Transcription
AS WE COME ON THE AIR, there are 800,000 people in the state of Arizona who are right now being deprived of full representation in Congress, thanks to House Speaker Mike Johnson's refusal to swear in their Congresswoman-elect, Adelita Grijalva.
Mike Johnson has doubled and tripled and quadrupled down on his refusal to seat Grijalva. He is claiming that he's following House traditions: swearing in members only during regular sessions. Except that isn't his own tradition. As with many things, for a Republican, there's an obvious and clear double standard staring us in the face. When Republicans are the ones who win and would benefit, Mike Johnson, as he did in April, swore in two new House GOP members during a pro forma session.
"Watch. Representatives-elect Fine and Petronas, and members of the Florida delegation, present yourselves in the well. As all members rise, and the Representatives-elect, uh, will you please raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear or affirm that you will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that you will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, that you take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that you will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which you are about to enter. So help you God."
"I do."
"Congratulations, you're now members of the 119th Congress."
See, Mike, you can do it. That oath was administered when they were not in session and, importantly, within 24 hours of those Republicans' victories.
Now, almost a month after Representative Adelita Grijalva's victory to represent her late father's district, the state of Arizona is taking legal action. Arizona's Attorney General, Chris Mays, has filed a lawsuit against Mike Johnson for blocking Grijalva from being sworn in to do the job she was elected to do. He argues that constitutional rights cannot be used as a bargaining chip.
Attorney General Mays adds in a piece for MSNBC, "This isn't just an attack on the voters of Arizona's 7th District. It's an affront to every American who has a constitutional right to representation in Congress." Let's be blunt: this is taxation without representation, the very injustice that sparked the American Revolution 250 years ago.
As for Mike Johnson's motives for breaking his own very recent precedent and refusing to seat Grijalva, a Democratic representative, we're left to guess. But we do know that Grijalva has promised publicly to be the pivotal 218th signature on the House's bipartisan Epstein Discharge Petition.
The filing from Arizona's Attorney General states, "Speaker Johnson has not identified any valid reason for refusing to promptly seat Ms. Grijalva. Instead, on information and belief, Speaker Johnson wishes to delay seating Ms. Grijalva to prevent her from signing a discharge petition that would force a vote on the release of the Epstein files and/or to strengthen his hand in the ongoing budget and appropriations negotiations."
That is where we start today. I want to bring in Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva of Arizona. Also joining me at the table, former Criminal Division Deputy Chief at STNY, MSNBC Legal Analyst, the host of the YouTube show Courtside, Christy Greenberg is here. Joining us as well, Tara Palmieri. She writes "The Red Letter" on Substack and has hosted two acclaimed podcast series on the topic called "Broken Jeffrey Epstein" and "Power the Maxwells."
Representative-elect Grijalva, um, just take us inside your current state of limbo.
It's, um, basically, we have access to what was my dad's office. It'll be my office until December of 2026. Um, we have keys. We have, um, I have a laptop, but we don't have access to any of the databases that are important. And respectfully, I can't serve constituents until I'm sworn in and actually have constituents.
Have you had any conversations with Speaker Mike Johnson about why he saw to it to swear in two Republican representatives when Congress wasn't in session, but won't see to it to swear you in?
You know, I, I heard him say no. There's been no direct conversation with me and Speaker Johnson. He's made flippant comments and sort of, you know, these explanations that are, and excuses that are debunked on a regular basis. But, um, what he said is that the Florida, the two members from Florida scheduled an appointment for that, for them to be sworn in, which I'm like, how do I sign up for that gig? And that he, they brought in their families. And so that's why they made the exception. But, so if I sign up and bring in my family, will he swear me in? No. He's basically continued to make excuses about why, um, I'm not sworn in and has not made any effort to communicate those to me directly.
Have you, like, walked into his office and, and tried to ask him for one of those appointments?
Well, we did go down. I went with a couple of friends down to his office to try to get some attention. He wasn't there, and I respectfully don't know when he is there. Um, I did call. I've left two messages. I, we sent a letter, and then AG May sent a demand letter. Um, I did recently, just yesterday, receive a call from his chief, uh, you know, to sort of, because I called and said, can we, do we schedule a meeting or how does this happen? Then he gave me the number to another chief to schedule something. But at this point, now that the lawsuit has been filed, it's probably better for me not to have any direct communication with him outside of legal counsel.
