A step-by-step breakdown of Trump coup attempt (Yes, it was a coup)
01:02:
(Chris Hayes)
Tonight on All In.
01:04:
(Donald Trump)
You know what was trending on the internet?
01:07:
(Donald Trump)
Where's Ruby?
01:08:
(Donald Trump)
Because they thought you'd be in jail.
01:10:
(Donald Trump)
Where's Ruby?
01:12:
(Chris Hayes)
What sure looks like another piece of the Trump coup plot is exposed in Georgia.
01:20:
(Soundbite)
We didn't want to frighten you, but we had to find you within this time.
01:25:
(Chris Hayes)
We are only 64, a party that needs to tidy up.
01:27:
(Chris Hayes)
Bombshell reporting from Reuters.
01:29:
(Chris Hayes)
A Kanye West publicist pressured a Georgia election worker to confess to bogus election fraud two days before January 6th.
01:39:
(Soundbite)
I cannot say what specifically will take place.
01:46:
(Soundbite)
I just know that it will disrupt the world for them.
01:47:
(Chris Hayes)
Tonight, what this revelation means for the investigation of Donald Trump's coup attempt and what it means for the ongoing march to undermine democracy.
01:56:
(Chris Hayes)
Then what we learn from the alarming Supreme Court decision on the Texas abortion ban and why there's genuinely good news on the vaccination drive in a place you might not expect.
02:05:
(Chris Hayes)
But all in starts right now.
02:12:
(Chris Hayes)
Good evening from New York.
02:13:
(Chris Hayes)
I'm Chris Hayes.
02:15:
(Chris Hayes)
They attempted a coup.
02:16:
(Chris Hayes)
We use that word a lot on this show to describe Donald Trump's attempts to stay in power following the 2020 election.
02:23:
(Chris Hayes)
We use coup.
02:24:
(Chris Hayes)
We use it in scripts and in graphics and the banners that you see on the bottom of your TV.
02:29:
(Chris Hayes)
And when we first started calling it that, and we made a choice to do so, when we first started after January 6th, it sounded provocative, I think.
02:38:
(Chris Hayes)
Coup is not a term you throw around lightly when you're talking about the United States of America.
02:43:
(Chris Hayes)
By definition, a coup is a sudden, illegal, often violent seizure of power from a government.
02:49:
(Chris Hayes)
And it's something that happens all around the world in other countries.
02:53:
(Chris Hayes)
Some examples, places like Chile in 1973 or Bolivia in 1971.
02:57:
(Chris Hayes)
It's happened in Turkey and Pakistan and on and on and on.
03:02:
(Chris Hayes)
But the way that we think about a coup is that it doesn't happen here.
03:06:
(Chris Hayes)
Not here in what is supposed to be the beacon of democracy throughout the world.
03:11:
(Chris Hayes)
And there was some initial debate among political scientists about what exactly a coup is.
03:15:
(Chris Hayes)
Does it need to involve the military?
03:17:
(Chris Hayes)
And wasn't this technically an auto coup because Trump was trying to cement his existing control and stay in power?
03:24:
(Chris Hayes)
But all the semantic hair splitting sort of avoids the fact that we don't have a better word.
03:33:
(Chris Hayes)
There's no better way to describe what happened.
03:37:
(Chris Hayes)
Donald Trump and his allies did everything they possibly could, tried every possible avenue to overthrow a democratic election and install an authoritarian ruler in defiance of the people's will.
03:55:
(Chris Hayes)
And there is no real precedent for it in American history.
04:00:
(Chris Hayes)
I mean, even Fort Sumter,
04:01:
(Chris Hayes)
a violent secession that began the American Civil War in 1861.
04:05:
(Chris Hayes)
In certain ways, more violent and more jarring and started an era of horrific violence.
04:13:
(Chris Hayes)
But that even that isn't quite what this was.
04:16:
(Chris Hayes)
What this was has never happened before.
04:21:
(Chris Hayes)
And it wasn't a contested election.
