01:02 Chris Hayes Tonight on All In. 01:04 Donald Trump You know what was trending on the internet? 01:07 Where's Ruby? 01:08 Because they thought you'd be in jail. 01:10 Where's Ruby? 01:12 Chris Hayes What sure looks like another piece of the Trump coup plot is exposed in Georgia. 01:20 Soundbite We didn't want to frighten you, but we had to find you within this time. 01:25 Chris Hayes We are only 64, a party that needs to tidy up. 01:27 Bombshell reporting from Reuters. 01:29 A Kanye West publicist pressured a Georgia election worker to confess to bogus election fraud two days before January 6th. 01:39 Soundbite I cannot say what specifically will take place. 01:46 I just know that it will disrupt the world for them. 01:47 Chris Hayes Tonight, what this revelation means for the investigation of Donald Trump's coup attempt and what it means for the ongoing march to undermine democracy. 01:56 Then what we learn from the alarming Supreme Court decision on the Texas abortion ban and why there's genuinely good news on the vaccination drive in a place you might not expect. 02:05 But all in starts right now. 02:12 Good evening from New York. 02:13 I'm Chris Hayes. 02:15 They attempted a coup. 02:16 We use that word a lot on this show to describe Donald Trump's attempts to stay in power following the 2020 election. 02:23 We use coup. 02:24 We use it in scripts and in graphics and the banners that you see on the bottom of your TV. 02:29 And when we first started calling it that, and we made a choice to do so, when we first started after January 6th, it sounded provocative, I think. 02:38 Coup is not a term you throw around lightly when you're talking about the United States of America. 02:43 By definition, a coup is a sudden, illegal, often violent seizure of power from a government. 02:49 And it's something that happens all around the world in other countries. 02:53 Some examples, places like Chile in 1973 or Bolivia in 1971. 02:57 It's happened in Turkey and Pakistan and on and on and on. 03:02 But the way that we think about a coup is that it doesn't happen here. 03:06 Not here in what is supposed to be the beacon of democracy throughout the world. 03:11 And there was some initial debate among political scientists about what exactly a coup is. 03:15 Does it need to involve the military? 03:17 And wasn't this technically an auto coup because Trump was trying to cement his existing control and stay in power? 03:24 But all the semantic hair splitting sort of avoids the fact that we don't have a better word. 03:33 There's no better way to describe what happened. 03:37 Donald Trump and his allies did everything they possibly could, tried every possible avenue to overthrow a democratic election and install an authoritarian ruler in defiance of the people's will. 03:55 And there is no real precedent for it in American history. 04:00 I mean, even Fort Sumter, 04:01 a violent secession that began the American Civil War in 1861. 04:05 In certain ways, more violent and more jarring and started an era of horrific violence. 04:13 But that even that isn't quite what this was. 04:16 What this was has never happened before. 04:21 And it wasn't a contested election. 04:22 It wasn't even Bush v. Gore, which you might say was, well, sort of legally purloined. 04:29 It was an attempted coup. 04:31 This fact that they tried a coup has not sufficiently sunk into either public or elite consciousness. 04:41 And that is in part because the people who planned it and carried it out were in many ways incompetent. 04:48 Donald Trump, despite as many dangers, is comically inept. 04:52 But just because he did not succeed in overthrowing American democracy does not mean he did not try. 04:59 What he and his collaborators and cronies were trying to do at each and every turn had a unified strategic purpose. 05:09 They weren't just randomly trying stuff. 05:11 They were trying to find the weakest link in the chain of democratic transfer to break it. 05:19 And they kept trying each different link in the chain. 05:23 The most recent one involving an employee of the rapper Kanye West, who now wants to be known as Ye, showing up the doorstep of a Fulton County, Georgia election worker named Ruby Freeman to threaten her into confessing to some completely bogus election fraud charges. 05:42 Her outrageous and menacing threats were captured on police body cam. 05:46 I'm going to play them for you in just a minute. 05:49 But before that, and before we get to that story, which I honestly can't believe I just said the words that I said, it's just worth stepping back and just looking at all the ways that Donald Trump previously tried to overthrow the election in just the state where this took place. 06:06 Just one state, Georgia. 06:07 Let's just focus on that. 06:09 So first, there was the audit of ballot signatures in Cobb County, which came after immense pressure from Donald Trump. 