00:02 Chris Hayes Tonight on All In. 00:04 Sidney Powell Every voting machine in the country should be impounded right now. 00:07 There's frankly more than enough criminal probable cause to justify that. 00:11 Chris Hayes Jaw-dropping new documents released to the January 6th committee, including the executive order Donald Trump was considering that could have ended American democracy as we know it. 00:21 Then. 00:22 Boris Epstein Yes, I was part of the process to make sure there were alternate electors. 00:26 Chris Hayes What we learned today about the Trump world control of the plot to fake electors. 00:32 Plus, the Justice Department announces the first arrest of someone threatening the lives of election officials. 00:37 And why life needs to imitate art as Democrats look to salvage parts of the Build Back Better plan. 00:45 Amy Gardner It's real and it's coming. 00:47 If anyone tells you any different, they're full of sh**. 00:50 Chris Hayes But All In starts right now. 00:56 Good evening from New York. 00:57 I'm Chris Hayes. 00:58 Well, they've got the Trump documents. 01:00 The committee investigating the insurrection on January 6th has now taken possession of more than 700 pages of Donald Trump's documents from the National Archives. 01:10 The ex-president fought all the way up to the Supreme Court to keep them out of the committee's hands. 01:14 The court ruled against him earlier this week, and it is now clear why he fought so hard. 01:19 They appear to be incredibly incriminating and include one of the biggest smoking guns we have seen yet, though I will note there's been a few. 01:27 The committee now has in its possession this draft executive order that Politico published today. 01:33 It's dated December 16, 2020. 01:36 It is titled Presidential Findings to Preserve, Collect and Analyze National Security Information Regarding the 2020 General Election. 01:44 Now, before I get into it, let me just say, having read this, if this draft order had been issued and signed by the president back in that December, I think it would have very clearly signaled to the country and to the world that the United States was in the midst of an attempted coup. 02:00 It would have created a moment of forced constitutional crisis, one we didn't ever quite get to until the day of January 6th. 02:08 The order, as contemplated and drafted, would have seized voting machines used in the 2020 election, quote, effective immediately. 02:16 The secretary of defense shall seize, collect, retain and analyze all machines, equipment, electronically stored information and material records, citing a federal law about retaining election records. 02:27 The unsigned order also cites a slew of conspiracy theories, including alleged evidence of international and foreign interference in the election, which I guess is why the Secretary of Defense would be involved here, although that is deeply strange. 02:42 The executive order also would have directed the secretary of defense to complete an assessment of the election and submit that to the director of national intelligence within 60 days. 02:52 Now, Betsy Woodruff Swan points out in Politico, since the order was dated in mid-September, that suggests it could have been a gambit to keep Trump in power until at least mid-February of 2021. 03:03 The final provision of the order is the appointment of a special counsel to oversee this operation and institute all criminal and civil proceedings as appropriate based on the evidence collected. 03:13 Or in other words, to use the power of the Department of Justice to investigate the 2020 election. 03:18 Now, we still don't know who actually wrote this thing, who authored this draft executive order. 03:23 We do have some clues about how it may have come about. 03:26 In the very first sentence, the order cites two classified documents, National Security Presidential Memoranda 13 and 21. 03:35 We knew of Memoranda 13, but not Memoranda 21. 03:37 A source with knowledge of both of those told Politico, quote, the fact the draft executive order's author knew about the existence of Memorandum 21 suggests that they had access to information about sensitive government secrets. 03:51 You also have the context of what we know was going on at the White House and who was around the president at the time of this memo. 03:59 The conspiracy theorist and lawyer Sidney Powell visited the White House multiple times in mid to late December 2020. 04:05 On one of those visits, just two days after the executive order is dated, 04:09 Powell was joined by former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, and a little-known former Trump administration official Emily Newman for what Axios describes as the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency, which is, of course, saying something. 04:25 Powell and her fellow conspiracy theorists spent hours in the Oval Office with the president trying to convince then-President Trump the voting machines were rigged to flip votes from Trump to Biden. 04:37 It was part of an international communist plot to steal the election for the Democrats. 04:41 Axios reports she proposed declaring a national security emergency, granting her and her cabal top-secret security clearances, and using the U.S. government to seize voting machines. 