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That's Norton dot com slash matto to save 25 percent off the Rachel Maddow Show weeknights at nine Eastern on MSNBC. We've got a lot to get to tonight. There's some breaking news that's just emerged that has filled in some of the details about that intriguing, very largely redacted federal court document that we told you about over the last couple of nights. This appears to be about the Justice Department investigating the possibility that there was a bribery scheme to try to essentially pay cash for presidential pardons and or clemency from the Trump White House.

The New York Times has developed that story considerably this evening. And so we're getting more flesh on the bones there from that redacted court document in terms of what that investigation may have consisted of and who may have been in its crosshairs. We're working on that story right now, working on adding our own reporting to the extent that we can. And we'll have that for you coming up with within the course of this hour. But I want to start tonight by introducing you to Chris Rockfest.

Chris Rockfest is a Ross Quest, is a registered nurse at Intermountain Health Care, which is in Murray, Utah. Murray is just south of Salt Lake City. It just is day after day these patients are here fighting, you know, some losing their lives and others, you know, regaining their freedoms and ability to care for themselves. I mean, the one thing that comes to mind is exhausting with these people here. They're they're not here for three days or a week.

They're here for weeks and months at a time.

Well, we've noticed that covid does tell our patients is shut out from everybody. Even even the care providers are covered up. We're in a paper. They can't see our mouth. They can't see. I know they can't see our expressions. For the most part. They're stuck inside themselves. They can't talk. They they can't stretch their arms because if we lose the ETTY to the tube that's helping them breathe, they'll die.

Sometimes it feels like there's no end in sight and we have hope. But for right now, our everyday lives are pretty, pretty strained.

It's always in your face. When I come to work, I deal with covid patients and when I go home, I don't get to hug my kids.

I have an eight year old and they don't run to the door anymore because we don't give hugs or they go they broke up.

The first thing I did was I shower and then I get to spend half an hour with them and I come back and I do it again. And I think that all of our nurses are in the same boat. You know, you get a call from somebody after a shift and they just sob because one or two or three patients died in the shift.

Sometimes these patients are awake and they know what's going on.

Are registered nurses and nurse practitioners and patient care technicians who will work at Intermountain Health Care, which, as I said, is in Murray, Utah, just state of just south of Salt Lake City. You can just see the strain on them, right. How hard they're working and what they're having to deal with on a daily basis in a way that has now gone on for months and months and months. And it's only getting worse.

I'm putting this up at the top of the show right now because I feel like that strain on frontline health workers is probably the single most important thing in the country right now, not just the scale and scope of the epidemic, but what we can reasonably expect from the people who we need to handle the scale and the scope of the epidemic right now. Here's somebody else you should meet. Her name is Morgan Crohn. She's a nurse at Indiana University Health, which is in Indianapolis.

It's about three thirty in the morning, and this is my fourth shift in a row, and we're feeling and high capacity patience and the need for more nurses. So I offered to help out an extra shift this week. Most of our patients over here are monitors and they're very sick. Most of them have covered. A lot of them are requiring a lot of oxygen. So we have to keep them monitor very close. We're really seeing a lot of patients coming through our aid here at Methodist.

And, you know, more and more patients are coming up to these units and we're seeing a lot of covid. So we're admitting a lot here at night. And it's we're feeling the brunt of it right now. So but we deal with a lot of people it up here. And that's predominantly all my patients tonight.

That's predominantly all my patients tonight at three thirty in the morning when she's recording that meeting lots of patients every night through the ed, through the emergency department, NBC News reporter Allison Barber was able to go into DePaul Hospital in St. Louis this week, specifically to their ICU to talk to their staff there. And all of us right now in this country are looking at the same numbers, looking at the same statistics, feeling scared about the weeks ahead, the people who are going to try to get us through the weeks ahead, though, they are already rocked back on their heels right now by how much they're doing already, by how big the problem is right now before we get into what is about to be the worst of it in these next few weeks.

Once they get to us, we're not seeing a lot that make it out of here, so it's just like a day in and day out, I don't know. I just wonder in the end how, you know, if things are going to be different. I don't know.

