some sense of righteousness. 35:16 And gateway drug, the reason you're using that metaphor is because gateway drug is about temptation and corruption. 35:23 You get a little bit of taste, and then you want more. 35:26 Zephyr Teachout You want more, and you can't even see it. 35:28 So we can talk about the federal government. 35:31 In New York State, there's a lot of corruption. 35:34 And what you see, without looking into anybody's heart, but getting as close as you can, is these elected officials get so used to the kind of transactional interaction with donors. 35:48 that it's hard to believe that the transactional interaction with somebody who's giving them something personally is any different. 35:54 It just feels the same. 35:56 So if you're used to the kind of transaction, like, hey, I'll give you the campaign limits in New York State or for a statewide office, like $65,000. 36:08 So I'll give you $65,000. 36:10 Oh, and by the way, what I really care about 36:15 And I don't like supporting people who don't care about the things I care about. 36:19 What I really care about is making sure that we don't, I don't know, have too many bike lanes. 36:26 So, like, who doesn't hear that conversation and know exactly what is going on? 36:32 But then you have that conversation, and then a few years later, you're talking to somebody who's like, hey, why don't you just come for a great trip with me? 36:40 Because we're going to go visit the Bahamas. 36:42 And by the way, what I really care about is no more bike lanes. 36:47 And then the third step is, why don't I just give you some cash and we'll deal with the bike lanes issue. 36:52 Chris Hayes Yeah, can we just stop all of this pretending? 36:55 I'm just going to give you some money and get rid of the goddamn bike lanes. 36:58 Love of God. 36:59 Zephyr Teachout So morally, you're in a sycophant position. 37:02 Somebody running for office becomes a beggar. 37:04 It's kind of disgusting. 37:05 Chris Hayes It's gross. 37:05 It's gross. 37:06 Zephyr Teachout It's disgusting, that kind of like polite begging of the wealthiest people in the world and getting used to that moral orientation that they are worthy of, especially worthy of having policy ideas. 37:17 Chris Hayes And it reminds me, like, I've seen it, and I guess I've been in a position of raising money for a theater company once before. 37:24 It was very different because I believed in it, and the people you're asking don't really have sway over you. 37:28 But there's, you know, you see this, there's something servile. 37:32 It is, yeah. 37:49 levels of harassment and quotations. 37:53 Yes, I was a waitress. 37:54 But it's that thing. 37:56 It's like the people that run our country are constantly around rich people, like indulging their kooky ideas, listening to long monologues about, you know what I saw the other day? 38:07 Like, 38:07 That's how they spend their time. 38:09 Zephyr Teachout And campaigns and the whole campaign operatus just accepts that this has to be the way things are and encourages this servility. 38:17 There's also a lot of illegality right now, too. 38:19 Chris Hayes So I want to get to Donald Trump and I want to ask this question. 38:23 Symptom or cause? 38:26 Zephyr Teachout Yes. 38:28 Both. 38:29 No, I mean, really, seriously, both. 38:31 Look, he comes out of New York City real estate. 38:33 Donald Trump himself has openly bragged about campaign contributions and the transactional way in which he's used campaign contributions. 38:43 Chris Hayes It was an incredibly effective shtick of his stump speech, which was, I have bribed people. 38:48 I know all these people are being bribed because I've bribed them. 38:51 Vote for me because I'm not taking bribes. 38:54 Zephyr Teachout Yeah. 38:55 So there's the person as the candidate, his own background. 38:59 There's also, we're not going to do a full autopsy on that election right now, but at least one part of it is radical disgust. 39:08 I mean, there's a lot of sexism, a lot of racism, and then also some radical disgust with the current system and a desire just to change it. 39:16 Something has to happen. 39:17 Something has to change. 39:18 I certainly saw that. 39:20 This deep sense that everything had gotten corrupt and 39:24 Now it's much worse. 39:26 Chris Hayes I mean, that's the irony. 39:28 He ran on, they're all corrupt. 39:30 Clinton cash, corruption, corruption, corruption. 39:32 She's corrupt. 39:33 She's part of the system. 39:34 I brought these people. 39:35 I'm not. 39:35 I'm going to drain the swamp. 39:36 I'm an anti-corruption candidate. 39:38 And has come in and done... 39:41 has put into place the most cartoonish version of corruption that you might have imagined. 