Exclusive: Olympian arrested after touching Reflecting Pool speaks out

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Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. Well, Donald Trump's murky reflecting pool saga continues day after day to be the most perfect encapsulation of his administration's approach to governance, indeed to the entire situation we've found ourselves in now. I mean, it's all there. It's all on display, the incompetence and the corruption. And now, of course, falling close on its heels, the authoritarianism. And to understand where we are right now, you have to remember how this all started with the promises of a beautiful, everlasting signature Trump construction project. This will last for at least 50 years and you'll never have a leak. It's very strong. You couldn't, if you had a knife, I don't want to give anybody ideas. If you had a knife, you can't even cut it. It's so strong, so powerful, powerful rubber. It is beautiful. Sealed. Did you track all that? Sealed. Beautiful. Last 50 years. Couldn't cut it with a knife. Well, viewer, it did not last 50 years. It did not last a week. And today, you're not going to believe this, but Donald Trump shared his theory as to why. We have vandalism. You know, we have a hundred and we have a. I think 290, 300 foot slit right through, probably a box cutter or a knife of some kind. National Garden police have been all over the mall. How would these vandals have gotten so close to do something like that? I mean, we didn't have a lot of them then. Who would think that somebody would go into a pool and take a knife and start cutting it? Did you have proof of that? Yeah, yeah, we have proof. Well, let's put it this way. When you have a 350, I think it's 350, not 250, a 350 foot slit from one end to the other, you think that's proof? Oh, so now you can cut it with a knife? The guy who demolished the East Wing destroyed the White House lawn for UFC Octagon is very concerned about vandals all of a sudden. This whole thing has been a complete disaster. I mean, almost beyond my wildest imagining. From the millions of taxpayer dollars handed over into no big contracts to guys like the Trump donor and owner of the cleaning company named, no kidding here, green water services, to the algae saturated mess they've left along with the expensive coating that Trump said you can't cut with a knife but now says was cut with a knife, but turns out to have been a lining for pickup truck beds and is now peeling and floating to the surface, not, I think, very clearly because someone cut out with the knife, but because it never adhered to the bottom because the job was screwed up from the beginning. Okay, so that is where we left this story on Friday. But then on Saturday, Trump posted that the entire pool will likely have to be drained again to get rid of the algae, which seemed like a rare admission of failure from the 80-year-old president, except, of course, of course, he's not taking the blame. He's not reckoning with reality. Of course. Instead, as you just heard, he blamed vandals without offering evidence, which is a very, very, very charitable way to put it. Claiming that saboteurs, I don't know, under the cover night, maybe Antifa super soldiers outfitted in scuba gear, climbing on their bellies with box cutters cutting a 250-foot long gatch in the pool's bottom that Trump previously claimed was uncutable. In fact, previously claimed was resistant to exactly that kind of eventuality. He even singled out ABC News reporter Jonathan Carl as an alleged vandal for this segment.

