The Rachel Maddow Show weeknights at 9:00 Eastern on MSNBC. So we landed a car on Mars today, a breathtaking feat of American ingenuity and exploration. Just a stunning example of what is possible when Americans put their heads together to do something truly grand, just an American feat of brio and engineering and ambition. Its major heart sing to see that team celebrate at the Jet Propulsion Lab to see those first pictures beamed back from the surface of Mars, where we have our rover.

And it was just amazing. We're going to have more on that later in the show tonight. But meanwhile, here on Earth today, same day, same country, we still have not figured out how to keep the lights on. Hundreds of thousands of Americans still in the dark tonight in the great state of Texas suffering what has been a days long, slow rolling disaster caused by a big and very cold winter storm that has pounded most of the country.

And it is bad and a whole bunch of places and then a whole bunch of states. But the situation in Texas is just a catastrophe, not only because of the weather, but because of the mix of the weather and Texas's inability to prepare for it and inability to handle it. Against the cold temperatures, demand for electricity is way up so people can heat their homes. But the energy supply in Texas is simultaneously also way down with Texas non winterised, non insulated, largely unregulated, very fragile energy infrastructure, proving itself once again to be incapable of operating in the cold and capable of generating anywhere near enough power to light up the state when demand is high.

That has left millions of Americans in Texas without power for days. No power, of course, means no heat. That has created dangerous conditions for millions of people. As of tonight, dozens of people have died in Texas. The electricity part of the problem is starting to resolve now, although still tonight, the number of Texans without power remains in the hundreds of thousands, some of them for four straight days. Now, even those improvements, though, they may not last with more very cold temperatures in the forecast.

Texas regulators are warning they may again have to kill power in parts of the state. Parts of the state that have power now may yet lose it as regulators turn off some neighborhoods, some places that have power. Again, they're anticipating having to do that to try to keep further strain off the unstable, unsupported grid in that state. Texas grid manager saying now that if that does happen, they'll try to limit new power disruptions, this time to no more than 12 hours at a time.

But on top of what everybody's already been through, knowing that places with the lights on right now may yet have the lights go off again is just if it's beyond words. But this catastrophe with the power in Texas, it is not a problem that can get fixed with the flip of a switch, the knock on effects of depriving millions of people of power for days on end. Those are baked in now. It's going to take a while to get out of those.

It starts with the water. Tonight, more than 14 million people are under what's called a boil water notice in the state of Texas and parts of Texas. The facilities that treat the water that clean people's water lost power because of that and some other storm related issues. That means that 14 million people in Texas don't have clean drinking water tonight. That's basically half the state of Texas. And not having clean drinking water is a very dangerous, very unsustainable problem.

Being told to boil your water when you might not even have electricity to power any means of boiling the water is, of course, ridiculous.

It's an insult on top of injury, but it turns out people in Texas with dirty, undrinkable water coming out of their taps right now. In some ways, they're the lucky ones.

One Austin resident telling The Wall Street Journal tonight, quote, I'm like, great, you're telling us to boil water, but nobody's talking about the fact that I know one person who has water and I'm driving to that person's house right now to get some water. Are we supposed to boil? People in Texas have been bailing water out of swimming pools. They can find pools that aren't frozen. They're bailing water out of swimming pools to fill up their toilets.

They've been melting snow and outdoor fire pits because the only water they have is the frozen stuff that's fallen on their lawns, the stuff that came out of the sky. I mean, this is Houston, Texas. America's fourth largest city, people waiting in line with buckets at a local park to fill them up because somebody found that there was still water coming out of that one spigot. The entire city of Austin is under a boil water notice. Thousands of people have dry taps, Austin officials have told people in that city to be prepared to be without water potentially for days.

One Austin resident telling the local NBC affiliate that she stockpiled water last week just in case she'd even filled up on four bathtubs. But now she and her family are down to the end of that stockpiled supply. They have just a half case of bottled water left for the family. She said, quote, If we knew this is going to be one day or two days, that would be one thing. But not knowing and the possibility of extending longer makes it pretty hard to deal with because we do not know what to plan for.

