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Watch Rachel Maddow Highlights: Dec. 5

Mar 14, 2024
As of today, the case is now before the jury, which means we are awaiting the verdict in the criminal trial of former President Donald Trump's family business. We are waiting to see if the jury will find the Trump family business guilty of a 15-year sentence. alleged tax fraud scheme we are under verdict awaiting that as of today because the jury got it as of today but that is just the beginning the legal landscape for him right now is starting to look like a scene in black and white. war movie Even as we now await the jury's verdict on his company, the Manhattan district attorney's office is reportedly launching its criminal investigation into Trump himself, renewing that office's investigation into money payments Trump made to a porn star while campaigning for president and potentially also looking into whether Trump should be personally charged with the types of financial crimes that his company was charged with for which we are now awaiting a jury verdict, the big news in that front was reported today for the first time by the New York Times since it was confirmed by directly to the Manhattan district attorney's office, they have brought in a high-ranking prosecutor from the US justice department apparently to handle these Trump cases.
watch rachel maddow highlights dec 5
This is a man who was the number three official in Maine Justice overall, now coming to the New York district attorney's office, maybe more so. Most importantly, though, in terms of understanding the significance of his move to the New York District Attorney's office, you should know that prior to his work at the Department of Justice he was heavily involved in investigations of Trump in New York. This is a prosecutor who led the investigation that caused the closure. of the bogus Trump Charitable Foundation, also led the investigation that resulted in a $250 million lawsuit filed against Trump, his children and his business by the New York attorney general several months ago, now the district attorney's office of Manhattan has brought in that same prosecutor as a top Presumably the Council will work on some of the things they're going after Trump on right now, but oh wait, there's more to it than dicing and julienneing we're too awaiting word right now on whether the Jan. 6 investigation in Congress will make criminal referrals to the Justice Department as it concludes its work this month.
watch rachel maddow highlights dec 5

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watch rachel maddow highlights dec 5...

A subgroup of the Jan. 6 investigation met Friday to make a recommendation to the overall investigation. about possible criminal references we don't know what happened in that meeting we don't know what their recommendation was We don't know the outcome of that process yet, but we know we will know their decision before the end of this month, when the committee concludes its work on the existing criminal investigation from the Department of Justice on January 6 at the Trump White House. The lawyer and his deputy White House counsel were forced to testify before the federal grand jury late last week, meanwhile, the Justice Department's other investigation into Trump, the Mar-A-classified documents case Lake, one simply took a straight line and stepped on the accelerator.
watch rachel maddow highlights dec 5
You may remember after federal agents seized Mar-A-Lago documents from Trump's bizarre golden beach house, where other people can pay to visit, Trump's lawyers persuaded a new Trump-appointed judge to install A Special Master to review documents the government seized instead of prosecutors simply being able to view them was basically a Gambit to slow down the criminal investigation, but now a federal appeals court has put an end to that special master process that should speed up the final resolution. of the Mar-A-Lago case, whether that ultimately means criminal charges will be filed or not, we will get to that end sooner than we were going to get there sooner, then there's Georgia.
watch rachel maddow highlights dec 5
Trump's White House chief of staff has now been ordered to testify in the criminal investigation in Fulton County, Georgia, into whether Trump criminally interfered with the 2020 election in that state and Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani , had to appear today in a disqualification process in Washington for the frivolous lawsuits he filed trying to overturn the 2020 election because of Trump. In the name of all that is happening right now, so I mean maybe it's kind of a natural occurrence, if that was the legal perspective that you had right now, you too could demand termination of the Constitution if you were faced with to all those different forms of legal liability under the Constitution we are joined now by Rebecca Rife, former assistant district attorney in the Manhattan district attorney's office, where the new senior counsel will work Matthew Colangelo, now a professor at the Law School from New York Ms.
Rafee, thank you for being here thank you for inviting me to the district attorney's office or the district attorney's office, so the district attorney's office and the district attorney's office, aside from the fact that we call them by their initials, yeah, it's frustrating, tell me what it means to have someone who had that kind of experience in the New York attorney general's office come to the district attorney's office. I think, in particular, those of us

