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All In With Chris Hayes, Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Read the transcript from the Wednesday show

ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES
Date: April 30, 2014

Guests: Katie Fretland, Bryan Stevenson, Marcus Thompson, Bomani Jones
Valerie Jarrett, Laura Dunn

CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes.

"Something`s wrong." Those chilling words were uttered last night by a
medical technician present at the execution of Clayton Lockett, when it
dawned on officials that their experimental new drug cocktail, designed to
put Lockett to death, was not working.

Ten minutes after the execution began, a doctor declared Clayton Lockett
was unconscious. But at 6:36, Lockett began writhing. Minutes later, it
started getting particularly ugly.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Reporter Graham Lee Brewer of "The Oklahoman" was one
of the official witnesses.

GRAHAM LEE BREWER, THE OKLAHOMAN: He began kicking his feet, lifting his
head and his chest off the gurney, grimacing, clenching his teeth, and a
couple of months, he actually mumbled.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: At 6:39, a prison official said to witnesses, we are going to lower
the blinds temporarily, and they did.

It was clear at that point, to officials in attendance, that something was
very, very wrong.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: After conferring with the warden, and unknown how much
drugs that went into him, it was my decision at that time to stop the
execution.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: According to an "A.P." reporter in attendance, prison officials
said they would try to get Lockett to the hospital to resuscitate him. The
man they were just moments ago trying to kill, well, they did not succeed
in resuscitating him.

At 7:06 p.m., Clayton Lockett was declared dead. He died of a heart
attack, 43 minutes after the drug was administered, a gruesome period of
what can only be described as torture by incompetence.

Although when you look at the full context of this execution, when you zoom
back and take it all in, incompetence is far, far too gentle a term.
Something more like sinister, insistent, willful malice is more apt.

And no one is more central to that story of malice than Republican Governor
Mary Fallin, who last night was forced to stay the execution of a second
prisoner set to be executed that night. After she pushed and pushed to go
ahead with last night`s executions against all warnings and due process.

Today, she promised an investigation into the botched execution she,
herself, had so zealously advocated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. MARY FALLIN (R), OKLAHOMA: After consulting further with the
Department of Corrections director, Robert Patton, we greet that an
independent review of the Department of Corrections procedures would be
effective and also appropriate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: The two men who were scheduled to be killed last night were found
guilty of crimes so unspeakably horrible and repugnant, they deserve the
harshest penalty a humane society metes out. Well, Oklahoma, they have the
death penalty and the state was intent on putting them to death.

But here`s the thing, Oklahoma is having trouble finding the drugs to kill
its inmates.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Oklahoma had never before used the three chemicals in the
combination it administered to Lockett. All 32 death penalty states are
struggling to find lethal injection drugs after suppliers said they no
longer wanted any part of capital punishment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: But undeterred, Oklahoma, like many other states, has pressed on.
Not only did they decide to experiment with a dosage and combination of
drugs that had never been tried before, they passed a law in 2011,
declaring they did not have to tell public or even the courts what drugs,
in what dosages, they were using to kill their inmates.

Earlier this year, lawyers for the two prisoners argued to an Oklahoma
judge, ruled the law was unconstitutional.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE) successfully argued Wednesday that Lockett and
Warner have the right to know who makes Oklahoma`s execution drugs and how
reliable they are, to avoid a painful execution. An Oklahoma county
district judge, Patricia Parish, ruled the state`s secrecy law, that hides
all information about the execution drugs, is unconstitutional.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: It seems reasonable enough, that the public, and certainly, the
prisoners themselves, should have the right to know, just exactly how the
state is going to put them to death. Earlier this month, the Oklahoma
Supreme Court, the state`s highest civil court, issued an extremely rare
stay of execution for the two men, until the court could hold a hearing on
the secrecy laws at issue.

Well, Republican Governor Mary Fallin issued an executive order, saying,
remarkably, she would go ahead and just ignore that court`s ruling. And
she ordered the execution to move forward.

Then her Republican allies in the legislature, they began to initiate
impeachment proceedings against the five justices who had the gall to vote
for that stay of execution. Within hours, facing intense pressure, that
court changed court, reversing the lower court`s ruling that found the
state`s secrecy law unconstitutional, dissolving the stay of execution they
had made earlier in the week.

So, Mary Fallin and her allies won, they ran roughshod over the state`s
highest court, and all of that set the stage for last night. When the
state of Oklahoma so egregiously botched the act of killing they had
pursued so vigorously, and Governor Fallin had to issue her on stay of
execution, first for Clayton Lockett, who died anyway, and one for Charles
Warner, who was scheduled to die last night.

So, yes, Oklahoma, something`s wrong. And that goes for you, too --
Missouri and Georgia, and any other state who`s seeking to keep secret
their experimental drug combination to carry out their killing. There`s
something wrong with a government so intent on killing, and yet so worried
about how it all looks, how the actual death will be meted out, they want
to keep it all a secret and away from the public`s prying eyes. Something
is very wrong, indeed.