04:22:
(Chris Hayes)
It wasn't even Bush v. Gore, which you might say was, well, sort of legally purloined.
04:29:
(Chris Hayes)
It was an attempted coup.
04:31:
(Chris Hayes)
This fact that they tried a coup has not sufficiently sunk into either public or elite consciousness.
04:41:
(Chris Hayes)
And that is in part because the people who planned it and carried it out were in many ways incompetent.
04:48:
(Chris Hayes)
Donald Trump, despite as many dangers, is comically inept.
04:52:
(Chris Hayes)
But just because he did not succeed in overthrowing American democracy does not mean he did not try.
04:59:
(Chris Hayes)
What he and his collaborators and cronies were trying to do at each and every turn had a unified strategic purpose.
05:09:
(Chris Hayes)
They weren't just randomly trying stuff.
05:11:
(Chris Hayes)
They were trying to find the weakest link in the chain of democratic transfer to break it.
05:19:
(Chris Hayes)
And they kept trying each different link in the chain.
05:23:
(Chris Hayes)
The most recent one involving an employee of the rapper Kanye West, who now wants to be known as Ye, showing up the doorstep of a Fulton County, Georgia election worker named Ruby Freeman to threaten her into confessing to some completely bogus election fraud charges.
05:42:
(Chris Hayes)
Her outrageous and menacing threats were captured on police body cam.
05:46:
(Chris Hayes)
I'm going to play them for you in just a minute.
05:49:
(Chris Hayes)
But before that, and before we get to that story, which I honestly can't believe I just said the words that I said, it's just worth stepping back and just looking at all the ways that Donald Trump previously tried to overthrow the election in just the state where this took place.
06:06:
(Chris Hayes)
Just one state, Georgia.
06:07:
(Chris Hayes)
Let's just focus on that.
06:09:
(Chris Hayes)
So first, there was the audit of ballot signatures in Cobb County, which came after immense pressure from Donald Trump.
06:15:
(Chris Hayes)
In fact, in the press conference announcing that audit, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger conceded it was in direct response to Trump's ongoing bogus claims of fraud.
06:27:
(Chris Hayes)
Quote, now that the signature matching has been attacked again and again with no evidence, I feel we need to take steps to restore confidence in our elections.
06:36:
(Chris Hayes)
Of course, the audit didn't find anything nefarious.
06:40:
(Chris Hayes)
But that did not stop then White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows from traveling to Georgia to oversee it.
06:46:
(Chris Hayes)
And it is unclear exactly what expertise Meadow would bring to an operation like that, other than lending these wild conspiracy theories the legitimacy of the White House, which of course was a real objective.
06:56:
(Chris Hayes)
An objective that was also on display when Trump personally called Georgia's Republican governor, Brian Kemp, on December 5th of last year.
07:05:
(Chris Hayes)
Trump wanted to pressure him to call a special legislative session to override the results of the election in his state.
07:13:
(Chris Hayes)
Think about that.
07:14:
(Chris Hayes)
Just throw out the votes of the voters of Georgia.
07:18:
(Chris Hayes)
Appoint new electors that would keep Trump in office despite the fact the voters of Georgia voted to not do that.
07:25:
(Chris Hayes)
And then when that did not work, he moves to the next link in the chain.
07:29:
(Chris Hayes)
He made the now infamous call to the Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, where he threatened him to try to get him to overthrow the will of the voters.
07:41:
(Donald Trump)
The ballots are corrupt.
07:42:
(Donald Trump)
And you're going to find that they are, which is totally illegal.
07:46:
(Donald Trump)
It's more illegal for you than it is for them because you know what they did and you're not reporting it.
07:51:
(Donald Trump)
That's a criminal offense.
07:56:
(Donald Trump)
And you can't let that happen.
07:58:
(Donald Trump)
That's a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.
08:02:
(Donald Trump)
That's a big risk.
08:03:
(Donald Trump)
So look, all I want to do is this.
08:06:
(Donald Trump)
I just want to find 11,000
08:11:
(Donald Trump)
780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.