39:49 Zephyr Teachout It's tragic and horrific to see what he's brought in. 39:53 So this is cause. 39:55 So yes, there's an element of symptom. 39:57 And that's one of the reasons why I think moving forward, we actually have to deal with root issues and Donald Trump. 40:03 And you can't deal with just Donald Trump. 40:04 Although I take the threat of Donald Trump as a democratic crisis deadly seriously. 40:09 Like he is a genuine, serious, absolute threat to self-government in multiple ways and to democracy in multiple ways. 40:20 And so he brings in this just open, self-serving, lawless, anti-law presidency, you know, openly dismissive of the judiciary. 40:30 The perversity when he talks about rule of law is what he means is arbitrary power, which is the opposite of rule of law. 40:36 So he'll use this phrase, but he'll mean I get to decide. 40:40 Chris Hayes I mean, we talked about corruption going back, you know, the beginning of civilization. 40:44 It's one of the oldest ethical codes that exist in human life, which is if you're with me, you're on the right side of the law. 40:50 And if you're not, you're on the wrong side of the law. 40:51 It's just pure mafia ethic. 40:53 Zephyr Teachout Absolutely. 40:54 Chris Hayes You are with us or you aren't. 40:56 And that's what matters. 40:57 There's no like standard. 40:58 There's no like thing out in the world. 41:00 It's like you're working for me. 41:02 You're a good guy. 41:04 I don't care if you put a vase through the face of your ex wife and you there who is a thug or you there that's a mom from Ecuador. 41:12 You're breaking the law. 41:13 Zephyr Teachout I mean, to me, that is a perversion of even the word law. 41:17 Not the law ever achieves this perfectly, but the aspiration is this really radical idea, which is the opposite of that, which is that whoever you are, you have the same speed limit. 41:29 whoever you are, you have the same judge and that it is not like what protector you have that defines what the rules are. 41:37 It's the elemental civilizational battle. 41:40 Chris Hayes I mean, it's the elemental civilizational battle between an ethic on one side that says there is nothing else but our struggle for power. 41:48 Zephyr Teachout Power is law. 41:49 Yes. 41:49 Chris Hayes And an idea that like there's some objective standard and some equality before that objective standard and we're going to live under those rules. 41:56 That's it. 41:56 That's the that's the fight. 41:57 Zephyr Teachout That is the fight, and that is the fight we are in right now. 42:00 He may not have a lot of consistency on policy, but he has a total consistency on this vision of power is everything, connections are everything, you can do what you want if you have power, and this idea of law as a really beautiful idea that people are equal in the face of government is something that is actually incoherent to him. 42:24 Chris Hayes Yeah, that's so true. 42:26 It's not that he opposes that idea. 42:28 He is incapable of conceiving of it as a real thing. 42:31 Zephyr Teachout Yeah, I think that's right. 42:32 Chris Hayes I think that he thinks that anyone that runs around like Zephyr Teachout espousing it is trying to play other people for a sucker. 42:39 Zephyr Teachout That may be right. 42:40 Chris Hayes I think the cynicism is so deep and so pernicious. 42:44 And this is part of the reason I think that like corruption is so dangerous. 42:48 Right. 42:48 That it embeds itself is that like the cynicism and corruption that go together in this way where you start mentally projecting onto everyone else your own view of things. 42:59 Zephyr Teachout And part of arbitrary power is like the idea of corruption then doesn't make any sense. 43:04 What would corruption be? 43:06 It's like you use your advantage. 43:08 That's like what you're supposed to do. 43:11 Chris Hayes That's exactly right. 43:12 If you don't actually have... 43:14 the conception of the standard above and beyond power, you actually can't even conceptualize what corruption is. 43:21 Zephyr Teachout It's just a gobbledygook. 43:23 Right, that's right. 43:23 It's just gobbledygook. 43:24 Chris Hayes And so then there's these like random... Yeah, like I help my son out because I'm... Yeah, that's what people do. 43:31 Obviously we go to the family, we go to my properties because like I'm the president, we're going to go to my property so that we make more money for my properties. 43:38 Zephyr Teachout Yeah, yeah. 43:39 Chris Hayes Like that's what you do. 43:39 Zephyr Teachout Yeah, and then there's these laws or ethics rules 43:43 which seemed to him just wrong and arbitrary, just some referee stepping in because it's so incoherent in his vision of the world. 