04:52 Now, members of Trump's team had already looked into all these claims and found over and over that Powell's allegations fell apart under basic scrutiny. 04:59 People were yelling and cursing as White House lawyers and aides tried to shoot down Powell and her allies. 05:05 Multiple outlets reported that Sidney Powell went back to the White House on December 20th, where, according to Maggie Haberman of The New York Times, she was once again pitching an executive order on seizing voting machines. 05:17 Those White House meetings on the 18th and the 20th took place just days after Sidney Powell laid out very clearly what she thought the president should do in this interview with the far-right Epoch Times. 05:29 Sidney Powell Well, given the level of foreign interference we can demonstrate, and the country has evidence of in our filings of foreign interference in the election, it's more than sufficient to trigger the president's executive order from 2018. 05:43 It gives him all kinds of power to do everything from seize assets to 05:49 freeze things, demand the impoundment of the machines. 05:53 I think under the emergency powers, he could even appoint a special prosecutor to look into this, which is exactly what needs to happen. 06:00 Every machine, every voting machine in the country should be impounded right now. 06:05 Chris Hayes Seize the machines, appoint a special prosecutor. 06:08 Boy, that sounds like a lot. 06:09 Like a real executive order there. 06:12 Now, we don't know why the order was never issued. 06:15 Thank goodness it was not. 06:17 One answer may be it clearly would not have stood up to legal scrutiny. 06:21 Then Attorney General Bill Barr made that clear at a press conference on December 21st. 06:25 Soundbite Does the president have the legal authority to order the seizure of voting machines around the country? 06:32 Bill Barr I see no basis now for seizing machines by the federal government. 06:39 You know, a wholesale seizure of machines by the federal government. 06:44 Chris Hayes Keep in mind, by the way, just to note that that guy, that coward, just tucked his tail between his legs. 06:50 He wrote an overwhelmingly ludicrous encomium to Donald Trump in his resignation letter about what a swell dude he was and then just ran away from the constitutional crisis. 07:01 That's William Barr's legacy. 07:03 But it seems like Donald Trump may have come close to signing the executive order. 07:07 We know from Axios' reporting about the December 18th Oval Office meeting, he was actually considering Sidney Powell's ideas. 07:13 He reportedly told his staff, listen to this, you guys are offering me nothing. 07:16 These guys are at least offering me a chance. 07:19 They're saying they have the evidence. 07:21 Why not try this? 07:22 Again, had that executive order been issued, we would have been in completely new territory. 07:28 We would have been very far beyond any familiar frontier of constitutional governance. 07:34 And in the midst of a constitutional crisis, unlike anything this country has encountered in more than a century. 07:40 Ian Bassin served as associate White House counsel under President Barack Obama. 07:43 He's now the executive director of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to fighting efforts to undermine democracy. 07:49 And he joins me now. 07:51 Ian, as someone who formerly worked in a White House counsel's office and is familiar with executive orders and their drafting, what's your just reaction to this document as a document? 08:02 Ian Bassin First off, it's incredible if it was actually in the Oval Office and presented to the president, because executive orders go through an enormous amount of legal review before they could ever make it anywhere near the president. 08:13 Now, we don't know whether this went to the president or whether he saw it, but the fact that it's even possible in this mix says a lot about dysfunction in the White House or what the president was willing to do, because this thing would never have passed a laugh test. 08:25 As a lawyer in the White House, you cannot simply cite 08:28 series of statutes and say, therefore, I authorize the president to go shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, which is what this would have done to our democracy. 08:35 Chris Hayes It also seems to me, I mean, again, he doesn't go through with it, but just to play out like President Trump issues executive order directing the army, the Pentagon to seize voting machines. 08:47 The military seizing voting machines is just like that's a one sentence description of a coup for anyone hearing it. 08:53 And I think would have been read as such domestically, internationally, everywhere. 08:58 Ian Bassin I mean, one of two things is true here. 09:02 The former president of the United States corruptly tried to overturn an election, knowing that what he was doing was unlawful and inappropriate, in which case, very likely, there were crimes committed. 09:13 I would point out earlier this week, 1,000 alumni, more than 1,000 alumni, the Department of Justice signed an open letter endorsing Attorney General Merrick Garland's promise that he would go wherever the facts lead and bring indictments against anyone, no matter what level of government they're at, which is really important. 