08:19:
(Chris Hayes)
You hear that?
08:19:
(Chris Hayes)
The sort of weird combination of wheedling and pleading and menace.
08:23:
(Chris Hayes)
You're going to be criminally liable and just cough up one more vote than we need.
08:28:
(Chris Hayes)
That happened on January 2nd.
08:31:
(Chris Hayes)
That's four days before Congress was set to certify the election.
08:34:
(Chris Hayes)
Also notable in that call was this exchange where Trump disparages a U.S. attorney that he appointed.
08:41:
(Donald Trump)
But nobody can make a case for that, Brett.
08:43:
(Donald Trump)
Nobody.
08:44:
(Donald Trump)
I mean, look, that's you'd have to be a child to think anything other than that.
08:49:
(Donald Trump)
Just a child.
08:50:
(Donald Trump)
I mean, you have your never attorney.
08:52:
(Chris Hayes)
A little hard to hear there, but Trump refers to you got your Georgia's never Trumper U.S. attorney.
08:59:
(Chris Hayes)
That's a reference to a man named B.J.
09:01:
(Chris Hayes)
Park.
09:01:
(Chris Hayes)
Before Trump appointed him as U.S. attorney in Georgia, he served as a Republican in the state legislature.
09:06:
(Chris Hayes)
The day after that phone call to the secretary of state, Pac got a phone call from the Justice Department where an official, quote, relayed that Mr. Trump remained fixated on the false notion that he had won Georgia and said the president was angry that Mr. Pac did not support that conclusion.
09:23:
(Chris Hayes)
Right.
09:24:
(Chris Hayes)
So, I mean, stay with me here.
09:25:
(Chris Hayes)
Right.
09:25:
(Chris Hayes)
He's trying the governor first.
09:28:
(Chris Hayes)
First, he does the audit.
09:29:
(Chris Hayes)
Then he tries the governor.
09:31:
(Chris Hayes)
He goes to the secretary of state, tries a U.S. attorney, PAC.
09:34:
(Chris Hayes)
PAC says he was told the GOJ was prepared to fire him for not pushing the ridiculous fraud claims.
09:40:
(Chris Hayes)
He resigned the next day.
09:42:
(Chris Hayes)
This was set against the backdrop of something of a shakeup at the Justice Department when this man, Jeffrey Clark, a nondescript Republican lawyer and DOJ Flack, schemed to oust the acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and install himself in that position instead so he could do what?
09:58:
(Chris Hayes)
So he could weaponize the Department of Justice to force lawmakers in Georgia to do Trump's bidding.
10:04:
(Chris Hayes)
Right.
10:05:
(Chris Hayes)
He's getting nowhere with the audit.
10:06:
(Chris Hayes)
He's getting nowhere with Kemp.
10:07:
(Chris Hayes)
He's getting nowhere with Raffensperger.
10:09:
(Chris Hayes)
He's getting nowhere with the U.S. attorney.
10:11:
(Chris Hayes)
So use the Department of Justice.
10:12:
(Chris Hayes)
Use Jeffrey Clark to draft a letter to Georgia's governor and legislative leaders writing, quote, at this time, we have identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states, including the state of Georgia.
10:27:
(Chris Hayes)
Now, just to be abundantly clear, that is a lie.
10:30:
(Chris Hayes)
It's all lies.
10:31:
(Chris Hayes)
Right.
10:33:
(Chris Hayes)
But in the absence of anyone else willing to go along with a lie, he gets Jeffrey Clark at DOJ.
10:38:
(Chris Hayes)
And Clark wanted to use legitimacy of the Department of Justice to disseminate that lie, to stamp it with DOJ letterhead, to give it to Georgia's top lawmakers and say, maybe you should call your special session and send your electors.
10:50:
(Chris Hayes)
To pressure them into holding that special legislative session to throw out the results of a Democratic election and install the loser over the winner.
10:59:
(Chris Hayes)
It's the same scheme Trump would mention in that phone call to Brian Kemp.
