Summary
Former Congressman and former advisor of the January 6 Committee, Denver Riggleman, writes a book about advising the January 6 panel. Riggleman joins Chis Hayes to discuss his new book and new insights on January 5 probe. The January 6 Committee will return with new live hearing on Wednesday. Giorgia Meloni won a clear majority in yesterday`s national election to be Italy`s Prime Minister. Transportation Secretary slams Gov. Ron DeSantis and Gov. Greg Abbott`s migrant stunts.
Transcript
WILLIAM BARBER, PRESIDENT AND SENIOR LECTURER, REPAIRERS OF THE BREACH: People died because they didn`t have --they didn`t have health care and that -- and they`re also poisoning the water. That`s why people are coming together because they`re tired of it and wants change.
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Indeed, Bishop William Barber, Brooke Floyd. Thank you both very much. Much appreciated. That is tonight`s "REIDOUT". ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES starts now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voiceover): Tonight on ALL IN, the January 6 Committee gears back up and a former committee advisor speaks out.
DENVER RIGGLEMAN (R-VA), FORMER UNITED STATES REPRESENTATIVE: There was much more coordination than the American public can even imagine when it came to January 6.
Tonight my exclusive interview with former Republican Congressman Denver Riggleman on claims that his new book of Trump World connections to January 6 extremists and his response to committee pushback on his aha moment.
RIGGLEMAN: You get a real aha moment when you see that the White House switchboard had connected to a rioter`s phone while it`s happening. That`s a pretty big aha moment.
HAYES: Then, why a far-right victory in Italy is sending shockwaves throughout Europe and beyond. And just when you thought cruel treatment of asylum seekers couldn`t backfire anymore.
PETE BUTTIGIEG, U.S. TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: It`s not just ineffectual. It is hurting people in order to get attention.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES (on camera): Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. This week, the January 6 Committee returns from a summer recess with another public hearing that may be its last. Tens of millions of Americans watched the first eight hearings in June and July. There`s some evidence that had a pretty big effect on public opinion. A poll conducted in the days before the eighth hearing show that 40 percent of Republicans believe Donald Trump is at least partly to blame on the attack on the Capitol, up from 33 percent before the hearings.
And along, the Committee`s goals for these public hearings have been pretty clear. Most importantly, they want to air the most salient facts about just what happened on January 6, the plot that led up to the attempted coup and who was responsible for it. But they`ve also quite assiduously aimed to build a wide coalition in American politics of people who err on the side of defending American democracy and against the coup.
And to that end, the committee has made a particular effort to highlight self-described avowed conservatives and Republicans to help make their case. They feature testimony from Donald Trump`s own White House Counsel Pat Cipollone. And his Attorney General Bill Barr. We`ve heard from the Vice President`s Chief of Staff Marc Short and his top counsel Greg Jacob.
The Committee also called former Federal Judge Michael Luttig who is a hero in conservative legal circles. Rusty Bowers, who`s the Arizona House speaker, and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger have testified. Both of those men respected elected Republicans. It`s all been done in an effort to show Republicans that even people who share their politics, who share their worldview or their ideology, their faith, and their commitments, recognize the danger and the abnormality of what happened leading up to and on January 6.
There`s another really interesting person who fits in that mold who has been part of the committee`s work. He has remained mostly behind the scenes until now. You may have seen some news about him this weekend. His name is Denver Riggleman. He`s now very much in the public eye because he`s written a book which is coming out tomorrow about his work as a staffer for the January 6 Committee.
Riggleman had an interesting path to the committee. He spent more than a decade in the Air Force where he worked as an intelligence officer. In 2003, he was posted to the National Security Agency, and a few years later, he co-founded a military contracting company. After selling that business, Riggleman his wife began a new venture opening a distillery in Virginia`s Blue Ridge Mountains. It was their frustration with Virginia`s liquor taxes and strict regulations, which by the way are quite strange, that inspired Denver Riggleman to get into politics.
In 2016, he launched a somewhat quixotic campaign for governor calling it a "Whiskey Rebellion." It gained a following but struggled to raise money, dropped out three months later before the Republican primary. Soon another opportunity arose when a congressional seat opened up in Virginia`s Fifth District. The incumbent there, Republican Tom Garrett, you may remember this story, was facing accusations he use his staff as "personal servants" and decided not to run for reelection.
And so, in 2018, with the endorsement of them President Donald Trump, Denver Riggleman was elected to the United States Congress. He immediately joined the far-right Freedom Caucus, voted with President Trump 92 percent of the time. But Riggleman also began to develop a reputation for some heterodoxy for reaching across the aisle, sometimes riling up his own party. When he officiated the same-sex wedding of two of his campaign staffers, the far right turn on Riggleman. It was the beginning of the end of his quite short congressional premiere -- career finished off by a primary challenge from a more conservative candidate.
