thank you for joining us. this chair is here for you when everyone is gone by. we really appreciated. thank you very much. karine jean-pierre gets tonight's last world. what the 11th hour starts now. >> tonight, the trump mar-a-lago criminal investigation can move forward. a federal repeals court has reversed converse or decision of the trump judge of a classified documents, saying trump had no business having them. and in new york, the state attorney general brought her case against trump and his family to the public, saying no one is above the law. not even a former president. a bad day for donald trump. >> this is the worst day he has ever had legally. >> plus, the former guy is already lying about the two big court defeats today. we'll have a special look at

how lies and conspiracies can threaten our democracy, as the 11th hour gets underway on this important wednesday night. take a breath, because here we go. good evening once again. i am stephanie ruhle. this is a very big news night. one that has not been good for donald trump. just a short time ago, the 11th circuit court of appeals and a trump's lower years a huge defeat. two of them appointed by trump himself, lifted the judges order that prevented the justice department. seized from mar-a-lago in its criminal investigation that. ruling came after the world learned the former guy is now facing a potentially crippling lawsuit that poses and his real date

business and a family. letitia james, new york to tierney general, sued trump, his adult children ivanka, eric, and she's accusing him of lying to banks in the state, fraudulently over valuing his assets by billions and billions of dollars while trying to minimize his company's tax bills. >> the fraud deception used by trump and the trump organization for their own financial betterment is astounding. claiming you have money you don't have. it doesn't amount to the art of the deal. it's the art of the steal. and there cannot be deferrals for different people in this country or in this state. and former presidents are no different. >> and james offered several examples of what she called staggering fraud, including this allegation about the former presidents home in trump tower. >> mr. trump represented that his apartment spanned more than 30,000 square feet, which was the basis for evaluating the apartment. in reality, the

apartment had an area of less than 11,000 square feet. this was something mr. trump was well aware of. based on that inflated square footage, the value of the apartment in 2015 and 2016 was 300 and $27 million. to this date, no apartment in new york city has ever sold for close to that amount. tripling the size of the apartment for purposes of the valuation was intentional and deliberate fraud. not an honest mistake. >> the attorney general noted the vindication began after former trump lawyer michael cohen testified before congress back in 2019. did >> the president ever provide inflated assets to an insurance company? >> yes. >> was the president interested real reducing his local real estate tax bills? >> yes. >> and how

did you do that? >> what you do is, you deflate the value of the asset and then you put in a request to the tax department for a deduction. >> new york state lawsuit seeks to recover 250 million bucks from the trump organization, and james says she hopes to essentially ban trump and his kids from running any businesses in new york. trump's lawyer says the attorney general's claims are quote, merit-less, and tonight on fox news, for a full hour, trump himself said it was up to the banks to make sure his company is telling the truth. >> we have a disclaimer. right on the front. it basically says, get your own people, be at your own risk. what we do is, ears the financial statement, but be careful, because it may not be accurate. it may be way off. i

think it's close to a page and a half of all of these things, get your own people, use your own appraisers. use your own lawyers. don't rely on us. >> i'm going to get into that. as if that was not enough incitement for wednesday night, there is also breaking news tonight from the january six committee. a source close to the house panel tells nbc news lawmakers plan to interview ginni thomas the wife of supreme court justice clarence thomas. she was in touch with the former trump chief of staff, mark meadows, and lawmakers in both arizona and wisconsin, and guess what it was about? overturning joe biden's legitimate 2020 win. with that, let's get smarter. we need to tonight, with the help of our lead off panel. new york times investigative reporter,

covering the trump family and its business interests. kyle cheney, senior legal affairs reporter for politico, a former federal prosecutor and state prosecutor here new york. she clerked for merrick garland and justice sandra day o'connor. tally, i want to ask, is this the worst legal date of trump's ever had? i'm pretty sure the answer is yes. but i want to drinks date into tish james's lawsuit. how strong is the case? >> her case is incredibly strong, stephanie. i think that introduces the elephant in the room, which is, why is a case this strong not also the subject of a criminal prosecution and not just a civil prosecution? >> brag, she's looking at, you let's remind our audience, tali, you ran against alvin bragg. all of new york city must be calling you saying sister, what's up with this guy? didn't everything tish james tell us, seriously, though how is this not a criminal investigation? what are we missing? >> you're right, that's the interesting question, because what she has said today, inward indeed, is that she thinks that he is has completely given up, which is really something that we already knew on prosecuting donald trump. it's interesting, on the first page she says, trump and his people have committed a host of state crimes, repeatedly. she says