How many patients have you lost? I, I don't even know our numbers. There's days when it's 3:00 in for a shift. So it's hard how many hours is a shift, 12 hours, it's not a 12 hour period. Some days where you're missing three or four people. Yeah, at least. And we're only you know, we're an 18 bed unit. So, you know, that's that's a lot, you know, and it affects everybody on the floor, too, you know, because everybody like I said, it's a team effort.

The entire floor is a team effort. So it affects everybody. We just kind of have to pick each other up and move on to the next room. What do we need to do in here? We do. It's part of the care that we give is kronin patients putting them prone and, you know, you think of yourself in that position, you know, it's just I can't imagine the stuff that we do to these people that the care that they require, it's just unbelievable.

I've never you know, we've grown one patient, maybe my entire career, and now we're doing it daily, multiple times a day, because that's what these patients are wearing their body. That's the only position that their body will hopefully do better in otherwise that they're not going to survive.

One of the words that we do outside the medical profession never had to know before 20 20 is that word groaning that she just described there. And Dawson, I mean, instinctively, you know, you think of somebody in the hospital, you think of them as lying on their back in the hospital bed. Right. One of the lessons learned thus far in treating covid is that just structurally in terms of the way we are built, it can be easier on a patient's lungs.

Apparently, they can sometimes get better lung function, more oxygenation if they are not lying on their back, if in fact they're flipped over and they're on their stomach.

And I remember early on in the first surge, the spring, talking with doctors in New York about that and having them explain that and having me as a lay person learn that. I remember thinking, you know, as somebody who doesn't know anything about medical stuff, well, you know, at least that's a simple, easy thing. That's great. And it's true, it's not some newly invented, super expensive monoclonal antibody, right, or some fantastical space AIDS treatment that needs to be kept in subzero temperature control or it's just a position, just a way to shift the body.

And now we're 10 months into this thing. It's true. That is helpful for a lot of patients.

But I want to show you this. One of the things that Allison Barber and her crew were allowed to shoot at this hospital in St. Louis this week was that process that I've been thinking all this time, is that like cheap and easy thing that helps so many patients? And I'm going to show it to you now. And it's not gruesome by any means. It's not gory. But what I'm going to show you is a procedure in a hospital. If there's a chance you don't want your kids to watch it, your kids are watching with you.

Now, I would understand. So I'm pausing for time here for a second, OK? You don't want them to see this. OK, but here it is. I've watched this today a number of times cutting this footage. Part of the reason I wanted you to see it is because I know that I can't get it out of my head. And I also just think it's something we should probably all see in this case. This is a patient who has been prone to already and this team in St.

Louis in this ICU is the five person team in the ICU that's turning the patient again back to what's called the supine position, putting the patient back on the back, back on the patient's back. And you can see the team running through their checklist. They move all the lines and the tubes that are going into and out of the patient that confirm which way they're going to do this movement of the body. They make sure they all understand that the doctor leading the team calls one to three to move the patient from the center of the bed to the side of the bed.

The team then repositions rechecks confirms nothing is dislodged. The doctor calls one, two, three again. They then move the patient two thirds of the way through that turn and then they reach back and retake everything around the patient, recheck everything, and then it's one to three again to recenter the patient in the bed, having now been supine because the patient was prone to before. I mean, you can just see the care it takes, the work it takes to take care with everything that's hooked up to that patient, all the monitors and the tubes, the lines and the bedclothes and the catheter and the coordination between that team, five of them in that room for that one procedure.

And you can see at one point it's written on the patient's door and black marker, the time that this patient was put in the supine position and then the time that they were flipped to prone, they spent hours prone lying on their stomach. And then this is, again, them moving them back to supine. And they marked that time. I mean, this is the simplest thing they do. This is the simplest, easiest thing they do. And it takes five trained people in the ICU and that much time and that much care.

Think about that, this is the bottom of the totem pole in terms of what they do, and you heard the nurse there, Jennifer Dawson, say we found one patient in my entire career, but now we're doing it daily, multiple times a day. They're also losing three in four people.

Three in four of their patients are dying per 12 hour shift on a unit that's only 18 beds. I mean, how long can we keep asking the health care workers in our frontline hospitals to do this this intensively with this many patients, with this much death, with this much intensity? Right. This much intensive mess in terms of the care that they're offering? What you just saw, it was like the simplest thing they do.