Denver Riggleman also started speaking out about the influence of the far- right, the dangers of disinformation and conspiracy theories that have fully infiltrated the Republican Party. In his farewell speech on the House floor, He admonished the bad actors in his party who were spreading lies about the 2020 election.
[20:05:12]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RIGGLEMAN: A well-instructed people and a knowledgeable people, pillars of a working Republic, those pillars are now being assaulted by disinformation and outlandish theories surrounding this presidential election. As we transition to a new administration, I implore all to consider the sources of information you receive, to fact check diligently and to recognize that many bad actors who spread spurious and fantastical conspiracy theories under banners like QAnon, Kraken, Stop the Steal, Scamdemic, and many other emotive terms and coded language, are not disseminating information rooted in the knowledge but with questionable motives and greed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: So, Denver Riggleman, with that speech, essentially moved into the same categories as his former colleagues, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Liz Cheney of Wyoming who were on the committee, conservative Republicans who recognize the acute danger of the MAGA Movement, the one that is taking over the party. And when the House launched its investigation to January 6, it was committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney who recommended Denver Riggleman to join the staff. He drew in his intelligence experience working to analyze data, including online activity and call records.
In the book, Riggleman wrote about his experience. He left the committee in April. He presents some new information in particular about one of the phone calls that he analyzed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RIGGLEMAN: You get a real aha moment when you see that the White House switchboard had connected to a rioter`s phone while it`s happening. That`s a big -- pretty big aha moment. You get to aha --
BILL WHITAKER, CORRESPONDENT, CBS NEWS: Wait a minute. Someone in the White House was calling one of the rioters while the riot was going?
RIGGLEMAN: On January 6, absolutely.
WHITAKER: And you know, who both ends of that call.
RIGGLEMAN: I only know one end of that call. I don`t know the White House`s end, which I believe is more important. But the thing is, the American people need to know that there are link connections that need to be explored more.
HAYES: Now, let me be clear, members of that committee are clearly not happy about what Denver Riggleman is saying. Congressman Adam Schiff of California, Jamie Raskin of Maryland both took the opportunity to shoot down Riggleman`s book`s claimed revelations this weekend.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): You know, I can`t say anything specific about that particular call, but we are aware of it and we are aware of lots of contacts between people in the White House and different people that were involved, obviously, in the coup attempt and the insurrection.
REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): I can`t comment on the particulars. I can say that, you know, each of the issues that Mr. Riggleman raised during the period he was with Committee which ended, you know, quite some time ago, we looked into. And one of the things I think that has given our committee credibility is we`ve been very careful about what we say not to overstate matters, not to understate matters. And without the advantage of the additional information we`ve gathered since he left the committee, you know, it I think poses real risks to be suggesting things.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: In a statement, the Committee said in part, "Mr. Riggleman had limited knowledge of the Committee`s investigation. He departed from the staff in April prior to our hearings and much of our most important investigative work. Since his departure, the Committee has rundown all the leads, digested and analyzed all the information that arose from his work."
And joining me now is the man in question, Former Congressman Denver Riggleman. His new book out tomorrow is The Breach: The Untold Story of the Investigation Into January 6. Good to have you here.
RIGGLEMAN: Hey, thanks, Chris.
HAYES: So, let`s start on this. First of all, this sort of broader context. The committee is clearly not happy. Here`s how I understand they see it. You can sort of tell between the lines, right? You essentially betrayed a trust, right? You go to work on staff there. Now you`re out selling a book. They asked you if you`re going to sell a book, you said no. Now, you are telling things that they haven`t fully vetted or things that they feel they want to control the information on, and ergo that you`re a -- you`re somewhat untrustworthy character.
RIGGLEMAN: Yes, I didn`t betray the trust. They know, I was going to write a book beforehand. New York Times back in April 2021, I said that. But you know, the thing is, I don`t want to make this about, you know, some kind of beef about the Committee because it`s obvious they didn`t read the book yet. So, that`s really what it comes down to.
And it`s a -- it was a little bit surprising. But the thing is, some of those individuals saying that I really think you`ve done a fantastic job. And it was -- it was little bit interesting to see them say some of those things.
HAYES: Well, I guess the question here is, do you -- are you hoping the Committee is successful in it`s undertaking?
RIGGLEMAN: Oh, my goodness, yes. And that`s why, you know, when I wrote the book, I`m like, how do we prove -- how do we show that the minutus form of data, the smallest bite, proves the committee`s in the right direction. So, a lot of this book, sadly, I think people are going to be angry, this is not a, you know, an indictment against the Committee. It`s actually a positive book about the committee. But it just shows that we can be more aggressive in the information warfare space.