there's a persistent pattern of that. then she says federal prosecutors, you might be interested in looking into that. the strong implication being that she doesn't think that the manhattan district attorney, which is supposed to prosecute state crimes, is going to be taking the charge here. and also, just indeed, because you don't do a civil case before a criminal case. this is her way, i think, of saying she's tired of waiting. it's been three years of all the men who have had jurisdiction here and criminal jurisdiction not doing anything so she's going to use her tools. there are lesser tools,

but she made a strong case with what she had, and she showed us a lot of evidence, in excruciating detail. >> and she told us that was only a ten bit of what she had. david, you are the person i was thinking of when i was watching tish james today. you have studied trump and trump's money, most specifically the gross inflation of his wealth, for years. you won a pulitzer prize for it. what was your reaction watching tish james lay it all out, letter by letter? >> well, i have to be honest, it was jealousy. i look at president trump's finances for a long time and focused on the number of these properties. but i didn't find a lot of the things that she found, in part because a no one is giving me subpoena power yet. but i was impressed by the breadth of what she found and there are so many pieces of trump's empire that apparently were false goods, i should've checked but i. didn't the size of his own apartment. he troubled the actual size of it and claims incredibly high valuation. another one was trump park avenue, building in manhattan, where he still owns some of the units. she's in many of those units are rent stabilized, meaning you can't make the people are renting them now leave without their

permission. so trump valued them as if they were empty and you can sell them is condos tomorrow, and that was absolutely not the case. so valuation went from some number in the millions, which is what he claimed, sounded like 750, 000, just looking in every corner that she looked in. she found some falsehoods, she found some exaggeration. and the scale was even bigger than i thought they would be. so i was impressed after all these years of looking at this business empire that there was so much out there that i hadn't found. >> you touched on something right there though. trump is saying, we watched him in that fox news clip, where he said it's up to the banks. i have a disclaimer, pages that say you guys do the math. he wasn't just talking to one party, though. go through this with us, david. on one hand he would overinflate the price for the banks, this is how much i'm worth, but on the other hand, you talk to the government he'd say the same assets were worth practically nothing, because he didn't want to pay taxes on. it so he can't have it both ways.

who did he lie to? the banks, or the government? >> that's right. there's two elements, i think, that undercut what trump says. the argument he will eventually make up there's a trial. there are two statements than undercut. that he didn't give the banks. he gave them to the federal government, trying to bid on this property for the hotel that became the trump hotel in d. c.. and he gave them to lenders is part of his personal guarantee. the second thing is, even though there's a disclaimer that says, evidence claimed from his account. in his accountants are saying look, these numbers came from donald, trump not from. us our job was to put them on a gene justify them and make them look nice. but they are his numbers. they don't come out and say these numbers are allies or these are made up. they say where accountants, we didn't check that. it's an interesting thing, it's not just the dollar figures that she is saying a wrong. she is saying that there are specific facts about the condition of these properties, how many lots can easel? does he have permission to sell lots at all? and he's lying about those facts, which then undercut the valuation in dollars. all those things make it harder to say, well i told people, buyer beware. >> kyle, trump's adult children, who

either currently or formerly ran his business, they're in a whole lot of trouble here as well. is this a situation where they could turn on him to save themselves? >> we saw a lot of that in the trump years, i think. in his presidency when a new investigation, you eventually have people who felt like they were under the glare of investigators, would break from donald trump it. didn't happen often but it did happen and it seems like the family, the too closely knit together in all of this. letitia james made a clear point in saying this wasn't just that they had knowledge of it. the entire trump organization business model depended on their close cooperation, involvement, and partnership, knowing partnership in all of this alleged fraud here. so this was them as a unit. it's hard to