Check this out. That American flag blue paint, it's peeling away. The $14 million job to redo the bottom of this reflecting pool is falling apart before our eyes. Trump responded by posting, quote, lightweight ABC reporter Jonathan Carl was seen sticking his hand in the pool and trying to rip the rubber off the surface. Law enforcement is actively investigating the situation and will hopefully have it resolved soon. That is not what Jonathan Carl did. You saw it yourself with your own eyes. This is just Trump crashing out. He's throwing a tantrum, except this tantrum is now being treated as a criminal accusation by Trump's handpick U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, former Fox host, of course, Janine Piro. Judge, is Jonathan Carl from ABC in trouble? Well, you know, it depends. You know, anyone who was in a position of vandalizing or attempting to vandalize the reflecting pool will face the criminal justice system in D.C. Look, the president has made it a priority to make D.C. not only safe but beautiful. And there are several citations that have been handed out to individuals. And these are cases that will be prosecuted to the full extent. If there are more serious prosecutions, that are put into the reflecting pool to create more algae or a bigger problem than we'll consider more serious charges. This is insane. This is madness. No one's dumping things in the reflecting pool to grow algae. It's their own incompetent corrupt failures blooming for all the world to see, cracking and floating to the surface, all of it. Just the most literal manifestation of how these people go about everything. And now they have to create this dark conspiracy and use the force of law to pursue it. These people are desperately seeking someone else to blame for Trump's malfeasance. And sure enough, sure enough. Over the weekend, we got this part of it. National Guard soldiers in camo. weapons, kidded out, and then a variety of law enforcement officers descending on the reflecting pool where they detained, cited, and even arrested visitors. By Saturday night, at least five people were arrested. Five more got federal citations, administration official, told multiple reporters. The Washington Post witnessed at least one more citation given out on Sunday. Those visitors were arrested by the Post reports by a mismatch of Park Police, U.S. Marshals, and Sheriff's Deputies from a host of states. officers from around the country who've been detailed the Trump administration's, quote, D.C. safe and beautiful task force summer surge. As Trump posted this morning that the 250-foot gash in the pool, which grows by 50 feet every time it's open his mouth, was really 300 feet, adding, quote, please remember there is a 10-year prison sentence for the destruction and even attempted destruction of such things, which will be fully enforced. Now, one of the visitors who was arrested, this guy by the name of David Carter Hearn, 67-year-old man of Bethesda, Maryland, who owned a company that made composite used to build watercraft. A Hearn happens to be a former Olympic canoe racer. There he is. Look at him go. That was a while ago. And he told the AP he briefly touched a peeling chunk of the pool bottom to inspect it and let go when told to by a park worker. This is something that we've seen lots of people do.

Hearn said he was detained by guard, soldiers, and park police for five hours before being given a summons for a court appearance next month. I'm a curious citizen, Hearn told the AP. I reached down to see what it felt like. It was very rubbery. Remember, this is also part of the recipe here. Just last week, okay? Again, we know this because they posted it online. It was Trump's Interior Department, as we were covering this, the algae blue, right, and the peeling chunks of paint. The Interior Department was lying to us all, right? Like, what are you talking about, you psycholybs? Posting photos, the reflecting pool from, like, the low angle to get the reflection of the sky, claiming the water was, quote, crystal clear with the American flag boot coating shining brightly on the bottom of the pool. Now the President Department of Justice have to admit that's not true. The pool's in worse shape of a before. I mean, they pivoted in like a day or two. And then in classic authoritarian fashion, they pivoted from claiming the water's perfect and clear. There's no peeling paint to. Yes, it looks terrible because it was sabotaged by secret leftists like this Olympian and that journalist. And also we are now going to be bringing law enforcement authorities from the nomination as part of our summer search force to arrest people who are guilty of the non-existent crime of putting their hands in the water. Doesn't matter whether it's an election he contested and lost or a war he started and lost or a reflecting pool renovation that he absolutely screwed up from start to finish in every conceivable way. When Donald Trump screws up, as he always does, he needs scapegoats because Donald Trump is president, what it really means is he now wants arrests. Norman Eisen is the co-founder executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, as well as the attorney for David Hearn, the U.S. Olympian, who was arrested at the Reflecting Pool, and they both joined me now. It's good to have you here, Mr. Hearn. I saw some video of you out this weekend. When you're at the Reflecting Pool, you were in Viking Gear. You're clearly out for a long cycling ride, a very active individual still. Can you just tell us how you ended up at the Reflecting Pool, why you went down there? Yes, Chris. I was just out on about a 50-mile bike ride, and I decided to swing back over by the reflecting pool on my way back as a concerned, curious citizen. And you checked out the pool. You told the AP that you just put your hand in the water. And then what happened? I've seen like National Guardsmen came up to you and then parked police. How did that all go down? As soon as I... left the side of the reflecting pool and went back to my bike that was laid down on its side on the edge of the grass. Three National Guard troops sort of materialized and started talking to me about after I greeted them, they were talking to me about the park police wanting to talk to me. And they arrested you? They put some sort of cuffs or zip ties on you behind your back? I didn't think I'd done anything wrong, so I had no reason to think I was going to be arrested, but I suggested we walk over toward the park police rather than waiting for them to come to us, and went over and furnished my ID, and kind of before I knew it, I was being handcuffed and realized I was being arrested.

