it's 4:00 in new york in what was described to me today as a game of chicken between the fbi and the white house by one source, and russian roulette with human lives at stake by another. the standoff between the fbi and the white house has entered its most dramatic chapter. the questions out number the answers so we will lay them out. if the redactions of the highly controversial memo that the fbi deems extraordinarily reckless are not made by the white house, will director chris wray resign over the bureau's grave concerns? did the president say he would 100% release the memo before he'd even read it because he already knew what was in it? if so, does that suggest a greater level of collaboration between the nunes staff and the white house staff? which was kward nated in the past. and the gop war is meant to distract us from donald trump's true objective, to fire rod rosenstein who oversees the mueller investigation and will the release of the memo give him the political cover to finally do so?

we will dive into these questions as well as explosive new reporting from "the new york times" about the role hope hicks may have played about a phony story of don junior's meeting with russians. steve bannon has not yet met with bob mueller's investigators. that meeting was expected to have happened bijan 31st. but we start with the white house standoff at the fbi over classified information and the president's desire to derail the mueller probe. here's congressman adam schiff on the topic earlier today. >> the president is looking for a reason to fire bob mueller. the president is looking for a reason to fire rod rosenstein. the bigger concern i have right now is for rod rosenstein. this has been true for me for sometime and why rod rosenstein and not bob mueller? the white house knows it would face a fire storm if it fired bob mueller. what's more effective is to fire bob mueller's boss. why is that more effective?

rod rosenstein decides the scope of bob mueller's investigation. >> and a brand-new story breaking in "the new york times" in just the last hour says, quote, president trump cleared the way today for the release of the secret memo written by republican congressional staffers and said to accuse federal law enforcement officials of abusing their surveillance authorities. mr. trump was expected to tell congress on friday that he had no objections and would likely not request that any material be redacted. according to a senior administration official. let's get right to all of this with our reporters and guests. making appearance here at the table is nbc's ken dlanian, we're spending too much time on satellite, joe becker who broke the news on hope hicks last night. from the washington post white house reporter ashley parker. jonathan swan, national political reporter for axios. we also have harry lit man, deputy assistant attorney general in the clinton administration and a former u.s. attorney. let me start with you, ashley

parker, and let me ask you what your understanding is right now about whether or not there are negotiations, whether or not this nunes memo which has gone to the white house now, which the president has now read, whether they are in the process of redacting the sorts of things that give the fbi grave concern. >> so, my understanding is from conversations just recently that a number of things are incredibly up in the air, including what concerns will and will not be addressed, the timing of when the memo will actually be released. but the one thing that is clear and i think is important to remember is that this memo almost certainly will be released and that this in many ways was a preore daned conclusion. my understanding is the president first saw the memo wednesday afternoon when john kelly walked it into the oval office to hand to him. but you'll remember that tuesday night at the state of the union

he said he was 100% going to release the memo. and our reporting shows that between when he first sort of learned about the memo and what it might mean for him politically about two weeks ago and now, he had already made up his mind, and there was almost nothing or no plea or no lobbying or no appeal from the justice department or the fbi or even his own advisors that could convince him otherwise. >> ken delanieian, what would make even this president willing to potentially reveal sources and methods that his own appointee running the fbi and his own appointees running the justice department have suggested would bring about grave consequence, which in law enforcement circles has a real meaning? it means lives and potentially huma human assets are at risk. what would be so important that he would do that anyway? >> well, look, i think it's very clear that he has very little regard for those kinds of concerns. >> human lives? cia and fbi assets?

>> he doesn't seem to understand the gravity of this. when he talked about the wiretap of trump tower and the kind of language he uses to talk about the intel community and what they do, the speech at the cia that was a rambling mess, he doesn't seem to get it. one thing he does get, this memo is an effective tool to discredit the mueller investigate investigation. and the russian propaganda campaigns on twitter saying release the memo. so, you know, the only thing at issue it seems to me here is whether any of this stuff is going to be redacted. and there is a process going on in the executive branch because they're going to do what they -- the responsible thing, which is okay, if this is going to be released, let's minimize the damage. but here's the thing. none of that has to happen. under this never before used house rule, they can just release the whole thing if donald trump doesn't object. so, that's why i think all this is up in the air because, yes, the fbi and the intelligence community is negotiating right now about redactions, but it's unclear whether any of that is actually going to happen. >> and, harry, one of the