I mean, given what we are asking of them, especially given what's coming, how can we relieve them, how can we make it any easier on them, given what we're asking for?

Right. I mean, you look at the numbers and we've been looking at the numbers every day for 10 months, but today was like if you've ever really been through a period in your life and it might be right now when you're really, really broke, you didn't make ends meet for this pay period.

But like today's the day you knew you weren't really making it. I've been there in my life. I have had times like this. But today was a day where, like, you found out you knew what? You knew you weren't really making it. You knew you were in trouble financially. But today's the day you found out it's worse than you thought. You got a call from the bank or you got an alert from the bank that it turns out your way overdrawn in your bank account, something you didn't expect to get automatically deducted or some check you had to write that you were really hoping wouldn't clear yet.

It cleared and you're screwed, right? Today's today is that kind of day. The bank is mad. There's a big red flag on your account. You're way overdrawn. You're going to have to pay overdraft fees. You're in trouble. Right. And you've got that panic because of it. And then on top of that, at the same time, you get that call right, you get that alert from the bank that you're way overdrawn and you don't know why you're going to do about it.

You also, at that same time, get a new bill in the mail or in your inbox and it's from the utility company or it's taxes or something else. You've absolutely got to pay. And that bill is way bigger than you thought it was going to be, way bigger than it's ever been before than you ever, ever had to plan on before. And it arrived at a time you just found out that you have zero money. You not only have no way to pay, you are overdrawn.

That's what the Kofod numbers are right now. Right. That's what the covid numbers are specifically today. In terms of what we've got in the bank and the bill that is coming due in terms of the resources that we have to devote to devote to the problem that we've got in our country and how big the problem just got. Look at the numbers today and think about it in those terms. I look at the KOVA tracking project numbers today. Number of Americans hospitalized is the highest it has ever been by a lot over one hundred thousand of our fellow Americans in the hospital right now, over one hundred thousand inpatient covid patients.

All right, that is how taxed our resources are right now in terms of health care and look at what's coming, look at the bill that just arrived for how much more hospitalization is about to be demanded of us. The number of people newly infected today is also the highest number we've ever had as a country. More than two hundred and ten thousand new infections in America today. Our hospitals are already bending under the strain of having more than one hundred thousand people in the hospital, and when I say the hospitals are bending under the strain, I mean, the people who work in them, our fellow Americans who work in the hospitals are bending under the strain.

There is too much already being put on our doctors and nurses. Right, we have we have over drawn from them as a resource in terms of what they're capable of keeping up with, just as human beings, with families and feelings and limits. And while the hospitals are maxing out, we are simultaneously accelerating what we are sending them newly to deal with. That's what these two different numbers mean in tandem. Right, we're already taxing the resources that we've got beyond anything we've ever tried before as a nation, while we are racking up daily new infections so large they will produce new hospitalisations, new hospitalisation numbers so large within the next two weeks that we really don't know what our hospitals will do.

Our hospitals in many parts of the country are approaching the point where they are tapped out in terms of capacity already, particularly in terms of human capacity among our health workers. And yet these raging new case numbers every day mean that we're about to send a tide of sick covid patients to our health care workers, the likes of which we have never before contended with. On top of what they've already got. I mean, that's looking at the number of people we've got in the hospital and the number of people headed toward the hospital, the death numbers are already bad enough.

In the past day, more than twenty seven hundred deaths. That means one American is dying from covid every thirty two seconds now. And keep that in mind as a benchmark, because that's a couple of weeks or so before we see the impact in the hospitals and then ultimately the impact in the morgue of these new infection numbers that we are seeing now. I honestly, I don't know what to say. I mean, I don't know what's going to happen in the hospital, so I don't know where the ambulances are going to take people after the surge capacity is exhausted.

We finally got our hands on the document from the White House coronavirus task force that I mentioned on last night's show. This is the document that they do not make publicly available for some reason, but they send it to public health officials in the states. And again, I'm not sure why this hasn't been a bigger story since that news of the content of this document broke. It's maybe because people haven't seen the actual document from the White House. They've only heard about it.