Norm, you're his lawyer here. Is there, like, this seems so impossibly insane to me, but they're threatening 10 years in prison, and I'll ask you, Mr. Hearn, about how you feel about the president threatening that. But is there even, like, what, is there a crime here? Is there anything here? Chris. There was no crime. These accusations were made about the distinguished journalist Jonathan Carl. There's certainly no wrongdoing as to Davy. This is a reflecting pool where people have for decades. touch the water. How can it be a crime to touch the water of the reflecting pool, Chris? What you see is a desperate effort to cast blame anywhere other than those responsible. When you paint the bottom of a pool in the height of the summer heat, a dark color in a body of water that already is known to have severe out. problems, of course, you're going to have more difficulties. When you issue a no-bid contract, Chris, including involving one of the president's Mar-a-Lago cronies, that, of course, is going to lead to poor performance. This a coating is coming up of its own volition. Obviously, Mr. Hearn did not dump algae or toxic chemicals or run a 250 or 300 foot knife line down this pool. And it is one of the classic signs of an authoritarian regime to abuse. the criminal powers, just like we saw the AG Letitia James case thrown out, just like we saw the James Comey case thrown out, so many other cases that have been rejected by judges, by grand juries, and it's outrageous. Every American should be concerned about this. It is a sign of authoritarian behavior. As you know, we have... over 300 legal cases and matters. This one is among the most important because we can't let the criminal justice system be abused this way. That's why we fight these cases. Mr. Hearn, you were, you were, am I right that you were detained for five hours during, after this arrest? Yes, I was in the lockup at Haynes Point, Park Police, jail, and I didn't know how long I was going to be held. I was held. After an hour, I was told that it was going to be a site and release, so that led me to believe that I might not be there that long. And it dragged on. I was photographed, and they put me back in, fingerprinted, put me back in.

And I had not been able to, allowed to make a phone call. Nobody really knew I was there. I was held in communicato that whole time. It was never read my rights. What? Do they tell, are you charged yet? Have they even furnished the charges? We do have two misdemeanor citations, Chris. But there's no basis for this. We're going to contest it vigorously. It is not a federal crime to touch water. If you look in the statutes, you'll see there's no such federal crime. As someone who represented this country in the U.S. Olympics, we got to show that clip of you, which was incredibly cool. One of my favorite events to watch, actually, seems completely impossible and defies the laws of physics. I mean, it's so surreal, but how does it feel to have the president and then the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia essentially threatening to throw the book and talking about 10 years in prison? Well, Chris, I'm concerned for our country. I'm cautious about the future, but I'm confident in my counsel, and we will contest these charges. All right. Norm, you have filed ethics complaints against Todd Blanche. You're litigating a bunch of active, a bunch of sort of active lawsuits against this Department of Justice. It seems to me that it's gotten worse there somehow and almost improbably. Is that the trajectory, it seems to you as well? Well, Davy's case is a new low. They've hit bottom again here. And the courts are pushing back, Chris. As you know, we won the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center case. We helped defeat the slush fund. $1.8 billion. And we're going to fight this case as well. We can't have the Department of Justice bullying American citizens for touching water. That cannot be a crime. So this is a very important matter because it's an effort to shift the blame and scapegoat for the consequences of the administration's corruption. We're going to be contesting it vigorously. Well, I would just say to the folks that are tourists or residents of D.C. down there, based on what I've seen from reporters, our own and social media, the block is hot down there. They got, like, they got surveillance vehicles. There might be plainclothes officers waiting to snatch you up if you put your hand in the water. So just, you know, be for a warn. This is the state that we find ourselves in. David Hearn, Norm Eisen. Thank you both. Appreciate it. Coming up, Senator Elizabeth Warren on Trump's use of the Department of Justice to protect his closest allies. That's next. Hi, it's Sierra Miller. I can't wait for you to check out my new collection of shoes and accessories at Designer Shoe Warehouse. If you love shoes as much as I do, then trust me, I got you. From cute sneak arenas to the perfect flip-flops to stunning heels. These shoes are all style, no drama. It's a girls' girl's summer, and DSW has just the shoes.