reasons that they are negotiating with the fbi is because of what we've talked about, grave concerns that they could reveal sources and methods that lives could be at risk. the other is that they're afraid christopher wray might walk out the door. i'm told at this hour that he's very calm, that this is a matter of policy disagreement, that he's a calm, cool and collected individual. but what equities are at stake for an fbi director if he can't walk into the speaker of the house's office and say, mr. speaker, there are lives at stake. this is highly sensitive classified information. and the speaker says, sorry, i'm washing my hands of you. i trust devin nunes. devin nunes says, you can't brief my committee members before we vote on whether or not to release this. we've got this. he goes to the white house chief of staff and they say, no, no, no, 100% we're releasing this. how impotent does an fbi director have to become to walk out the door? >> right. i mean, normally you would think after this kind of high noon standoff that he would have set the stage to have to walk.

it does look as if he wants to stay and, in part, he seems to be playing this toward the rank and file of the bureau. at least to say in these hard times, i've got your back and i need to stay. but you're 100% right, nicolle. compare this with the famous episode with john ash croft in the hospital bed and mueller and comey. they went after that, did mueller and comey, to the oval office to george bush and laid it out and said, we are going to resign. you have to back away from this. and bush did, as any president since roosevelt would have done. this is the -- it's unprecedented and almost inconceivable that you could get this kind of sober assessment where, as you say, lives are on the line from the director of the fbi and just essentially give him the back of the hand. it makes him, as you say, look pretty impotent. >> joe, i worked in the white

house at the time, and i believe christopher wray was also one of the d.o.j. officials who had sided with mueller and comey at the time and was going to walk out the door. and my understanding of that episode -- i was not in the oval office when they made their case, but there was no deliberation about whether or not to take the side of the three men protecting the country after 9/11 or to pursue a program that had upset them to the point where they were going to resign. i'm under the understanding from your paper's reporting and your reporting, ashley's paper's reporting, everyone's reporting that paul ryan was unmoved by these kinds of concerns. devin nunes was unmoved by these kinds of concerns. donald trump's chief of staff unmoved by these concerns. donald trump unmoved. my understanding is the only person even paying attention to these concerns is white house counsel don mcgahn. you exist at the intersection of the mueller investigation and sort of the existence and creation of a fisa warrant and the kinds of people that they would want to listen to as part of that investigation.

what's your sense of what sort of political exposure, someone like rod rosenstein could have, if a memo like this came out that might give donald trump the cover he needs to fire snim >> look, i mean, i think what you're seeing is the result of a sustained campaign, right? we've been hearing all about the deep state, you know, the fbi -- we live in a world where republicans going after law enforcement agencies in the united states, the fbi, the cia. i think, you know, their reputation has suffered, and you see that by republican members of congress sort of shrugging their shoulders over their concerns, you know. the question about this memo and what it could be used for, we don't know what's in the memo. >> right. >> we don't know what's not in the memo burks that should be in the memo. so i think it's really hard to know at this point what kind of political leverage this will give the president.

>> jonathan, what do you know at this hour about the white house staff and their sort of concerns, if any, about the fall out from this fight with the fbi? do they have any concern that it might look bad in the middle of the russia investigation which is, if not intensifying, certainly proceeding at full speed, that it might look bad if another director of the fbi were to exit? >> well, the big concern -- i just published a story on axios literally five minutes ago. >> i've got it. anyone with this story, let me send everyone to read it. so, your new story, rising white house fear: nunes memo is a . i read this real quickly. i missed the word memo. i thought it said nunes is a and i was slightly more captivated. let me ask you in the context of the possibility the memo does nothing for the president in terms of his political goals, then why alienate the director

of the fbi? >> so, you have literally just laid out what more people in the administration than you might be aware of by reading the public coverage. this is what they're concerned about. people who are familiar with the contents of this memo inside the administration say that it's not the slam dunk that it's being portrayed to be by people like devin nunes on the hill. and their concern, the debate is really what's the value -- is there a great political value to madening the fbi, maddening the intelligence community, making all of these enemies there and releasing this document that ultimately that is not the slam dunk that it is. to be clear, ashley was exactly right. everything she said is 100% right. it's still up in the air. there is still a debate internally about whether to take more of the recommendations from the intelligence community in terms of redaction and, you know, with regards to concealing