43:52 But it's dangerous because he's the president. 43:54 It's dangerous because it's really dangerous because he's trying to infect the you know, this is where the language of disease and rot the entire country with this approach. 44:04 with the team approach, maximize whatever you can. 44:08 Laws are just fun painting on top of what's clearly just self-interested. 44:14 And it's why I believe there are other aspects of Trump, like that he lies. 44:18 And so the way to counter lying is not not lying, but it's actually truth-telling. 44:25 And the way to counter arbitrary power and this vision of arbitrary power actually has to be a kind of radical recommitment to the best ideas of law. 44:36 And so law is really important in taking on Trump and not just as a instrumental tool, but as actually showing what law can be and showing that law can treat the taxi driver and the president the same way. 44:52 That in itself is an important task at this moment. 44:55 Chris Hayes You're running for attorney general in the state of New York, and there's a very notable item. 45:00 I forget where the other day that said the president is paying attention to a lot of races. 45:04 One race he's paying particular attention to is the race for attorney general of New York. 45:10 Zephyr Teachout Well, he should be. 45:11 The New York state attorney general has authority and responsibility to maintain the integrity of businesses in New York state. 45:22 This is the center of Donald Trump's business empire. 45:25 The attorney general in New York State may easily be in a position, if Donald Trump either pardons somebody or tries to get rid of Mueller, to be the prosecutor or working with local prosecutors of last resort, bringing criminal charges against somebody in his associate circle. 45:43 So it matters as a criminal law matter. 45:45 It matters because the attorney general of New York can look into his businesses 45:49 There's currently a lawsuit that Barbara Underwood brought, just a blockbuster lawsuit seeking to dissolve the Trump Foundation. 45:57 There is a provision in New York law that gives the attorney general the authority to dissolve corporations or nonprofits that are so deeply riddled with fraud that they lack all integrity. 46:11 So Donald Trump, the source of his power... 46:16 is his business empire. 46:17 He's using the presidency to get rich. 46:21 Sadly, this is not an original effort. 46:24 People throughout world history have used power to get rich. 46:27 It's illegal in this country. 46:28 You mentioned the mafia earlier. 46:31 When you go after the mafia, you've got to go after the money. 46:34 You've got to actually follow the trail of the business transactions. 46:38 So he should care a lot because the New York attorney general matters in terms of potential prosecutions, but also in terms of investigations into the businesses. 46:48 Chris Hayes One big area where people are attempting to use the Constitution law to rein in corruption is emoluments, the emoluments clause. 46:55 A federal judge recently said this emoluments lawsuit, which is by the attorneys general of Maryland, D.C., can go forward and for the first time kind of defined corruption. 47:04 Like, what is an emolument? 47:06 What counts? 47:08 What do you think of the status of that case? 47:10 Zephyr Teachout I mean, this is a major, major victory. 47:12 So I just want to step back a little bit. 47:14 Three years ago, there were two of us who were talking about emoluments. 47:17 And if I asked somebody, they would be like, it sounds like a French lotion or something. 47:23 And I was interested in it because it is this original commitment on the part of our country to, 47:28 And a commitment that basically broke with all of European tradition. 47:32 In Europe, there was lots of foreign money flowing to different officers. 47:37 And in our constitution, we say we don't want that culture because that culture looks corrupt to us. 47:41 So we're not going to allow foreign money to go to federal officers. 47:45 And we're going to put in this bright line rule, even if it might hurt our diplomatic efforts, because diplomats were kind of used to getting money from foreign governments. 47:52 Chris Hayes That's a big part of your diplomatic posting back in the day. 47:55 Zephyr Teachout Right, exactly. 47:56 You're going to get... 47:57 Chris Hayes Sweet foreign bribes. 47:58 Zephyr Teachout Exactly. 48:00 And so our Constitution is kind of radical on this, and because of corruption concerns. 48:06 It's like, if we allow this, it's just going to end up corrupting our country. 48:09 So we're not going to do that. 48:11 Anyway, Trump gets elected. 