But we have now obtained pieces of that document. And I can tell you what, the White House ignore the president, ignore whatever is going on with that circus, what the coronavirus task force in the White House is telling public health officials to do right now in the state. It's the equivalent of when the National Hurricane Center starts putting out those warnings in all capital letters telling people they will definitely die unless they evacuate ahead of the oncoming storm. That is what's coming now from the coronavirus task force to the states.

Just look at this. NBC News obtained this last night. I know you may have seen quotes from it, but we finally got the document itself. And this is the top of the new recommendations from the covid task force at the White House to public health officials in the states. It says this If state and local policies do not reflect the seriousness of the current situation, all public health officials must alert the state population directly. Look at this language.

It must be made clear that if you are over sixty five or have significant health conditions, you should not enter any indoor public spaces where anyone is unmasked. Due to the immediate risk to your health, you should have groceries and medications delivered. If you are under age 40, you need to assume that you became infected during the Thanksgiving period. If you gathered beyond your immediate household, most likely you will not have symptoms. However, you are dangerous to others.

You must isolate away from anyone at increased risk of severe disease. You must get tested immediately. The covid risk to all Americans is at a historic high. The national daily covid incidence after Memorial Day was fewer than twenty five thousand new cases a day. Now it is more than one hundred and eighty thousand new cases a day. And in fact, today it's even higher than that. The task force continues, quote, covid in patients, then meeting in the spring, hospitalizations in the spring where fewer than thirty thousand, they are now more than 90 thousand.

And in fact, tonight there more than one hundred thousand. Fatalities have more than doubled, we are in a, quote, very dangerous place due to the current extremely high covid baseline and limited hospital capacity for the Thanksgiving surge will compromise covid patient care as well as medical care overall. Anybody who got infected during Thanksgiving travel, they say that two days before symptoms and five days after you first get symptoms is the time when you're most likely to give it to somebody else.

That's the time that you're most infectious in terms of when you're when you get the symptoms onset yourself. You might never get it, but it will likely be within the first seven to 10 days that you've been exposed. So if people travel to Thanksgiving and got infected, which the White House task force says you should assume you did if you saw anybody outside your household, that means that the time if you're infected and you're giving to others, this is the time that you're infected and you're giving it to others.

And so there is this I don't know why they keep this secret, the secret advice from the White House to the states that reporters have to dig up every time they update it and we get little pieces of it leaked. But we can see from their nonpublic advice to the states that they are telling public health officers to pull out all the stops, go around state officials and whatever policies do not reflect the seriousness of what is happening for you locally. Pull the ripcord.

This is what we were most worried about. It is here and that's what's happening while the Americans. So we will count on to save us, if we can be saved, are already being pushed to their limits. I mean, things will eventually get better.

Vaccines will someday, hopefully someday soon start to make a dent. In less than 50 days, we will have a new president. Today, President elect Biden announced that he has asked Dr. Tony Foushee to stay on as the nation's top infectious disease doctor and has additionally asked Fauci to become his top medical adviser. Reports are also now circulating about President elect Biden's choices for health secretary, for surgeon general, for the coordinator of the government's overall covid response efforts. And it turns out none of them are quacks that he found on Fox News who think that masks don't work.

And it's cool if we all get infected and maybe magic flower juice from the my pillow guy will cure us all.

That's good. Ever since FDR first introduced the concept of the first hundred days for his administration in nineteen thirty three, he coined that phrase in a fireside chat. Ever since then, new presidents have made pledges to the public about what they will do in their first hundred days in office. They've all defined these ambitious first hundred days agendas for what they want to accomplish in their first hundred days when they are sworn in, after they are sworn in as president.

Well, Joe Biden today said that what he wants for his first hundred days is for the country to commit to wearing masks for one hundred days for the first hundred days that he's in office. That's what he wants for us to commit to that for one hundred days to break the back of the explosive viral transmission that has overtaken us coast to coast. I mean, if we could do that one thing, it would have a huge, huge impact. I don't know if we can do that.

I hope that we can. Just like I have lots of hope for what the vaccine might mean, but even if the vaccines are all that we hope for and more, even if we could do one hundred days with masks with the new president. It's still nearly 50 days away before we'd start it. And tonight, I want to know what we can do to help American health providers, to help them get through not what's coming yet, but even just to get through December on the way toward what we know is building as this tsunami that's coming at him.