And beyond individual households in Austin, it's not just households that use water. The crisis also is now a huge problem for the city's hospitals. Last night, David's hospital in Austin had their water cut off, the hospital had to transfer dozens of patients to other hospitals. Last night, they discharged some other patients, just told them to go home. The CEO of the hospital says they need water to supply the boiler in that hospital. The boiler heats the hospital, so losing water was the first of their problems.

Losing water also meant they couldn't fire the boiler, which meant the hospital was also losing heat. Today, the hospital brought in a water truck to feed the boiler and to feed the toilets so they can flush. I mean, this is just a slow, rolling, unmitigated disaster in Texas right now. This was southwest Houston today. People waiting in line for hours in the cold to get propane. This was a line outside a fast food restaurant in Austin.

People don't just need propane, they don't just need water. They need food. Fast food restaurants open, this is the kind of line you're getting. A line of cars stretching all the way down the block, grocery stores have been mobbed with people. The shelves in many stores are bare. Some grocery stores were closed for days because they didn't have power. Freezing temperatures and rolling power outages have thrown a monkey wrench in the supply chain for everything. One Austin resident telling the Texas Tribune about her recent trip to Target, quote, The store was out of meat and eggs and almost all milk before I left, lines were wrapped around the store.

When we arrived, shelves were almost fully cleared for potatoes, meat, eggs and some dairy. She said her neighbor went to that same store two days later. By then, it was completely out of food. There was no sign that more shipments were on the way. No employees restocking shelves, nothing to restock with people living in one of the largest states in the country. Are living with no electricity, no heat, no water, scrounging for non potable water and for food.

This has been going on for the better part of a week. It was not in the midst of that, it was not until yesterday that the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, held a public press conference to talk to the people of Texas about what's been going on, what the state is trying to do to fix it. This is how the Texas Tribune summed up what Governor Abbott said at the press conference. Quote, I hope it provides few details on when Texans suffering will end as state's crises mount.

Today, Aaron Benko at The Daily Beast reporting that the federal government had sent Texas 60 industrial sized generators to help alleviate the strain on the electrical grid. But she reported that as of this morning, those generators were, quote, sitting in a staging area in Fort Worth waiting for delivery instructions. Same with ten thousand gallons of diesel fuel to fire those generators sent to Texas by the federal government. FEMA officials are waiting for instructions from Texas officials as to where to send it while they wait.

The federal government has been trying to help. My administration has declared a state of emergency in Texas and a state of emergency in Oklahoma and Louisiana now, too. They've also been hard hit by the storms. The president has authorized FEMA to provide hard hit states with generators and supplies. They says they're ready to fulfill additional requests for assistance in Texas, specifically, besides those 60 generators that were reportedly sitting in a warehouse in Fort Worth. FEMA has already sent Texas hundreds of thousands of liters of water, tens of thousands of blankets, hundreds of thousands of meals.

This is a crisis that is absolutely still ongoing. Joining us now is Bob Fenton. He is the acting administrator of FEMA in the United States. Mr. Fenton, I really appreciate you taking time to help us understand what's going on right now. Thanks for taking the time to be here. Well, thank you for having me on, Rachel. First, let me know if you need to set me straight, if I've said anything that's wrong here that's out of date or if my reporting is misconstrued, anything.

Second of all, I'd like to hear, in your words what the scale of the FEMA response is right now. Well, thank you. What's happened is weather events started late last week that caused significant impacts on the roadways and then this last weekend started with cold weather, cold weather and another event that is continuing to last. And how many single digit temperatures along the Texas area and most of the state and including the rest of the southern plains are now moving up to the eastern seaboard.

So there's a number of states affected in addition to Texas. For Texas, one of the worst, because it's so far south. We look at the building codes down there, it's really not made for temperatures that we see or that are this low that happened that often last time this happened was over 50 years ago. So in addition to the cold temperatures, that's causing significant impacts, individuals that have collateral next to the water systems through the fuel systems.

