MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: "Trump makes frenzied attempt to spin Ukraine Call."
Interview
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HAYES: Tonight, the House investigating committees released a statement on that briefing from the State I.G. saying that these documents "reinforce the concern the President and his ally sought to use the machinery of the State Department to further the President`s political -- personal political interest." Joining me now, the only member of Congress who was at today`s meeting with the Inspector General of the State Department, Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland. All right, I think it was not classified, if I`m not mistaken. It`s an unclassified briefing. You can tell us what happened. What happened?
RASKIN: Well, essentially, he distributed this packet of information which looked immediately to me like a bunch of propaganda and disinformation, the kind that Rudy Giuliani has been passing around recently. But the most curious thing about it was the packaging that it was in, because it was -- it came in a Manila envelope that was addressed to Secretary Pompeo attention roots as if they knew you know, who his staff was, and then it was written the White House up in the left-hand corner, but it didn`t look like an official White House stationery. And then there were a series of sub dividers which were Trump hotel folders on the inside. This package was then given by Secretary Pompeo to his counsel who then gave it to the Inspector General. And apparently the counsel said something to the effect of -- that the Secretary reported this "came over," presumably that it came over from the White House.
HAYES: So do you -- so what`s in there? And I know you don`t want to sort of talk about the contents, because a lot of it as you said is debunk conspiracy theories. But my sense is from the tweets of Rudy Giuliani, the tweets of Don Jr., and the reporting of, if you can call it that, John Solomon at The Hill, there`s a whole right-wing narrative about this sort of Ukrainian efforts to entrap the President and to block him, and it includes the former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. Is she the subject of the kind of scurrilous innuendo in the packet?
RASKIN: Yes, I would say that Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was a principal target of it. I think Hunter Biden and Joe Biden are also the targets of it. So it basically stitches together the entire either right-wing conspiracy theory meant to debunk the Mueller report, and the idea that there was you know, a comprehensive and sweeping and systematic campaign by the Russians to interfere in our election. You know, in terms of just trying to keep all of this clear. It`s an absolute distraction from what actually happened here, which was the President shaking down Ukraine for a smear on the Biden`s and then covering that whole thing up and betraying our values in the process. But it is interesting, it`s kind of this subsidiary story of the propaganda campaign meant to derail the truth from coming out. And it is curious how involved Secretary of State Pompeo may or may not have been in that.
HAYES: Here`s where the to link up to me. The Ambassador to Ukraine Yovanovitch was actually recalled after coming in for criticism from Giuliani and from these sorts of right-wing voices. And there`s a question there, did Pompeo do that and was that done because she was not cooperating with the shadow foreign policy being run by Giuliani with the President`s approval to coerce Ukraine into digging up dirt on Joe Biden?
RASKIN: And I`ll add to that, that the documents that we saw apparently surfaced at the Department of State at the end of April, early May, about a week or ten days before she was recalled from her job. So that would support your theory that there was all part of a propaganda hit on the ambassador to get her out of the way so they could use the State Department, the U.S. Embassy over there for their own purposes, which were the political purposes of the President.
HAYES: I should just say as sort of close the loop on this. I think Rudy Giuliani has now told CNN that he gave Pompeo those documents. You mentioned they looked like -- Giuliani tells Michael Warren that he provided State with some of the docs the State I.G. gave to Congress today. So your guess at the beginning of the segment that this looks like the kind of thing Rudy Giuliani was circulating was a good guess. It looks like he, in fact, was doing that. Congressman
RASKIN: Yeah, it was completely congruent with everything that Giuliani has been saying, so if it wasn`t Giuliani somebody was plagiarizing him.
HAYES: All right, Congressman Jamie Raskin, thank you very much.
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