Joining us now is Adam Hohman. He's a nurse practitioner on the front lines and not one, but two of the country's hardest hit states. He works both in North Dakota and Minnesota. He's also an assistant professor at North Dakota State University School of Nursing. Mr Hodgman, thank you so much for being with us tonight. I really appreciate you making time. Thank you, Rachel. Thanks for having me on.

Let me just ask you if my level of worry is commensurate with your level of worry as somebody who's doing this work. Yeah, I would agree, I think I have huge concerns as we come into the next one or two weeks post Thanksgiving, that we're going to see a huge surge in cases, particularly for the number of people who travel over Thanksgiving and.

There's a potential that we could surpass our local capacity not only here in the rural setting, but also in our urban facilities. Adam, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is I know that as part of the Air Force Reserve Service, you traveled this spring to New York City to help out and treat patients as New York was having its terrible surge. I wonder if you could compare the experience there and what you saw there versus what you've been seeing in rural North Dakota and Minnesota in terms of places with fewer resources, smaller health systems overall having to deal with with their own kind of strain right now.

So I think one of the things that we maybe got lulled into in North Dakota was that we were so rural and that we weren't New York. And but if you compare data per capita, I mean, we obviously have led the nation in both deaths and hospitalizations in cases. New York was unique in that when we arrived, there was a significant amount of lack of beds, staff, some of the staff themselves who were the normal nurses and medical providers, were either the patients had died or had quit because of the color pandemic was just so significant.

I have not seen that level yet here locally. But I do have concerns coming into the worst part of the surge right now and what weeks to months to come look like. One of the things I think that often gets forgotten in rural America is most of our what we call critical access hospitals or hospitals that have twenty five beds, twenty four hour requirements, but typically are staffed by primary care physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, just by the nature of their remoteness.

And in those facilities, they typically, with rare exceptions, don't have respiratory therapist. They don't often have anesthesia team, frankly, don't have ICU beds. And so I worry as this kind of progresses out from the urban setting into our rural communities, what does that look like for for rural? Because we're hearing first of all, how can we start to call that the pandemic is devastating their communities? But I think potentially the worst is yet to come.

Adam Hohman, nurse practitioner on the front lines in both North Dakota and Minnesota, assistant professor at North Dakota State University School of Nursing, thanks for helping us understand what you seen, Adam. Best of luck to you. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. As I mentioned at the top of the show, we've got some late breaking news tonight from The New York Times. Fascinating development in a story that we covered earlier this week about an alleged bribe for pardon scandal that has been investigated by the Justice Department. This is alleged payments to the Trump White House to pay for presidential pardons or clemency. This derived from a highly redacted court document which was unsealed in Washington earlier this week. The New York Times has just filled in some of the proper nouns behind the big black lines in that court document.

We started to figure out who this might be about. We've got that story for you next. Stay with us. Hi, I'm Trevor Noah of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, which is also a podcast. Did you miss last night's episode?

Catch up with The Daily Show with Trevor Noah is Ed.. It's everything you love about The Daily Show except for the dimples. But we are working on technology to make an audio version of those, too. You can listen to the podcast Monday to Friday mornings everywhere podcasts are available. The Daily Show with Trevor Noah is Ed.. Subscribe Now.

2020 has been a challenging year for all of us. For those facing hunger across the globe, covid-19 has brought severe challenges and rise against Hunger is responding to meet the global need. 820 million people are affected by hunger globally and that number is increasing as a result of covid-19 Rise Against Hunger is an international nonprofit working to end hunger worldwide. Right now they're responding to covid-19 to meet the increased need during this time of crisis through their covid-19 Relief and resilience plan.

They're working with country partners to sustain and pivot the distribution of food and meals, providing grants and cash based assistance for local food procurement, and continuing to empower communities by strengthening resilience and capacity for food production through sustainable agriculture projects. You can help rise against hunger, address this increased global need and make an impact in the lives of people around the world. Visit Rise Against Hunger podcast to learn more. That's Rise Against Hunger podcast. Update for you on a story we first brought you a couple of nights ago about newly unsealed court documents that managed to be sort of a bombshell, even though there was a lot we didn't understand about it because so much of it was redacted.