see them turning on each other when they're also intimately involved, according to her lawsuit here. >> tali, when trump testified he took the fifth hundreds of times. he said absolutely nothing. when he could get in trouble for perjury. if he goes on fox news for a full hour tonight and talks about anything and everything. fox news. he can't get trouble from the law but he can test out a bunch of disinformation stories and see what sticks. can any of the things he is saying on tv tonight be used by the doj? >> absolutely. some of what i heard him say tonight sounded like admissions or something close to emissions. he is even saying we may have said some bogus stuff in the statements, but you shouldn't have taken them, the bank, at the other end. that's already starting to sound like yeah i knew what we were putting into, there which is like the holy grail. did he have knowledge of what was going into the statements? but then he tries to brush it off.

you know, stephanie, i should also say that in a civil case, when you take the fifth, that counts against you, unlike in a criminal case, the jury is entitled to draw an adverse inference that you had something to hide, so if the strategy up until now has not been neutral it's going to hurt. him >> we also heard today for michael cohen, trump's former personal lawyer, we know he went to jail, we heard from tish james today, him testifying before congress, help this thing move along and i want to show what he said. >> donald call us in and he would say, i want to be higher on the forbes list, and so what i need to do is, i'm not worth six billion. i'm worth seven. and then seven would become, i'm worth eight, in fact i am really worth ten. so this guy added four billion dollars of net worth in a matter of 8 to 10 seconds. >> here's the thing, david. we've laughter trump doing that before. but

inflating the wealth like that isn't just a cheesy way to move up a rich list and get yourself on a magazine cover. this is how you cheat the government out of hundreds of millions of dollars. is that the case tish james is putting before us? >> it is. just to be clear, it's totally legal to lie to forbes but you can't tell the same lies to the government. you can't tell the same lies to lenders. that's the argument that she has made. broader and very detailed point by point property by property version of that argument. it wasn't just trump it was doing in little ways in every corner of his empire to impress all kinds of different people. it wasn't just a onetime thing, it was a common, steady practice throughout the business to lie about the properties did, what

they were worth. >> kyle, parts of this lawsuit have been referred to the irs in the doj. what are they likely to do now? >> good question. i think the justice department would would take refers from a fellow prosecutor seriously. you hear about things the january six committee make a referral to the justice department. i don't think prosecutors look at those particularly favorably when they come from the predict party political brand of government a prosecutor, herself a political figure, presenting this level of evidence, it would be hard for them to turn away from it. the question we don't really know is, to what extent have they looked at all of this already? so many financial records and somewhere in the iris possession. to what extent of the exam in these with a fine tooth comb that tish james is now displaying for the public? >> tali, i want to know what you thought watching this today. you worked for the brooklyn da. we watched tish james going through this. she spoke for 45 minutes. there's hundreds of pages. what kind of

work went into this? i'm thinking there had to be all of these da's this summer, in the sweltering heat, in their junkie downtown offices with lousy air conditioning, going through paper after paper. she got up there speaking, a black woman, with donald trump sitting in his house watching this. what went through your mind? >> it is an extraordinary public service that she has done. i was grateful for that and for all the people who work for her, but also, stephanie, i was frustrated because there is justice in what she is trying to pursue. there is no. doubt if don jr. can't be an officer of a corporation in new york ever again, if the trump organization can never get a loan from a bank that is registered here, that is important. it's not the same

kind of accountability as somebody going to prison, especially somebody who may be on the brink of becoming a presidential candidate again. and so there is accountability in the short term but there's also accountability that can change the course of history. that does feel to me like an opportunity that is missed, because what i see is a criminal case that has been put on the shelf. >> i know i have to go to break, but what about this frustration? if donald trump wasn't president of the united states, he would've gotten away with all of this. how about the fact that the way real estate empire's role, it sure seems like it's really easy to commit a whole lot of fraud and get away with it. nobody was going to notice that he overinflated the value of his in parliament and said it was worth 300 and $27 million? he likely would have gotten away with this for the rest of his life. >> but i might invert that and say that he is getting away with it, perhaps because he became president of the