Joining me now, Katie Fretland, a freelance reporter who witnessed the
execution of Clayton Lockett and wrote about it for "The Guardian."

Katie, what happened last night in that room?

KATIE FRETLAND, WITNESSED EXECUTION: Clayton Lockett`s execution began at
6:23 p.m., 7 minutes into its execution, he was still conscious. Three
minutes later, he was pronounced to be unconscious, but three minutes after
that, he began to violently convulsed. He strained --

HAYES: I just -- what happened in that moment? I mean, you`re sitting in
the room. There are presumably a number of witnesses. He`s been
pronounced unconscious. He begins to move. What is that like, what is the
-- what are you thinking in that moment?

FRETLAND: That something is very wrong. I witnessed one execution before,
but this was extremely different. He was covered in a white sheet. He was
laying on the gurney. He began to strain and try to lift up off of the
gurney. He lifted his head and shoulders. He grimaced. He tried to
speak.

At 6:39, he did speak. He said the word, "Man." he groaned, "Man," and
then at that point, the ward decided to lower the blinds from the public
witnesses` view.

HAYES: What was going through the room of public witnesses when the blinds
are lowered? What are you thinking at that moment?

FRETLAND: At that point, the state officials left the room. People --
they were trying to figure out what to do. The Corrections Department
director got on the phone with the governor and the attorney general`s
office. He came back in and told us that the execution was not going ahead
and that he was stopping the execution and the second scheduled execution
of that night was not going to go forward.

HAYES: Were the victims` family -- were the victims` families in that room
as well?

FRETLAND: They were seated in a room behind us, through a pane of glass
where we could not see them.

HAYES: So they were seeing this all transpire as well?

FRETLAND: Yes, as well as Clayton Lockett`s attorneys. Two of them were
left sitting in the room, not knowing if he was alive or dead. We didn`t
find out until later that it took 43 minutes from the start of his
execution, for him to die. He suffered a heart attack.

They stopped the execution after 16 minutes. He died of a heart attack 43
minutes after the first drugs began.

HAYES: Did they inform you, the prison officials, when they came back in
to say they were suspending the execution, did they give you any
information of what had happened? What drugs they had administered, in
what doses, what was going wrong, where they were taking any of that?

FRETLAND: We didn`t find out until later on. The Corrections Department
director came across the street to speak with us in the media area and he
told us that all three drugs were administered to Clayton Lockett. The
execution did not go at all as planned.

HAYES: Am I correct that this was the first time that this specific drug
protocol had ever been used by the state of Oklahoma?

FRETLAND: Yes. In March, Oklahoma changed its protocol to allow five
different combinations -- five different ways that they could lethally
inject someone. They couldn`t get the drugs that they wanted to use.

In this protocol, they used a completely untried dose of the drug midazolam
to try to sedate Clayton Lockett, who was not sedated ten minutes into his
execution. That was followed by two other drugs that were meant to
paralyze him and then stop his heart.

HAYES: What was the reaction of Mr. Lockett`s lawyers?

FRETLAND: Horror. They were horrified. They had no idea what was
happening to their client as the blinds were closed.

HAYES: Reporter Katie Fretland, reporter for "The Guardian" -- thank you
very much. I really appreciate it.

Joining me now is Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the
Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit organization that provides legal
representation, also professor at NYU School of Law.

What is going on with the administration of the death penalty in this
country? Because what happened in Oklahoma last night is an extreme case
of a state essentially running an experiment on the convicts that they are
executing, for the first time, but it`s not the only state that is
essentially in the business now of experimenting with new drug protocols,
with which to mete out the death penalty.

BRYAN STEVENSON, EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE: Well, I think the death penalty
is becoming increasingly perverse. I mean, when you have states doing what
Oklahoma has done, which is, essentially invoking the words, state secret,
to describe how they`re going to execute prisoners, because they do not
want scrutiny, they do not want to be accountable, they do not want
transparency, you begin to see why so many of us have been arguing how the
death penalty just brings out the worse in all of us.

I mean, the bottom line here is that the question of the death penalty
isn`t answered simply by asking do people deserve to die for the crimes
they`ve committed. You`ve got to ask, do we deserve to kill? Are we going
to be entirely sure that we`re not executing innocent people, as we have --

HAYES: But stop for one second, Bryan, because, basically, I`m an opponent
of the death penalty and agree with you on all of that. I agree on the
logistical arguments and the moral arguments.

But just to zero in on what has brought us to this point of sort of
horrific absurdity. I mean, there was a fairly standard three-drug
protocol for lethal injection that had been used and upheld by the Supreme
Court. That is no longer being administered. States can not get their
hands on it.

Why is that the case? What is the disruption that`s happened?

STEVENSON: I think that`s the point, Chris. You can`t disconnect these
broader questions. The truth of it is, is that the states want to create
executions that appear flawless, that appear painless, and you cannot do
that with the kind of uncertainty that has been created by these drug
combinations.