Would you, is the lawsuit, um, intended for a court and a judge to require him to swear you in, and would you drop the lawsuit if he proceeded and swore you in?
Well, and, and this is, so this is for Attorney General May to weigh in, but our big issue is swear her in, give us a date. And that's why I think, you know, people have been asking, well, why did we take so long? Well, one, my, now my race is certified. And once that happened, then Attorney General May, I think, started looking at, okay, so what are the other reasons? Because being in a shutdown does not include swearing people in, because there was a whole class in 2019 that was sworn in during the shutdown. I mean, I've met with many members of Congress that were sworn in in a special. It's pretty common and it's supposed to happen fairly quickly. So this stalling is just really highlighting, um, you know, why Speaker Johnson is doing this. And the other is, it's just blatant obstruction.
What is your sense of how desperate he is to avoid this vote on the discharge petition?
Well, we do know that Speaker Johnson ended cases early, um, to avoid, I mean, send everyone home a week early in order to avoid having this vote on the House floor. So I do think that even if I signed that discharge petition, there is going to be some sort of, in Spanish we call it "movidas," like something that's going to happen, um, to sort of preclude those, um, files being released. But really, the, the survivors need justice, and those that are implicated in that information and those files need to be brought to justice.
Let me bring in my, my colleagues here. Um, Tara Palmieri, the survivors and the victims have not been silenced, and the public support for them and what they want is aligned. 81% of Americans believe Donald Trump is hiding something in the Epstein files, and they believe his leaders at the Department of Justice are involved in a cover-up that has not gone away with Mike Johnson, um, preventing the 218th vote and swearing in, um, Congresswoman Grijalva. What is your sense of what is happening, um, maybe that we can't see during this standoff?
Actually, Nicole, I think it's only growing. The desire for the, the files to be released. I think Virginia Giuffre's memoir and the headlines that are coming out and the, um, repercussions that they're feeling in the UK. There are a lot of questions about why in this country, where people are protesting about no kings, um, you're seeing the monarchy in, in the UK suffering more as a result of what's inside of the Epstein files than what's happening in the US. Um, but the sense is that there are people that are being protected and departments that are being protected, like the Department of Justice. I think if the Epstein files are revealed, you'll understand more about why Jeffrey Epstein continued to get away with crime starting back in '19, uh, in the early 1990s when he was involved in a Ponzi scheme, one of the biggest Ponzi schemes at the time, $300 million. His partner, Steven Hoffenberg, went to jail for the rest of his life. Jeffrey Epstein helped the prosecutors, and he got to be, he was, you know, he lived there for many, many years without facing any arrest. And, and then he only spent 13 months in prison for sex trafficking. But, you know, he also helped prosecutors in a Bear Stearns case. I mean, I think that they're afraid of opening Pandora's Box, but Virginia's book has already started to do that, and the pressure is going to be too intense.
Joining us now, former Maricopa County, Arizona reporter and Cato Institute scholar Steven Richer, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar, staff writer for The Atlantic Adam Sower, and MSNBC Legal Correspondent Lisa Rubin. Mr. Secretary of State, first to you, if you were not on that call in Arizona, were any of your election officials on that call?
They were not. We participated. Yeah, no worries. We did not participate in the call. I didn't see the value of participating in the call. We know what they were going to say. Elections are run at the state level. We're preparing at the state level with our 17 counties to ensure that we have a strong 2026 election. The time invested in working with them at the local level is critical and more important than hearing the rhetoric that has already been debated and discussed among the voters in the '22 election. In the '22 election, every pro-democracy secretary won their race against an election denier.
Do you have any concerns about efforts going into 2026?
Absolutely. I think the concern is the misinformation that's being put out there by the federal government. However, we know that the state owns and has the right to run its elections as they see fit for its citizens, and that's where we continue to fight. If they really want to be helpful in the elections process, they need to invest in elections. We need the resources to ensure that we have safe and secure and accessible elections. I say this all the time, that Nevada runs some of the safest, most secure, and accessible elections in the country.
Steven, who is Heather Honey?