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Just about every week that goes by, it seems things are getting worse to the Department of Justice, that same outfit that is going to apparently prosecute Mr. Hern. In addition to throwing people in jail for a decade over the reflecting pool disaster are threatening to do so, the DOJ has been hard at work doing Donald Trump's bidding. Earlier this month, ProPublica revealed the DOJ had squashed a criminal investigation to coal companies owned by the family of Republican Center Jim Justice of West Virginia. who's been close to Trump since switching parties at a 2017 Trump rally. DOJ claims there was no case. Just yesterday, we learned about another investigation dropped by the Trump DOJ, this one, into, quote, the circumstances surrounding his grant of clemency to a convicted fraudster, which we're going to have more on later in the show. And all this is happening is Donald Trump tries to push through his former personal criminal defense attorney, Todd Blanche, currently the acting U.S. Attorney General, to become the U.S. Attorney General. Senator Elizabeth Warren's a Democrat of Massachusetts and will vote on whether to confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General whenever it hits the floor. And she joins me now. Senator, I wanted to start with this because it strikes me that when you saw the Bill Pulte nomination, there was a sort of catalyzing effect, a palpable one in the Senate. And it was bipartisan. Like this guy can't be the head of DNI. This is dangerous. And there were sort of movements. They've sort of been boxed in by Trump. I feel like Todd Blanche hasn't. raised a sufficient level of alarm. And he's just sort of hanging out there and he's not calendared of when he's going to be confirmed. But do you feel that way, too? Or is there a palpable sense in the Senate that there's no way you can confirm this guy to be U.S. attorney? So look, there is no way that any reasonable person could vote for this guy to be the Attorney General of the United States of America. He is not only Donald Trump's private attorney, which, like, creates a whole bunch of conflicts, but also he's somebody who is not willing to say to the president, no, I got to make independent judgments here. He has clearly made his entire career in the past several years. doing nothing but Trump's bidding, and that's what makes him so attractive to Trump. But I think what you're also tapping into here, Chris, is how many people on the Republican side, and maybe even a few on the Democratic side, just don't want to talk about the corruption. They don't want to talk about the corruption that's just out there in plain view. You mentioned, what, three, four examples in just the last few days. But it's everywhere. Donald Trump has made, what, $2.3 billion of crypto after basically setting up a scheme that looks like it should be titled, Bride Me in Plain Sight. And you just can keep going from there. over and over and over, that his own son is off doing what, negotiations in the Middle East at the same time that he's hitting up Middle Eastern countries to fund his next ventures. The Saudi, I'm sorry, the plane is about to arrive, right? The Katari plane is about to arrive. And I think it's a moment when you have to ask, is there

anything so corrupt that the Republicans won't say, no, that's okay with me. I don't know anything about that. I have nothing to say. Because that's the real heart of the problem here. It's nobody on the Republican side willing to stand up on this corruption. And frankly, that means they own it. So you just excoriated the cowardice of some of your Republican colleagues. Today was a strange day in the U.S. Senate because there was a huge bipartisan majority vote on a large piece of substantive policy on housing. Now, I think people think of you as a fighter, and I think you've sort of. proudly worn that mantle. This is a piece of legislation that has worked through both houses. This version is going to have to be passed in the House. 85 to 6, I believe, today. You wrote it with Tim Scott. It's going to be passed in the House by a huge bipartisan majority and go to Donald Trump to be signed. And I want to ask you this. This is probably a defective way to reason, but I will admit there's some small part of me that sees those numbers and thinks, oh, that can't be good. Anything that this Senate or this House produces that Dollar Trump's going to sign, like, so what am I missing with that sort of reasoning? Because this is good. So let me just tell you two really good things about this. This bill, it's like a giant meatball. Lots of ingredients, right? A lot in there. A lot in there. A lot of different parts. But it's got nearly 50 different provisions that all aim toward increasing housing supply. Not all 50 apply to any one town or neighborhood. But there's stuff there to be used all across the country to help build more housing. And that's the number one way we're going to bring down housing costs. So all by itself, the fact that we could take good ideas from everywhere, including I want to give a shout out to the mayors across the country who contributed ideas and helped us push this along and all the different housing groups as well as. Republicans and Democrats in the Senate. So that's part one. More, more, more supply. But part two is this bill says for the first time ever anywhere in American history, it says no to private equity. You cannot move in to one neighborhood after another. buy up all the single family homes and turn them into rental units and turn America into a nation of renters. We have actually stood up finally and said that the private equity play is not going to work on housing. We're willing to put a stop to it. Those two things, pretty big deal. And there was bipartisan. On that second thing, this is something it gets a lot of attention. I have seen people argue.