And what we're doing now is responding to those to help Texas out. The president, as you said, issued a emergency declaration this weekend that authorized us to direct the federal government to support the state of Texas needs it. They have talked about a lot of the resources that we've sent down there. We do have a very large warehouse in the Texas area already, but we're also seeing stuff from Atlanta and energizing a lot of our contractors and working with a lot of different groups that would bring assistance to the area to help those that need.

I know that the president's emergency declaration allows FEMA, which is you, to coordinate disaster relief for all two hundred and fifty four Texas counties when it comes to coordinating the relief, is it most is FEMA focused mostly on direct aid to people who most need it? The things that I just described, water, blankets, food, that sort of thing? Or is your coordination of relief also about working with Texas power generating facilities and water treatment plants and other systems operators to get the systems back up and running?

But we're there to support the state of Texas. They set the priorities where they want us to focus our resources and where we can provide assistance. So in this case, right now, we're providing resources directly to individuals through shelters, warming stations, whether that be water, meals, blankets, cots, those kinds of things. In addition to that, you talked a little bit earlier about the generators were providing some of those are to pump stations or other critical infrastructure to get those up and operational.

And we're bringing fuel and other things. In addition to that, we provide funding to Texas to help them bring in resources to do this so we could do help in all aspects, from individuals to government entities to assist the state in helping private sector if they need help to get their equipment up and running or resources need to be brought in that aren't there right now. Administrator Fenton, I'm going to ask you just to sort of tell me bluntly in just in human to human terms, is the response working right now?

I'm worried when I see reporting, like we saw from that report at The Daily Beast today, that FEMA has succeeded in getting generators into Texas. But they were sitting at a staging area this morning while we're seeing the human suffering in Texas, because people don't have access to power, they don't have access to all the things that are made possible, including heat by access to power. Is this I understand the scale of what you're describing as the effort here, but is it is it working or are there problems here?

Well, this is a significant event. Single digit temperatures to hit an area the United States is not used to seeing that temperature over a long period of time is impacting many that are not ready for this type of event. So it's impacted a number of people across. Not only almost every county in Texas has been impacted by this event, which is 20 something million plus people, plus other states are impacted by this. And what's happened is there's been secondary events.

So not only the cold by now, Texas has tried to respond to that by putting up the stations, by opening shelters, by working to assist in improving communications and those kind of things, but that they start to have the secondary events of the water line breakages, whether it's in homes or our main line, which is now a collateral effect that we're dealing with. And you talk about the boil water notices and they need to provide water there, which is almost like a second event that's happened now and it's still called in.

This is going to happen through the weekend. So we are working together with Texas and the local governments there to provide the resources they need. Individuals need to continue to heed the warnings of local government officials. Don't expose yourself to the cold for long periods, check on friends and family and make sure that they get the warning stations if they need to. We need to make sure we don't lose any more lights here. And we need to make sure that we start reenergizing the bread and water and the power, because that's going to eventually make things better.

As we do that, there's going to be significant damage from this event, from those pipelines that we're going to have to deal with for weeks ahead and make sure that we're providing sufficient water and other commodities to help those that need most. Well, I hear you on the scale of the response, the the and what's needed in terms of the people of Texas needing immediate relief after four days shivering in the cold. I hope the scale of the response can quickly start to reach the scale of the need.

Robert Fenthion, acting FEMA administrator, thanks for helping us understand tonight. And Godspeed to you and your colleagues. Thank you, Rachel. Our prayers go out for everyone in Texas and we'll be there to help you through this. All right, let's now go to Texas, to Harris County. Harris County is the largest county in Texas, the third largest county in the United States. Harris County includes the great city of Houston. And they did have some good news today.

The county of Harris County went from having one point four million people without power yesterday to having twenty thousand people without power today. Large a large scale restoration of power in Harris County and having the majority of power restored for the county is a good step. But the county's top elected official is warning tonight, quote, The lights are on for now in most of Harris County, but we are not out of the dark. She says most of us are still under boil water, under boil water notices.