methods and sources. the decision to release it, it's almost certainly going to come out. as we and others reported, soongz trump knew about this memo, he wanted it out there. and we reported this i think tuesday morning, a few hours later the white house went on the record to dispute our reporting and then embarrassingly for them a few hours after that, trump confirmed it unwittingly on a hot mic during the state of the union. >> i'm not sure that they're capable of embarrassment. i think unwittingly is generous. let me play for you, harry, a former deputy director of the fbi talking about -- mentioned to ken the term grave concerns has a pretty specific meaning in law enforcement circles. let's watch and talk about it on the other side. >> now we see the fbi saying they have grave concerns. it's a hint that there may actually be top secret information underlying this memo that nunes doesn't even know about. i'm here to tell you if it's t.s., top secret, that means

there are sources, methods, techniques involved . it could mean there are human lives involved, human sources, maybe russian sources that have been flipped, recruited. >> isn't this exactly the kind of information the fisa court exists to protect the secrecy of an investigation that would involve human lives? isn't this exactly the kind of process that is incorruptible for the very reasons just stated? >> it's supposed to be incorruptible, but it's been corrupted, yes. you have to worry about sources and methods and having bad guys know what you're doing, and you have to worry about human lives, agents who have been turned and would be in terrible danger in their home country. look, the distinction here, the divide is not between republicans and democrats or executive and congress. it's between grown ups and children. anybody who knows anything about fbi operations would understand,

party aside, this is playing with more than fire, with grave risk to the national security. and you're exactly right, when fbi says to the public we're talking grave concerns, that's a signal that, that the potential consequences are cataclysmic. >> ashley parker, i want to show you something else that is turning out to be cataclysmic and that's the list of people from whom the president has demanded loyalty. we're going to put that up. so, from jim comey he want aid loyalty pledge and he pleaded with him to drop an investigation. from rod rosenstein we're learning from "the new york times" in a report last night, that he asked rod rosenstein for a loyalty pledge. he asked koets, head of an intelligence agency to deny kwoopgs in the media, to go to the press and say that there was no evidence that trump team had

any ties, whatever, cooperated with russia. he asked the same of admiral rogers. he asked christopher wray to fire mccabe on twitter, among other places, and he asked andy mccabe, former acting director of the fbi, for a time deputy director of the fbi, who he voted for, called his wife a loser. can you talk about just the unprecedented nature of what donald trump demands from his law enforcement and his intelligence chiefs? >> sure. it's incredibly unprecedented and that was quite a long list you read. and the charitable explanation is that it reflects the fundamental misunderstanding of a man who spent his entire career running what was essentially potentially at times successful, but at its core a family business, where that sort of personal loyalty was part of the credo of the trump organization and a man who has not quite made the transition on

this front into being president. and he either does not understand, or does not care, that when you are president of the united states, you simply cannot ask these people to swear, you know, loyalty to you personally because their loyalty is to the constitution, to the country, to the agency they represent. and people have tried to explain this to him because it's not just a misunderstanding. it is a misunderstanding that has now become a central focus of robert mueller's probe and that is problematic for this president. >> this is what i'm dying to ask you about. we're going to get to your story about hope hicks, who is i think the closest person to the president to really come into serious question other than family members in the mueller investigation. but what does this look like to bob mueller and anyone investigating donald trump, to learn that he asked for a loyalty pledge from jim comey, rod rosenstein, that he asked coats and rogers to defend him in the press, and in the stories

you write, that he asked wray to fire mccabe on twitter and otherwise he's defying his wish to protect sources and that he asked andy mccabe who did he vote for. we're covering that as a news organization. what does that look like to an investigator, a picture of guilt, paint a picture to cover it up? >> bob mueller is going to have to sort all of this out. but at the heart of one of the key things that he's looking at is has the president and his team attempted to obstruct justice in this case. does the firing of comey amount to that? does, you know, all of this -- all of these issues -- asking someone for a loyalty pledge, i'm not sure what the legal significance of that is. >> right. >> it's, it's unprecedented because, as you know from working in the bush white house, they're supposed to be a divide between the white house and the justice department. >> right. >> and you're is nnot supposed e bringing people in investigating you asking for pledges of