united states, and that is intimidating. now we are, at the moment where we know all the stuff and some of this fraud is actually comical, it is so easy to understand. you can take out your tape measure and see that the apartment is not the size that he says that it is. so easy to explain that to a jury. and yet these are not crimes that he committed in the course of his presidency, because he was president. they don't have a political dimension. they started, and the bulk of it happened, before he became president. and so really it seems to me like becoming president has helped him out here. and seriously undermine the idea that all of us are equal under the law. >> this is a mad, mad, manned world. there is too much to cover. when we come back. the fact challenge former president is sticking to his claim that the documents he took from the white house were all

declassified. do you know he said he did it? by thinking about it. thinking about declassification. and later, decades of questionable financing. could donald trump's wheeling and dealing days finally be crashing to an end? the 11th hour, just getting underway, wednesday night. wednesday night.

for president still complaining about the search of his club. and tonight he presented a bizarre understanding of how the declassification process works. what >> is their process, what is your process? >> there doesn't have to be but i as i understand is the president of the united straits by saying i think about it. to mar-a-lago or -- doesn't have to be a process [inaudible] you make that decision. send it..

>> rolled against his letting the justice department has documents that were secretively [inaudible] in their ongoing [inaudible]. still with us. against him and their word matters? the rules against him so what does that mean? whatever judge cannon said about these documents is null and void. and their word matters. >> especially about the hunter particular documents or marked classified that this court said are classified. whenever donald trump says there has been no evidence to support this. these are in their view

classified documents that belong to the government. and the government should be able to use them as part of a criminal investigation. judge cannons ruling out the window now, and this could be appealed to the supreme court. don trump team has a signaled what they're going to do, but the fact that you have to trump appointed judges on this panel, as noted, ruling as forcefully as they did, you know, they really picked apart cannon. they took down almost every element of her ruling in somewhat aggressive fashion. it makes me wonder whether trump team will go through with an appeal here, all the way to supreme court, so with a pretty thorough rejection of the cannon rationale. >> so david, now the doj can go through these documents. do they need to go further? because if you listen to what donald trump said right there, if you're the

president, you can declassify and send them to mar-a-lago or wherever, i want to underline wherever. does that give a hint that maybe he just said the prior part out loud what the doj should be putting out next? looking at bedminster, trump tower, wherever else he could've sent things? >> i think the people who would know that with the national archives and records administration. they know, i think the, universe of documents that are listed in the first place to know what's missing. if they think there's something missing, there may be other trump properties to go to. i don't think there's an infinite universe of documents were looking for. i think there is a set, and they will know how many of them they still don't. have they may still not have some, but they would know. >> tali, trump is back making the argument that everything is declassified. yet his lawyers have never made this argument in the court of law. so are they arguing to a court of law and he's trying to win the court of public opinion? >> well, yes, i think he is making an argument for the public, but i also do think he is setting up an argument for court. it's not the argument that he's going to try to prove that these documents were actually

declassified. that's silly. we can sort circuit that. but the current government, the current executive says they're classified, and that's the end of that. i think he's trying to do something a little bit more tricky here in set up the argument that whether or not they were declassified, he thought so, and if he thought so, how could he have criminal intent? now he needs one more step. he needs to also say, i assumed that if i thought they were declassified, i could hoard them, i could maybe destroy them, i could obstruct justice. >> i am a dom dom is a defense? >> haven't we heard a version of that argument before from him? i didn't know what i was doing? so i think this is where this has always been leading. i think that it's maybe possibly actually the best that he can do with what he has. >> is that a viable defense? >> i do not think it's a good defence, but i think that we have certainly built up

this idea that this criminal intent is the key and he might think that he might be able to persuade a juror that that is enough. >> we've been talking that trump is slow playing this and suddenly it seems like a lot is happening very quickly., what happens next? where do we go from here? >> again, we will see if the trump team is going to appeal this. but it raises the question, you have this special master going through all the documents while under this ruling. those documents are no longer part of that review. so that stands, the doj is kind of happy. they've moved a criminal investigation forward. there's no longer a threat hanging over them that if they do the wrong thing there going to be held in contempt of court. so now that