And I think somewhat persuasively that on the numbers, when you look at like the crunch that is Americans having a harder, harder time affording housing, that the purchase by private equity entities of single family homes, which they convert to rental, is not really what's driving it. But it might be bad on its own, but that they've sort of been turned into a villain for an entire story that's about something much more broadly. What do you say to that? So let me just do the housing part of this first. They don't just buy like 1% of all the housing around the country. They go, in effect, city by city. So they've mowed through Atlanta. Did you know that 25% of all sales of single family homes last year in Atlanta were private equity. Sucking it up. That's a big number. That's a big number. Whoa. And beating out every first time home buyer or every family that's outgrown the little two-bedroom hoping to move to something bigger. They come in with an all-cash offer that is really tough on buyers. But here's the other part that you don't want to miss sight of. And that is when they turn those into rental units and shrink up the amount of housing to buy. They also are really terrible landlords. So what the data now show is that when private equity comes in and starts buying up housing, you lose the competition. You don't have lots of mom and pops out there. And, you know, if your landlord treats you like a jerk, you could move somewhere else. No, private equity comes in. The first thing they do is they raise the rent. Then they start putting a bunch of fees in place. And then... They go hard after people on collections. They are really bad landlords because they start to act. like monopolists because it's one outfit, two outfits, three outfits that start to control a larger and larger share of the whole rental market. So what I'd like to do is stop this business of private equity mowing through city after city before it hits Boston and before it hits San Antonio and before it hits St. Louis. We need to stop it now because... It is truly a danger to families who want to buy and to families who want to rent. And this legislation will severely curtail it, essentially put a stop to it at the scale you're talking about. Final quick question for you. It's going to pass in the House. You're going to go to the signing in the White House that the president invites you? You know, I truly, I haven't even thought about that. All I want to do is we got it through the Senate tonight. It's my birthday. We got it through the Senate tonight. Tomorrow, I hope there's going to be a vote in the House. That's where I'm focused right now.

But understand what this bill is about. Democrats have been fighting to lower costs for American families. for a long time now. And this shows that we are determined. We do fight and we do deliver. And this giant housing bill is our first down payment on lowering costs for American families. That's what we're going to do. Well, we expect it to become law. Unsolicited advice. If you do go to the White House, I would roll back the regression Gretchen Whitmer tape just as a thing to study about how you want to handle that situation. Senator Elizabeth Warren, thank you for your time tonight. Thank you. Zilla had the new report on Trump abusing his pardon power. This one, I just, it's just too weird. It's just too weird. That'll be next.