loyalty. your white house counsel would have never gone for that. to what extent -- pledges of loyalty amount to legal jeopardy, i don't know. that's up to mueller to figure out. >> ashley, i know you have to go, but let me just ask you before we lose you if you're picking up any sense of how hard the white house is working to come for christopher wray, to make any accommodations they're able to make from the radar of the president's purview or while still achieving his aim of releasing the memo and do whatever he can to reduce the credibility of the fbi? >> i think it's mixed. my understanding is that christopher wray had raised some concerns and that those either have already been addressed or they are in the process of trying to address them. although, again, we also know that he went to the white house to make the case against the memo coming out and he spoke to general kelly twice, in person and then in another phone call, and he remained unmoved.

so, i think the white house's top line is not going to change, but there is a process that should be followed that deals with the counsel's office. and on that level they are trying to make sure that nothing that should not be included or something that should be included that is not is all sort of sorted out before the official release. >> ken, let me give you the last word. you mentioned norms yesterday. speak to your point that you started and take into account that list of whys for loyalty pledges. >> what i was thinking is, you know, what this underscores is these are traditions. the idea of the independence of the fbi and the intelligence community that are not loyal to the president. these concepts are not enshrined in law. these are post-watergate traditions. what donald trump is making us all realize is any president can shatter those traditions. and with the memo -- >> why would they want to is what i'm trying to get at. why would he want to? >> he's decided it's in his own self-interest. we've shattered 40 years of the congressional oversight system

the intelligence will hand secrets to the congress and they will treat them responsibly and not weapon ize them for political gain. norms are shattering all over this town, nicolle. >> it's not breaking news any more and another norm falls. ashley parker thanks for getting us started. when we come back, donald trump's memo obsession could have something to do with the fact that bob mueller is getting closer and closer to the president and his role in crafting a bogus story to explain why his son met with russians at trump tower. also ahead, unpacking the right's propaganda campaign against top cops. how the latest developments reveal targets may have put him over the top in 2016. stay with us. oh, you brought butch. yeah! (butch growls at man) he's looking at me right now, isn't he? yup. (butch barks at man) butch is like an old soul that just hates my guts. (laughs)

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brand-new reporting by one of our guests joe becker and her colleagues at "the new york times" details the june 2016 meeting at the trump tower between top campaign officials and russians, sorry, freudian slip, and how the president and his team scrambled to put together a statement on its purpose has become a focus for bob mueller and his team. it's one of the topics he wants to discuss with the president. a one-time spokesman for the legal team is the latest witness called in to interview with the special counsel on the topic. corral owe is planning to tell mr. mueller about a previously undisclosed conference call between president trump and hope hicks, the communications director. he plans to tell the investigator that during the call e-mails written by donald trump, jr. before the trump tower meeting in which the younger mr. trump said he was eager to receive political dirt

about mrs. clinton from russians will never get out. that left coralo she would be attempting to obstruct justice. the piece goes on to say, he told colleagues that he immediately notified the legal team of the conversation and jotted down notes to memorialize it. he also shared his concerns with steve bannon, then the president's chief strategist. let's bring in the rest of our panel. nick and nbc and national affairs analyst john heilman. harry lit man is here, too. you and i have known each other since the '90s. makes me sound like i'm older than i like to admit. you have been reporting on, you won a pulitzer for your reporting on russia. you broke the first story about this meeting and about the attempt to cover the e-mails over fourth of july weekend. i remember because i was on vacation and my husband was yelling at me because i couldn't get off my phone and read your

stories. describe the book ends. you report last night in the first account of the truth about that meeting. >> sure. so, back then in july, we went to the trump white house and we told them that we were prepared to write a story that said that donald trump, jr. had arranged a meeting with this woman natalia veselnitskaya who is a kremlin-connected russian lawyer and, you know, we asked them for comment and what was the purpose of this. that then set off a huge scramble which we describe in great detail in today's story, in today's paper. and basically the president was aboard air force one with hope hicks, who is the white house communications director, and hope hicks was on the phone with donald trump, jr.'s lawyers and they were all crafting this statement, which is crazy. i mean, crazy on so many levels. they had a whole outside legal