We were getting drugs from Europe. European manufacturers said, we don`t
want to have anymore role in this process. They then had to scramble. And
so, now, then there were all of these questions.

And what these lawyers have been arguing is that these officials don`t know
what they`re doing. They can`t ensure that people aren`t going to be
subjected to cruelty and torture. And I think that is part of the problem.
You, then, add to that this desire to be tough, to seem as if you`ve got it
all under control, even having two executions in one night, as part of this
instinct, to create a spectacle of toughness.

And you put those two things together, uncertainty, unreliability, a lack
of rigor, a lack of transparency, a lack of scrutiny, and then you`re going
to get the kind of cruel, barbaric, torturous execution that you saw last
night in Oklahoma.

But you can`t disconnect that from the broader questions.

HAYES: And not to mention that the absence of medical professionals in
large part, because the American Medical Association, for very obvious
reasons, having to do with the Hippocratic Oath, which first says, do no
harm, wants nothing to do with the machinery of death as well -- you also
have, I mean, this stuck out to me. You have these states now scrambling
to get their hands on drugs, so they can keep this going.

The state of Georgia obtained illegally exported sub-potent drugs from a,
quote, "pharmacy run out of" -- and I`m not making this up -- "the back
door of a run-down driving school in London, England. The state of Georgia
used these drugs in two executions before the Federal Drug Enforcement
Agency raided Georgia`s lethal injection drug supply."

I mean, this is beyond -- beyond what anyone`s intuition about decency, or
even just basic government competence looks like.

STEVENSON: Well, that`s right. When you have DEA raids going on to kind
of uncover illegally obtained drugs in the possession of Corrections
Departments, again you begin to see how this all plays out. But I think
you have to understand, the culture that we have created around the death
penalty.

I mean, you had a ruling in this case, from a judge, that said that I
believe that this process sis unconstitutional. And yet the state was able
to avoid dealing with the questions and findings of that judge, by simply
pushing forward with an execution by intimidating judges, impeaching
anybody who got in the way, and insisting on a process that would result in
a dead body.

And I think that`s the question that we have to deal. Is this culture
we`ve created that elevated this instinct to kill, even if we`re not doing
it fairly, justly, or constitutionally?

HAYES: There were so many red lights that Governor Mary Fallin and her
allies ran through on the way to last night`s horrific debacle.

Bryan Stevenson from the Equal Justice Initiative -- thank you for your
time.

STEVENSON: You`re welcome.

HAYES: Coming up, yesterday, the NBA went nuclear on the owner of the L.A.
Clippers. Today, we know why that was essentially the only choice the NBA
commissioner had. Up next, the incredible behind the scenes stories of
what the Golden State Warriors were prepared to do if the NBA didn`t ban
Donald Sterling for life.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: The White House is finally doing something about the disturbing
epidemic of sexual assault on college campuses, the equally disturbing
trend of those academic institutions ignoring it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSEPH BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We need all of you to
be part of the solution. This is about respect. It`s about
responsibility.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It`s up to all of us to put
an end to sexual assault. And that starts with you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: But are PSAs and guidelines enough? Coming up, I`ll ask senior
adviser to the president, Valerie Jarrett.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And those words from Adam Silver are the reason this
game is being played at all. Both teams have made commitments that have
made a lifetime ban and force of sales from Donald Sterling hadn`t taken
place today in New York, they were not going to play this game.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: There was palpable surprise yesterday at just how hard the NBA
dropped the hammer on clippers` owner, Donald Sterling, after an
investigation confirmed it was, in fact, Sterling`s voice on that now
infamous audio recording in which he spouts all kind of racist nonsense.

But in the 24 hours since the announcement, it`s pretty clear this was less
about NBA Commissioner Adam Silver ruling with an iron fist, than it was
about the league`s players collectively mobilizing to exert their will.

According to the "San Jose Mercury News," the Warriors had planned to go
through with their pre-game warm-ups last night, take part in the national
anthem, and then take the floor for the jump ball, and then once the ball
was in the air, they were going to just walk off, all 15 of them. If they
had their way, the Clippers would have joined them in exiting the court.

Again, TNT sideline reporter David Eldridge lets us know that all the
playoff teams scheduled to play last night were willing to just walk off
the court.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In addition, they believe that they had commitments
from the other four teams, they thought they had commitments to likes of
Kevin Durant and John Wall not play tonight. This was a league-wide thing.
This is every player who plays in this game.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: The power move that was in motion last night by the players was
particularly ironic when you take a listen, again, to this passage from
that same infamous taped conversation with Donald Sterling.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

MS. STIVIANO: Do you know that you have a whole team that`s black, that
plays for you?

DONALD STERLING: I support them and give them food and clothes and cars
and houses. Who gives it to them? Does someone else give it to them? Do
I know that I have -- who makes the game? Do I make the game or do they
make the game? Is there 30 owners, that created the league?

(END AUDIO CLIP)

HAYES: Do I make the game or do they make the game? Are there 30 owners
that created the league?

It was a rhetorical question, and Donald Sterling seemed confident in that
conversation of the answer.