Donald Trump has opened up an insanely corrupt process for granting pardons and commutations. Basically, completely cut out the official Department of Justice process for these decisions, which had a longstanding pardon office, the presence of both parties relied on. Remember, he fired the pardon attorney when she wouldn't give a pardon to Mel Gibson? So what's replaced it is a very lucrative kind of gray market for people around Trump to help rich folks facing federal prison for criminal enterprises to try to get their sentences commuted by the president or be pardoned outright. And I got to say, one of the most shocking stories is about this guy, David Gentile, who was charged with defrauding thousands of mom and pop investors over a billion dollars in a Ponzi-like scheme in 2021. He was convicted, he was sentenced to seven years in prison, and then he was freed 12 days into his sentence. He was granted clemency by President Donald Trump. Well, the New York Times now reports that this convicted fraudster's appeal for clemency was aided by a retired Catholic priest in Queens, the guy you see there who delivered the benediction at Trump's second inauguration. The priest denies he had anything to do with the grant of clemency, but as you'll see in the reporting, there's some evidence he did. And then, after the clemency, federal prosecutors in New York started to look into exactly how this commutation came about. They started a criminal probe into the clemency itself, which was then, surprise, surprised, shuddered by the Trump administration with orders from Maine justice. Ken Vogel is one of the Times reporters who broke the story. He's been all over the corruption of the pardons and commutation process under Trump. And he joins me now. Ken, this is really a real doozy. So just the context here, Gentile is not alone, right? Like there are multiple folks, sort of fraud, wealthy folks engaged in what we call white color of crime who have gotten pardons and commutations from this president. Yeah, there's been basically the emergence of this part in industrial complex, for lack of a better word, where people have either a lot of money or connections to Trump or are able to use their money to pay people who have connections to Trump in order to get their clemency petitions before him. And you're right, Chris, it turns on its head the normal process for vetting and evaluating people to determine whether they're worthy of clemency, whether they've shown remorse, served their time, recidivate. And so instead, what you have is a system that's based on who has the ear of the president. And he seems to take glee in using this power. And so this industry has fallen into a little bit of like a well-established pattern where like, if you have the money to hire someone close to him, that person typically knows how to frame the application so that it appeals to him by using the magic words, witch hunt.

Biden and Justice Department, you know, unfair prosecution. And we found time and again that it has worked. Now, this situation is particularly unique in the way that it got to him, but it fits a pattern in other ways. Right. So the plot twist here is that the guy close to Trump was his ear is a retired priest named Father Mann, Frank Mann. Who is this guy? And what's his nexus with this part? Yeah, so he became friendly with Trump, at least as he tells it, to some of the Catholic press in Brooklyn that have written about him quite a lot because, frankly, he courts the press and he likes the attention. And it seemed like he courted Trump. What he did is he went to the gravesite of Trump's parents and his brother and cleaned it up and sent Trump photos of it. It's in Queens. He's in Queens. And Trump reached out to him, and they developed this friendship during. towards the end of the first term and into this sort of interregnum, he went to Bedminster, Trump endorsed his children's book, and so he had the ear of the president, and somehow we don't know exactly how he came to be connected to this David Gentilly guy, this convicted fraudster, and he told, and Gentilly told people that he was going to... pay as much as $2.5 million, possibly even more, to try to facilitate the pardon. And he told people, sorry, the clemency ended up being a commutation, he told people that he had facilitated payments to father man for his assistance in lobbying Trump for this commutation. Now, I want to say the father that you see there denies it, but this, you have reporting saying he told people, he gets to prison, he says, don't worry, I'm not here very long. Trump's got me hooked up. He told people he paid $2.5 million arranged somehow by the priest for this commutation. And you have reporting that Trump catches wind of it and calls the priest to yell at him. Like, are you selling my pardons? Is that true? Yeah, I mean, the irony with all things, Trump is, as you reported, as you talked to Senator Warren about, he has made a lot of money. And his family has made a lot of money off the presidency. But he really bristles when he finds out that other people are making money. And so we have reported on a number of instances in which people were involved in, you know, were paid a great deal of money to facilitate clemency from him. And he's gotten quite upset about it. And the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has issued statement. saying that he finds it detestable that anyone would try to make money off clemency. So we reached out to the White House and we said, hey, we're doing some reporting. We understand that this father man guy had used his connections to Trump to lobby for a pardon for David Gentilly and may have been paid. And we are told by a White House official that Trump picks up the phone after this gets to him. calls father man and demands to know whether he is paid whether he was paid at all and father man denied it adamantly uh but we have people who are familiar with gentilly's representations on this who have said that no gentilly said that at least some money we don't know how much we don't know when but at least some money was facilitated to go to father man for his work and in facilitating this clemency