And just you know, for instance, today, I just find it funny, you know, following up every lead, that`s great, but you got to know where to look. So, today, you know, in the book, you know, I talked about Kellye SoRelle, that we saw the littlest, tiny bit of data was that she tried to text the White House December 20th. So, that obviously wasn`t followed up because today we had an NBC reporter call about that tiny tidbit when we find out that Kellye SoRelle was texting Andrew Giuliani.
[20:10:10]
So, the issue is that you got to look at the data. They might look at thousands of leads, but these are not counterterrorism analyst. And what I`m saying, though, is that the investigation is going great, the Committee has done well, but we`re in a new war. We`re in a forever war of information war. And you have to look at these tiny pieces of data to really put together the command and control architecture that these individuals use.
And the fact is, I think some of this dialogue that they`re having, which some of it is, you know, a little bit sad. You know, I`m not a -- not a sociopath. You know, sometimes you get my feelings hurt. But, you know, they`re still using our same data teams, the ones I built, the contracts, the millions of lines of data, the call detail records, the text messages. That`s all of our team. That`s me. So, you know, I find it interesting that they would say that.
HAYES: Well, here`s the other thing that I got from Schiff`s statement there, right, is that they understand they have a target painted on their back, right? And anything, any slip up, any error is going to be the source of massive blowback and discrediting. And you can see that they have been extremely careful, and I would say small C conservative in what they prevented -- presented. They made deliberations. This is -- your book is a channel outside of those deliberations about what gets made public.
RIGGLEMAN: Well, that`s because the data is owned by the Americans. It`s owned by Americans. It`s not owned by me, it`s not owned by the committee. This is public trust. I was a former congressman. I was a former CEO. I`ve done this for 20 years. I`ve probably forgotten more about data analytics than everybody on the committee, right? But that`s why they picked me. You know, you talk about, you know, limited knowledge, well, if limited knowledge is 20 years in the counterterrorism field, that`s sort of -- sort of something.
HAYES: Let`s talk about this one phone call, right? So --
RIGGLEMAN: Sure.
HAYES: So, we know -- I mean, I don`t think this has been disputed. I think this is established.
RIGGLEMAN: It`s a fact.
HAYES: It`s a fact, right. There was a phone call from the White House switchboard.
RIGGLEMAN: It`s a -- yes, that`s a landline that actually wraps to the switchboard. It`s the default number that you can actually set through your call manager. So, just like desk phones here --
HAYES: Right.
RIGGLEMAN: -- you call off your desk phone, it goes to a default number, and it goes to an individual.
HAYES: And that individual was a rioter at the Capitol. And it happens around 4:30, I think, is that right?
RIGGLEMAN: It`s 16:34 local.
HAYES: Yes. I guess the -- what do you make of that, right? So, yes, it isn`t aha moment when you hear it, right? The question is like, well, what does it that up to?
RIGGLEMAN: Right. What it adds up to is how in the world in any way would you have somebody on a White House desk calling a rioter on January 6? Let`s go through it. Were they ordering pizza, dialed the wrong number? Probably not, right? Or how about was it a girlfriend?
HAYES: Right, or an associate or someone that was in town from a low level staff, right? I mean --
RIGGLEMAN: So, we have an associate, whoever on that desk phone, is calling a rioter who`s been convicted, who`s a DOJ charged defendant. Here`s the only thing. By the way, the Committee is pursuing this. They wanted to see the White House numbers. They couldn`t get them. There`s hundreds of them. So, there`s so much more here. So, to say that --
HAYES: Well, what`s the so much more, right? To that -- here`s my understanding of what I`ve seen following this very closely, right?
RIGGLEMAN: Right.
HAYES: You`ve got -- the White House is whipping this up, right? Donald Trump is whipping this up.
RIGGLEMAN: Right.
HAYES: He`s got this sort of people that are his kind of off-books team, right, the Bannon and the Roger Stone --
RIGGLEMAN: Right.
HAYES: And then he`s got people floating around, Meadows sort of in the center of it. And then this sort of wide array of characters, right, who are showing up. The question always is, what`s the level of coordination? And then more deeply how much coordination you need when the guy with the biggest megaphone in the world is telling people like, go down to the Capitol?
RIGGLEMAN: Well, you need a little bit of coordination if you`re talking about multiple groups that have multiple objectives. And, you know, in the military, you know, it`s really commander`s intent. And the commander`s intent was we want to keep President Trump in power. That`s what he told us to do. All of these groups, though, they had sort of different organizations, and they had to talk to each other. And if you look at -- if you look at Kellye SoRelle, if you look at Rhodes and Tarrio and those individuals that were, you know, in the basement --
HAYES: Stewart Rhoades of the Oath Keepers, Enrique Tarrio --
RIGGLEMAN: I should probably -- yes.
HAYES: He`s with the Proud Boys. It`s all right.