We are facing another freeze tonight and Thursday night, and we are dealing with shortages and price gouging. Take steps to keep your family safe. Joining us now is Harris County Judge Linda Hidalgo, who is the top executive in charge of a county of over four and a half million people, I'm told. Judge it. Al just got off the phone with the governor of Texas. Judge, thank you so much for taking time to be here tonight. I know you are in the middle of it.

I appreciate this time. Into. I just spoke with the FEMA administrator live just moments ago. He talked mostly about the scale of the challenge, expressing confidence that FEMA can scale up to support Texas in as a federal partner, basically in this response. I still feel like the need that we are seeing in Harris County and across Texas is far outstripping the scale of the response in terms of government efforts federally, statewide, locally. It just seems like it's an overwhelming crisis.

How are you feeling tonight and what are you hearing from the governor? It absolutely is and has been an overwhelming crisis. I just actually recently got updated numbers on the hypothermia deaths, just the tip of the iceberg. But but seven very sad stories just here in the county as as the the fog of war settles a little bit and we get details. We've seen cascading impacts, water, carbon monoxide poisoning, pipes bursting, roofs caving in, hospitals with low water pressure, all kinds of issues.

And so we know we take care of ourselves as best we can. Locally, we've got committed and creative emergency response professionals. But part of my discussion with the governor is how we can together advocate for an emergency disaster declaration from the federal government. And that's a discussion I had today with the White House as well as FEMA is is this is far beyond the ability of local governments, for example, to adequately recover from. Houston is one of the places where, as you mentioned, hospitals have been hit, I've read reports today about pipes bursting in multiple Houston hospitals as they struggle without heat, without water.

Obviously, the idea of having no water pressure, no ability to flush toilets or run water to clean anything in a hospital is a nightmare scenario. What can you tell us about that, that status in Harris County and and that the circumstances of your hospitals right now? So we lost power on a very early Monday morning, about 1:00 in the morning, and that meant that many of the generators that keep that water pressure going, we're down. That then allows bacteria to seep into the water, causing boil water notices.

Right now, as of about an hour ago that I got my briefing, we have two hundred and twenty two cities and municipal utility districts within Harris County that are under boil water notices. That's about three point three million people who cannot drink their water as the the roads become less impassable. At least they can they can try and go out and purchase it. But again, we've got a lot of grocery stores that are not operating. Many folks, of course, have all a whole week's work, even amidst a pandemic.

And they're facing all of these same cascading effects right now. The main concern is the water situation. In terms of Harris County's power supply, obviously we did see big progress with the electricity coming back, but you were among the most prominent voices in the state warning that even a big, well resourced county like Harris County that is not getting the county out of the dark, that there may be additional power cuts, that the long term, the long term turnaround in this water crisis that you're describing may take quite a bit of time, even as the power is back on for people who have friends and loved ones in Harris County right now in and around Houston and that part of Texas.

What should they expect in terms of ongoing hardship these next few days? It's going to be another hard freeze tonight. We have to acknowledge the good news and being down to twenty two thousand homes without power is great, but I also am not in the business of raising false hope. And the challenge was that the state agency, this, this, this, this Earth Court did not have enough power generation to sustain the crisis. Their power plants came offline with the cold.

We're about to see cold that extreme level of cold again. And so they make buchel again. Under that weather, we're about to see high demand again. They may buckle under that high demand. That is not an expectation that we have. But I at least want to leave that possibility open that there may be some hiccups as these folks that very much failed for several nights get everything together. And I don't want folks to be extremely alarmed if there are some some smaller outages as we get out of this.

Now, the broader impacts we are helping to address as best we can. We're working with our community partners. It's all hands on deck. So I do think that things are definitely looking up. They're definitely looking up. I know folks have been concerned. It has been a catastrophic, just tragic few nights and days for the community. And we just need to recognize that, like with any disaster, recovery takes a while. It's not perfectly smooth and there's going to be some setbacks on the way to that progress.