It was a 20 page long order that was unsealed on Tuesday night from the top judge in federal court in D.C. Her name is Chief Judge Beryl Howell. Judge Holwell issued this order in late August. She unsealed it on Tuesday, although a whole bunch of stuff in the order was still blacked out. What we what we could see in this document that made it such big news was that it showed that federal prosecutors, Justice Department prosecutors had been actively investigating what the judge described as a bribery four pardons scheme, a, quote, secret lobbying scheme and bribery conspiracy by which some number of people were suspected of arranging bribes in the form of substantial political contributions.

What they wanted in exchange for those substantial political contributions was, quote, a presidential pardon or reprieve of sentence. So a cash for pardons scheme in the Trump White House being investigated by the Justice Department. Really, that was as far as we knew. This story went two days ago. Well, just within the last hour, just in the last few minutes, The New York Times has started to fill in a bunch of the blanks here. The headlines, the headline on the story just posted at The New York Times is this Trump Associates said to have been scrutinized in suspected pardon scheme.

Hmm. Here's the lead. The Justice Department investigated as recently as this past summer the roles of a top fundraiser for President Trump and a lawyer for his son in law, Jared Kushner, in a suspected scheme to offer a bribe in exchange for clemency for a convict, specifically a tax crimes convict. Two people familiar with the inquiry said it concerned efforts by the lawyer for Mr. Kushner, Abbe Lowell, and the fundraiser Elliot Brady, who pled guilty in October to a charge related to a different scheme to illegally lobby the Trump administration.

Now, Brady is a figure who has popped up in a lot of Trump related scandals since before the inauguration. Brady pled guilty to a scheme to lobby Trump the Trump administration on behalf of undisclosed foreign clients. Weeks ago, not long ago, Brady was also a key part of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, which has come under lots of legal scrutiny. We'll talk about that more this hour. He was also part of the Republican Committee, Republican National Committee's finance team, along with Michael Cohen and the disgraced casino billionaire Steve Wynn and all sorts of other savory characters.

But now there's understandably been a lot of speculation in the last couple of days once we got this court document about who who might have been seeking this pardon from Trump, especially with all the family members and friends and well known associates Trump has reportedly been considering preemptively pardoning before he leaves office. We'll be talking more about that tonight, too. But it turns out, according to The New York Times reporting tonight, the guy who was seeking this pardon, which led to this Justice Department investigation into whether or not pardons were for sale in the Trump administration, the guy who was going to pay the bribe to make it all happen.

It seems like these are guys that nobody's ever really heard of from the Times tonight. Quote, A billionaire San Francisco real estate developer, Sanford Diller enlisted the help of Abbe Lowell, Jarrett's lawyer, and Eliot Brody, the Trump fundraiser, in securing clemency for a Berkeley, California, psychologist named Hugh Elbrus, who had received a 30 month prison sentence on a conviction of tax evasion and improperly claiming Social Security benefits. Under the suspected scheme, Mr. Diller would make a substantial political contribution to an unspecified recipient in exchange for Mr.

Barris getting the pardon. Well, Mr. Diller died in February. Twenty eighteen. There's no evidence that the effort continued after his death. Mr. Barris, for his part, did not receive clemency. Now, Abbe Lowell was Jared's lawyer, has his own lawyer. And that lawyer tells The Times tonight that Abbe Lowell did represent Mr. Barrett's and this unsuccessful effort to avoid being locked up. But he says that no bribe was paid and Mr. Barratt's didn't get out of prison.

As far as we can tell, he went to prison on June twenty seventeen. He was released in August. Twenty nineteen. He didn't get a pardon. He didn't get clemency. The Times says that is part of this bribery for pardon alleged scheme. Quote, Someone approached the White House counsel's office to ensure that the clemency petition reached the targeted officials. They did not say who made the contact or how the White House responded. Now, again, Elliot Brady, I said, as I said, has already pled guilty in a whole different scheme to illegally lobby the White House on behalf of four and.