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ing from outside of New York don't necessarily know the difference between these offices and what their different powers might be, so the district attorney's office is primarily a prosecutor's office dealing with criminal cases and The New York Attorney General primarily has responsibility for civil cases, he has some jurisdiction over criminal cases, but less so, the fact that he comes here probably means it's not because of his expertise.
Prosecuting cases comes from his experience overseeing major major investigations and, in particular, this investigation into the former president and I think we generally think about civil cases. Those of us who are not lawyers tend to think of civil cases as you know, a citizen suing. Citizen B in the case of these civil cases brought by the New York attorney general's office, I think the one that might be most clarifying for us is one that was covered very closely in the press, including here on this program, on the that Trump operated. What was a It is alleged that it is essentially a fake charity that uses this Trump Foundation, which is supposed to be a charitable instrument to instead put money into their own pockets and do themselves political favors.
The result of that civil suit was the closure of the Trump Foundation, which says something. about what kind of teeth there might be in these findings in these civil cases, Matthew Colangelo was one hundred percent on that right so it's like a civil case where the victim is the public where instead of being like you know that someone is suing someone else. because that person was injured suffered some type of harm instead it's like the public was harmed and that's why there is a civil case being brought on behalf of the public that's what the Attorney General is doing yes in this case, what Mr.
Colangelo said as you said it. By including him as a high-level Council member, they even got an exclusive for the New York Times. They put out a press release afterwards obviously wanting people to know this is happening. They are not naming him as a person who works on Trump things, but because he has no experience in the past, he is a criminal prosecutor, it is his experience related to Trump that in a way he brings with him as baggage in this, the reason why presumably they incorporated it, we should assume from that that some of the facts and some of the understanding that he gained during these civil investigations will now result in criminal charges being brought against Trump for related matters.
I think it is an exaggeration to say from this that we can read that there will necessarily be some type of accusation. that involve the same facts that were involved in those civil cases, but I think we can draw the conclusion that these cases and investigations are extensive, potentially extensive and ongoing, and that in itself is significant because there was some doubt when it became known that several prosecutors left the office about If that was really true, I think we can now say to ourselves: "Okay, these investigations are ongoing and they probably don't have to do with some small problem that the office itself could solve, but rather they are extensive and complex was just southeast of San Jose California began at 12 58 a.m. in some sort of semi-rural unincorporated area not far from Silicon Valley, near Highway 101 12 58 a.m. somehow someone, almost certainly more than A person opened the heavy metal cover of an underground vault on the side of the road.
It was not a normal manhole cover like you see on the street everywhere, the kind of thing you could lift yourself, it was much larger. than that, heavier than that, which is why researchers think It probably would have taken more than one person to open this, but whoever opened it, they went into that underground vault and when they were there they cut the fiber optic cables that They crossed it and nine minutes later they did so. Again, in a different nearby underground vault containing fiber optic cables, they opened the doors, entered and cut the fiber and the consequences of that were immediate: people throughout the area instantly lost cell phone surface and phone service landline and 911 calling surface.
Ultimately, police would have to tell people in the area that if they had an emergency and needed to call 9-1-1, they should try doing so from a cell phone, if that doesn't work It worked, they should try it. from a landline, if that didn't work, police advised people in the area that they will have to drive to the nearest fire station and ask for help in person because we have no other way to reach us 21 minutes after they cut the second set of fiber optic cables, whoever it was started shooting at that electrical substation with AK-47 style rifles.
The Gators say the shooters fired more than a hundred rounds at the electrical substation over a period of about 19 minutes and were shooting quite carefully. and with enough well-informed deliberation that in that 19-minute period in which they were firing all those dozen rounds, they were able to take down 17 different electrical transformers at that substation, some of them by shooting them directly and others by causing them to melt. quote, the shooters appear to have targeted the Transformers' oil-filled cooling systems riddled with bullet holes, the Transformers leaked 52,000 gallons of oil and then overheated. The first bank of them began crashing at 1:45 a.m., so between hitting the oil that was used as a cooling fluid for the Transformers and hitting the Transformers themselves with over a hundred AK-47 rifle shots. 17 Transformers were knocked out in that electric power substation and with the cutting of the Fiber Optic Cables near the landline of cell phones and The 9-1-1 service was out of service in that attack in Northern California in 2013 , all its different components took less than an hour and when the police showed up, the perpetrators were already gone, it took the authorities 27 days to make the repairs. and get that substation up and running and hook up that fiber again, that took place in April 2013 in Northern California, that attack remains unsolved, no one publicly claimed responsibility, no one, as far as we know, was ever arrested, was ever arrested.
He attributed no motive to whoever carried it out. that attack now fast forwards to this year February this year February 2022 three men one from Ohio one from Wisconsin one each Indiana and Texas pleaded guilty to a plot to do much the same thing inspired by white supremacist ideology Press Release Justice Department three men plead guilty to conspiring to provide material support to a plot to attack power grids in the United States. The domestic terrorism plot promoted white supremacist ideology and the plea agreement in that case from earlier this year explains it in detail, he says in the fall of 2019.