It was, in fact, he and his fellow owners that make the game. But we`re
discovering in the reporting that came after Sterling`s lifetime ban is
that if the players act as one, then they, actually, are the ones that call
the shots.

Joining me now, Marcus Thompson, sports columnist for Bay Area News Group,
who reported this story in the "San Jose Mercury News," and Bomani Jones,
writer, commentator, co-anchor of ESPN 2`s "Highly Questionable."

Marcus, great reporting on this.

How much communication was there between the players? How much organizing
was happening in the day or two after the tape comes out, leading up to
Silver`s announcement yesterday?

MARCUS THOMPSON, BAY AREA NEWS GROUP: For a while, they were just trying
to focus on basketball. But, you know, all those reports started coming,
and all the expectations that it would just be an indefinite suspension.
And you start getting those grumblings about the owners really couldn`t do
anything. I think that really kind of got to them. You know, it put them
on the side of, we have to do something. If this guy comes out with some
soft punishment, then we`re going to do something.

So I think it was more like about Saturday, Sunday, they were just trying
to play basketball. But come Monday, they were like, we`re ready to go
something if this thing doesn`t go how it works. And the warriors had
their plan concocted Tuesday morning.

HAYES: Bomani, you have been, to your credit on the Donald Sterling racism
beat for a while. Eight years at the very least. This is a 2006 piece on
Donald Sterling`s racism should be news, is the headline. You`re saying
that piece got more traffic yesterday and the day before than it got -- 10
times as much traffic as when you actually published it?

BOMANI JONES, ESPN: That was a bit of hyperbole, but I`ve gotten a lot
more feedback on that than I got in 2006. I can tell you that.

It`s been interesting that, as this thing happened with Sterling, people
are suddenly looking at it and wondering, how did it get to this point?
People are wondering, wait a minute, he was doing crazy stuff beforehand
and nobody did anything about it? And I think that kind of contributed to
the narrative of the story that we have now.

HAYES: Was that -- how common -- people keep talking about, this was an
open secret and people kind of news, and there was the Elgin Baylor lawsuit
-- of course, an African-American former player who sued Sterling when he
was working the front office in that Clippers organization -- a lawsuit
that was ultimately dismissed.

How common was Sterling`s personal views and also what his business
practices have been.

JONES: I mean, he`s widely considered to be a slum lord. There`s no one
you can find that did not know that around the NBA. That has generally
been the perception, there have been stories written about him about how
aloof he is and problematic.

But with the racism, specifically, people knew about this. I haven`t found
anybody covering the NBA that didn`t have a general knowledge or
understanding about the way Donald Sterling felt about people who were not
white. He didn`t hide it.

And you have to remember, when he interviewed Rollie Massimino for that job
in the 1980s, his first question for Rollie Massimino was, so, what makes
you think you can coach these N-words? And Rollie was never shy about
telling that story. This was not a mystery.

HAYES: That was the first line in his job interview.

JONES: That`s it. That`s how it starts. So, how are you going to coach
these N-words. And it ties to how Sterling has hired so many black coaches
up and down the line, because he felt like they knew how to talk to the n-
words.

HAYES: Marcus, how much of that, just the sort of scandalous-ness of the
contemptibility of what was represented was what was driving the kind of
radicalization, I think, of the players over the course of these two, three
days, as they start to think there`s not going to be punishment. And start
to really put together a plan that would have been -- I mean, if they had
done that on that night, one of the most iconic moments in sports, in labor
history, that I can think of in the last, you know, 20 years, even longer.

THOMPSON: Oh, yes, no question. That would have been a modern version of,
you know, Carlos and Smith at the Olympics.

They were trying to make history. They were trying to send a statement,
create this image that we would have seen 20 years from now, to look back
on.

I think the salaciousness of it all is the fact that he could come out and
say this, and this gets out. It`s no longer a dark secret. And for no one
to respond, that bothered them.

HAYES: Yes.

THOMPSON: Just so he can be out and say this, this is how he feels, about
the majority of the NBA, and then we all go acting like basketball resumes.
That`s what really was getting to him.

I talked to a few players who are like, as long as Silver did the right
thing, we`re fine. But if they were going to let this go, they were just
going to slap us in the face -- and you`ve got to remember, this was the
same group that just took a 7 percent pay cut --

HAYES: That got locked out by these same owners, who Lord knows what the
other 29 are saying behind closed doors.

THOMPSON: Same owners, and they`re talking about an age limit increase.
So it`s not like the relationship has always been harmonious, but you start
adding stuff on top of this and they feel like they`re giving money back,
and there`s all these fines and the way the game is being governed. And
then on top of that, you let a guy come out and say this about them, I
don`t think they were going to stand for that.

And the fact that it just came out. You know, it was a dark secret, like
Bomani said, everybody knew, it came out.

HAYES: But once it came out, it was humiliating to let it go.

THOMPSON: It`s just too much. At some point, you have to draw the line.
Remember, these are millionaires with pride and ego. And they`re just
going to let somebody get away with that.