06:15 In fact, in the press conference announcing that audit, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger conceded it was in direct response to Trump's ongoing bogus claims of fraud. 06:27 Quote, now that the signature matching has been attacked again and again with no evidence, I feel we need to take steps to restore confidence in our elections. 06:36 Of course, the audit didn't find anything nefarious. 06:40 But that did not stop then White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows from traveling to Georgia to oversee it. 06:46 And it is unclear exactly what expertise Meadow would bring to an operation like that, other than lending these wild conspiracy theories the legitimacy of the White House, which of course was a real objective. 06:56 An objective that was also on display when Trump personally called Georgia's Republican governor, Brian Kemp, on December 5th of last year. 07:05 Trump wanted to pressure him to call a special legislative session to override the results of the election in his state. 07:13 Think about that. 07:14 Just throw out the votes of the voters of Georgia. 07:18 Appoint new electors that would keep Trump in office despite the fact the voters of Georgia voted to not do that. 07:25 And then when that did not work, he moves to the next link in the chain. 07:29 He made the now infamous call to the Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, where he threatened him to try to get him to overthrow the will of the voters. 07:41 Donald Trump The ballots are corrupt. 07:42 And you're going to find that they are, which is totally illegal. 07:46 It's more illegal for you than it is for them because you know what they did and you're not reporting it. 07:51 That's a criminal offense. 07:56 And you can't let that happen. 07:58 That's a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. 08:02 That's a big risk. 08:03 So look, all I want to do is this. 08:06 I just want to find 11,000 08:11 780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state. 08:19 Chris Hayes You hear that? 08:19 The sort of weird combination of wheedling and pleading and menace. 08:23 You're going to be criminally liable and just cough up one more vote than we need. 08:28 That happened on January 2nd. 08:31 That's four days before Congress was set to certify the election. 08:34 Also notable in that call was this exchange where Trump disparages a U.S. attorney that he appointed. 08:41 Donald Trump But nobody can make a case for that, Brett. 08:43 Nobody. 08:44 I mean, look, that's you'd have to be a child to think anything other than that. 08:49 Just a child. 08:50 I mean, you have your never attorney. 08:52 Chris Hayes A little hard to hear there, but Trump refers to you got your Georgia's never Trumper U.S. attorney. 08:59 That's a reference to a man named B.J. 09:01 Park. 09:01 Before Trump appointed him as U.S. attorney in Georgia, he served as a Republican in the state legislature. 09:06 The day after that phone call to the secretary of state, Pac got a phone call from the Justice Department where an official, quote, relayed that Mr. Trump remained fixated on the false notion that he had won Georgia and said the president was angry that Mr. Pac did not support that conclusion. 09:23 Right. 09:24 So, I mean, stay with me here. 09:25 Right. 09:25 He's trying the governor first. 09:28 First, he does the audit. 09:29 Then he tries the governor. 09:31 He goes to the secretary of state, tries a U.S. attorney, PAC. 09:34 PAC says he was told the GOJ was prepared to fire him for not pushing the ridiculous fraud claims. 09:40 He resigned the next day. 09:42 This was set against the backdrop of something of a shakeup at the Justice Department when this man, Jeffrey Clark, a nondescript Republican lawyer and DOJ Flack, schemed to oust the acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and install himself in that position instead so he could do what? 09:58 So he could weaponize the Department of Justice to force lawmakers in Georgia to do Trump's bidding. 10:04 Right. 10:05 He's getting nowhere with the audit. 10:06 He's getting nowhere with Kemp. 10:07 He's getting nowhere with Raffensperger. 10:09 He's getting nowhere with the U.S. attorney. 10:11 So use the Department of Justice. 10:12 Use Jeffrey Clark to draft a letter to Georgia's governor and legislative leaders writing, quote, at this time, we have identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states, including the state of Georgia. 10:27 Now, just to be abundantly clear, that is a lie. 10:30 It's all lies. 10:31 Right. 10:33 But in the absence of anyone else willing to go along with a lie, he gets Jeffrey Clark at DOJ. 10:38 And Clark wanted to use legitimacy of the Department of Justice to disseminate that lie, to stamp it with DOJ letterhead, to give it to Georgia's top lawmakers and say, maybe you should call your special session and send your electors. 