09:30 Or the former president of the United States was so misled by conspiracy theories and believed things that were so patently false that everyone who looked at them, other than a handful of kooks in his office, rejected, including his own attorney general, that he sought to overturn American democracy based on those lies. 09:49 Either one of those things. 09:51 suggests that something incredibly dangerous was occupying the Oval Office. 09:56 And I would just point out that there's another culpable party here other than the former president, and that is the Republican Party right now, which I did not see making statements today about how this man should never be allowed anywhere near power again. 10:09 And you can bet the House that if documents today suggested that China was behind this, 10:14 Every Republican in Congress would be knocking themselves over on the way to the television cameras to rattle their sabers. 10:20 And yet Mitch McConnell still to this day says if Trump's the nominee, he'll support him in 2024. 10:25 Chris Hayes That that is a really important point. 10:27 The other point that I think about here is in the end, this doesn't happen. 10:31 And I think it speaks to something that's that's that's at the core of what happened during that period. 10:37 Which and I think it pertains to the work that you're very focused on, which is how do you fortifying and strengthen guardrails of American liberal democracy and constitutional governance? 10:47 There was this threat that people would quit. 10:50 There was the specter of a kind of Saturday night massacre. 10:54 We've got this text from Sean Hannity to Mark Meadows. 10:57 This is around the same time as on December 31st. 11:01 Says we can't lose the entire White House counsel's office. 11:04 I do not see Jan 6 happen the way he's being told. 11:07 I think this is pertaining to another part of the plot. 11:10 But ultimately, it seems to me a huge part of what happened was enough people in the White House around said, we'll quit if you do this. 11:17 And the political blowback from that was what stopped it from happening, as best we can tell. 11:22 Ian Bassin That's true. 11:23 It seems to be true of those bureaucrats within the administration, but where it has not been true, and it is not true today in terms of the continuing roiling efforts to undermine future elections, is among the elected leadership of the former president's party, of which he is the titular head. 11:39 Steve Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, the authors of How Democracy Die, have made the point that there are three requirements for political parties and healthy democracies. 11:48 One, they 11:49 unambiguously accept electoral defeat. 11:52 Two, they eschew violence. 11:55 And three, they break with anti-democratic extremists. 11:59 And over the last year, the Republican Party has failed on all three of those. 12:03 There are good members of the party. 12:05 There are good members that are elected that need to do more, but there's too many who aren't doing enough. 12:09 They need to bring that party back into the fold of healthy democratic governance in order to preserve this republic for the next generation. 12:17 And right now they're failing at that. 12:18 Chris Hayes Ian Bassett, as always, a pleasure. 12:20 Thank you. 12:22 I want to now bring in Congresswoman Elaine Lurie, a Democrat of Virginia who serves on the House Select Committee investigating January 6th. 12:29 Let me just start first by asking how significant, how important is it to the work you're doing to now have possession, to have won this case in the Supreme Court and have possession of these documents the committee requested? 12:40 Elaine Luria Well, Chris, I would say that this is so far the singular most important outcome of the investigation, the fact that the Supreme Court upheld with an eight to one vote that the committee should have access to these documents. 12:53 And we recently received 700 pages of documents, maybe a 12:56 Just like glimpse into those for some reporting today. 12:59 But, you know, this is the truth, the facts in writing. 13:02 These are the documents that were the closest to the president that his staff was using to brief him to plan and to execute the work of the White House. 13:10 So this is an incredibly important development. 13:12 Chris Hayes Yeah, I want to there is another document here that Politico published parts of. 13:17 So this is in the public record. 13:18 I'm not asking you to comment on anything that hasn't been been released, which was a draft of an address for the president to give the day after January 6th. 13:26 It was never given. 13:28 But I want to read parts of it and get your reaction to what it says that it was drafted and that it was never given. 13:33 And it was labeled remarks on national healing. 13:37 And these are some of the portions. 13:40 Like all Americans, I was outraged and sickened by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem. 13:46 I am directing the Department of Justice to ensure all lawbreakers are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. 