RIGGLEMAN: I`m sorry about that, Chris. You know, I know this pretty well. When you see that all three of those have been charged with conspiracy or seditious conspiracy and you see that there`s actually phone links between these individuals, and then you have links to Roger Stone that are specific, you know, that will come out eventually, right, that there`s actually phone calls happening between these individuals.
So, that`s the kind of thing -- it`s like, OK, we know that Roger Stone -- we saw a signal chat, you know, on the newspaper at The Washington Post, they reported -- great reporting on that. We see all these different things, but oh, by the way, we have digital confirmation that these individuals were in contact and that is -- that is massive.
HAYES: Yes, let me -- let me talk about Stone.
RIGGLEMAN: Sure.
HAYES: This is a book -- I mean, it always seemed to me -- again, without any access to any data, that Stone was sort of in the middle of a Venn Diagram, right? I mean, we`ve got him We know that he`s in the Willard Hotel -- in the -- in the hotel, right, the day of in the sort of war room.
RIGGLEMAN: Right.
HAYES: We know he`s around Eastman. We know he has Proud Boys or Oath Keeper bodyguards, right? So, all this stuff is -- we`ve seen.
RIGGLEMAN: Right.
HAYES: You write the book that along with the top members the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, his number was connected to higher level Trump associates, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Bernie Kerik, former NYPD Commissioner, close ally Rudy Giuliani, Arthur Schwartz who`s a Manhattan political consultant who work closely with Donald Trump Jr. How central do you think Stone`s roles?
[20:15:19]
RIGGLEMAN: I think since 2016. I mean, he was the Stop the Steal sort of founder there. So, when you think about somebody and you see what he said, who he`s been with, who he`s hired, who he`s called, who he`s contacted, Roger Stone is one of the most important factors of what happened on January 6. It`s just -- it`s not just in what he has said himself, but it`s really in the link connections in the data, and in the people that work for him.
So, if you look at Kristin Davis, right? Kristin Davis maybe didn`t practice as good operational security as Roger Stone. Maybe Kristin Davis is --
HAYES: She`s a longtime associate of Roger Stone.
RIGGLEMAN: Longtime association, right, with Roger Stone. And maybe she also liked hanging around with Mike Flynn. And, you know, maybe she was looser with her phones or text messages. So, you know, that`s why the -- and that`s why I keep going back to committees on the right track here. They`ve done a fantastic job. But the American public needs to know why they`re doing such a great job just because the data is backing up their player.
HAYES: How would you in the year 2022, as we sit here, describe yourself politically, ideologically?
RIGGLEMAN: Non-affiliated. There`s no -- I mean, even looking at, you know, even what happened in the last couple of days, you know, it`s funny is that I would do the set -- you know, if you`re in a political tribe, you have to sort of rally the troops around you, right, if you feel like you don`t know what`s coming, you`re uncertain of what`s happening.
So I have a feeling when the book releases tomorrow, as an unaffiliated individual, I think people are going to calm down a little bit. Because when you look at it, the committee has talked about a lot of this stuff, but I wanted to explain individuals, people that weren`t in the DC beltway, people who maybe come to my distillery, they can read a 280-page book that can break it down like this is why it happened and this is why it`s true and the Committee is correct.
HAYES: Well, that`s what I want to talk to you about. I mean, you know, you were a Republican, and you I think, consider yourself a conservative.
RIGGLEMAN: I do. I do.
HAYES: How do you understand what`s happened? I mean, you are someone who I think along the lines of Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, you know, you have a specific set of beliefs, worldview, you`ve watched this utterly sort of toxic and insidious form of disinformation, lies, alternate reality, kind of come to sort of exercise domain over people that I imagine you call friends --
RIGGLEMAN: And I`ve lost family and friends.
HAYES: -- family, people that you know very well who believe things that you know not to be true. How do you understand what`s happened?
RIGGLEMAN: You know, you understand it from really -- you know, there`s things that I`m going to say that really backed up by what people say, you know, self-identify. But I think it comes from a belief system of good against evil where they`re just easily radicalized. And this is intensely personal to me. You know, after the wedding, Chris, you know, when somebody comes up to your face from me to you --
HAYES: This is after the staffers` wedding which is a same-sex marriage that you officiated.
RIGGLEMAN: After the same sex one. That`s right. So, I might be a little bit angrier than other people. This guy -- this is very personal to me. I mean, not just the death threats or people messing with my vehicle while my daughter is driving it, which was actually an attempt on my life. That stuff happened, right. And I had somebody come to my face after -- with my two staffers after marrying them and scream in you`re the general the sodomite armies, right? I was called the tool of the Antichrist. My wife was called the small of Satan.
By the way, that would make us the biggest power couple in the United States. But --
HAYES: It`s a good buy.
RIGGLEMAN: Right and also, if you think about it, too, with the distillery, we were -- we were accused of funneling money for George Soros to our distillery. It was --
HAYES: But how did you -- do you know that backlash was coming? And when you were face to face with it -- because I`ve talked to a lot of people who have been in your -- some version of your shoes. If you saw Rusty Bowers, right?