Harris County Judge Linda Hidalgo, the top elected official in charge of the largest county in Texas. God bless you and your colleagues. I know that it has been a bunch of sleepless nights already and it will continue to be as you try to address this crisis, stay in touch with us. Let us know what we can do in terms of getting the word out to a national audience. Good luck. Thank you. All right, I'll tell you, my colleague Lawrence O'Donnell is going to have much, much more on the situation in Texas in the next hour, including and over the course of the night tonight here at MSNBC.

We're staying on this. One of the things that is very worrying in Texas, even as in some places we are seeing the power come back on, is the I think that the sort of crushing emotional blow it's going to be in some places when after the power finally comes back on and a lot of places today, tonight, it may yet go down again with this fragile grid in Texas and more very cold weather coming in overnight tonight, that is going to be difficult.

But these water, the access to clean water issue is going to take a long time to dig out of. And it's very, very dangerous to keep Texas in your prayers tonight. All right. Much more to come tonight. Stay with us.

His name was Carmine Galanti, but his mob nickname was the cigar. He was apparently almost never seen without a cigar clamped between his teeth. So that was kind of his mafia handle. Carmine the Cigar Galanti. And in the 1970s, Galanti rose through the ranks, kind of killed his way through the ranks to become at one point the de facto chief of the Bonanno crime family. Galanti was implicated in multiple murders and in drug trafficking on an enormous scale.

And one of his drug related trials, they had a hard time keeping a jury on the case after individual jurors kept getting phone calls threatening their lives. The jury foreman somehow ended up falling down a long flight of stairs and breaking his back on top of all the other crimes in which he was implicated and for which he was convicted. Perhaps the best window into Carmine Gallant's approach to his upward mobility in the mob is the fact that upon being released from federal prison after a 12 year stint that ended in the early 70s, one of Carmine Gallant's first acts when he got out of prison after 12 years was that he blew up a mausoleum containing the remains of one of his mob rivals, a guy who had died the previous year while Carmine was still locked up.

Carmine was in prison, so we never got a real chance to whack the guy while the guy was alive. So once Carmine got out of prison, he whacked the guy anyway at the cemetery where he already laid dead. He blew up his mausoleum. Better late than never. That was nineteen seventy four, I think, five years later, in nineteen seventy nine, Carmine the cigar Galanti was eating and the back patio at a place called Joe and Mary's Italian American Restaurant in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

He was eating a meal with two other guys from the Bonanno crime family. And on that hot day in July in Bushwick, Brooklyn, at that nice restaurant, enter guys in ski masks carrying multiple guns. And Carmine Galanti and the other Bonnano crime family, guys who were eating with him, all three of them get killed in a massive hail of gunfire at this restaurant in Brooklyn. Carmine Galanti was photographed dead at the scene of the crime with a cigar still clamped between his teeth.

The man ultimately prosecuted for his murder. I kid you not. His name was whack whack. His name was Bruno indelicately, which means the guy did not even. The nickname his mother probably named him Bruno in Delgado specifically to make it to superfluous to even consider nicknaming that young man. But in the mob in the 1970s, they didn't care. Bruno and Licadho was called Whack Whack, and he was charged and convicted of Carmine Galatis murder and the murder of the other two Bonnano crime family guys who are at that table with him at that day, at that restaurant.

Each of those three murders was treated as a constituent element of Bruno indelicately ultimate conviction on racketeering charges. What is racketeering? It means basically not just crime, but crime as part of an organized enterprise. That's why they used it against the mob. So much, considerably tougher penalties for crimes that get prosecuted under that racketeering umbrella. Here's the thing, Mr. Whack Whack. Bruno and Licadho had a really good lawyer at the time who eventually argued in his case as it made its way through the court system, that although this looked at the surface like an incredibly black and white case, I mean, literally, this is whack whack puts on a ski mask and shoots the cigar at an Italian restaurant in Bushwick.

Right. It doesn't sort of get more black and white than that in terms of mob hits. But his lawyer was good enough to complicate the the circumstances considered by the law to a considerable and lasting extent. His lawyer used that crazy case to force an entire 12 judge panel of the federal appeals court in New York, the Second Circuit, to reckon for the first time in that case, in Bruno's case, with the real specific legal definition of racketeering.