Interests, while Brady apparently knew this billionaire real estate guy previously, it's not clear what Abbe Lowell had to do with this. Abbe Lowell is a very high powered big name Washington lawyer who works for Jared Kushner, among other people. It's not clear how he might have become involved in this or what, if anything, that might mean for Jared, for Jared Kushner potential exposure in this. But that all comes as we continue to get new reports even tonight, that President Trump, as he winds down his last few weeks in office, is considering preemptive pardons for all his adult children, including his son in law.

Jared, what a mess. More as we know.

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Again, that's code nado at Madison. Dasch, Reed, Dotcom. Politico Dotcom just posted tonight, quote, President Donald Trump is considering preemptively pardoning as many as 20 aides and associates before leaving office 20 20 preemptive pardons. You get to be Nixon and you get to be Nixon and look under your chair. You'll all go down in history like Richard Nixon, 20.

That huge number of people reportedly on the president's preemptive pardon plan is is New 20, but some of the names on the list are familiar. That was The New York Times that first reported earlier this week that the president was considering preemptive pardons not just for his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, but for three of his adult kids, too. And not to state the obvious here, but as far as we know, none of the Trump kids have been charged with a crime.

The reason the Trump kids might need preemptive legal protection even before getting charged with anything is a little woolly. When The Times first broke that news that Don Jr. and Eric and Ivanka all might get Nixon here. But then yesterday, we learned that the president's eldest daughter, Ivanka, just this week was deposed in a lawsuit by the D.C. attorney general. This is the lawsuit that alleges and that D.C. attorney general's words that the president's inaugural committee abused nonprofit funds to enrich.

The Trump family specifically says they illegally spent inaugural money at the president's hotel in Washington, D.C. According to the lawsuit brought in D.C., the president's inaugural committee coordinated with the Trump family, specifically with the president's kids, to have the inaugural committee grossly overpay for event space at that hotel during the inauguration. In other words, the allegation in the lawsuit is that the Trump kids used their sway inside the family business to up charge the inaugural committee as a way to put a little extra cash into the family business.

Today, Ivanka Trump confirmed publicly that she did give a deposition to the D.C. attorney general's office this week. She said she answered questions there for more than five hours about what the inaugural committee was charged by the Trump Family Hotel and why she publicly pushed back on the allegation that she had done anything wrong. She called the whole investigation a demonstration of vindictiveness. The D.C. attorney general conducting that responded like this. He said, quote, We filed suit after gathering evidence that the inaugural committee knowingly entered into a grossly overpriced contract with the Trump Hotel.

Any claim to the contrary is incorrect. D.C. law requires nonprofits to use funds for stated public purposes and to avoid unreasonable, wasteful expenses. Our investigation revealed the inaugural committee willfully used non-profit funds to enrich the Trump family. It's very simple. They broke the law. That's why we sued. And that that last line there, that's why we sued, that's not just like a punchy comeback, it's an important reminder here that the president can't just pardon his daughter Ivanka out of this particular gym.

The D.C. attorney general's case here is a civil case. Presidential pardons only cover cover for federal crimes. So unless the president believes this civil lawsuit could mature into a criminal liability for his family, a preemptive pardon would do Butkus ivonka. It would also do bookies for millennia. The first lady has also been subpoenaed for documents as part of this lawsuit as well. Now, the first lady, for her part, has said that she had, quote, no knowledge of the financial spending during the inauguration.

But regardless, this is very much a live matter and one which seems to be agitating the president considerably. The attorney general from Washington, D.C., brought this case against the Trump inaugural committee and he joins us live next. Stay with us. This is from the original lawsuit brought by the D.C. attorney general into the Trump inaugural committee. It says that it seeks relief for nonprofit funds after the Trump presidential inaugural committee, quote, grossly overpaid for use of event space at the Trump Hotel.

The next inaugural, of course, will be the Biden Harris inaugural next month. But this case over the potentially illegal misuse of funds at the Trump inaugural is just heating up. Now, we have learned this week that the president's deputy campaign manager, Rick Gates, and his inaugural chairman, Tom Barrack, have been subpoenaed, along with the president's wife, Melania. The president's eldest daughter, Ivanka, just gave more than five hours of testimony as part of the suit.