RIGGLEMAN: Right.
HAYES: I mean, people who -- I mean, I`ve talked to random public health people in, you know, Tennessee who one day, they`re out there saying, oh, you should wear masks. The next, I got people at their door. Like, how did you understand what is happening in America that happened to you and keeps happening to people?
RIGGLEMAN: Radicalization. Social media has changed the landscape. And the ability to put money behind radicalization is maybe the biggest thing we`ve ever seen. You -- I mean, Chris, we can -- we can pick anywhere we want to go on the internet, right? Deep web, dark web, open web, I can go to any forum, right? I`m not even going to -- I was about to tell a joke, I won`t. But I think we can go anywhere we want. We could -- you know, we can self- select whatever we want. We`ve gone to a unicast world. It`s not multicast anymore. We can self-select that crazy place you`re going to.
And by the way, it`s good against evil. Where -- I`m a globalist.
HAYES: It justifies a lot. Yes.
RIGGLEMAN: You know, there you go.
HAYES: Denver Riggleman, author of The Breach, which is out tomorrow, thank you very much. That was certainly illuminating.
RIGGLEMAN: Thank you.
HAYES: Still ahead, the next public January 6 hearing is just days away. What the committee plans to share after three months away and why Donald Trump`s dirty trickster Roger Stone is right in the middle of it. Next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:20:00]
HAYES: A former congressman and former January 6 Committee staffer Denver Riggleman is releasing that new book tomorrow one day before the next possibly the last hearing by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack. We don`t know yet exactly what the hearing will focus on. We don`t have a witness list, but it may cover the alleged role of the man we were just discussing, longtime Trump ally and Republican fixer Roger Stone in his efforts to overturn the election.
According to The Washington Post, "The committee is considering including video clips in which Stone predicted violent clashes with left-wing activists and forecasts months before the 2020 vote but then-President would use armed guards and loyal judges to stay in power.
Nicholas Wu covers Congress for Politico. He`s been on the committee beat. And Asha Rangappa is a former FBI Special Agent, as well as an attorney and senior lecturer at Yale University. Both join me now.
Nicholas, let me start with you, just in terms of your reporting on the committee -- what the committee is preparing for this week, and also their reaction to the Riggleman book which clearly has them extremely unpleased?
NICHOLAS WU, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, POLITICO: Well, let`s start with Mr. Riggleman. We know that the committee is really, in some ways, put some distance between itself and Former Congressman Riggleman as far as this book goes. They put out a statement over the weekend noting that he left the committee in April before he had actually -- before the committee is able to interview some of its most important witnesses like Pat Cipollone or cast --or, you know, be able to call Cassidy Hutchinson publicly. And so, you know, there`s a certain degree of separation they put between themselves and their former aide.
At the same time, you know, when I asked the committee chair about the book last week, he said that he just hadn`t, you know, read it yet and wasn`t able to comment on it yet. And so, I think that what the committee`s main focus has been on right now is trying to prepare for this final hearing. As we know, this is a committee that is very tight-lipped about a lot of its plans. They try to tamp down the leaks. They really keep things close to the chest until they`re ready to present
HAYES: Yes.
WU: And that I think is likely what we`re going to see as we head into this final hearing.
HAYES: Yes. I want to talk about the reporting that indicated Stone may be the subject. We now have some clips of video that we understand will be introduced as evidence. I want to play one of these that we`ve gotten our hands on, Asha, and sort of get your reaction because I think in some ways, Stone has been a figure who seems so central about whom we haven`t heard a ton despite the fact that he does seem at the sort of center of a bunch of Venn diagrams.
This is a little clip of a documentary that was made I think believed by Danish filmmakers of Roger Stone. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROGER STONE, TRUMP ALLY: Excellent. (BLEEP) the voting. Let`s get to violence.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let`s get right to it.
STONE: Shoot to kill. If you see an Antifa, shoot to kill. (BLEEP) them. I`m done with this (BLEEP).
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: All right, amidst the bleeped-out expletives, that`s Roger Stone saying shoot to kill about Antifa. He was writing along with that that Danish documentary group. It does seem like there`s more footage. And I wonder what significance you think Stone place the investigation, Asha?
ASHA RANGAPPA, FORMER FBI SPECIAL AGENT: Well, I think stone is going to be one of the main linchpins that ties a lot of these threads together. I mean, we already know that he actually had contact -- was -- had physical protection by some of the militia groups that have since been charged with seditious conspiracy. So, we know that he was in communication with them. And I think the question is, what was the nature of that communication?