Well, I mean, that's a new one, I got to say. Father denies it all. I guess that's ultimately between him and God. We'll find out Ken Vogel with a real – I mean, each one of these is sort of surpasses the last, but you've been doing great reporting on this. Thank you very much. Appreciate you, Chris. Still to come, Senator Chris Murphy on the trouble with Trump's big Iran deal. Next. Hi, it's Sierra Miller. I can't wait for you to check out my new collection of shoes and accessories at Designer Shoe Warehouse. If you love shoes as much as I do, then trust me, I got you. From cute sneak arenas to the perfect flip-flops to stunning heels. These shoes are all style, no drama. It's a girls' girl's summer, and DSW has just the shoes. Shop the Sierra Miller collection right now at your DSW store or DSW.com. Walmart shoppers, meet the debit card design with you in mind. The Walmart Money Card offers up to $75 cash back on purchases at Walmart each year, early direct deposit, overdraft protection, and so much more. When Walmart is your everyday store, you need a card to match. That's the Walmart Money Card. Open your account today. The Walmart Money Card is issued by green dot bank, member FDIC. Fees, terms, and conditions apply. Visit WalmartMoneycard.com to learn more. Some say Odu business management software is like fertilizer because of the way it promotes growth. Some say Odu is like a magic beanstalk, scaling with you while being magically affordable. And some say Odu's programs for manufacturing, accounting, and more are like building blocks for creating a custom software suite. But I say Odo is all of it. Fertilizer magic beanstock building blocks for business. Yeah. Odu. exactly what every business needs. Sign up at odu.com. That's odio.com.

The U.S. and Iran have now signed a kind of pre-deal, right, a so-called memorandum of understanding, which then inaugurates a period in which actual peace talks can begin. And as with everything surrounding this conflict with Iran, we're going to see things oscillate wildly in every direction possible over this period, including Trump himself throwing a fit on social media just yesterday, writing, quote, Iran must immediately stop their highly paid proxies in Lebanon from causing trouble. If they don't, we'll hit Iran very hard, just like we did last week, only harder. And then today, Trump's out promising the end of the war and lifting of Iranian sanctions and that it will help American farmers. One of the things that we are doing also when it came up last night is money that's being unfrozen is going to be used to buy food, and the food's going to be bought exclusively through the United States from our farmers. Okay, maybe, maybe not. Is that as real as the Antifa super soldier with the box cutter? You know, desecrating the reflecting pool? We don't know. There are two dynamics, though, fundamentally, structurally, as you watch all this unfold. One is that Iran still has a leverage because Trump wants the oil to flow and he needs it to flow and he doesn't want to be hereover, right? The second is that two of the people negotiating whatever deal happens just have absolutely zero business representing the United States government us. These aren't Senate confirmed. They're not American officials. They're not even full-time employees. It's just if the president's son-in-law and the president's real estate buddy, who themselves have literally billions of dollars tied up in the region. Senator Chris Murphy is a Democratic Connecticut. He serves on the Foreign Relations Committee, and he joins me now. You know, Sarah, I do feel that the Steve Witkoff Jared Kushner show has become so normalized that people don't really bat an eye anymore. When I saw the picture of the night, it was released where they're like all in the room and Vances at the laptop. One of the things people forget is that Jared Kushner said this time around, if he did anything with the government, he wouldn't also be soliciting funds. Right. Soliciting money from investors while he was. And then just drop that pretense altogether. He's continued to raise funds for his investment firm Affinity Partners. He's seeking $5 billion for Middle Eastern governments. As he participates in peace talks in the region, it's so crazy that this is not a scandal. Yeah, I mean, it is a scandal. We've never had our diplomacy this compromised. This is a regional negotiation. Yes, the talks right now are between the United States and Iran, but you see in those photos the foreign minister of Qatar. The Secretary of State is about to visit all of the other Gulf nations because you can't really get a deal that lasts unless all of the Gulf nations. support it. And so it is a fundamental corruption that Jared Kushner in particular basically has his private equity fund 90% supplied by funds from these Gulf countries. They clearly have a deal they would support and a deal they will not support that has nothing to do with what is good for the United States. And Jared Kushner only stays in business.