13:51 To those who engage in acts of violence and destruction, I want to be very clear. 13:54 You do not represent me. 13:56 You do not represent our movement. 13:57 You do not represent our country. 13:59 And if you broke the law, you belong in jail. 14:02 What does it say that that was drafted and never given? 14:06 Elaine Luria Well, you know, Chris, it's very clear that those words that you just read never came out of the former president's mouth, but they certainly should have. 14:13 That's the kind of statement that we needed, that the country needed in order to understand that what had happened was wrong, that this big lie was in fact a lie and that we needed to move forward and have a 14:25 Smooth transition of power to the new administration to tell the people overrunning the Capitol to leave and stop the violence. 14:31 And, you know, the committee has pointed out numerous times we waited 187 minutes over three hours for the president to take action. 14:38 It's very clear. 14:40 You know, the bottom line is that there are people. 14:42 There are people who are within the White House who knew the right things to say. 14:47 They tried to push that message forward. 14:49 Someone drafted this speech. 14:50 It was very eloquently and appropriately written for the moment. 14:54 But did the former president make a choice to deliver those words? 14:57 No. 14:58 He did not. 14:59 He said essentially the opposite of that. 15:01 He said something like, we love you to these rioters. 15:04 And that was just, you know, obviously not the leadership the country needed. 15:08 And, you know, as we've said from the committee, it's really a dereliction of duty. 15:11 He had a responsibility to stop this violence and he didn't do it. 15:15 Chris Hayes Yeah, it is. 15:16 It is striking to read those those words if you go to Politico and read and read the excerpts. 15:19 I mean, it is. 15:20 I was like, oh, right. 15:21 This is what this is the obvious thing that a politician should say. 15:24 This is what a president would say. 15:26 Anyone. 15:27 I mean, any person. 15:28 I mean, not even a president like someone who just a normal like, you know, normal person who saw this happen or felt responsibility for this this happening. 15:37 Yeah. 15:37 One of the other themes that I think we've seen in the documents that, again, that have been made public or have been hinted at and excerpted and quoted in the letters is just the fact that. 15:49 The president is in a small group of people who seem to be most gung ho about these various plots, attempts to stay in power. 16:01 amidst a bunch of people who are either skeptical or outright opposed. 16:06 And that seems like one of the avenues, if it's fair to characterize, that you're pursuing or one of the narratives that we're seeing come out of the committee. 16:16 Elaine Luria Well, it certainly is. 16:17 And, you know, going back to something you said earlier on in this reporting, the fact that there was this presidential memorandum number 21 that wasn't publicly reported or known about, that's really concerning to me. 16:26 I mean, it means that someone who had knowledge of that document at the highest levels of government participated in providing information in order to draft this document. 16:36 And that's what we need to look at. 16:37 We don't 16:38 know right now where a document like this came from, how high it got within the levels of the White House and the administration, but it's a record that the archives provided in White House documents. 16:49 So, you know, it does bear full investigation and we really have to understand who was involved in this. 16:54 I mean, it wasn't like 16:55 And some fringe person, maybe Sidney Powell, or people who were not involved in the government wouldn't have access to that kind of classified information. 17:03 How would they have known that a document like that existed in order to cite it in this memorandum? 17:08 So there's a lot for us to look at. 17:10 And I haven't had a chance to look at it personally, yet we had 700 pages last night. 17:14 So still a lot to digest. 17:16 But these are huge questions that the committee has. 17:18 Chris Hayes Yeah, that's a great point. 17:21 I mean, just aside from the citation of Memorandum 21, which refers to something that's classified, just the fact that this was in the National Archives possession as part of the White House papers means by definition this was not something that was like drafted on a napkin in a bar by someone who was four steps removed. 17:39 Like this was a White House paper. 17:41 It was in the possession of the White House. 17:43 It was moving, circulating through the White House's paper system. 17:46 It must have gotten some consideration. 17:49 Elaine Luria It's very concerning. 17:50 I mean, we clearly outlined in our request to the archives what types of documents we wanted, things like the press secretary's briefing books, the president's working papers. 17:58 You know, it's very clear the kind of things that we think are important from within the workings of the Trump White House that would inform our investigation. 18:06 And the fact that, you know, something like this could have wound up there is really overly concerning. 