HAYES: Bomani, do you think this will be a turning point in the labor
relations, after what was a threatened wildcat strike effectively moving
NBA policy.

JONES: Well, let`s see. And the question becomes, exactly, how does it
get turned? You have to remember, the tenor of that lockout and the media
surrounding and the way those players were battered by the people covering
them. You had people openly questioning whether they were smart enough to
understand that every passing day was costing them money. You have people
just talk about how they were too weak and they were too broke to do this
sort of thing.

And for them to stand at that moment makes you wonder like, has something
changed with this union, where guys like LeBron James were at the front
saying, we`re not going to take it. But think about saying we`re not going
to get take it to a bunch of rich guys, they generally don`t say, OK, fine,
you`re not going to take it, we`ll just work out things civilly. What`s
the response going to be when these other 29 owners look up and say, wait a
minute, these players strong-arm us.

HAYES: Marcus Thompson from the Bay Area News Group, Bomani Jones from
ESPN 2`s "Highly Questionable" -- thank you, gentlemen, both.

Coming up, given what you know about Chris Christie, how do you think he`d
react if some budget bureaucrat told him his numbers didn`t add up? The
full Christie unleashed on a guy what happened to be right. That story
ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTONIN SCALIA, ASSOCIATE JUSTICE, U.S. SUPREME COURT: I attack ideas. I
don`t attack people. And some very good people have some very bad ideas.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: If there`s one thing Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is known
for, it is his impatience with idiots. Sloppy thinking, errors of logic,
do not bring those in front of Justice Scalia.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCALIA: What happened to the Eighth Amendment? You really want us to go
through these 2,700 pages?

I have to give you an example here, or you won`t understand the difference.

Could you define the market?

Everybody has to buy food, sooner or later, so you define the market as
food. Therefore, everybody`s in the market. Therefore, you can make
people buy broccoli.

Anyway, that`s my view, and it happens to be correct.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Victims of the acid tongue of Scalia must have been having a pretty
good chuckle today when it was revealed that Scalia himself had committed a
-- quote -- "hugely embarrassing, cringe-worthy blunder" in one of his
latest dissents.

At issue was whether the Environmental Protection Agency could regulate
coal pollution across state lines. The court found it could, while Scalia,
of course, dissented, at one point writing -- quote -- "This is not the
first time the EPA has sought to convert the Clean Air Act into a mandate
for cost-effective regulation. Whitman v. American Trucking Associations
confronted EPA`s contention that it could consider costs."

The only problem with that, the EPA argued the exact opposite in that case.
Quote: "The agency was defending its refusal to consider cost as a
counterweight to health benefits when setting certain air quality
standards." It was the trucking industry, the other side of the case, that
wanted the EPA to factor in costs.

On top of that, the EPA won the case with their argument against
considering cost, with the court ruling unanimously in favor of the agency
in 2001. You don`t have to consider cost. And you know who wrote that
decision? Justice Antonin Scalia.

You know, just a week ago, the conservative media was eviscerating Justice
Sonia Sotomayor for her personal and eloquent dissent in the affirmative
action case, referring to her opinion as -- quote -- "legally illiterate
and logically indefensible."

So, we eagerly await them taking the rhetorical brickbat to their idol,
Scalia.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: The state of New Jersey is facing a huge budget shortfall of $800
million under the leadership of the fiscally conservative, no-new-taxes
Governor Chris Christie.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R), NEW JERSEY: We balanced the budget without any
tax increases.

For the second year in a row, I propose a constitutionally balanced budget.

Yes, I will be able to balance the budget and, no, we`re not going to raise
taxes.

Today, I present to you a budget that once again is balanced.

The Democratic legislature decided it was time to go back to the future, to
revert to more of the same unrealistic, fantasy budgeting.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: In addition to touting his balanced budgets, Christie was found of
railing against New Jersey Democrats` fantasy budgeting.

Now the Christie shortfall is becoming evident, you may wonder, who could
have possibly predicted the shortfall? When Christie was drawing up a
budget two years ago, prior to his reelection campaign, who could have
predicted that revenues would not be what Christie said they would be?

This guy did, David Rosen. He`s the chief budget officer of the Office of
Legislative Services, new Jersey`s version of the nonpartisan Congressional
Budget Office. Rosen predicted back in 2012 that Christie would end up
with a $145 million hole in his then current-year budget and would come up
$392 million short on his revenue projections for the next year.

So what did Governor Christie do? He unleashed full Chris Christie wrath.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRISTIE: So they needed to call in the Dr. Kevorkian of the numbers,
David Rosen, the Dr. Kevorkian, from the partisan office of legislative
services.

Why would anybody with a functioning brain believe this guy? How often do
you have to be wrong to finally be dismissed?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Let me read that again. "Why would anybody with a functioning
brain believe this guy? How often do you have to be wrong to finally be
dismissed?"