if in this deal he pleases. His friends in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. They will not continue to fund him if he doesn't sign a deal that is good for them. And again, that may or may not have anything to do with what's good for the United States of America. Yes, to an extent, Chris, all of this has become normalized. But it is important, as you do, for us to highlight who Jared Kushner is every time that he is mentioned in the context of this deal. He is a fundamentally corrupted actor in these negotiations. Yeah, in terms of the, you know, whether it's good for the U.S. Again, I, you know, I think I'm on the page of it's better than continuing the war. The weaknesses in the MOU are born from the weaknesses of starting a war that you basically lost and ended up with the wrong, you know, put yourself in a poor position. But it is striking. Like, my understanding of what the initial MOU phase is and some of the documents been issued by Treasury is that... They basically repealed like 40 years of U.S. sanctions on the Iranian oil industry in about a day for the next 60 days, which we met. Like, it is quite dramatic what they have done out the gate. Okay, so let's put these two things together. Historically, Saudi Arabia has not wanted the U.S. to do a nuclear deal with Iran, in part because they don't want the U.S. and Iran to normalize relations, right? Saudi Arabia wants to keep a fissure between the United States and Iran. So, traditionally, Saudi Arabia doesn't want a deal. So let's just ask ourselves whether we get closer or further away from a deal by releasing all of the oil sanctions up front. And the reality is we get much further away from a deal because that's our primary leverage. Obama didn't release all these sanctions ahead of the nuclear deal. Iran has no reason to step forward and sign an agreement once they've already got the sanctions relief, the oil sanctions relief. So back to the Saudis. If the Saudis are trying to scuttle a deal, then they would be supportive of a temporary deal that gives up all the American leverage up front. So I just think you have to. connect the pieces here. Saudi Arabia historically doesn't want a deal between the United States and Iran, and the MOU makes it harder to get a deal. Is that coincidental? Maybe, but maybe not.

Now, my understanding is that this, there's like sort of 60-day reprieve, right? But the idea is that, like, that would be an additional ratchet of leverage, right? Because they could close that back up to stay at the table here. I mean, I imagine these negotiations are going to drag on for a while. There's also the assets, which have been unfrozen, which, again, I just, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills because it's like, how many years do we cover? The Obama White House and Ben Rhodes and Jacob Dan Sullivan and everyone say it's their money that we are releasing. We're not paying. It's their running. And now I get to watch JD fans and Donald Trump and everyone say the exact same phrase. Yeah, well, I mean, listen, we lost the war. I mean, that's the bottom line. We lost the war. And so we have to pay an enormous amount of money to Iran to reopen the strait. That's the bottom line here. Yeah, that's the trade. That's the trade. But, I mean, yes, it is theoretically leverage to resanction Iranian oil after 60 days. But they know what Iran will do. They will close the strait again. And there is no way 60 days from now this administration with the midterms just months away are going to risk the straight being closed. So the reality is those sanctions have been lifted permanently. We have lost all that leverage, which we would have used to get a nuclear deal. And it is basically illogical that we're going to get a deal that's anything close to what the Obama deal was. That people should keep that timing in mind because that's a huge part of how the leverage works here, which is that if they close the straight right before the midterms, like everyone understands what that means and probably going to not happen, Senator Chris Murphy. Thank you. Stay tuned. In just a few minutes, Rachel Maddo on how the losses are just piling up for the president right now. We'll be right back.

That does it for All In. You can catch us every weeknight at 8 o'clock on MS now. Don't forget to like us on Facebook. That's facebook.com slash all on with Chris. Walmart shoppers, meet the debit card design with you in mind. The Walmart Money Card offers up to $75 cash back on purchases at Walmart each year, early direct deposit, overdraft protection, and so much more. When Walmart is your everyday store, you need a card to match. That's the Walmart Money Card. Open your account today. The Walmart Money Card is issued by green dot bank, member FDIC. Fees, terms, and conditions apply. Visit Walmartmoneycard.com to learn more.