48:13 Seven days later, I read an article for The New York Times about how it looks like he's on the verge of violating this central anti-corruption provision of our Constitution. 48:22 Almost immediately, I start working with Norm Eisen from Crew and other lawyers, and we build a legal team. 48:29 And we have been and I have been pushing this legal strategy since Donald Trump's election. 48:35 In fact, we filed a lawsuit three days after he took office. 48:40 saying he's got to divest his business interests. 48:44 So to be clear, there are two emoluments clauses of the Constitution. 48:48 One prohibits foreign governments from giving federal officers emoluments, benefits, gains, advantages. 48:56 The second prohibits the president in particular from getting benefits from states and local governments so that they can't play favorites with states. 49:08 Fascinating. 49:09 And given his business empire, the only way that he cannot be violating these emoluments clauses is he has to divest his businesses. 49:19 I think this is something that needs a little emphasis because people might hear about the litigation. 49:23 It's like yet another lawsuit. 49:25 This is not yet another lawsuit. 49:28 This is a lawsuit that should force Donald Trump to have to choose between the presidency and his businesses. 49:35 That's a major, major blow to the kleptocratic presidency. 49:41 It's constitutionally required. 49:44 It's obviously ethically required. 49:46 Talk about no-brainer things. 49:48 Clearly, you should not be making money off the presidency. 49:50 Chris Hayes I think we agree on that. 49:52 I think it's bad that that's happening. 49:55 Zephyr Teachout I think sometimes people expect things to happen overnight, but our first case was brought representing people like restaurant professionals who are competing against the president. 50:05 for people coming to their restaurant. 50:07 And they're saying, hey, he's violating the Constitution. 50:09 It's hurting me. 50:10 I urged then Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, and I know others did as well, to engage in this lawsuit. 50:16 And the New York Attorney General really has to be the leader on this, because this is where the businesses are. 50:21 So the lawsuit with Maryland and D.C. is really important. 50:24 One, because it established federal courts saying state AGs are the right people to bring this. 50:29 And second, this is the big news from last month, that this legal question, which had never been decided before about what an emolument is, was decided in this federal court. 50:41 Trump's lawyers said, well... 50:44 What this provision really prohibits is the president agreeing to exchange official services. 50:51 We're back at quid pro quo. 50:53 Chris Hayes Right. 50:53 Totally. 50:53 It's the same argument. 50:55 It's the same argument. 50:56 Yes. 50:57 Like the only thing is that like if Macron shows up with a check. 51:02 Or Mohammed bin Salman shows up, he's like, here's a million dollars, you do us for that. 51:06 Like, that's barred. 51:07 Zephyr Teachout That's barred. 51:08 Obviously. 51:09 Right. 51:10 And so that's what the president's lawyers were arguing, which is clearly absurd. 51:13 Chris Hayes The president's lawyers, by the way, the Department of Justice lawyers. 51:15 Yes, yes. 51:16 Just to be clear. 51:16 Yes, yes. 51:17 Our lawyers. 51:18 Zephyr Teachout Yes. 51:18 Chris Hayes The government, our, U.S. citizens' lawyers were arguing this. 51:21 Zephyr Teachout We're arguing this. 51:23 Yes. 51:24 So the judge, and I'm very proud of this, the judge actually extensively cited my previous scholarship in the opinion saying this clause comes out of a history. 51:33 It comes out of a context. 51:35 Chris Hayes That's awesome. 51:36 Zephyr Teachout Yeah, it was a major victory. 51:37 Chris Hayes Were you fist pumping? 51:38 Zephyr Teachout I absolutely was. 51:42 Chris Hayes Somebody read it. 51:44 Zephyr Teachout Well, and more importantly, he's going to have to divest. 51:47 He's going to get rid of his hotel. 51:48 I mean, look. 51:49 Chris Hayes You really think so? 51:50 Zephyr Teachout We know Trump is going to appeal. 51:52 Trump's lawyers, the DOJ is going to appeal. 51:54 But this is an absurd reading of the clause. 51:58 And yes, facts need to be found. 52:00 And there's a lot we do not know. 52:02 Like two weeks ago, no, last week, we learned the crown prince of Saudi Arabia is funneling cash to Donald Trump. 52:11 Chris Hayes This crown prince of Saudi Arabia sweeps into New York. 52:15 And where does he stay? 52:16 He stays at the plaza, which is owned by, has a huge Saudi interest owning it. 52:21 And the plaza's got the resplendent, 52:23 suites necessary for a crown prince of Saudi Arabia. 