Well, I want to begin with saying that we'd be happy to have Cisco back in Arizona. I know he went to the University of Arizona, so you're welcome back anytime. Heather Honey is an election fraud enthusiast who had a bit of a background in investigations, but she had no background in election administration. She's never been part of election administration and she had no background in elections at all prior to 2020. She's somebody who started with the conclusion that the 2020 election was stolen, and she pursued it vigorously and intensively and consistently. And so therefore, she has risen and risen within the Trump orbit. And for anyone who's looking for, well, hasn't this all been going on for a while? How is this different? The first Trump administration. Well, it's because responsible actors, by and large, were in the Department of Homeland Security and the DOJ in the first administration. And now at this point, we have some people who will probably tell the President, "No, the election wasn't stolen," if he should ask again in the future, but let me find you a reason why it was.
So is that just going to be rhetoric? I mean, is, or can she disrupt elections?
Elections are run by states. States have power over elections. It's part of, um, it's one of the rules. The federal government does not have power over state elections. But if she wanted to get involved or if she wanted to to pursue something, what does she have beyond rhetoric?
Well, she has broad authority to investigate through the Department of Homeland Security, and then, of course, if it's accompanied by the Department of Justice, then they have broad authority to prosecute. And I promise you that can potentially disrupt an election. And if nothing else, it will make a number of election administrators nervous if they're simply calling spades a spade and saying, "No, the 2020 election wasn't stolen," or "No, the 2020 election wasn't stolen," or "The 2028 election wasn't stolen." And so now, I think for the first time ever, we have a number of people within these government offices who are willing to indulge the most fanciful of claims, and that simply did not exist in President Trump's administration in 2020, by and large, with the exceptions of people like John Eastman.
Can you tell me a little bit more about why states are responsible for their elections and why it is not the purview of the federal government?
Well, there are some laws that essentially say that states have responsibility for administering their elections, and that includes elections that through which we elect members of Congress, for example, and also presidential electors. There are certain things that Congress can control, but of course, Heather Honey wants to go around both actors here. She not only wants to obfuscate the power of states, but in some of the statements that she allegedly made during that phone call, she's basically saying that she doesn't really want to have to cooperate with Congress either, that by declaring, for example, a federal emergency subject to her investigation, that she can grab control over some of these procedures herself, without the permission of either states or Congress. That is, in part, Katie, what makes some of her allegations and descriptions of how she plans to use her authority as dangerous as they were on that call, as reported by The Times.
How can she possibly continue to say that with any sort of authority or credibility that the election was stolen and they need to do more investigations into it when there were 60 cases?
Well, and in particular, Heather Honey should know better because in 2022, well after the 2020 election, and Steven knows this probably better than anybody else, she was a witness in litigation brought in Arizona where she claimed that certain procedures used by a particular county could have allowed absentee ballots to be counted. And again, I'm reading from the New York Times story right now, but as she was questioned, she acknowledged she had no evidence that this had occurred on a widespread scale. She was fully discredited as a witness in that Arizona litigation, and a judge found, and again, I'm quoting from his decision, "would not come close to clear and convincing evidence that the election outcome was affected." Nonetheless, Heather Honey has it in her mind that more people voted than were entitled to vote across a number of states in various counties, etc., and she is not letting go of that idea, joining forces with people like Cleta Mitchell to say that they are the true defenders of election integrity, and they will get to the bottom of why there are discrepancies between voter rolls and the number of votes cast. They believe there is widespread fraud in who is registered to vote and who is actually voting, and that they themselves are the only ones who are willing and able to get to the bottom.
All right, so here's the hard question. I'm going to give this to you, Adam, and this is how cynical should one be about the next elections, 2026 or 2028? And I ask that because we've seen special elections that have gone on, tampered with even by rhetoric. I mean, Representative Grijalva, who has not yet been seated, still won her special election. Nobody's claiming fraud over over that race. So how cynical is it, is it, is it fair to be in considering Honey, uh, Heather Honey, um, and Donald Trump's own rhetoric regarding the next election cycle?