As Vox.com details, the numbers began to come in, and those numbers, while
bad, well, they weren`t quite as bad as Rosen predicted, and so Christie
attacked Rosen again, saying: "I mean, this guy can`t get it right."

But a few days later, the Christie administration informed potential Wall
Street investors in a bond offering that, well, actually, there would be
lower-than-expected revenue, scold Rosen on the one hand, but basically
tell Wall Street Rosen was right.

And in tend, after two fiscal years had passed, Rosen was exactly right,
prompting state Senator Richard Codey to say, "It looks like Dr. Kevorkian
is alive and well and he`s 100 percent correct."

For Governor Christie, a chief executive who is keeping his presidential
aspirations on life support, a budget shortfall may be as bad a fiscal sin
as it gets.

Joining me now, MSNBC contributor Brian Murphy, assistant professor of U.S.
political history at Baruch College, former managing editor of
PoliticsNJ.com.

I mean, this guys, this Rosen guy, what`s his reputation in New Jersey
politics?

BRIAN MURPHY, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: He`s been there -- I realized today I got
an award on -- with a group of people on like a quiz bowl team when I was
in high school. He was still in his job back then. He`s been doing this
for many decades.

And I think one of the more offensive things to people who work in that
Office of Legislative Services isn`t so much the Kevorkian comment. It`s
Christie saying, the partisan office of legislative services.

They regard themselves as being really above partisanship, very
trustworthy, able to deal with both sides. So to them, that, like, is an
attack on the very core of what they do.

HAYES: And that`s fairly unprecedented. My sense from talking to people
and reading the coverage of this is that people basically respect the
office and they respect Rosen. This is not a guy that becomes a rhetorical
punching bag for everyone all the time.

MURPHY: Sure. And governors -- no governor has agreed with their...

(CROSSTALK)

HAYES: Of course. Of course.

MURPHY: ... has wanted to agree with what they say. No one has done what
Christie has done, and come out and make this one person, who can`t fight
back, who cannot come out and defend himself, and who, if Democrats come
out and defend him at this point, then it just adds ammunition to what
Christie is charging.

HAYES: Just dumping on the guy`s reputation in absentia, and you were
wrong.

MURPHY: And he`s been right.

(CROSSTALK)

HAYES: He`s right, and you`re wrong.

MURPHY: That`s right. He`s been right so many times.

HAYES: Here`s Christie now saying it was Barack Obama`s fault. Take a
listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRISTIE: What we`re being told initially is that this is the effect of
the change in the law at the end of 2012 by the Obama administration and
the Congress to increase tax rates on upper-level individuals.

Remember that the top 1 percent in this state pays 40 percent of the income
tax. So when you start to make changes, they`re going to change their
behavior. Treasury departments all over the country underestimated the
effect that raising those tax rates would have on those people`s conduct.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Does that fly to you?

MURPHY: It would, except for the fact that Jersey knowingly predicted
growth rates that were higher than any other state in the country. Jersey
has a very sticky, very high lingering unemployment rate from the
recession.

So there was no way that the numbers that they were putting out were going
to become real.

HAYES: Yes, for the Christie budget numbers to work, New Jersey was going
to have to grow at the fastest rate of any state in the union. Am I
correct about that?

MURPHY: Yes.

HAYES: Yes.

MURPHY: Like, we would have seen post-World War II growth rates that would
have to be aided by large fiscal programs that do not exist in the modern
age in the United States.

HAYES: In other words, you could tell, if you scratched the numbers, they
were hooey back before any tax increases happened thanks to socialist
Barack Obama.

MURPHY: And everyone was saying that they were hooey back then, except no
one really -- in the political environment of Jersey, everybody was
intimidated by Christie. No one could call him on it.

HAYES: Plus, on top of this, he`s got all of this Sandy federal money
flowing in, which of course wasn`t predicted then because these projections
were made before Sandy.

MURPHY: And he had killed the ARC Tunnel. He had done all kinds of
gimmicks to pick all the low-hanging fruit so that he could balance his
budget in earlier years.

HAYES: So, he`s got to squeeze this for $800 million. What`s he`s going
to do?

MURPHY: He`s got bigger problems than that. He`s supposed to -- they owe
$2.4 billion in a pension payment next year.

Apparently, he`s going to try to push off -- push that off for another year
and try to do the $1.6 billion one that he`s supposed to do this year, do
that in the following year, and then call the savings from that a surplus.

(CROSSTALK)

HAYES: And then he`s going to go to Iowa and say, yes, my staff starts
traffic jams out of political vendettas and I can`t balance my budget. I`m
your next Republican gubernatorial -- presidential candidate.

MSNBC contributor Brian Murphy, thank you.

MURPHY: Thank you.

HAYES: A scandal and cover-ups at some of America`s most prized
institutions -- the shocking truth ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: One out of five women may be sexually assaulted while in college.
Coming up, I will talk to Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to President
Obama, about guidelines the White House released yesterday to help
survivors and improve the way schools handle cases.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: Considering that 19 percent or nearly one in five undergraduate
women experience attempted or completed sexual assault while in college,
the White House released guidelines yesterday on how to best combat what
can surely be called a sexual assault epidemic on college campuses.