What happens next here? Joining us now is Carl Racin. He is the attorney general for the District of Columbia. He brought the civil suit against the inaugural committee. Mr. Racine, thank you very much for being here. It's an honor to have you tonight, sir. Good evening, Rachel.

I'm happy to see you. And great that Susan is back in good health. Thank you for saying so, that means a lot to me. It's been it's been a wild ride. Let me ask you if any of the noise that we have heard so much about in the past week in terms of the president potentially preemptively pardoning all of his family members, trying to pardon himself, preemptive pardons for other people surrounding him and part of the administration potentially part of the inauguration, will that have any bearing on this case that you've brought in D.C.?

No, not in this case, for the reasons that you stated, namely that this is a civil case, not a criminal case. And so the president cannot pardon anyone for a violation of a civil wrong that would likely result if established.

And we're confident about our case in moneys going back into the not for profit from the Trumps pockets. I I know as much as any nonlawyer about the types of distinctions between different types of cases that you're talking about, which is to say not much, but I do know enough to ask whether or not you have made any criminal referrals stemming out of what you have learned in this case or whether you expect to make any any criminal referrals or if you expect that this will remain a civil case.

I think in any case where depositions are being taken, where folks are put under oath and are sworn to tell the truth under threat of perjury. It's important that they honor those laws and follow the truth. To the extent that something like that doesn't occur, then we would be in position to make an appropriate referral, but it would be only in those circumstances that a criminal matter would arise from this case. OK, let me let me just make sure that I understand the full contours of that, I mean, there were public reports that the just the US Justice Department might have convened a grand jury last summer to look into some issues related to the inaugural committee.

I can can I ask you if that's your understanding as well or whether there's any whether there has been any question about the whether the Justice Department, federal Justice Department might have an interest in this case as well? So I'm not able to comment on that, nor am I able to share information with you that I don't know. I can tell you that the Trump family and misuse of not for profits is not something new. You'll remember, Rachel, that they had the foundation based in New York that was forced to shut down and that they had to repay for the public good.

Two million dollars as a result of that foundation, doing things like purchasing portrait's, paying legal expenses, clearly not for not for profit organizational purposes. There's a long list of people and entities who have been subpoenaed for documents as part of our investigation, we learned a lot more about that with documents that we were able to see in the case this week. In general, have parties been forthcoming when you have been wanting to depose people related to the inaugural committee, when you have sought documents from them?

Have you been able to get your hands on everything you need to conduct your investigation? You've been able to talk to everybody you'd like to talk to. Our prosecution of this civil case has been thorough and indeed we've received numerous documents. We think that the productions to date have been complete. We are deposing additional witnesses you've had on your show before, Masuo Koff, who will be deposed on December nine. Mr. Gates will be deposed, Rick Gates on December 17.

And we'll have a more fulsome opportunity to assess whether everyone has been truthful with us after all of the deposition testimony. I want to emphasize a couple of points, and I think that with all due respect to Ivanka Trump, what she put out today was highly misleading and at best only a part of the story. For example, Rachel, she makes a lot of a an email wherein she claims that she directed the foundation to pay market rate for the Trump Hotel.

That email was dated December 14 days after that email. There was clearly an attempt to pay a lot more than the market price. Stephanie Walcoff sent emails, including to Ivanka Trump, raising alarms about the prices that the Trump Hotel was seeking to charge the inauguration committee. Interestingly, this Trump does not cite any email after Miss Walcoff red alarm email saying, oh, my goodness, this should not be charged, that these high levels and in fact, as we know, the foundation was charged at extraordinarily high levels.

If I could give you one example that I think really tells you exactly what was going on on one of the days of the inaugural committee, it paid one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars for full use of the hotel's event space, including use of a large ballroom for a half day, which was double booked by a different, not for profit presidential inaugural prayer breakfast, not for profit. That not not for profit paid five thousand dollars for that same ballroom.

One hundred and seventy five thousand charge to the inauguration committee. Five thousand to another, not for profit. Doesn't sound like market rate to me. D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine, sir, thank you for being here. Thank you for helping us understand this case. Thank you. All right. We'll be right back. Stay with us. That is going to do it for us tonight. Good to see you again tomorrow night. The Rachel Maddow Show weeknights at 9:00 Eastern on MSNBC.

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