11:03:
(Chris Hayes)
Now, of course, none of this works.
11:07:
(Chris Hayes)
He tries every link in the chain.
11:10:
(Chris Hayes)
And with the clock ticking down to the final 48 hours before the electoral votes will be counted on January 6th, with every court in the land having dismissed the allegations of voter fraud as completely baseless, with every single audit that has been undertaken showing the election was free and fair, with literally nothing to sustain this coup plot, we come to a woman named Ruby Freeman.
11:32:
(Chris Hayes)
She is a Georgia election worker.
11:37:
(Chris Hayes)
who was smeared with false conspiracies and viral videos that she and her daughter helped steal the election by smug-legging suitcases full of illegal Biden ballots on Election Day.
11:48:
(Chris Hayes)
She was smeared by, among others, Donald Trump, who mentioned her name 18 times in that phone call to the Secretary of State.
11:59:
(Donald Trump)
You know the Internet?
12:00:
(Donald Trump)
You know what was trending on the Internet?
12:02:
(Donald Trump)
Where's Ruby?
12:03:
(Donald Trump)
Because they thought you'd be in jail.
12:06:
(Donald Trump)
Where's Ruby?
12:07:
(Donald Trump)
It's it's crazy.
12:11:
(Donald Trump)
It's crazy.
12:11:
(Donald Trump)
That was the minimum number is 18,000 for Ruby, but they think it's probably about 56,000.
12:19:
(Donald Trump)
Ah, yes.
12:19:
(Chris Hayes)
This individual, this one woman on the viral video that my former caddy must have showed me in the Oval Office stuffed 56,000 ballots.
12:29:
(Chris Hayes)
Well, today we learned that Ruby Freeman experienced a harrowing and what could only be called surreal visit just two days before January 6th.
12:35:
(Chris Hayes)
Remember, that clock is ticking, right?
12:38:
(Chris Hayes)
Clock is ticking.
12:40:
(Chris Hayes)
A woman named Trevyan Coty showed up at Ruby Freeman's doorstep.
12:46:
(Chris Hayes)
She said she was representing a high profile individual who wanted to help Freeman.
12:51:
(Chris Hayes)
What Kuti did not reveal is that she was a publicist to Kanye West, a Trump ally who himself ran a half-hearted campaign for president in 2020.
13:02:
(Chris Hayes)
Now, we reached out to Kuti to ask who she appeared on behalf of that day.
13:07:
(Chris Hayes)
Who was this high-profile individual?
13:08:
(Chris Hayes)
We have not heard back.
13:10:
(Chris Hayes)
Now, put yourself in Rudy Friedman's shoes, okay?
13:13:
(Chris Hayes)
At this point, she has been harassed to her breaking point by Trump allies for weeks.
13:19:
(Chris Hayes)
Her name, she's been doxxed.
13:20:
(Chris Hayes)
They know her address.
13:22:
(Chris Hayes)
There are people outside her house.
13:23:
(Chris Hayes)
She's calling the cops.
13:25:
(Chris Hayes)
This woman shows up.
13:27:
(Chris Hayes)
I'm coming to help you from a high-profile individual.
13:30:
(Chris Hayes)
So she agrees to meet with Kanye's publicist in a safe location, a local police station, where Cutty outlined a threat wherein mysterious figures would show up to Freeman's house and put her and her family in jail if she did not publicly admit to stealing the election for Joe Biden, something she did not do.
13:52:
(Chris Hayes)
It would...
13:54:
(Chris Hayes)
It is so ridiculous what I just told you.
13:57:
(Chris Hayes)
It's real.
13:58:
(Chris Hayes)
It is so ridiculous it would be laughable were it not so dark.
14:02:
(Chris Hayes)
But there is real threat and menace here.
14:05:
(Chris Hayes)
Ruby Freeman is scared for her life, okay?
14:09:
(Chris Hayes)
She's told that if she does not cooperate, if she does not make this big confession, she and members of her family will lose their freedom.
14:16:
(Chris Hayes)
That's the quote.