The 20-page report put together by a task force the president formed in
January appears to be a pretty good first step in doing that. Some of the
recommendations include allowing survivors to speak confidentially with a
trained advocate, instead of forcing the student to -- quote -- "report all
the details of an incident to school officials."

What this does is ensure these crimes remain confidential, and according to
the report, it then makes survivors more likely to move proceed with a
formal complaint or cooperate in an investigation.

The report is also, crucially, encouraging schools to conduct what`s called
climate surveys, meaning students will be asked anonymously about sexual
assaults in order to gauge the prevalence of the crime on campus.

It is intended to provide a better measure of the problem, since sexual
assault on college campuses is notoriously underreported. According to a
2005 report by the U.S. Department of Justice, 95 percent of campus sexual
assaults are not reported.

Yesterday, I had a chance to speak with Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to
the president, just hours after the White House released their
recommendations on how to combat sexual assault on college campuses.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HAYES: Joining me now, Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to President Barack
Obama.

Valerie, what was it that prompted both the creation of this task force and
the report that came out today?

VALERIE JARRETT, SENIOR PRESIDENTIAL ADVISER: Well, as the president said
when he announced the task force, there`s more that we can do to end sexual
violence on our campuses.

One in five women are sexually assaulted while in college, and more often
than not, it happens their freshman or sophomore years. And so there`s
still more work to do, and the president was determined that the federal
government, in partnership with stakeholders around the country, should
work together to come up with a series of recommendations, and that`s what
we announced today.

HAYES: It strikes me this is an area in which the president would have a
considerable amount of force from the perspective of a bully pulpit.

It seems to me that were he to call the presidents of 20 major universities
into the White House and say, you guys need to shape up, because I have
looked at the data, and it is shocking, it is shocking to everyone who
looks at it, everyone who has got someone going to one of those schools,
every donor and alma mater, it seems to me the president could have
actually quite a bit of influence in this area.

JARRETT: Well, we certainly think he does.

And, as a matter of fact, we had over 80 college and university presidents
here in town several months ago, when we were working with them to see how
we could expand opportunities for disadvantaged young people to go to
college. And while they were here, I met with them and I said, this is an
issue that we care a great deal about.

The president is going to sign a presidential memorandum directing us to
spend 90 days coming up with new recommendations. They were certainly on
notice that this was coming. But I have to tell you, we were heartened to
see how many colleges and universities did step up to the plate who are
going to voluntarily participate in our survey that we are recommending
that they do, who want to engage with us and who are looking for solutions.

But there are certainly those who have not, who have tried to sweep this
issue under the rug and who have not taken their responsibility for our
young people seriously. The president often says, you know, having a child
is like having your heart walking around outside of your body.

And when you turn that heart over to an institution, you expect that it`s
going to use everyone within its toolkit to try to make sure that your
children are safe. And we still have a lot of hard work to do.

HAYES: And the plain facts from all of the reporting I have seen, and this
pertains to my alma mater, it pertains to universities from big college
football schools to small liberal arts institutions, is that there is an
institutional bias towards keeping things in the internal disciplinary
process, as opposed to reporting to law enforcement.

It seems to me that is a major fundamental hurdle that has to be cleared.

JARRETT: Well, it`s a hurdle not just because of the attitude of the
universities, but oftentimes the victims are hesitant to come forward.

More often than not, it`s somebody that the victim knows. More often than
not, the victims will feel a certain sense of initial responsibility and
did they do something wrong, which is why it is so important to make sure
that the people who first interact with the victim, whether they`re law
enforcement, whether they`re people in the hospitals, are trained to
understand just the psychological damage that comes from this experience.

It was heartening today to see this amazing young woman, Madeleine Smith,
stand up and talk about the experience that she had. And, you know, any
parent who heard her would say, this should not happen, not on any college
campus. And so I think what we have here, today, Chris, is an opportunity,
an opportunity to -- as you said, for the president to put a real spotlight
on an issue and to encourage colleges and universities to recognize that
participating in this survey, which we`re asking them to do voluntarily
now, will tell us what -- you know, what`s the prevalence of sexual assault
on campuses, what`s the attitude about it, what`s the awareness, and that
those are the first steps understanding what we have to do to end it.

So we`re starting out with a voluntary survey, but we intend in 2016 to
make it mandatory, because we want every college and university to be
sharing information, because, right now, what will happen, for those who
come forward and do participate, the information will be transparent.

But we don`t want to put them at a disadvantage for participating towards
solving the problem. We want everybody to be transparent. We`re going to
do so from the federal government. We`re going to be as transparent as we
can about all the information that we have. And that`s how we`re going to
actually combat and end this.

HAYES: There`s a lot of federal money that flows to these universities and
colleges, I would add, as well.

Senior adviser to President Obama Valerie Jarrett, thank you so much for
your time. This is really important.