team, and the purpose of that was to insulate anybody in the white house, everything through this outside legal team so that people like bob mueller couldn't subpoena -- couldn't call them and ask them to testify because it would all be covered by lawyer/client privilege. in fact, though, as they are putting together the statement, mark kasowitz, the president's lawyer at the time, wasn't even consulted. didn't even know about this statement till after it had gone to "the new york times." of course the statement said that this meeting was about -- it was really about adoption and president trump himself signed off on this and oversaw the crafting of it and insisted that this statement we reported today say that it was about adoption. donald trump, jr. threw in primarily. and it was, you know, at best, an incredibly misleading statement, at best. >> and at worst, it could be something that bob mueller construes as obstruction of justice. >> well, it's interesting because, you know, lawyers are a

bit -- you know, there is a debate about this. is lying to the press a crime? and there is a theory that it is if what you're doing is really meant to mislead investigators in addition to the american public and "the new york times". and that's -- we'll see how that legal theory plays out if it does. but we know that mueller is very interested in this. hope hicks was asked to come in and talk to him, i think it was a couple weeks ago. >> she spent two full days with mueller's investigators. >> we don't know what she told him. >> right. >> or what she told him about this phone call. there is a dispute between hope hicks and mark carrallo who by the way was a spokesman of the bush -- >> he was carl rove's spokesperson during the valerie plam leak investigation. >> scooter libby. worked on dan bernie's committee in the house when he was a investigator with clinton. >> let me bring everyone else in

on this. let me put out two other date appoint -- data points. this is a rare instance where white house aides made it known to people who cover the white house that there was dispute about what to do. i was told that there was a debate, that there were people that urged more transparency. and so in real-time, people made it known there was a debate about how to respond to joe's inquiry. bob mueller sent over a list i think of six people and what they had in common. was that they were all -- after this incident, bob mueller sent over a list of names of people that he wanted to talk to. sean spicer, reince priebus, hope hicks, don mcgahn, james berman who works for mcgahn, and josh rafael. at least four of those people were on that air force one flight. how important do you think that flight and that statement are to mueller's probe? >> pretty important. i mean, look, first of all the fact that there was dispute over it, there is no question it was dispute internally. mark saw this unfolding and said this is a huge problem. and the reason we're talking

about his bhieography, this is a guy who has lived, i'm not his lawyer, but lived at the intersection of law and politics. >> and media. >> and gets what the problems are when you start telling lies, you beget other lies. what that leads to in terms of legal exposure and exposure. he saw a car crash unfolding and got out of there for one thing and that's the kind of thing that leads to people talking about there being internal conflicts. one, there is a real question. you can lie to the press, lie to the press isn't against the law. if it was, everyone in washington would be in jail. but what the question is when it comes to obstruction of justice is lawyers tell us over and over again it's the totality of the evidence and whether there is -- it all conveys corrupt intent. so, mueller is going to be looking at the panoply of evidence that we have, and this is not going to be the decisive piece of evidence. but in painting the mosaic that shows that donald trump has corrupt intent and that he's been trying to obstruct justice, if thoos' the case he makes, this is will be a piece of that. again, he won't -- you won't

indict him for this thing probably, but you're going to indict him for the broader thing. this is a very vivid piece about the time when the russians came to town. >> right. harry -- >> can i add a couple points? >> please. my question was going to be that staffers do often get in trouble around questions about an ennis debt like this for perjuring them self. it was interaction with the press that led scooter libby to perjure himself. he was being queried about conversations with journalists when he told a lie that result ed in a perjury indictment. it was in many of the statements that white house staffers had made to reporters that either conflicted with one another or turned out not to be true that made so many -- my former white house colleagues feel legally exposed. can you talk about that list of six people on the plaerne, the decision which was known to be a false statement given to "the

new york times," and the consequence and what you think is going on inside the investigation as a result? >> sure. so, a few points. there were about six on the plane, but by at least the "fire and fury" account, the smarter ones knew to kind of slip away and hope hicks got kind of stuck in the middle transcribing. >> do we know that's all she was doing was transcribing? do we know that? >> well, look, well, this is the report in "fire and fury." but the big point about this episode, a couple big points. first, you're right, it's a potentially important piece of evidence in obstruction. it's also a potential overt act in a conspiracy involving and that by the way is the real charge involved in the russia investigation, not collusion, but conspiracy. and the big point about this one is trump's personal involvement. the most accounts have him insisting on this lie, and it's interesting cavalierly. we don't care about lying to the