Well, I would say two things. One is that the allegations of fraud are more of a spiritual belief than a factual one. Their belief is that real Americans voted for Donald Trump, and therefore other people's votes really shouldn't count, especially if he lost. Um, and therefore, you know, uh, it's fine for them to claim victory anyway. Uh, Donald Trump was told by his advisors that, uh, you know, there was no fraud in that election. We know that from the Jack Smith indictment and from reporting by sources like The New York Times before that indictment was handed down. The second part is that the voter fraud claims, we must remember, were pretexts for an attempted seizure of power, uh, legal, unlawful seizure of power in the aftermath of the election. Donald Trump tried to stay in office despite the fact that he had been voted out, uh, and I think we should simply see all this rhetoric, whether or not there's a practical effect on the actual results of these elections because the states do run them. We should see this as an excuse to say, "Well, I get to stay in power regardless of the results," you know, after the next election if he does not win.
So on a practical level, Mr. Secretary of State, what are you doing or what are you prepared to do in Nevada if the President or somebody in his administration, be it Heather Honey or someone else, claims that your results are not accurate, that they're fraudulent, and that they shouldn't be counted?
I think it's understanding that the average Nevadan doesn't share that belief. We've been through this issue. We're constantly preparing for these elections. We are building transparency efforts to ensure that information is given to the voter in real time, but it's also having Nevadans understand that there are 17 counties. There are 17 clerks and registers. 15 of those 17 are Republican Party members. That they are doing what's in the best interests of their local community. They know their voters. They know what the expectations are, and they're preparing for it every day. What rhetoric they're delivering is actually having, I think, unintended consequences. I think there's a small group of Americans who have this belief in what they're falsifying, but the majority don't. They believe in the elections process. They believe that their vote counts, and that they're going to continue to participate. And the more that they spread this information, the more likely it is it's going to backfire on them. You know, '26 is a critical election for '28, and as the Chair of the Democratic Association of Secretary of State, we have to ensure that strong secretaries get elected into every battleground state and other states around the country because we need to ensure that '28 is going to be a solid election.
Steven Richard, what if there are National Guard troops on the ground, um, and, and people are concerned about feeling intimidated to go to the polls? Or, or what if there is another, uh, argument that these election machines are all being hacked? I know there's transparency. I know people like you and people like the Secretary of State have been going out and trying to say these things are not attached to the internet. I mean, Chris Krebs has said that over and over again, they're not attached to the internet, they can't be hacked, but that, that myth, that, that lie is still pushed. So there's that. But then there's also just the physical aspect of it. If there's National troops on the ground in some of these polling places, what's the advice of of local officials?
Well, I would say if you're in a state like Nevada or Arizona, you can certainly vote ahead of time. You can vote no-excuse early, and you can vote by mail. As for machines being hacked, not only are they not connected to the internet, but 97% of voters in the United States use a paper ballot. That means that there is always a non-hackable, auditable paper trail. And to my fellow conservatives and Republicans out there, I would say, continue to believe in the rule of law. And the rule of law, the courts have shown consistently after 2020, after 2022, after 2024, that despite what people like Heather Honey have alleged, our elections have been fair, and they have been lawful, and they have been accurate. And if the courts rule such in 2026, then I hope and I trust that people will abide by the results of those elections.
We are now in week four of the government shutdown with no clear end in sight. Democrats are demanding Republicans extend the subsidies used by more than 20 million people to lower the cost of health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, particularly in those ACA marketplaces. Republicans just won't do it and don't want to negotiate about it. So now people around the country are getting a preview of how much their healthcare might cost.
My name is Mary Prey. I'm from Westford, New Jersey. Last spring, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was able to get treatment. I rang the bell, and now I'm in the follow-up stage. If I didn't have that insurance, I would not have gone for the testing and gotten that diagnosis. If that insurance goes away, how am I going to maintain my health? How am I going to take care of my family? I'm right now I'm paying almost $300 a month. If that goes away, I'm going to get stuck paying $2,500 a month. I can't afford that. So my option becomes no insurance. Do I insure my kids and not me and my husband?
That was one of New Jersey Senator Cory Booker's constituents. He often has been collecting those stories, and he joins me now. Um, Senator, I've, I've been hearing stories like that from a lot of people. We've been seeing people post on even Reddit threads as open enrollment starts. They've been taking screenshots of the the price being quoted for them. If, let's say the Democrats were successful here, how would you imagine that success becoming a legislative solution? Meaning like, what would the steps be such that something would get passed and, and it would be part of a deal to end the shutdown?