Racketeering had been used in the law for quite some time, but it was that case that led to the first legally tested, specific, rigorous definition of racketeering under US federal law. That lawyer for Bruno and Licadho, Mr. Whack Whack, the lawyer for him who turned that gangland bloodbath case into a legal landmark that still matters today that changed forever. The way racketeering is used in US federal law. He's still around. That lawyer as a prosecutor and then as a defense attorney litigated dozens of organized crime cases, including some some of the highest profile cases in the worst of the Mafia wars in New York City, as a prosecutor, he ran both the appellate unit and the criminal unit at FDNY in two different stints in that storied US attorney's office in both of those divisions at SDMI, with all of that experience as a prosecutor.

He's now one of the highest profile, big deal white collar defense lawyers at one of the fanciest law firms in New York firm called Paul Weiss. And that lawyer just got a new job. The New York Times reporting tonight that earlier this month he was sworn in as a special assistant D.A., which seems like an unlikely title for a guy with that kind of pedigree and that kind of history. But that's what he is now. He's sworn in as a special assistant D.A. at the state prosecutor's office in Manhattan.

He has taken leave from his very fancy private firm and instead taken a temporary gig to assist prosecutors in that office. He has upended his whole life in private practice, put everything else on hold. He's been sworn in with the special status. Also, he can work with state prosecutors in New York on precisely one case. And that one case is the investigation underway in that office of the Trump Organization. This is the ongoing criminal investigation of former President Trump and his business.

It reportedly includes allegations of tax fraud, bank fraud, insurance fraud. It started with an investigation related to the hush money campaign finance felonies for which Michael Cohen went to prison and which led prosecutors to describe President Trump as individual one and unindicted co-conspirators. That investigation by state prosecutors has since reportedly expanded to include wider allegations about basically the president and his company allegedly keeping two sets of books for various Trump properties, including Trump Tower, so they could, according to investigators, potentially defraud tax authorities and defraud banks and defraud insurance companies by using two different sets of books with two different sets of valuations for all of the Trump major properties.

The Times reporting tonight that the case has recently generated more than a dozen new subpoenas. This is also the case that produced subpoenas to financial firms for personal and business records and tax records related to the former president. Lower courts have ruled that those subpoenas are valid and should be enforced and the state prosecutors should get access to those documents. Both CNN and The New York Times are reporting in depth tonight on the mystery surrounding what's happening with those subpoenas and what's happening with that case in the United States Supreme Court right now.

This New York state investigation of President Trump is one of two live criminal investigations that he's facing that we know about. One of them is the criminal investigation that has just been opened into his conduct in Georgia in terms of him pressuring Georgia state officials to basically corrupt the election outcome in that state. The other is this New York investigation into potential financial crimes, tax fraud, bank fraud, insurance fraud. Well, those New York prosecutors need the president's financial records in order to press this case.

And they say they need his tax records in order to press this case. They have issued subpoenas for those records. Lower courts have said they should get them. But since October, they've been waiting on the on the Supreme Court, the United States Supreme Court. To find out if they're getting those records. That have been subpoenaed, lower courts say they should, the Supreme Court is just sitting on it. The Supreme Court somewhat inexplicably sitting on this request to deal with that matter for four months now.

It is an unusual and as yet unexplained delay from the Supreme Court that is having material consequences for what seems like a very live, very active and newly ambitious investigation, a criminal investigation of the former president in New York, even as that New York prosecutor's office drafts in new serious outside firepower to assemble that case against Mr. Trump, the Supreme Court is sitting on the documents that they need for their investigation. Meanwhile, the wheels of justice do keep turning, this, for example, is a peak of the FBI's main Twitter feed.

Even just tonight, the FBI multiple times per day now is churning out new, basically digital wanted posters for people captured on tape, taking part in the violent sacking of the Capitol by the pro Trump mob that mounted that assault on the US government on January 6th. They put out new pictures, new basically wanted pictures every single day, and the president's culpability for that grotesque crime remains at center stage, particularly as more and more of his followers get arrested and charged every day.