public. but if his lie here is not only a potential overt act, but it evidences his possible knowledge about what was really going on at that june meeting, what was really happening with the russian contacts and that's a problem. finally, hope hicks, it wasn't only corral owe, but steve bannon who said, look, you're really putting yourself in jeopardy here for a potential criminal charges. and she is someone now who mueller could not only talk to, but pressure to cooperate. and she knows a lot. remember, she was involved in the whole campaign. she was -- had an affair with cory lewandowski, the president said in his gentile way that she was the best sexual partner, not the way he put it. that lewandowski would ever have. there's a lot she has to tell. and if she has the pressure from this ill-advised incident of

getting involved in that letter, it might give mueller account of things all the way through the campaign. >> you got much further in "fire and fury" than i did, my friend. let me ask you to talk about mark corral owe as someone who clearly from reading the story in your paper had the essential -- had the sense to walk away from defendsing ting the presid that investigation. that in itself screams guilty, guilty, guilty. talk about mark corral ee and aside from the "fire and fury" account which is secondhand, which is from steve bannon, we know now from your paper from joe's great reporting that at the time -- it's so interesting, it wasn't just jim comey who at the time was issuing contemporaneous accounts of interactions with trump and his team. mark corral owe did the same thing. >> look, to take a step back for a second, this is the most direct known interface between the kremlin and the president and his inner circle so far. so, it's the whole investigation

in miniature. at this point in time, right, we begin to see the different interests difficult verging, people have their own spokes men, their own legal teams, they're flying in different directions. they can't sync their stories up and mark corral owe comes in and says, guys, this is a danger zone. this could provide some evidence of intent to obstruct justice. and he's an experienced guy. and more experienced than a lot of the people in that room, by the way, in these circumstances, and he runs. that says a lot to me. >> last word. >> could i focus on the part that got nbc news excited today? the idea that hope hicks was in the conversation with donald trump about making incriminating e-mails go away, that maybe they wouldn't come out. did i understand you also to report that these e-mails had already been prepared to be turned over to congress. not the special counsel, he didn't know about this meeting, but congress was about to get these e-mails. the lawyers knew about them. >> congress had asked for all records relating to meetings with russians from a number of

people, including manafort, including jared kushner. and so the legal team was aware at this time that these e-mails existed. and, of course, the times would subsequently report that the e-mails existed and exactly what was in them and donald trump saying, if you say if it's dirt like you say, i love it. >> i love it. >> they knew all that at the time that we first made this call, at the time that they made -- that they were putting that statement together. and the thing that, you know, got sort of my attention about this story is that you have next day this dispute over how -- mark corral owe saying, hey, guys, there are records and they're gonna come out. and it's in the context, right, of these multiple investigations that are going on. and that's when he says, hope says those documents will never come out because only a few

people have them. and by his account, he's stunned. and either she's being sort of hopelessly naive because, of course, lawyers are going to turn these over and they're not going to deep six them. or she's suggesting somehow that they could all get together and destroy this evidence, or not turn it over. and what he's also deeply concerned about by his account -- now, hope denies saying this. let's just get that out there. hope denies this through her lawyer in our story today. but by his account, what he then -- he's so concerned that not only what she said, but that she said it with the president on the line, with no lawyers. so, it's not privileged. so, mueller can ask everybody about it. >> and it's in your paper and everyone should go read it. jo becker, lit man and jonathan swan thank you for joining us. still ahead, democrats defending christopher wray and soundsing the alarm about releasing the

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if i am given the honor of leading this agency, i will never allow the fbi's work to be driven by anything other than the facts, the law, and the impartial pursuit of justice, period, full stop. my loyalty is to the constitution and to the rule of law. those have been my guide posts throughout my career, and i will continue to adhere to them no matter the test. >> no matter the test. seven months after fbi director made that pledge, we may get to see -- we may have a chance to see how far it goes. what wray does over the days and weeks ahead carries significant risk. he now finds himself firmly in the crosshairs of an administration that seemingly values loyalty above all else.