And then also, you know, he was the architect of this whole stop the steel movement. I mean, actually, he coined this back in 2016 in anticipation of that election. So, this has been a long con. And so, I`m not surprised that, you know, that he had this formulated in his mind. And in many ways, I would say that I expect his role to be not very different than what surfaced in the Mueller investigation where he was a linchpin between, you know, WikiLeaks and the Trump campaign. I mean, he`s always kind of in the center, getting his hands dirty and that`s where I guess he loves to be. And I will be interested to see what the committee has uncovered with regard to his role.
HAYES: It`s a great point because we`ve already been through this this movie once before in which Stone plays this kind of sort of plausible deniability off book role, an informal adviser kind of running ops that can be -- that aren`t officially part of, you know, sanction, but he can talk to other people and you know, he was convicted by a jury of witness tampering, obstruction. He ended up being pardoned by Trump which is why he`s was out and about doing his thing in the run up to this.
But, Nicholas, what is your understanding about this schedule pass this hearing? There was some back and forth in the Committee, it was interesting to me, where some of the members seem to indicate this was the last one they had planned. Liz Cheney was like, not so fast. What do you think about that?
WU: Well, the committee has said that this will be their final hearing for now. And given how a lot of the scheduling has been with this investigation, we`re inclined to believe them. But they`ve still very much reserved have the right to hold another hearing if the opportunity arises. And they`ve set the bar very high for that.
Remember that the emergency hearing they held over the summer, the last- minute one, was when Cassidy Hutchinson came and testified publicly and helped fill in a lot of key gaps in the investigation so far. But there`s - - it doesn`t appear there`s anything on the schedule for now. And, and remember, Congress goes on break again in October as members go back home to campaign for reelection.
And so at the very least, we know that they have a final report coming before the end of the year, and there will likely be some kind of presentation or hearing to lay out those findings. So, Wednesday`s hearing might be a final argument in some ways for the January 6 Committee, but that`s just for the time being.
[20:30:44]
HAYES: Yes. And that -- we also wonder if there`ll be some kind of interim document issued before that final report, which many people anticipate as well. Nicholas Wu, Asha Rangappa, thank you both. I appreciate it.
RANGAPPA: Thank you.
HAYES: Still to come, Ron DeSantis cannot escape his own human trafficking scandal.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUTTIGIEG: You flee a communist regime in Venezuela, you come here, and then somebody tricks you -- somebody`s using Florida taxpayer money for some reason tricks you into going from Texas to Massachusetts. It`s not just ineffectual. It is hurting people in order to get attention.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: How the Republican Governor of Florida`s performative cruelty keeps blowing up in his face ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:35:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WHY): I think for example, that Governor Younkin in Virginia is doing a good job. I think that he`s demonstrated that he`s somebody who has not bought into the toxin of Donald Trump. But he campaigned recently for Kari Lake. He went and campaigned --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Republican candidate in Arizona for governor.
CHENEY: Right. Who is an election denier, who is dangerous. And that`s the kind of thing we cannot see in our party. We cannot see an accommodation like that.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Does that include campaigning for Democrats if that`s what it takes?
CHENEY: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It does. OK.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Threats to American democracy are so cute that Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney says she will support Democrats in November. It`d be as completely shocking statement were not for the January 6 Committee hearings co-chaired by Cheney and Democratic Congressman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, highlighting the threat to American democracy which is the number one issue for voters according to a recent NBC News survey, even higher than the cost of living and the economy.
There`s at least one more hearing on the docket. As we head towards Election Day. This Wednesday afternoon, we expect to hear more about Donald Trump`s actions and inaction during the Capitol riot, perhaps a result of new interviews conducted and investigatory leads followed since the last hearing back in July.
Members have said there`s still a large amount of evidence to display though this hearing is a bit of a mystery. No witness list is being provided beforehand. You can of course watch the hearing live on MSNBC with special coverage starting at noon Eastern. And Wednesday night right here at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, it`s the latest edition of our primetime coverage of hearings breaking down what we learned and what may come next.
Rachel Maddow hosts an all-star table of that analysis featuring Nicolle Wallace, Joy Reid, Lawrence O`Donnell, Stephanie Ruhle, Ari Melber, Alex Wagner, and of course, yours truly. It`s going to be a big night, so please join us for that.
Still ahead, the ghosts of fascism that haunt Europe. Meet the far-right politician likely to be Italy`s new leader next.
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[20:40:00]
HAYES: Around the world, we are seeing the rise of right-wing nationalism with roots in old fascist ideologies. The latest example is in Italy were a hard right coalition led by Giorgia Meloni won a clear majority in yesterday`s national election. Meloni is the leader of the Brothers of Italy Party, which has its roots in neo-fascism, like the actual neo- fascism of Italian fascism.