14:17:
(Chris Hayes)
She is told she will.
14:18:
(Chris Hayes)
She is a loose end and that federal people are involved.
14:22:
(Chris Hayes)
She is then instructed to connect with an associate named, and I'm not making this up either, Harrison Ford.
14:28:
(Chris Hayes)
And she is instructed to implicate herself in the imaginary fabricated claims of voter fraud.
14:36:
(Chris Hayes)
And thanks to some truly excellent reporting from Reuters, we have video of that meeting.
14:43:
(Chris Hayes)
Because remember, Ruby Freeman's holed up in her apartment, just a random poll worker facing death threats.
14:49:
(Chris Hayes)
And so she goes and meets Kanye West, publicist at a police station, where an officer with a body cam captured the meeting.
14:56:
(Chris Hayes)
Now, fair warning, this is a little long, about three minutes, but I promise you, it is absolutely worth listening to in full.
15:06:
(Soundbite)
Thank you so much for agreeing to meet us.
15:12:
(Soundbite)
We didn't want to frighten you, but we had to find you within this time.
15:18:
(Soundbite)
I'm here because I received a call.
15:22:
(Soundbite)
Not that I didn't know about the situation because I had heard that it wasn't of serious concern.
15:31:
(Soundbite)
We would like to
15:34:
(Soundbite)
let me know first and foremost we have put in placement um a way to to secure you um i cannot say what specifically will uh take place i just know that it will disrupt your
16:05:
(Soundbite)
I would like to connect now on the phone here as an employee who would be taking this situation to a detailed level for you to let you know exactly what investing, what choices you have, whether you choose or not to deal with the eye on your enemy.
16:31:
(Soundbite)
This is Harrison.
16:32:
(Soundbite)
He works with me.
16:34:
(Soundbite)
You are a loose for a party that needs to tidy up.
16:44:
(Soundbite)
I've worked with some of the biggest names in the industry.
16:45:
(Soundbite)
Crisis is my thing.
16:46:
(Soundbite)
What they don't want to do for you is create another crisis.
17:02:
(Soundbite)
I'm going to call Harrison Floyd and I'm going to put him on speaker.
17:03:
(Soundbite)
Who is it?
17:04:
(Soundbite)
Harrison Floyd is Harrison Floyd.
17:04:
(Soundbite)
It's about the words of crisis.
17:05:
(Soundbite)
We have very high level of political powers to get people to play together.
17:09:
(Soundbite)
This is at this moment a conversation between private citizens.
17:14:
(Soundbite)
I'm hoping that you are trusting that this information doesn't go any further.
17:20:
(Soundbite)
I have to honestly advise I don't know her background.
17:25:
(Soundbite)
I can step over there if you're comfortable.
17:35:
(Soundbite)
I don't know who is connected to who.
17:38:
(Soundbite)
And I really need for her to be as nonchalant as possible with this conversation that we are going to have so that if she does make a decision, she's protected in her decisions.
17:54:
(Chris Hayes)
What on earth, right?
17:56:
(Chris Hayes)
What on earth?
17:58:
(Chris Hayes)
Now, there's a lot to unpack there.
18:00:
(Chris Hayes)
But to put a finer point on it, Freeman told Reuters that Kanye's publicist told her, if you don't tell everything, you're going to jail.
18:08:
(Chris Hayes)
That's the threat.
18:09:
(Chris Hayes)
She shows up at this woman's door with all this crazy conspiracy talk and Harrison Ford, the black progressive crisis manager who has authority to keep you in safety.
18:20:
(Chris Hayes)
You have to confess to this or you're going to go to jail.
18:22:
(Chris Hayes)
Bad things are going to happen to you and your family.
18:23:
(Chris Hayes)
Donald Trump and his allies tried everything to install him as the authoritarian leader of this country.
18:29:
(Chris Hayes)
And this episode highlights how increasingly desperate they all were in the days leading up to the insurrection.
18:35:
(Chris Hayes)
I mean, at one level, it's so weak and bizarre, but also so menacingly desperate.