10:50 To pressure them into holding that special legislative session to throw out the results of a Democratic election and install the loser over the winner. 10:59 It's the same scheme Trump would mention in that phone call to Brian Kemp. 11:03 Now, of course, none of this works. 11:07 He tries every link in the chain. 11:10 And with the clock ticking down to the final 48 hours before the electoral votes will be counted on January 6th, with every court in the land having dismissed the allegations of voter fraud as completely baseless, with every single audit that has been undertaken showing the election was free and fair, with literally nothing to sustain this coup plot, we come to a woman named Ruby Freeman. 11:32 She is a Georgia election worker. 11:37 who was smeared with false conspiracies and viral videos that she and her daughter helped steal the election by smug-legging suitcases full of illegal Biden ballots on Election Day. 11:48 She was smeared by, among others, Donald Trump, who mentioned her name 18 times in that phone call to the Secretary of State. 11:59 Donald Trump You know the Internet? 12:00 You know what was trending on the Internet? 12:02 Where's Ruby? 12:03 Because they thought you'd be in jail. 12:06 Where's Ruby? 12:07 It's it's crazy. 12:11 It's crazy. 12:11 That was the minimum number is 18,000 for Ruby, but they think it's probably about 56,000. 12:19 Ah, yes. 12:19 Chris Hayes This individual, this one woman on the viral video that my former caddy must have showed me in the Oval Office stuffed 56,000 ballots. 12:29 Well, today we learned that Ruby Freeman experienced a harrowing and what could only be called surreal visit just two days before January 6th. 12:35 Remember, that clock is ticking, right? 12:38 Clock is ticking. 12:40 A woman named Trevyan Coty showed up at Ruby Freeman's doorstep. 12:46 She said she was representing a high profile individual who wanted to help Freeman. 12:51 What Kuti did not reveal is that she was a publicist to Kanye West, a Trump ally who himself ran a half-hearted campaign for president in 2020. 13:02 Now, we reached out to Kuti to ask who she appeared on behalf of that day. 13:07 Who was this high-profile individual? 13:08 We have not heard back. 13:10 Now, put yourself in Rudy Friedman's shoes, okay? 13:13 At this point, she has been harassed to her breaking point by Trump allies for weeks. 13:19 Her name, she's been doxxed. 13:20 They know her address. 13:22 There are people outside her house. 13:23 She's calling the cops. 13:25 This woman shows up. 13:27 I'm coming to help you from a high-profile individual. 13:30 So she agrees to meet with Kanye's publicist in a safe location, a local police station, where Cutty outlined a threat wherein mysterious figures would show up to Freeman's house and put her and her family in jail if she did not publicly admit to stealing the election for Joe Biden, something she did not do. 13:52 It would... 13:54 It is so ridiculous what I just told you. 13:57 It's real. 13:58 It is so ridiculous it would be laughable were it not so dark. 14:02 But there is real threat and menace here. 14:05 Ruby Freeman is scared for her life, okay? 14:09 She's told that if she does not cooperate, if she does not make this big confession, she and members of her family will lose their freedom. 14:16 That's the quote. 14:17 She is told she will. 14:18 She is a loose end and that federal people are involved. 14:22 She is then instructed to connect with an associate named, and I'm not making this up either, Harrison Ford. 14:28 And she is instructed to implicate herself in the imaginary fabricated claims of voter fraud. 14:36 And thanks to some truly excellent reporting from Reuters, we have video of that meeting. 14:43 Because remember, Ruby Freeman's holed up in her apartment, just a random poll worker facing death threats. 14:49 And so she goes and meets Kanye West, publicist at a police station, where an officer with a body cam captured the meeting. 14:56 Now, fair warning, this is a little long, about three minutes, but I promise you, it is absolutely worth listening to in full. 15:06 Soundbite Thank you so much for agreeing to meet us. 15:12 We didn't want to frighten you, but we had to find you within this time. 15:18 I'm here because I received a call. 15:22 Not that I didn't know about the situation because I had heard that it wasn't of serious concern. 15:31 We would like to 15:34 let me know first and foremost we have put in placement um a way to to secure you um i cannot say what specifically will uh take place i just know that it will disrupt your 16:05 I would like to connect now on the phone here as an employee who would be taking this situation to a detailed level for you to let you know exactly what investing, what choices you have, whether you choose or not to deal with the eye on your enemy. 16:31 This is Harrison. 