52:27 But the rest of his retinue stays where? 52:29 Where in New York do they stay? 52:30 They stay at the Trump Hotel. 52:33 And the general manager writes a letter to the investors in the Trump Hotel saying we were headed for a loss in this quarter. 52:38 And then who shows up and spends a shitload of money but the Saudis? 52:44 Zephyr Teachout Absolutely. 52:45 And we just happened to have this letter, you know, good reporting by The Washington Post. 52:50 But what about the other letters? 52:53 Chris Hayes I said this on air. 52:54 I said the Qataris could go book 50 rooms and keep them empty for two weeks in a Trump property and no one would know. 53:01 And no one would know. 53:01 No one would know. 53:02 Literally no one would know. 53:04 Zephyr Teachout And we have to know that. 53:06 I mean, this is basically like, first of all, going back to human nature, what country in the world doesn't care about American trade policy right now? 53:17 What country doesn't care about military policy? 53:20 And Donald Trump is putting up a big sign saying, if you want to influence me, if you want to make me richer, want to make me in a better mood, here's the way to do it. 53:32 It is outrageous that we don't know, but we already know enough to know there's constitutional violations. 53:37 And the reason I mentioned that he's going to have to divest the Trump Hotel in D.C. is that we have to find some more facts. 53:44 But on its face, this decision says you don't get to use businesses. 53:49 to transfer money from foreign governments to the president. 53:52 You just don't get to do that. 53:53 So we already have enough facts to know that there's a constitutional violation. 53:57 And yes, so that naturally leads to divestment. 54:00 And as disheartened as you may be by the courts, the Trump argument about what an emolument is just does not make sense. 54:07 So I am confident he's going to have to divest the hotel. 54:10 But what about all the properties in New York? 54:12 And this is why it's critical. 54:14 the New York Attorney General be involved in this lawsuit because he's got to divest not just the Trump Hotel in D.C., but the Trump properties in New York. 54:25 The Trump Tower at the U.N., where Saudis are paying monthly fees. 54:31 The government of Qatar is paying a monthly fee. 54:33 India is paying a monthly fee. 54:34 Just on the face. 54:35 We know that. 54:36 We know that because of reporting. 54:38 We don't know who's living on all the other floors. 54:39 We don't know who's renting all the other floors. 54:41 So, a lot to know, but... 54:43 Divestment is the goal. 54:45 And this is not just another lawsuit. 54:46 This is a major, major deal. 54:49 Chris Hayes So you're running for attorney general, and this is your third race? 54:52 Zephyr Teachout That's right. 54:53 Chris Hayes So you ran against Governor Cuomo as a primary challenger? 54:56 Zephyr Teachout Yes. 54:57 Chris Hayes You shocked a lot of people. 54:58 People had not heard of you in the political world when you ran. 55:01 I think you did way better than anyone thought that you would do in that race. 55:06 You ran unsuccessfully in a very tough year in 2016 in New York 19, which is now represented by John Faso, which is in the Hudson Valley. 55:14 Yep. 55:14 You're running this race. 55:15 I want to close. 55:16 You are also pregnant. 55:17 Yes. 55:17 Zephyr Teachout I am. 55:18 Chris Hayes Congratulations. 55:19 Zephyr Teachout Thank you. 55:19 Chris Hayes It's your first child. 55:20 Zephyr Teachout Yes. 55:21 Chris Hayes And you're due? 55:21 Zephyr Teachout A mid-October. 55:24 Chris Hayes That's awesome. 55:25 Zephyr Teachout Yeah, so I'm just hitting seven months. 55:27 Chris Hayes So you're campaigning pregnant. 55:28 Zephyr Teachout I am. 55:29 That's amazing. 55:32 Well, thank you. 55:32 Chris Hayes That's really amazing. 55:33 Zephyr Teachout Thank you. 55:34 You know, when I, look, Eric Schneiderman's resignation was kind of a shock, not just kind of, 100% shock. 55:40 Chris Hayes It was 100% shocking. 55:42 Zephyr Teachout And I have been deeply involved in the Trump litigation, in anti-corruption work. 55:49 It was a real natural for me to seek this office, given my expertise. 55:53 But it's true that when I was looking around, I was like, well, women must run for office pregnant all the time, right? 56:01 It turns out there, I think, two women who've run statewide, maybe I'm missing somebody, for a statewide office while pregnant. 56:09 And it is really exciting because there's so many new women running for office. 56:14 There's women breastfeeding running for office. 