JARRETT: Thank you, Chris.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HAYES: Imagine having to attend classes next to the person that sexually
assaulted you. It`s happening -- more on that ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: Some of the most elite, prestigious institutions in the entire
nation finds themselves increasingly the subject of very ugly press
coverage.

Right now, at my alma mater, Brown University, a young man who was
disciplined by the university for the crime of rape and who was suspended
for a year is now being allowed to attend the university alongside his
accuser.

As a result of the rape, the survivor says she was forced to take a medical
leave of absence, telling "The Brown Daily Herald" -- quote -- "I lost my
one semester of freedom, the same semester the rapist is allowed to come
back and matriculate here at Brown."

At Columbia, students -- quote -- "filed complaints with the federal
government, charging systemic mishandling of sexual assault claims."

At Harvard last month, a student wrote this open letter to the school and
it reads in part: "Dear Harvard, I am writing to let you know that I give
up. You will no longer receive e-mails from me asking for something to be
done, pleading for someone to hear me. My assailant will remain unpunished
and life on this campus will continue its course as if nothing had
happened."

With all this attention focused recently on the military and their
questionable history of dealing with sexual assault, we should also be
paying attention to some of the most cherished liberal institutions who
seem to be in the business of systemically mishandling sexual assault cases
as well.

Joining me now, Laura Dunn, survivor of campus sexual assault, now an
activist, started an organization, SurvJustice, consulted with the White
House as they were putting together their recommendation.

Laura, thank you.

What did you encounter at your university when you tried to report what had
happened to you?

LAURA DUNN, FOUNDER, SURVJUSTICE: Well, back in my freshman year of
college, I did become a sexual assault victim. Two men assaulted me.

And like many victims, I actually stayed silent at first. I didn`t know
how to talk about what had happened to me. I blamed myself too much. And
it took over a year for me to even know that college had a process for me
to come forward. And when I did, I actually did find originally a college
that was supportive, someone who wanted to get me support, counseling.

But when I asked for enforcement, when I asked for a consequence for what
had been done to me, that`s when I actually entered into the hostile
environment that Title IX is meant to address, colleges that are unwilling
to assist victims.

HAYES: Well, I mean, I should read first the statement from University of
Wisconsin, Madison, which gave us this today, saying: "The Department of
Education`s Office of Civil Rights found the university acted appropriately
within established law and due process guidelines and victim support
standards for investigating and responding to allegations of sexual
assault," specifically in your case.

When you say a hostile environment, what did you encounter?

DUNN: Well, for one thing, one of the young men that had sexually
assaulted me, because there were two, had a no-contact directive. And he
approached me at a party.

I tried to walk away into different rooms and avoid him at all costs,
because I didn`t want anyone to know that I was taking action about a
sexual assault. And he ended up approaching me and actually threatening me
openly, even hitting the walls around my head. And when I told the
university, they told me that I should have walked away, that I should have
called the police, that that was my fault.

So, that`s what I mean by hostile environment.

HAYES: How is it not criminal, how is it not just an absolute violation of
everything the university`s own codes are to not involve law enforcement or
to not have this outside some internal disciplinary process?

I mean, a no-contact order seems like insufficient accountability for the
crime of sexual assault.

DUNN: I agree.

But, in this case, I had actually reported to campus police. At the
University of Wisconsin, the police actually are both sworn officers and
campus officials. So I did pursue both criminal and civil. And what`s
unfortunate that many people aren`t realizing, the reason campuses are
dealing with this issue is because the criminal justice system also has
flaws.

The Violence Against Women Act found that -- back in 1994, when this was
passed, Vice President Biden even spoke to this. We are systemically
failing sexual assault victims. We are saying that it is their fault, not
just on campuses, but also in our courtrooms. And we need to change both.

HAYES: How common -- in your work now as an activist on this issue, how
common are stories like yours? I mean, how often do you hear from young
women who are -- and I imagine young men as well, actually -- who are
sexually assaulted on campus and find themselves sort of shepherded into
internal disciplinary processes that amount to very little?

DUNN: The vast majority of survivors share that.

And I know, back in 2010, the Center for Public Integrity, who first shared
my story nationally, did a significant study that found that the majority
of reports did not end in favor of the victim. And the ones that did even
still had meaningless consequences. So it is the norm.

I represent survivors who never got justice criminally, civilly, or through
the campus process. We are the majority of survivors.

HAYES: It is stunning to me, having spent some time reporting on what
happened in the Catholic Church, having spent some time looking at what
happened at Penn State, the lesson there is that if you keep judicial
processes completely internal to an institution, you will produce reliably
systemic injustice, because you need some external check on accountability.

And it`s just shocking to me that this is the case in the year 2014 at
campuses across the country, some of the most prestigious brands in all of
American higher education.

Laura Dunn from SurvJustice, thank you for coming on, and thank you for
sharing your story. I really appreciate it.

DUNN: Absolutely. Thank you.

HAYES: That is ALL IN for this evening.



THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY
BE UPDATED.
END

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