She`s now on track to lead the most right-wing governing coalition the country has seen since World War II. She has also been a big hit with the right wing in the U.S. Republican Congressman Marjorie Taylor-Greene congratulate Meloni on her victory although she did misspelled her name. Podcaster Ted Cruz retweeted a video of Meloni speaking writing "spectacular." And here`s former Trump adviser Steve Bannon with Giorgia Meloni talking to the Guardian in 2018.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat is professor of history and Italian studies in New York University, author of the book Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present, also writes about democracy and autocracy in her substack Loosen. Ruth, I know Italian politics particularly the lineage of Italian Fascism is your work, your academic work. When people -- you know, people on the right will say you liberals, you call everything fascists you don`t like, any conservative fascist. You`re just sort of slandering this new conservative faction Italy. What do you say to that?
RUTH BEN-GHIAT, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND ITALIAN STUDIES, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY: Yes, well, she`s calling herself a conservative and this is just to cover up. This is somebody who was a hardcore neo-fascist militant. From when she was 15, she became the leader of the neo-fascist party, the same party that was founded right after Mussolini`s death, to carry on fascism and the post war. She became the leader of the student organization.
And the fact that if you look at the party`s logo, it has a tricolour flame in it. And that`s just -- that`s not just about patriotism, the colors of the flag, she insisted that that flame stay in the logo because it is the logo, it`s the flame was in the original neo-fascist party emblem. And so, people have told her to take it out. And Mussolini`s granddaughter is also in her party, who also told her to take it out and she won`t because she is attached to this neo-fascist lineage. So, the fact she`s saying she`s a conservative and a good patriot, I don`t buy it.
[20:45:00]
HAYES: What is the significance of this victory in a country obviously, whose politics are incredibly fluid? I was joking yesterday on Twitter. The only silver lining here is that most Italians will hate Meloni in three months, more or less, because when the country is essentially ungovernable, they always end up hating the Prime Minister. But what is the significance of this victory which really has sent some pretty seismic shockwaves for Europe and even across the U.S.?
BEN-GHIAT: Well, she -- they got 20 -- her own party got 26 percent of the vote, which is a huge growth from last time. And the coalition, as a whole, had over 40 percent. So, she has a very clear mandate to govern. She has a majority in parliament. Now, who are her governing partners, it`s like it doesn`t inspire much, you know, optimism for rule of law. It`s, you know, Salvini`s lead, which is so racist, that a few years ago, he called for a mass cleansing of immigrants.
And then you have Berlusconi for Italia. And he`s a convicted criminal for bribery, you know, tax fraud, sex with a minor, and many other things. So - - but yet, together they have this majority in parliament. And so, it`s true that the -- it`s very easy to make a coalition government fall in Italy, but they -- it`s not -- it`s not clear that they`re just going to be there, you know, for six months or something, because this was also a protest vote against the other party`s, in particular, the center-left, which was seen as kind of exhausted and no longer the advocate of the working class. And economic equality and unemployment are huge problems in Italy.
And they`re also seen as too establishment and too elitist. And they -- and they`ve kind of lost their way in that sense.
HAYES: Yes, this is -- the dominant theme across essentially all of Europe, the U.K., the U.S., right? We`ve seen here when people talk about a place like Youngstown or parts of the rust belt that used to be Democratic strongholds that have moved over to Trump, right? There are replications of that in English towns when we saw the Brexit returns and we saw that -- when Corbin was standing for election.
The flip side is that urban centers, metropoles that have relatively high education, populations that used to be conservative moving towards the center left, we see that in everywhere. And we saw it in the Italian returns, places that had been left strongholds moving to the right, places that have been conservative strongholds in cities. What -- how do you understand what`s going on, this trend that`s happening across developed democracies?
BEN-GHIAT: Yes, this -- if I were a Democratic strategist, I`d be taking very careful note of this. And in Italy, in fact, the strongholds of the left for forever, like Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, they have very low -- they did very badly. It`s -- you know, democratic parties with small D are not -- they`re not using the same kind of emotional appeals. And also, you know, concrete policies that are really catering to working class and lower middle-class woes.
But a lot of this is about emotions. The right has been able to make feel - - people feel part of something with rallies, and Trump did it with slogans and chants and a sense of elevating people and taking them seriously and listening to them, even if it`s false. And Democrats have not been able to do this as well. And they`re paying -- they`re paying the price all over.
HAYES: It does seem also central all these is immigration, right? The fact that these are -- the movement of people across borders has increased quite a bit in the last 20 to 30 years. It has changed societies and their demographic makeup, not just U.S. and U.K., in Italy, across Europe, particularly places with declining populations. And this idea of, you know, Italy, for the Italians, is -- has a certain kind of power that connects again, across a lot of these countries.
BEN-GHIAT: Yes, it does. I`m glad you mentioned immigration, because again, the theme of Meloni, you`re going to keep hearing, including from her friends in the GOP, that she`s a conservative, and she is a an exponent of great replacement theory, but so far to the right that she`s even to the right of Tucker Carlson, because there are people who espouse great replacement theory. Oh, there`s demographic change happening like it`s passive, you know, fewer white babies. She actually believes that there`s a plot, she calls it a design, a plan by George Soros and the E.U. to flood Europe with mass immigration and make white civilization, you know, fall apart.