18:42:
(Chris Hayes)
I think that is why people have a hard time getting their head around what we have been through.
18:47:
(Chris Hayes)
Because it's not like they sent the tanks in.
18:50:
(Chris Hayes)
They probably couldn't have.
18:53:
(Chris Hayes)
They were grasping at straws.
18:54:
(Chris Hayes)
They were shaking every tree they could.
18:56:
(Chris Hayes)
A letter from DOJ to Georgia saying, we're investigating fraud.
18:59:
(Chris Hayes)
You guys should take that under advisement.
19:00:
(Chris Hayes)
The state legislature, Brad Raffensperger saying we found the votes or Ruby Freeman coming forward to be like, it's true.
19:06:
(Chris Hayes)
It's true.
19:06:
(Chris Hayes)
I stuffed the ballots.
19:09:
(Chris Hayes)
But all of those things would have had the effect they wanted.
19:13:
(Chris Hayes)
Each of those.
19:15:
(Chris Hayes)
It would have provided cover, just enough cover to delay the certification of the election.
19:21:
(Chris Hayes)
It was not without strategic logic.
19:24:
(Chris Hayes)
They failed.
19:26:
(Chris Hayes)
And thanks to some work by the committee investigating January 6th, we now know how off the walls desperate Trump's top allies were in light of that failure.
19:33:
(Chris Hayes)
Thanks to this PowerPoint dated January 5th from the trove of documents provided by Mark Meadows.
19:38:
(Chris Hayes)
And it is beyond insane.
19:40:
(Chris Hayes)
It includes the debunked claims of voter fraud.
19:42:
(Chris Hayes)
It argues the globalists and socialists are trying to subvert the election on behalf of China.
19:46:
(Chris Hayes)
It invokes Hugo Chavez, the former Venezuelan leader who had been dead for years.
19:50:
(Chris Hayes)
It is impossible to overstate just how bananas this all is.
19:53:
(Chris Hayes)
If a family member gave it to you, you would be very concerned.
19:59:
(Chris Hayes)
Trump is so desperate, but all out of options.
20:02:
(Chris Hayes)
They've tried everything, every link in the chain.
20:04:
(Chris Hayes)
All they have left is force.
20:07:
(Chris Hayes)
But they know they don't have the army.
20:10:
(Chris Hayes)
They know they don't have the army.
20:13:
(Chris Hayes)
So all he has left is to hurl the crowd at the Capitol and hope that they can use physical intimidation to disrupt the proceedings.
20:25:
(Donald Trump)
And we fight.
20:26:
(Donald Trump)
We fight like hell.
20:28:
(Donald Trump)
And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.
20:32:
(Donald Trump)
We're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.
20:36:
(Donald Trump)
I love Pennsylvania Avenue.
20:38:
(Donald Trump)
And we're going to the Capitol.
20:40:
(Donald Trump)
And we're going to try and give...
20:43:
(Donald Trump)
The Democrats are hopeless.
20:45:
(Donald Trump)
They're never voting for anything.
20:47:
(Donald Trump)
Not even one vote.
20:49:
(Donald Trump)
But we're going to try and give our Republicans...
20:53:
(Donald Trump)
The weak ones, because the strong ones don't need any of our help.
20:57:
(Donald Trump)
We're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.
21:06:
(Chris Hayes)
It did not work.
21:08:
(Chris Hayes)
But Trump did manage to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in this country's long history.
21:14:
(Chris Hayes)
And make no mistake, he's gearing up to run again in 2024.
21:18:
(Chris Hayes)
Even if he does not, he's already rebuilt much of the Republican Party in his authoritarian image.
21:24:
(Chris Hayes)
What happens when someone a little more competent who understands the levers of power tries to run the same playbook?
21:30:
(Chris Hayes)
What if the next Brad Raffensperger caves and finds the imaginary votes?
21:33:
(Chris Hayes)
What if the next terrified Ruby Freeman gives into intimidation and agrees to lie about fraud?