the investigation may start earlier this year and really escalated with this raid, the seizure of these documents from mar-a-lago, you have to continue apace and they've described it as being at the early stages, a few weeks ago, so maybe now they are moving to the middle phase of that, if they are allowed to go forward without any further appeals. >> the clock is ticking. david fahrenthold, kyle cheney, i love dave's response he felt jealous. i sincerely appreciate your honesty. and tali farhadian weinstein and what did she feel today, mad? matthew. alvin bragg. coming, up this is a wealthy family, unaccustomed to accountability. is that about to change? david cay johnston, who has written all about the trump businesses, and knows an inside and out, is here next. when the 11th hour continues. continues.

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basically alleging that donald trump ignored outside experts and advice, that he inflated his personal value, and he roped his family and friends into supporting the fraud, and say what you will, donald trump ran his business the way he ran the country. you're absolutely. right it's pattern after pattern. >> the new york ag says there were more than 200 instances of fraud committed over the last ten years. that pattern after pattern of the behavior within the trump organization, it actually may have been going on for decades. let's bring in pulitzer

prize-winning investigative room porter david cay johnston. he wrote the big cheat. how donald trump america and enriched himself and his family. david, for years, you have been shouting much of what tissue james talked about today from rooftops. so knowing what you know about trump's business history, put today's news in context. >> what is significant today is that finally we have law enforcement official who has simple authority, not criminal, laying out donald trump's constant cheating. it's just who he is. and doing so in a way that, and this is an important aspect of this. we'll show that he does not, he does this personally. donald often will say, i just did with the lawyer said, what the accounts told me to, do what the experts said. in one case, an appraisal of one of his buildings was a $200 million. he then put in

his net worth statement that it was over $500 million, and said that's what the appraisers said. that kind of fraud is going to be very difficult for donald when this comes to trial, and clearly there are going to be documents galore and witnesses. they've done a thorough job and put together a very solid case. >> let's talk about how this could hurt him. i want to draw a comparison. already trump and his family are not allowed to sit on a charity board for ten years in new york. that is embarrassing. but what the real punishment was they were forced to shut down their foundation, they actually had to give the money to charities that they promised to, and they had to pay a fine. that's the price. now what tish james is looking for here, donald trump and his adult children could not be officers in any business in new york, which, that's not really that bad. who cares? but the real painful thing would be that no new york bank, no u.s. bank, could lend to them again. talk to us about how damning that

is. because if you've got no liquidity, you've got nothing. >> no, that's exactly. right if you don't have liquidity, you have nothing, and donald always has these cash flow problems. he claims to be a multi billionaire body doesn't have cash flow to pay his bills. i'm a news reporter who raised a children, i always paid my bills on time. so donald would be able to operate businesses in new york but only if he owned them directly. he wouldn't have the shield of a corporation to insulate him he, would have to own them directly and he basically is being shut out of business in new york if the attorney general gets a court to rule in her favor in the civil suit. one of the problems donald is going to have here is that he took the fifth amendment when questioned by the attorney generals staff more than 400 times. eric trump something around the order of

500 times. in a criminal matter, you have a right to do that but you can question. it in a civil matter, the judge may, doesn't have to, but may draw an adverse interest. the reason you would answer the questions is that they were damning to your case. that is going to be also a very major problem for him. not being able to do business with banks to do any business in new york, well, that would introduce him to some small bank in little ion island. >> can he just get cute? here put the business under his other children's names? move it to the state of florida? can he do anything like that? >> any move to do that, you are going to see laetitia james in court instantly, hollering fraudulent transfer. and so no, he can't do that. and his children, he's a man who has exposed his children. whatever you might think of michael flynn, the

general that obama warned trump not to hire, when federal charges came out of there was a charge between flynn and his son, flynn stood up for his son. i don't expect donald trump stand up for his own children if push comes to shove. >> let's talk about those children. because bill barr talked about that earlier today. i want you to watch this. >> i'm not even sure she has a good case against trump himself. but what ultimately persuades me that this is a political hit job is that she grossly overreaches when she tries to drag the children into this. yes they had roles in the business, >> children, we're not talking about barron who's 16. years because a key executive in company. negotiated the hotel in washington. don junior and eric they ran