16:32 He works with me. 16:34 You are a loose for a party that needs to tidy up. 16:44 I've worked with some of the biggest names in the industry. 16:45 Crisis is my thing. 16:46 What they don't want to do for you is create another crisis. 17:02 I'm going to call Harrison Floyd and I'm going to put him on speaker. 17:03 Who is it? 17:04 Harrison Floyd is Harrison Floyd. 17:04 It's about the words of crisis. 17:05 We have very high level of political powers to get people to play together. 17:09 This is at this moment a conversation between private citizens. 17:14 I'm hoping that you are trusting that this information doesn't go any further. 17:20 I have to honestly advise I don't know her background. 17:25 I can step over there if you're comfortable. 17:35 I don't know who is connected to who. 17:38 And I really need for her to be as nonchalant as possible with this conversation that we are going to have so that if she does make a decision, she's protected in her decisions. 17:54 Chris Hayes What on earth, right? 17:56 What on earth? 17:58 Now, there's a lot to unpack there. 18:00 But to put a finer point on it, Freeman told Reuters that Kanye's publicist told her, if you don't tell everything, you're going to jail. 18:08 That's the threat. 18:09 She shows up at this woman's door with all this crazy conspiracy talk and Harrison Ford, the black progressive crisis manager who has authority to keep you in safety. 18:20 You have to confess to this or you're going to go to jail. 18:22 Bad things are going to happen to you and your family. 18:23 Donald Trump and his allies tried everything to install him as the authoritarian leader of this country. 18:29 And this episode highlights how increasingly desperate they all were in the days leading up to the insurrection. 18:35 I mean, at one level, it's so weak and bizarre, but also so menacingly desperate. 18:42 I think that is why people have a hard time getting their head around what we have been through. 18:47 Because it's not like they sent the tanks in. 18:50 They probably couldn't have. 18:53 They were grasping at straws. 18:54 They were shaking every tree they could. 18:56 A letter from DOJ to Georgia saying, we're investigating fraud. 18:59 You guys should take that under advisement. 19:00 The state legislature, Brad Raffensperger saying we found the votes or Ruby Freeman coming forward to be like, it's true. 19:06 It's true. 19:06 I stuffed the ballots. 19:09 But all of those things would have had the effect they wanted. 19:13 Each of those. 19:15 It would have provided cover, just enough cover to delay the certification of the election. 19:21 It was not without strategic logic. 19:24 They failed. 19:26 And thanks to some work by the committee investigating January 6th, we now know how off the walls desperate Trump's top allies were in light of that failure. 19:33 Thanks to this PowerPoint dated January 5th from the trove of documents provided by Mark Meadows. 19:38 And it is beyond insane. 19:40 It includes the debunked claims of voter fraud. 19:42 It argues the globalists and socialists are trying to subvert the election on behalf of China. 19:46 It invokes Hugo Chavez, the former Venezuelan leader who had been dead for years. 19:50 It is impossible to overstate just how bananas this all is. 19:53 If a family member gave it to you, you would be very concerned. 19:59 Trump is so desperate, but all out of options. 20:02 They've tried everything, every link in the chain. 20:04 All they have left is force. 20:07 But they know they don't have the army. 20:10 They know they don't have the army. 20:13 So all he has left is to hurl the crowd at the Capitol and hope that they can use physical intimidation to disrupt the proceedings. 20:25 Donald Trump And we fight. 20:26 We fight like hell. 20:28 And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore. 20:32 We're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. 20:36 I love Pennsylvania Avenue. 20:38 And we're going to the Capitol. 20:40 And we're going to try and give... 20:43 The Democrats are hopeless. 20:45 They're never voting for anything. 20:47 Not even one vote. 20:49 But we're going to try and give our Republicans... 20:53 The weak ones, because the strong ones don't need any of our help. 20:57 We're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. 21:06 Chris Hayes It did not work. 21:08 But Trump did manage to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in this country's long history. 21:14 And make no mistake, he's gearing up to run again in 2024. 21:18 Even if he does not, he's already rebuilt much of the Republican Party in his authoritarian image. 21:24 What happens when someone a little more competent who understands the levers of power tries to run the same playbook? 21:30 What if the next Brad Raffensperger caves and finds the imaginary votes? 21:33 What if the next terrified Ruby Freeman gives into intimidation and agrees to lie about fraud?