18:12 And, you know, this is part of what we have to get to the bottom to in the committee's work. 18:15 Chris Hayes All right, Congresswoman Elaine Luria, thank you for making time for us tonight. 18:18 Have a good weekend. 18:21 So it's clear there was no shortage of schemes for installing Donald Trump in office over the will of the voters. 18:26 They did have a lot of irons in the fire, including another plot centered on January 6th. 18:30 Next, the plan to install fake electors in seven states and new reporting on the Trump world underboss in charge of the whole operation. 18:38 That's next. 18:43 So we've talked at length on this show about the many ways that Donald Trump sought to stay in power, whether it was bullying Georgia officials to find one more vote than what he needed or sending a mob of his supporters to stop the electoral vote counting process. 18:55 One tactic that's largely escaped the same level of scrutiny until recently is the Trump campaign's attempt to send its own electors to replace the rightful Biden electors. 19:05 In a normal year, the elector process is still pretty complicated. 19:09 The Washington Post explains, quote, before Election Day, presidential candidates or their parties nominate a slate of potential electors in each state where they appear on the ballot. 19:18 After the popular vote is certified, the governor in each state is required under federal law to certify the winning candidates electors. 19:26 The electors then meet in mid-December and send signed certificates recording their votes to, among other places, the National Archivist and the President of the U.S. Senate. 19:35 The votes are tallied on January 6th. 19:38 That's what they were doing in the Capitol that day. 19:40 But as my colleague Rachel Maddow has been leading the way in reporting, while those legitimate electors were meeting in December, Republican electors in five states won by Joe Biden also signed certificates. 19:52 that are suspiciously nearly identical to each other, saying they were the real electors. 19:58 And they even went so far as to submit these certificates to the same authorities. 20:02 Now, if that seems, say, fraudulent to you, you're not the only one. 20:08 In Michigan, one of the states where Republicans submitted fake Trump electors, Attorney General Dana Nessel said she believes there's absolutely enough evidence to bring criminal charges against the 16 Republicans who signed a certificate falsely claiming to be the state's presidential electors. 20:23 Politico reports today the House January 6 Select Committee has trained its sights on the false pro-Trump electors. 20:30 So how do Republicans across the country decide to move forward with this plan by signing and submitting nearly identical fraudulent certificates? 20:38 The fake electors themselves have been really sketchy about that. 20:41 Watch what happened when one of them, an Arizona state representative, was confronted by local journalists. 20:47 Soundbite Did you have direction from anybody in doing this? 20:50 Was it you 11 yourself doing this or did someone give you advice on the manner in which you can do it? 20:57 So I'm simply, I was one of the electors, right? 21:00 I'm not in charge of the electors, so you would need that. 21:02 How did you hear about it? 21:03 You would need to ask the party chair that. 21:05 How did you hear about it? 21:06 How did you hear about the plan? 21:07 Were you just told to be someone? 21:08 You would need to ask the party chair that question. 21:10 But you're the person who received the call. 21:12 You showed up, right? 21:13 How did you know to show up that day? 21:15 So as I said, you can go ahead and ask the party chair the logistics of it. 21:18 Ask her how you got a phone call to go somewhere? 21:20 You're welcome to talk to them about the logistics. 21:22 Do you not know how you arrived at a place? 21:24 Thank you. 21:24 I appreciate your question. 21:25 Do you really not know how you got a call? 21:27 Have a great one. 21:28 Chris Hayes Excellent, excellent questioning there. 21:30 Well, despite sophisticated evasion like that, we now know who organized the whole thing. 21:34 The Washington Post reports it was President Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who was just subpoenaed by the January 6th committee on Tuesday. 21:42 Amy Gardner is part of the recording team that broke this story for the Post, and she joins me now. 21:47 Great to have you, Amy. 21:48 First, just sketch out what the scheme was or what happened in these states with these alternate slates of electors. 21:57 Amy Gardner Sure. 21:57 So in the days leading up to December 14th, as you pointed out, which was the day that the electors were due to gather in their in their state capitals to vote, the led by Rudy Giuliani, Trump's top lawyer and other Trump officials, the Trump campaign was planning to and encouraging. 22:19 his slates of electors in those states to convene and vote for Trump and to send that vote on to Washington. 22:29 We know this from talking to numerous Republican officials, party officials, campaign officials in the states in question. 