HAYES: We have heard that before for sure. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, thank you very much.
[20:50:01]
Still to come, the Ron DeSantis human trafficking scandal and our firsthand account of the mysterious woman lured dozens of migrants on a plane with false promises, next.
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HAYES: Tonight new reporting has brought us one step closer to learning the identity of Perla, the figure at the center of Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis` craven stunt to essentially traffic migrants to Massachusetts without their knowledge or genuine consent. One migrant who Perla recruited to help pick other passengers for that flight to Massachusetts now says he feels betrayed.
The man who spoke to the media anonymously says Perla offered him food, clothes, and money to help recruit other migrants to be flown to Massachusetts. He says he was not aware of the scheme or that it was backed by the Governor of Florida, that he was told they were going to a place that would shelter them. He also says Perla warned him not to talk to reporters.
Also, the Washington Post managed to interview one migrant who was part of the DeSantis scheme, a man named Jose. He fled Venezuela after he says he was stabbed by a gang who believed his family had ties to an anti- government group. Jose described being misled about where he would be taken and the fear and heartbreak of being deceived at his most vulnerable moment.
"When Jose met Perla outside of McDonald`s, he told her he needed to reach Philadelphia where an ants friend had offered to put him up. I can take you where you`re going. He said Perla told them. She was very nice. It looks like everything she was saying was true. The plane DeSantis chartered instead took Jose and about 50 other desperate people to an island in the Atlantic Ocean off Massachusetts instead of Philadelphia.
Jose says he was devastated. "If I tell you how I felt, I want to cry, Jose said. I felt destroyed inside, tricked, frightened. I didn`t know if they`re going to put me in jail and they deport me. I just wanted to get to Philadelphia. There is now a class action suit against DeSantis for this stunt. The Florida Governor is defending himself with this waiver, the migrant signed. Hey, they volunteered. But as you can see, it only partially is translated into Spanish. The part mentioning Massachusetts is only in English.
What`s more, and get this, as the Post reports, Jose and others sign the waiver under less than ethical circumstances it appears. Perla offered migrants $10 McDonald`s gift cards if they sign the waivers. So, desperate people who don`t know where their next meal is coming from unknowingly signing away their right to recourse in exchange for fast food. That`s the consent DeSantis is waving around to defend himself.
Ron DeSantis actually bragged to donors about the stump the days before it happened, telling them, "Maybe we will go to Texas and help. Maybe we`ll send to Chicago, Hollywood, Martha`s Vineyard, who knows? Now, DeSantis` stunt was actually caused something of a rift among his fellow Republicans, not because of its cruelty, but because of the attention he`s getting.
New York Times reports that Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott is mad DeSantis essentially ripped off his bid. Abbott has been busing vulnerable migrants to blue cities for months now with relatively little fanfare. And since the shadow primary for 2024 requires Republicans to outdo one another and how monstrous they can be, Abbott feels like DeSantis stole his thunder.
For his part, DeSantis is reportedly envious that Abbott gets to spend so much time grandstanding about the border. DeSantis mused to donors last year about Abbott`s good political fortunes, to share 1254 miles of border with Mexico and complain he didn`t have the same to use as a backdrop. In an event in Texas, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg was asked about the weirdly thirsty antics of Ron DeSantis. He summed it all pretty darn well.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUTTIGIEG: Obviously, there are issues with the border and with migration. But these are the kinds of stunts you see from people who don`t have a solution. Like, where was he -- Governor DeSantis was in Congress. Where was he when they were debating immigration reform? What have any of these people done to be part of the solution? So, you know, I get if you`re after attention. It`s one thing to call attention to a problem when you have a course of action, as some of the folks here speak enough about an issue exercising their First Amendment rights have done or in elected office. It`s another to just call attention to a problem because the problem is actually more useful to you than the solution and that helps you call attention to yourself.
That`s what`s going on. And the problem of course, it`s one thing if that was just people being obnoxious, but human beings are being impacted by that. You flee a communist regime in Venezuela. You come here and then somebody tricks you -- somebody`s using Florida taxpayer money for some reason tricks you into going from Texas to Massachusetts. It`s not just ineffectual. It is hurting people in order to get attention
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HAYES: He put some pretty good nuggets there. The problem more useful than the solution clearly the case, and hurting people to get attention, which is as good a summary of the MAGA ethos as I`ve heard.
That is ALL IN on this Monday night. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Chris. Thank you, my friend. Good to see you.
HAYES: Good to see you too.
MADDOW: Much appreciated. And thanks to you at home for joining us here this hour. I`m really happy to have you here.