So many of them telling the court after they've been charged that the reason they were there is because they thought the president was telling them to be there. Right. He stays at center stage as long as people are getting arrested, as long as the FBI keeps asking the public for more and more help finding these Trump writers so they can get arrested. As The Daily Beast reports today that President Trump is telling people around him at Mar a Lago now that he's worried he's going to be investigated and sued for the rest of his life.

We reported earlier this week on the first civil lawsuit brought against the president for the January 6th attack, a suit brought by Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. I say it is the first civil lawsuit brought against the president for the events of January 6th. I can tell you right now it will not be the last. Joining us next, I'm here to say for the interview tonight is the very high profile, very accomplished outside counsel who was brought in to help coordinate the impeachment trial of the president for the January 6th attack.

His name is Barry Berke, and he joins us for his first television interview since this all went down. Really looking forward to talking with him. That's next. At the conclusion of President Trump's second impeachment trial, the House impeachment managers took a team photo. Lead manager Jamie Raskin is there on the far right side, along with the rest of the team. He recognized Ted Lou, David Cicilline, Madeleine Dean, Congressman Castro, Delegate Plaskett, Congressman Swalwell, Congressman niggas in the back.

We know all their names and their faces. Take a look at the very tall guy in the back. That is another member of the team who is not a member of Congress. That is Barry Burke, chief impeachment counsel to the House managers. He helped craft those gut punch legal arguments that you heard them all make. You might remember played a similar role during Donald Trump's first impeachment trial with the House Judiciary Committee. Joining us now for the interview is Barry Berke.

This is his first television interview since the trial resolved. Mr Burke, thank you so much for this time. It's a real pleasure to have you here tonight.

Rachel, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you. I want to give you a chance to sort of set the record straight and help us understand from your perspective the import of the trial. Obviously, the president was acquitted. There were fifty seven votes to convict him. They needed 10 more than that to get a conviction. But all these Republican senators have voted to acquit him, basically explained that they voted to acquit on a technicality that they didn't believe they had jurisdiction to vote to to convict him.

That's, I think, the American takeaway of this. He got let off on a technicality, but he did it. Is that how you saw it from inside the process? I saw it very differently.

Rachel, I understand why you say it that way. But remember, the issue of jurisdiction had been resolved so that for the jurors to say they're relying on jurisdiction was for them to violate their oath. I was in that Senate chamber every single day, and our goal was to try a case like we were prosecuting a violent crime. And I felt with our extraordinary house managers are incredible. Lead manager Jamie Raskin. We prove that case. We proved with overwhelming evidence that former President Trump inflamed his base over time by telling the lie that the election was stolen and rigged.

He incited them by telling them to stop the steal, which is something he said they made up. He made it up. He did encourage violence leading up to the day of January six. So he knew when he used those words of violence, he would be setting them on a violent path, which they did. And when they started to attack the capital, our elected officials, the brave officers, he further incited them by repeating the lie, further attacking his vice president, who was subject of their air.

And he did it repeatedly. I looked at those jurors, all hundred of them, and I saw that they were fixated on the evidence. And I believe in my heart that if those jurors had the courage to be true to their oath and voted their conscience, we would have convicted by a large margin. The issue of the president's culpability is still banging around like a live wire right now, there's going to be it looks like looks like there's going to be a 9/11 style truth finding commission in Congress to try to get to the very the core foundation of the factual evidence here.

There's also the question, as you just described. You said you prosecuted this essentially as a violent crime. There is still a live question as to whether or not there's enough evidence to look at this as a potential criminal act by the president that should be handled in a court of criminal law that was raised, in fact, by the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell. How do you feel about that? I feel there is certainly evidence that should be the basis for an investigation of the president's conduct, he had knowledge throughout and most crimes at the heart have lies.