56:16 It is so exciting to be part of that wave. 56:21 By the way, men run for office when their partners are pregnant. 56:24 All the time. 56:27 Crosstalk Absolutely. 56:27 Zephyr Teachout All the time. 56:28 They soldier on. 56:31 It's not like being about to have a baby is something unusual while you're running for office. 56:36 Chris Hayes It's a great point. 56:36 I should note, for the sake of fairness here, because this interview is not an endorsement, it's a crowded field. 56:42 There's four people running. 56:44 There's Tish James, who's the public advocate for New York City. 56:47 There's Sean Patrick Maloney, who's a congressman here in New York, and Lisa Eve, who's a lawyer in the state. 56:53 So just to be clear to anyone listening in New York, there's a full group of candidates. 56:57 You should go check them all out. 56:58 But my final question to you is this. 57:00 You've run for office three times. 57:02 Yes. 57:02 I want you to think for a second and tell me something that you thought before you ran for office and you've changed your mind about, something you've learned or changed your mind about through the experience of running for office. 57:14 Zephyr Teachout Oh my gosh, that's a great question. 57:18 Well, I'll say two things. 57:19 One is... 57:21 on the money and politics front, it's worse than you think. 57:26 That you kind of know that this is bad, but when you actually see how much, talk to people who've worked on a lot of campaigns, I'm lucky because I have a huge grassroots base, but once you're inside politics and see how much money infects things, it's not a minor infection. 57:41 It's like a deep, deep, deep disease. 57:44 It affects so many conversations, like these conversations about 57:48 So one is that's worse than you think. 57:53 And then the other part, it's just more strange and interesting than expected. 58:00 I remember being at a great event in Queens where I'm after the local beauty queen and before the comic. 58:10 And the comic was hilarious. 58:14 But the whole evening was just more eccentric and interesting and wonderful. 58:20 And the thing that I guess I didn't expect is how human it is. 58:26 It's just like every interaction, there's so many surprising interactions. 58:32 There's kind of a real privilege with being able to just knock on a door or talk to somebody and say, what are you thinking? 58:40 All these words come out and all of these hidden thoughts about politics or their own lives or what happened yesterday. 58:47 And it's a deeply, deeply human thing. 58:51 And I get a lot of joy out of that. 58:53 Chris Hayes People are fascinating and weird, which is part of why I love being a reporter. 58:57 I'll never forget the first person I ever covered on a campaign trail. 59:00 I was like 23 or 24. 59:02 I was the Chicago Reader. 59:03 She was running in a primary against Rahm Emanuel on the north side. 59:07 Her name was Nancy Kazak. 59:08 And I went to meet her. 59:09 And the first thing we do was go to a bingo hall on the northwest side where she went around and there are these largely women, old women, sitting playing bingo on a weekday. 59:19 And she's going around to shake their hands. 59:20 And they're like, can hardly be bothered to get away from bingo. 59:24 And I'm like... 59:24 this is not glamorous no like this is really this is like wow like pulling at the sleeve of someone to be like hey how are you i'm running for congress like yeah i'm trying to hear my bingo numbers and but but the other thought i had was like it should be humbling these are your bosses and this is what self-government is and like they have a thing that you need not the other way around like you should feel that way in deference to the citizens 59:49 Zephyr Teachout Absolutely. 59:50 And it's a great story because so often in commercials you'll see somebody go knock on a middle class home where everything looks perfect and they look so excited to see the politician. 60:02 And the real interactions are so much more interesting and weird and either more welcoming or far less welcoming than that. 60:13 And you're charging across fields or you're 60:18 you know, all alone with two people at an event or suddenly an event, you know, learning how to dance. 60:23 I mean, everything happens in a campaign. 60:26 It's kind of inspiring. 60:27 I like that humility. 60:29 That's that's key. 60:31 Chris Hayes Zafra Teachout is a professor at Fornham University School of Law, and she is a candidate for attorney general here in the state of New York. 60:38 It's great to have you. 60:39 Zephyr Teachout Great to be on. 60:43 Chris Hayes So my thanks again to Zephyr Teachout for coming in and talking to me about corruption and about the role the attorney general of the state of New York might play in that. 60:52 I want to be clear, she is in a competitive Democratic primary. 