the company when he was in office. what is bill barr talking about? >> well barr is really trying to get letitia james who ran for office say essentially i'm going to get donald trump civilly. i'm going to get him. that is really an imprudent thing to do. and you can bet that as they move towards trial, the trump side will scream this is unfair. but i do not think it will get them in particular anywhere. but dame says in the past suggested that his son don jr., who is in his 40s, he's just a boy basically. nonsense. we're not even talking about someone who is what i call to my children, probationary adult from 18 to 30. they are way past that. they are so deeply involved in the matters that are going on here. if you or i were to lie to banks the way that donald trump did, and the government became aware of, it we would be in deep trouble.

>> hold on a second, though. let's say he did lie to the banks. he is saying it's the bank's fault. it's rare that i say, does don trump have a point? but just stay with me. almost no bank in new york would do business with him, because they knew he was a liar. but deutsche bank did. when he tried to do business with deutsche bank on the business side, i knew this, i work there, he said this is what the value of my brand is, they left him out of the building. but instead walking out of the building he just walked back in the side door and went to the private bank. and the private bank said, come on in. and they did business with him. so is there some accountability for some of those who did business will form when everybody else on the street knew he was a big fat liar? >> that's the point i wanted to get to. the banks are not innocent. here the it is the insurance companies aren't innocent. there's a great deal of lawlessness going on among our big banks, especially international banks.

we have a long history of banks like city bank helping the then president of mexico loot the public treasury and hide money. there is enormous amount of litigation that's going on about money laundering helping criminals move money, and we need to rethink, first of all, the standards of white collar crime in america, which we do little to enforce. you go robin bodega with a water pistol, and we will put you in prison, but if you rob a bank and do it the way donald trump does it, and nothing happens to you. trump is going to argue, all of these loans were repaid. it doesn't matter. if you reach into the company of the banks, the vaults, and take money, and you put it back later, because you won the horse you put it on, one of the racetrack, you still committed

a crime. so donald has real serious problems here, but we do need to look at the failure of our system to enforce the law against big banks and insurance companies, and this is a significant factor in something i've been writing about 25 years, which is our worsening inequality. it's really a form of subsidy for the superrich and it is paid for by the rest of us to less access to credit and less beneficial credit terms. >> well, whenever you want to come back and talk about that, we have always got time for. it david cay johnston, thank you for joining us tonight. when we come back, i've been saying it all night, don trump is already lying tonight on fox news. it's getting pushed on social media. all about the lawsuits against him. these lies will then get amplified online. and that is how trump supporters get their misinformation. the author who wrote about how that happens, and how dangerous it is to our democracy will join us on this big news night when the 11th hour continues.

it took absolutely no time for donald trump to -- tish james today. the former -- calling her a racist, and calling the investigation a witch hunt. exactly the type of misinformation that becomes internet memes.

spreading lies to all corners of the internet. our next guest has written all about this. doctor joan donovan, she's the research director of the shorenstein center on media politics and public policy at harvard, and the author of the new must read book meme wars, the untold story of the online battles upending democracy in america. joan, people think memes are funny, they are silly, they are not. take me to tonight, donald trump was on tv for an hour spreading lie after lie about tish james and her investigation. how soon before that enters the meme machine, and the misinformation is everywhere? >> it is already happening. so, one of the things that i did right before we came on air was just looking at her name on twitter and facebook, and there is quite a few people that are positively meaning her and saying, you know, she is, you know, here for law and order. so you have a lot of those memes out there. but, ultimately, what we are

seeing though is that people are starting to want to dig up dirt on her, you start to see people spreading racist memes with her face, and of course just in the same way we have seen trump and his allies go after political opponents he is going to try and drag her and the investigation through this no matter which is going to play out many different ways on different platforms. >> say that again, what kind of war? >> a meme war. so, it is -- >> that is a new term for us. >> yeah, so we have all kind of done it online. someone will say something, someone will respond with a meme. it is funny, it promotes in group solidarity, but when you have a meme like something like stop the steal, it really does stills something very simple that gets the message across and then the other thing it does, it coordinates people and so they start to take actions.