Well, for me, they have to do something more than promises. I don't trust this President. Uh, I don't trust, uh, the word of Republicans. Um, I want to see something substantive because of exactly that video you showed. I, I spent tonight calling New Jersey constituents who had reached out to me from a small business person who is desperately trying to hold on to their health insurance for their children and for their spouse, to a farmer in my state who employs 12 people. Everybody's on the exchange. She's facing a $12,000 annual increase. Um, and has two beautiful little girls that she's taking care of. The, the reality that they were saying to me is, please do not stop fighting to get this subsidy there. And, and Chris, you and I know this, it, it, it is so ridiculous what we are watching right now, uh, from the Senate. We're watching him come up with tens of billions of dollars to bail out Argentina. We are watching him spend $100, at least $100 million on destroying the White House to rebuild, uh, in his image. Uh, we're seeing people, Republicans find money for everything imaginable when it comes to their priorities, their wealthy connected billionaire, uh, uh, friends who are getting massive tax cuts that are costing us $1 trillion of deficit, but yet they can't come up for working Americans to help them have affordable healthcare. It is outrageous. The stories of pain and fear and worry, and they want Democrats in the Senate to stand strong. So.
I want to ask you about the psychology of you and your colleagues in this moment because I have covered multiple shutdowns, and generally there's been a kind of asymmetry between the two parties, which is Democrats generally want to do whatever they can to keep the government open, and Republicans are like, uh, we don't really like the government, and so if it shuts down, it shuts down. And this asymmetry has really affected the way the negotiations have gone, the way that all of these showdowns have been. And what I think I've heard and seen, and I want to get your thought is because Russ Vought and Donald Trump have basically said, "It really doesn't matter what you guys pass anyway. We're gonna do what we're gonna do. We'll close down programs. We'll spend money we don't have." You're just less concerned about that? Or, or has it changed the calculus for how you and your colleagues think about all this?
Donald Trump has told us what he's thinking. He said, "I want to cause maximum pain to Americans in order to try to force Democrats to capitulate." Just think about that for a second. He wants to hurt Americans. One of the ways he's doing that right now is unjustly threatening food stamps. They have the discretionary funds to keep those payments, SNAP payments to be more specific, those SNAP payments going, but he just wants to cause that pain. And again, it flies in the face of everything that we should be standing for, especially with vulnerable people. For him to be cutting off food aid unnecessarily in order to cause that maximum pain. So again, it is a moment where we've got to stand and fight and find an off-ramp ultimately of this that that alleviates the the the pressure on Americans, does something to lower their healthcare costs, um, and gets us back to a functioning government. When he controls the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives, I've, I've, I've seen, uh, the master classes in yoga my Republican colleagues are are doing and how they're bending over backwards to do his will. Um, he needs to come to the table and say, "You know what? I'm gonna do what I promised Americans I would do. I'm gonna lower their costs." And start with their healthcare costs. This is something he can do. It wouldn't cost that much money given all the things he's spending money on, from planes for Christie Nome, all the way to foreign bailouts to help his investor friends. The reality is he needs to focus on the American people and find a way to bring this to an end, especially when you control government right now.
Final question for you. You sit on the Agricultural Committee. You were the Mayor of Newark before you were a Senator from New Jersey, but there are farmers in your state and you're on that committee. How dire are things getting on the farm side of this, particularly on the soybean side? I mean, you're sort of hearing Brooke Rawlings and some farm state senators raising a hue and cry, but my reporting and the things I've read and the people I've talked to suggest like it really is at crisis level for a lot of Americans, American farmers right now.
Yeah, my state is, uh, what's called a specialty crop state, so it's fruits and vegetables. Uh, we're feeling the pain because they've gutted so many of the grant programs that we got done in a bipartisan way under the Biden administration. But yes, when Donald Trump is doing this chaotic trade war with China and then funding Argentina, where China now has gone to buy its soybeans, it's, it's opening up new markets. Uh, it is really kneecapping farmers. I talked to a dear friend of mine, uh, in Iowa, um, uh, today. I went back and forth on tax, and she just, just, just went through how farmers in our state are really hurting because it's not just losing their markets for their soybeans because of this tariff policy, all their input costs are going up as well. And so what, what Donald Trump is doing is he's causing one of the greatest farm crises we've seen in recent years. Very constituency that especially in a lot of these red states who voted for him, and what I'm hearing more and more is they're becoming dissatisfied because Donald Trump is hitting them on the tariffs, they're losing their markets, they're seeing their costs, their input costs go up, and they're even losing, as I found out from a lot of my Iowa friends, they're even losing some of the energy projects that used to help them make extra money because Donald Trump hates wind and is hurting those as well.
Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, thank you for your time tonight, sir.
There is mounting outrage and pushback tonight over this big scandal, Donald Trump's attempted money grab. He wants your tax dollars. This has only come out because of this New York Times bombshell report that basically the White House is, through Donald Trump, seeing if he can get away with this, seeing if he can pocket over $200 million taxpayer dollars by taking it from the DOJ. If that sounds like something odd that you've never heard about before in American history, that's because it's never happened. And I have more on that historical comparison tonight, but first, here is the pushback. Congressional Democrats launching an investigation into this "shakedown of taxpayer dollars" as a constitutional violation, and lawmakers in both parties are reacting to a scandal that is clearly rocking the Trump White House. Even some MAGA Republicans basically trying to duck this rather than face what is an obvious grift.
How comfortable are you with the President apparently seeking $230 million from the Department of Justice?
I don't know the details about that. That seems outrageous. The President is asking his own Justice Department to give the President money unless it's something that's done in the normal course of business, and I don't believe that it is. At the very least, it's horrible timing given that we're in a shutdown. I didn't talk with him about that. I know that he believes he's owed that reimbursement. It seems a bit odd to me, asking his Justice Department to find a settlement that will enrich the President. I've got a lot of optics concerns, and I just don't know if there's precedent for it.
There is no precedent for it. You could probably tell who the Republicans were in that medley, but they didn't have any there defending this outright. No president has tried anything this brazen. Trying to seize over $200 billion in taxpayer money is obviously unethical. It is an ethics violation to abuse government power to enrich yourself, full stop. It's also very likely unlawful. No president has tried, so we don't exactly have some clear court precedent on how much money you could just try to seize or take out of taxpayer grifting, but certainly not $230 million. And history is instructive. No one has come close to what Trump is trying. Richard Nixon famously faced blowback when he was the nominee for Vice President. It was over about $18,000 in alleged gifts. He gave a national address over the scandal, and he famously tried to say that the problem alleged that he was taking, you know, $10,000 was not true, the very opposite of Trump today, and that the main gift he took was his dog named Checkers.
"I'm sure that you have read the charge and you've heard it. That I, Senator Nixon, took $18,000 from a group of my supporters. The question is, was it morally wrong? Not one cent of the $18,000 or any other money of that type ever went to me for my personal use."
You see the denial. He was saying, "Hey, he didn't take any of the money, the $18,000." Trump is pursuing the opposite, trying to take it for himself, and it's $230 million. If you go back to the 1960s, there was a Supreme Court Justice who was caught taking about a $20,000 retainer. And it was such a big scandal that you would have that much government power but still be trying to take outside money. He ultimately resigned over the obvious ethics violation. If you check the numbers, Trump isn't seeking 100 times that amount, or $500, but actually over 1,000 times that amount in these taxpayer funds he's going to see if he can take, see if he can get away with taking your money. In 1981, a judge ultimately ordered Vice President Agnew to repay over $200,000 that he took in alleged bribes, which were determined to ultimately have belonged, that money to the people of Maryland, much like the federal money belongs to the people of the United States, not to politicians who are temporarily in power.
Now, you might have cynics who say, "Well, that was then. I guess things have changed. Things are different now. And Trump and his family make money off business while their father's in government. They make money off crypto and the hotels, so maybe they can start just taking it from the taxpayers too." Maybe they want people to get that cynical, but it's also off base. Even if some people want us to give up or go downhill, because I want to show you, in Donald Trump's first term, he ousted two cabinet officials over these types of money and ethics scandals. He, Donald Trump, whether it was the bad press or the optics or the ethics, but he ultimately said no to these officials who were caught with allegations about misusing about hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some of that, by the way, in fairness, was paid back, and we're not talking about $200 million. So if you may remember the exact people involved, Price and Pruitt, their grift scandals were too much even for this same President, at least when it came to him getting in trouble or bad press for this type of enrichment.