22:36 We know that they talked by phone the weekend ahead of December 14th and that they were discussing really, really nitty gritty details like, 22:47 Which legislator in Lansing, Michigan was going to let them in the building or in Arizona or in Georgia or Pennsylvania or Nevada? 22:56 And, you know, where they were going to meet. 23:01 What's really interesting, too, is that they discussed at length the fact that there were a number of electors. 23:05 in the original nominated Trump elector slates who balked at this plan and were not willing to go along with it because they believe that in their states, Biden was in fact the duly elected president. 23:18 And so they had to also scramble to find replacement electors for those who were unwilling to do so. 23:24 And we learned this from talking to a number of people and no one has really provided any evidence that it's not true. 23:32 Chris Hayes Yeah, we should just just note, I mean, the complexity of how America elects its president, which is really quite complex, that you're voting for basically like a team of people that are going to be the slate of electors, team A or team B. 23:45 And what your reporting says and what we know from from other reporting, even at the time we knew some of this meeting was going on, that, you know, if the Biden, if team B wins, you know, those are the people that send in their certificates because that's they won the state. 23:56 And what we had was team Trump being like, 23:59 Acting as if they had won and getting together anyway and going through the motions as if anything, everything had happened with Trump winning the state. 24:07 So as to send these electors on to Washington, D.C. and maybe talk a little bit about I mean, what's crazy here is as far out as this plan might be. 24:18 The idea of disputed electors is contemplated in the Electoral Count Act. 24:23 There's some precedent in American history and would have given Mike Pence a kind of pretext to maybe do some of the things that Donald Trump was prevailing on him to do. 24:33 Amy Gardner Yeah, and I do appreciate your lengthy description of the process because it is complicated. 24:37 And I only learned in reporting this story that the governors of the states are required by federal law to send in what's called a certificate of ascertainment to Washington that says who the governor. 24:49 rightful electors are. 24:51 And the governors in all of these states, two of them Republicans in Georgia and Arizona, had already done so. 24:56 So they had already signaled to Washington that the Biden electors were the electors whose votes were supposed to be counted. 25:01 What's really interesting is, and I think you're alluding to this, is that at the time, this was happening in plain sight. 25:07 It's not news that these electors gathered. 25:10 What is news is that it was used to try to persuade Mike Pence to do what you described with 25:15 which is to deny Biden his victory on January 6th. 25:19 And it's funny because at the time when the electors were gathering, they claimed it was just a contingency plan. 25:24 It was just intended in the event that some or one of their many legal challenges would prevail, even though most of them had already failed. 25:32 failed in court, but there were a few still outstanding. 25:34 So they claimed it was just in the event that a legal challenge prevailed because if you don't have those electors in place on December 14th, there's not really any recourse for you, which is true. 25:45 But what's important to note here is that the existence of the slates of electors and the fact that they voted on December 14th was used as evidence for Mike Pence to do what Donald Trump wanted him to do. 26:00 Chris Hayes Right. 26:00 Because he now the argument was, well, who's to say which of these electors? 26:06 You got to throw it into the both houses of Congress. 26:09 There's a complicated process by which they can determine who the true slate is. 26:13 There have been contested slates of electors at other times in American history, particularly in Reconstruction, when white supremacist governments sometimes like to send an alternate slate of electors to Washington, even though they didn't have control of the 26:25 state. 26:26 I want to just to sort of confirm your reporting that Boris Epstein was on my colleague Ari Melber's program tonight, in which he essentially confirms that, yes, he was doing it under the direction of Rudy Giuliani. 26:37 Take a listen. 26:39 Boris Epstein Yes, I was part of the process to make sure there were alternate electors for when, as we hoped, the challenges to the seated electors would be heard and would be successful per the 12th Amendment of the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act. 26:50 Everything that was done was done illegally by the Trump legal team, according to the rules and under the leadership of Rudy Giuliani. 26:57 Chris Hayes To your point, Amy, he seems to be holding to that line that this was just a contingency should something have happened, despite the fact that your reporting indicates it was more than that. 27:07 Amy Gardner, who does some great reporting with her colleagues in The Washington Post, thank you very much for your time. 27:13 Amy Gardner Thanks, Chris.