sometimes small, sometimes retweeting, sharing, maybe making another meme, but overtime it creates the network solidarity and people start moving from what we call the wires to the weeds. so something like stop the steal becomes the january 6th insurrection. >> so does that mean you go from the wire to the weeds, and someone like to shames, her team could be in real danger. because, if he starts pushing this out to the maga, to the january 6th grew, and she is target number one. that is not just jokes. >> yeah, we have already started to see him tapping into the qanon crowd, a colleague of mine juliette was writing about this in the atlantic today about how, now that he is really clued into qanon and the memes around that, particularly the phrase the storm is coming, he is getting desperate. these are not the kinds of people that are going to act like typical political constituents, because they are not people who are here for the party, they're here for in some instances what they call the god emperor, or maga king and trump. >> the got emperor, or maga king? >> yeah, so we talk a lot about

the got emperor mean and how -- that >> what is that? >> it comes from video games, and there is a lot of memes of trump being exulted in armor, and looking as if he is much bigger than he is, slaying dragons. this was something that people were sharing online as a way of, you know, roiling up some of the liberals, getting in the face of other people, trying to make trump much bigger than he has. in fact, trump himself has moved on beyond a persona, and is now a man made meme. >> a man made meme. john donovan, thank you for joining, us thank you for your work. when we come back, what is in liz cheney's bill to prevent a january 6th repeat? why should calling out one of

her own republican colleagues voting out against it. we will have that when the 11th hour continues. i wish that shaq was my real life big brother. turns out, some wishes do come true. they'll never know. and it turns out the general is a quality insurance company that's been saving people money for nearly 60 years. for a great low rate, and nearly 60 years of quality coverage- go with the general. >> the last thing before we go

tonight, protecting our democracy. today the house passed the presidential election reform act, the bill was introduced by representatives cheney and loeffler in, to inform the electoral contact after the january 6th attack. the measure makes it clear the vice presidents role when counting electoral college votes is purely ceremonial, and it raises the threshold to object electors. but republican congressman

rodney divestment of illinois, he argued the changes are not needed. >> these systems have worked, at the end of the day, the outcomes are exactly as they should have been. it is why people can and should have faith in our election system. this isn't to say our system is perfect, there is always room for improvement. but unfortunately, that is not what is happening here today. the electoral act has been in place or over a century, and directly implements constitutional provisions. first of, all political parties have exercise the rights of the provision of that law to race constitutional objections to state electoral slates if they determine something maybe improper. this is not an affront to democracy, frankly, it is democracy in action. >> for facts sake, with the republican objections on january 6th democracy in action? i will let congressman cheney take this. >> if your aim is to prevent future efforts to steal elections, i would respectfully suggest that conservative should support this bill.

if instead your aim is to leave open the door for elections to be stolen in the future, you might decide not to support this or any other bill to address the electoral count act. january 6th contrary to what my colleague from illinois just said, was not, quote, democracy in action. and our oath of office is to support and defend the constitution, which provides the method by which we elect our president. legal challenges are not in proper, but donald trump's refusal to abide by the rulings of the courts certainly was. >> what liz cheney just said to rodney davis, brother please, in the and, the bill passed to 29 to 203. nine republicans broke ranks to vote with democrats, but here's the thing, none of those nine republicans will be returning to congress next year.

they either lost their primaries, or are retiring. the senate is working on a similar bill to protect elections, it will be reviewed by -- the committee next tuesday and we will be watching you. and on that note, it is been an hour. i wish you all a very, very good night. from all of our colleagues across the networks that nbc news, thank you for staying up late. i will see you at the end of tomorrow. >> the fraud and deception used by mr. trump in the trump organization for their own financial benefit is astounding. >> the massive trump fraud suit. >> falsifying business records issuing false financial statements. insurance fraud. >> tonight, the evidence gathered against the disgraced ex president and his company. the legal jeopardy for trump and his oldest kids. and what prompted the investigation in the first place. >> the president or his company ever inflate assets or revenue? >>