The recent talk that Trump may take these millions from taxpayers, but what if he didn't take them personally? What if he put it to a charity? That's one of the defenses now floating, which again is a sign that things still matter and maybe they don't want to go forward with the original enrichment plan, but that wouldn't address the ethics here at all. Because if he takes the taxpayer money, it's not his money, whether he uses it for a charity or something else. And I would remind you, in the past, he has taken these types of formats and used the money to enrich himself. So what he called a charity ultimately led to the shuttering of the Trump Foundation because of credible allegations about misuse, what the Times reported on as a pattern of illegality.
Congressional Democrats say their probe on this tonight is serious. If they win in the midterms, well, then this could be something that they probe with the full subpoena power of a majority in the House. And so amidst this shutdown, we should note that Donald Trump is demolishing a very treasured, visible sign of American democracy, a big piece here of the White House. In fact, what I'm showing you to make the point here are live pictures. So this is literally what they're doing in the evening in the People's House, tearing down the East Wing for plans to spend $250 million on a ballroom that this politician, this President has chosen. No sign that they are doing any of the austerity they're asking public employees and others to do during the shutdown that they have ordered. The facade is a pile of rubble. The entire wing is set to be demolished within days. Trump had claimed the historic structure would not have met this fate. He literally said that what you see on your screen wasn't going to happen. "It won't interfere with the current building. I won't be, it'll be, uh, uh, near it but not touching it and pays total respect to the existing building, which I'm the biggest fan of. It's my favorite. It's my favorite place. I love it." False. It is, as you see, affecting the existing building. Trump brandished plans moments ago in the Oval Office for this ballroom. He's also said, and keep in mind during the shutdown, he's trying to take money for himself from the DOJ. He's got his plans here, but he says somehow there'll be no costs. Projects funding, he says, will be completely absorbed by private companies and donors. One problem though about how you calculate costs: those are individuals who might be doing this to get favorable treatment by or leverage over Trump. CBS reports those donors could have their names etched inside the public White House building or on a website. No final decisions on that. Also unclear whether this is ultimately good for the taxpayer or America if these people are using money this way. Now, that donor list includes many different corporations, including the parent company of MSNBC, a note we wanted to include, but there's also other secrecy of things we don't know about. The White House says the building plans will be submitted for some kind of review soon. Okay, but as we showed you, they're already demolishing things. So whatever review that is doesn't involve a lot of oversight. He's already broken one public vow about this, which suggests that maybe Donald Trump, who doesn't like oversight and thinks his ideas are great, had some inkling that interfering with what the White House has long looked like for the public, for tourists, for Americans wouldn't be a good look for him. As Rachel has said, this also serves up a metaphor. Trump literally today sent a, like a, a rental backhoe to physically rip down the East Wing of the White House. Donald Trump is literally destroying the People's House because apparently he thinks it's his house and not ours, and I'm guessing he has no intention of moving out of it ever. The point is literal. It is a residence for the temporary official elected by the people, but decisions about it, of course, should involve the public and the Congress because it ain't your house.
Now, there are some more temporary revisions that you can just debate as a matter of style. This President has made the Oval Office a little more gold, and that's well within his rights because it's not some demolition. Someone else can come in and redecorate. He's also already paved over the Rose Garden, giving it that look. And he's made it more of a social club, that garden area, fitting sort of his club style. We're not talking about gold drapes right now. We're talking about semi-permanent or permanent changes to the White House, which again, is nobody's property but the public. Last week, there were plans discussed to erect a big monument of Donald Trump himself.
"You, thanks guys. Let's go. You guys, you know, thank you. Let's get going. Thanks guys. Thank you. Thank you guys. It's gonna be a..." You could see a bit of the tension there while Donald Trump wants to talk about the beautiful monument that he's planning, and the press staff who might know something about how this plays are trying to get everybody out of the room. Let's not talk about it. We're talking about the physical infrastructure of things that are clearly at odds with democracy as a project where no person is permanent, not in terms of power or their stamp on what we understand to be our democratic institutions, and yes, are even buildings that house them, from the Capitol to the White House.