Two young men, a 21-year-old and a 24-year-old, met in one online forum and once suggested to the other that they hatch a plan to destroy electrical power substations in various parts of the country to try to cause civil unrest and hopefully try to establish a race war in the United States this is from the plea agreement quote the plan was to attack the substations with powerful rifles that would penetrate the electrical transformers. Members of the group estimated that it would cost the government millions of dollars to also recover the defendants. They believed that the time associated with replacing the substations would cause confusion and unrest for Americans in the region.
There were also conversationsabout how the possibility of the power supply lasting many months could cause a race war, furthermore, without electricity throughout the country they hoped it could cause the next Great Depression people would not show up to work, the economy would collapse and there would be a great opportunity for potential white leaders to rise up. That plea agreement revealed by the government earlier this year explains how these young men decided they would need to do it. cause a big explosion as a distraction, they wanted to cause some kind of big explosion that would immobilize the police and distract them from what they were going to do with the electrical substations, which is something they hoped would cause millions of dollars in damage, something that would take months to be able to repair to trigger only the distraction explosion.
They admitted to purchasing bomb components and beginning to test explosives to fit that part of their plan. They also obtained multiple so-called ghost guns without serial numbers so they couldn't be traced built what the government describes as multiple AR-47 style semi-automatic rifles built the rifles they were building more and began training with them at shooting ranges when the FBI searched their homes and found multiple firearms, including firearms without serial numbers, multiple silencers, milling tools, weapons modification manuals, explosives production diagrams, and manuals, chemicals and components that an FBI laboratory determined to be They could be used to create an explosive device.
Prosecutors said they found citing a large amount of Nazi-related materials, such as videos, books and images. Also detailed information on US electrical infrastructure. A list of specific electrical substations. Quote an article about the sabotage of an electrical substation in California, so the California attack on that electrical substation in 2013 is still unresolved. This year we see neo-Nazis trying to spark a race war by planning what appears to have been a copycat attack that copies what happened in California as well to the extent that they are also planning to use high-powered rifles to shoot at electrical substations and try to cut the electrical supply.
The guilty pleas to the plot were uncovered by federal prosecutors. Those guilty pleas were earlier this year. in federal court in Ohio and now this weekend here we are again in Moore County, North Carolina, shortly after 7 p.m. m., power outages began here in the Carthage area, soon after the outages would spread to the vast majority of central and southern Moore County with the arrival of Power crews and our helpers found extensive damage to their substations . Evidence from the scene indicated that the firearm had been used to disable the equipment cut power to what they call 45,000 customers, in this case that means 45,000 homes and businesses.
In total we are talking about more than one hundred thousand people, well, initially there were forty-five thousand customers, forty-five thousand homes and businesses, now they have been reduced to thirty-three thousand homes and businesses, but there are still tens of thousands of Americans tonight with zero energy, zero and and this is not like lines down in a storm that you go out and rewire the lines and put them back, it is two electrical substations shot up with guns like in California in 2013 and how the neo-Nazis end up pleading guilty to plotting in Ohio earlier this year and we have no one in custody, no one claiming responsibility, no information on any potential motive, there are apparently no suspects in Moore County, North Carolina, this weekend week, there were two different electrical substations, supposedly about 10 miles apart, both of which were allegedly shot at and rendered useless. shots fired approximately 45 minutes apart on Saturday night, as for the motive, we literally have no idea and there has been a lot of speculation both nationally and locally since we learned this happened, as we learned it was a attack inflicted deliberately, but honestly.
In short, we really don't know at yesterday's first press conference, where the sheriff and local officials answered the first questions about what had happened. They were immediately asked, and then repeatedly asked, if this attack on electrical infrastructure in North Carolina could be threat-related. and intimidation that have recently targeted local LGBTQ groups in Moore County and in particular at a drag show at a venue in downtown Southern Pines, a show that began just minutes before the power plants were shot electricity and the lights will go out. There were far-right anti-gay and anti-trans protesters trying to cancel that Moore County event on Saturday, just hours before the power plants were shot up.
This followed another similar protest by masked far-right paramilitary groups, including proud children at an lgbtq event. last month in nearby Sanford, North Carolina, which is just a half-hour from Moore County. Vice News notes today that this was a full weekend of threatening anti-gay and anti-trans protests in multiple locations across the country, including Columbus Ohio, where it honestly looked like a gun show on the street outside a gay and trans event with proud guys with guns holding up white power signs and yelling at people and a white supremacist group called the Patriot Front showing up in formation.
White lives matter, kids giving Hitler salutes to random kids. no apparent affiliation just showing up in military-style camouflage suits and assault rifles, that was Columbus Ohio this weekend Lakeland Florida had neo-Nazis this weekend outside a queer event waving a big swastika flag A neo-Nazi Holocaust denier stands up performed at another queer event in New York City this weekend as well, so when Moore County, North Carolina, hosted another one of these far-right anti-gay and anti-trans protests this Saturday and then , just when a local drag show they were protesting at, someone shot down the power plants and cut off power to the entire county.
Yeah, understandably local people immediately started asking the sheriff if that was the reason why, if there was a connection, now the sheriff has repeatedly said that he has no idea if the attack came to power. The stations are linked to those anti-gay and anti-trans protests. There's really no indication either way. The sheriff says he has no idea about a motive whatsoever. There are no suspects. Nobody takes responsibility. No one is in custody. Thank you foreigner.

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