When you talk about the New York investigation, bank fraud, insurance fraud, tax fraud, those are all lies. We thought this trial that the president was prepared to lie in order to interrupt our democracy, to try to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. He was prepared to lie in order to further incite an insurrection. So I think all that conduct will be fair game. And I'll say this, Rachel. I do think that in our country, we generally give the benefit of the doubt to a former president that maybe if they engaged in wrongdoing, we should not prosecute them after they leave office.

I think given the president's extraordinary, extraordinary conduct is unconscionable behavior in closing over one hundred and forty police officers to be injured, people killed, our elected officials in mass so close to being in harm's way that he has lost that benefit of the doubt. So I think you will see the commission look more deeply in some of the evidence that we had gathered but did not present at trial because we didn't need to. I think you will see the criminal investigations go on about and look into his conduct on January six.

And I think the other criminal investigations related to his seeking to intimidate and threaten Georgia election officials to find votes that didn't exist, the lies that would be the basis for a crime for anyone else if they did it in connection with bank loans or other financial transactions. I do think that this trial opens that whole Pandora's box for President Trump because he engaged in conduct where he misused his power in such a forceful way. And the harm was so great. And I walked the halls of the Capitol every day to the Senate floor.

I passed the victims of his attack, people who suffered, people who are still suffering. There are folks who committed suicide because they were so traumatized by trying to defend the capital. This is all because of one man. So I feel that I was part of something that was a great success. I'm very proud to have worked with our House managers and the lead manager to prove beyond any doubt that President Trump instigated this insurrection. He did it for his own personal benefit to try to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.

And he did it despite the great harm he was causing and with knowledge he was causing it. So I think this changes everything so well. We did not have all the senators who voted. I think the way that they knew they should have voted, I still think that this will have a huge effect on the future of Donald Trump and the future of the Republican Party. And again, I was humbled to have been part of it. You have this idea of the impeachment trial and the evidence that you collected, including, as you said, some that you did not present being a sort of Pandora's box for the future of this president, I think cannot be overstated.

Very Berk chief impeachment counsel to the House managers during President Trump's impeachment trial. Barry, thank you for your service and thank you for helping us understand it tonight. It's nice to see you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Rachel. Nice to see you. All right. Much more ahead. Stay with us. To make this work, NASA scientists had to send the perseverence a Martian rover, basically the size of a Mazda Miata. They had to send it 300 million miles through space.

That was the easy part. A spacecraft carrying the rover was going about 12000 miles an hour when it got to the Martian atmosphere. Then in the span of just a few minutes, perfectly timed. It had to slow down from 12000 miles an hour to a snail's pace so it wouldn't bullet into the surface of Mars and explode on impact. It worked. It made that descent all while enduring temperatures of more than twenty three hundred degrees Fahrenheit, the equivalent of traveling through molten lava.

Then it had to stick the landing, which is no small thing when you're trying to park this thing from three hundred million miles away in an ancient lake bed littered with cliffs and craters and sand dunes and all sorts of other things that could trip it up. NASA scientists figured out a way to make all of this happen. They did it.

Touchdown, confirmed it safely on the surface of Mars and began thinking of a top flight. Now that perseverance has landed safely in its new home, it's going to search for evidence of ancient life on Mars. It's going to collect samples that will eventually be returned to Earth by the 20 thirties. Start getting ready now. The perseverence is also equipped with instruments that will attempt to convert Martian carbon dioxide into oxygen, which could, of course, be a game changer in terms of future human exploration of Mars.

The perseverence also traveled all the way over there with a little helicopter tucked under its belly if everything goes as planned. That little chopper will take part in the first powered flight on another planet. We can send a rover to a planet three hundred million miles away and land it like a feather. We can create oxygen over there, we can fly mini helicopters in the Martian sky that work for us and send us things, and we can't provide water and power to people in Texas when it's cold.

Absolutely flabbergasting day in the news today. That's going to do it for us tonight, tomorrow, something to watch for tomorrow, the United States of America will officially rejoin the Paris climate accord back to the land of the living.

The Rachel Maddow Show weeknights at 9:00 Eastern on MSNBC.