60:55 I'm not endorsing her. 60:56 I got her on the program because she wrote this book about corruption. 60:59 She's sort of in a unique position. 61:02 She has been endorsed by The New York Times. 61:05 She is running against Tish James, who's the public advocate for the city of New York. 61:09 Alicia Eve, who's a lawyer with a lot of experience both in public practice and in private practice, and Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney of upstate New York. 61:18 So they're all in that primary. 61:20 If you live in New York, it's a closed primary and it's set for September 13th. 61:25 So you should vote in it. 61:26 You should go and check out the other candidates. 61:28 It is a really, really important position with, as we noted, profound national implications. 61:34 As always, we love to hear from you here at Why Is This Happening? 61:37 There's two great ways to get in touch with us. 61:40 You can tweet. 61:41 And if you tweet at us, you should tweet with the hashtag withpod. 61:46 That stands for Why Is This Happening? 61:47 Pod. 61:48 And pod stands for podcast. 61:50 The pod is from a thing called an iPod. 61:53 And an iPod is a weird ancient relic that Tiffany Champion has probably never seen in her life. 61:58 Yeah, so you should definitely tweet us the hashtag with pod. 62:05 For instance, a tweet like this. 62:06 Emily, who tweeted that she taught her 86-year-old grandma how to listen to us on her iPad after hearing the nightly plug on All In and getting FOMO. 62:15 Which stands for fear of missing out. 62:17 I am so with it. 62:19 Thank you, Emily. 62:20 Kate tweeted, just listen to the brilliance of Nancy Northup on a with pod. 62:24 And I'm convinced basic legal reasoning, constitutional law needs to be part of public education in this country. 62:29 I think that's actually a really great. 62:31 idea. 62:32 We also take emails. 62:33 You can email us at withpod at gmail dot com. 62:38 We got an email from Thomas about the Nancy Northup discussion about Roe v. Wade, and he said there has for many years been overwhelming support for abortion rights among Americans when you conduct polls, about 70 percent, I think, but not among members of Congress. 62:53 Why the difference? 62:54 And I think there's two answers to that. 62:56 One is that the polling on abortion is all over the place, all over the place, depending on how you ask the question. 63:03 So I don't think it's accurate to say 70 percent support abortion rights. 63:07 It is true that you can find polls that have big numbers of people say supporting Roe v. Wade, supporting a right to an abortion. 63:15 But if you start getting more specific, for instance, if you say, do you support second trimester abortions? 63:22 Do you support abortions after 20 weeks, which is absolutely protected by Roe? 63:26 Those numbers go down. 63:28 In fact, people have a bunch of conflicted intuitions, I think, about abortion. 63:32 So I think the polling can be kind of unstable. 63:35 I do think it is the case. 63:36 It is absolutely a majority position in this country that Roe should not be overturned. 63:40 I think that's absolutely true. 63:42 As to why there might be a gap between public opinion and Congress, it just really has to do with organizing. 63:49 I mean, the anti-abortion movement, the pro-life movement, as it calls itself, is just one of the best organized movements in America. 63:56 And, you know, unlike other things like the banking lobby, it's not because of some... 64:01 It's not like big business. 64:03 It's not some big oligarchic interest. 64:05 It's not a product of American inequality or corruption. 64:09 It's just a bunch of people who genuinely feel really, really powerfully about the issue and have organized around it. 64:16 And they're aided by, I think, a lot of the social capital in churches and church structures and religious life in America. 64:23 But that's the answer. 64:24 I mean, often organizing is more important than public opinion in shaping what politicians do. 64:31 Today, a special treat if you've listened all the way to the end of this episode. 64:36 We're going to have the final tag be read by a very special guest. 64:41 You want to read that? 64:42 Soundbite Why Is This Happening is presented by MSNBC and NBC News, produced by the All In Team, and music by Eddie Cooper. 64:53 You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned here by going to NBCNews.com slash Why Is This Happening? 65:06 Chris Hayes Ryan Shaw Hayes doing the final note, crushing it. 65:09 We'll see you next week.