joining our conversation is bill crystal, founder and editor of the weekly standard. what do you make of all of it, of the loyalty test, of chris wray making the case that if you release the memo, it's extraordinarily reckless, they have grave concerns, and the white house full steam ahead? >> i think chris wray made his case and i think people in the fbi are grateful that he did. i kind of doubt he'll resign. i have no knowledge on this, no reporting, but i just feel like he will think to himself. i did my best. it's probably better for the country that i stay here than resign. if he resigns, donald trump gets to appoint an fbi director and with more knowledge of who might be friendlier to him, more accommodating to him in the white house than he had seven months ago when he appointed wray who i don't think he knew much about. so, i think wray will stay. the nunes memo that is now sort of fair amount of reporting, gee, the white house fears it might be a substantively, it will be, i guess, substantively a , but it will have accomplished its purpose. it has totally muddied the

waters. a huge question on the original fi fisa, renewed fisa application of the carter page. it has nothing to do with what really happened in 2016 or in 2017. and to the degree touch-toit wi trump supporters -- it will say that rosenstein's renewal, i guess of the fisa application was somehow questionable, it may leave the groundwork for trump firing rosenstein which he would love to do. that's what the nunes memo is about, firing rosenstein. >> absolutely what it's about. go ahead. >> it's something else, which has clarified. i've said this now multiple times this week and i'll say it again. it has clarified the extent to which paul ryan is now no longer on team usa or on even team old republican party. he is on team nunes, which means he's on team trump, which means to some extent they're all -- they're advancing in some sense the interests of russia. this is -- this is what russia wants here. and i continue to be baffled by ryan's behavior.

but we now have a clear signal that ryan is utterly supine and he's backed nunes, he's saying to the extent that nunes is saying we don't care about russian meddling in the 2016 election, what we're going to do is investigate the fbi, which is what nunes is saying. ryan has come out and endorsed that view. and i find that utterly stunning. paul ryan has behaved poorly over the course of the last year, but this i did not think he would end up in this position. he is and he is there. it has huge implications for the future, too. >> is it explained -- does anything explain how paul ryan could rebuff christopher wray? is there any bad blood there? what would have happened, did he hit his head? why would paul ryan, speaker of the house, refuse to permit the fbi director to brief the house intel committee before they vote on exposing a memo like this, that the fbi deems extraordinarily reckless? >> look, this is politics. i'm out of my depth on this. he was happy with the tax cut. he wants on donald trump's side. the bottom line is that nunes wouldn't even have this highly

classified stuff if ryan hadn't backed him up in his dispute with the fbi and and the justice department. you're absolutely right. everything that's happening is a result of the decisions that paul ryan made and that people inside the administration made. and also i completely agree with you, bill, this thing has been about muddying the water. regardless how this plays out, what has happened now is how the focus of how the fbi got the information instead of what is the evidence, did the trump campaign collude with russia, obstruction of justice, that is getting lost. >> let's clear the water. we need to get to a break. give me one second. we are talking about a memo that's about a process that's so obscure to most americans, but it's the way we listen to our enemies. and the fisa court is a court that requires an application. there was an application made to the fisa court to listen to carter page in 2013, years before he was involved with the trump campaign, and years before donald trump described him as one of his key national security advisors. i want to ask you if you think

there is any chance in the renewal of the application, which was granted, so there had to be probable cause to continue to listen to carter page, right? if there is any effort to go ahead and achieve his aims of getting rid of the d.o.j. leadership if he deems them to have been aware of or complicit in continuing that approval to surveil carter page? >> the event they're trying to build, nicole, the dossier was funded by the dnc, the dossier provided the evidence for the warrant, the warrant was -- this is what they're trying to do. the warrant was wrong, and therefore the entire investigation and mueller's entire probe is tainted. >> the dossier didn't provide the evidence for the fisa warrant. what are they going to do when that is proven false? >> that's a good question. jonathan swan's reporting in the last hour is that people are actually worried that this memo, which is really just a press release, is going to actually be a . it's not going to actually be persuasive. and given what nunes tried to do before when he was still

nonrecused, i should say on this investigation, i guess he's nonrecused now. >> he's unrecused from his nonrecused recusal. >> he took some material stoked by trump's nfc guy and use it for his own committee. >> ding ding ding. this is the warning i've been getting, though. this information may not have originated on the hill. once again, this may be information that incrim nats some senior d.o.j. officials, maybe even including some of trump's own appointees and have the effect of giving him the cover to get rid of the people he wants to get rid of. >> in the end, if you follow the logic of their argument, what they are indicting is not just the fbi and the d.o.j. they are saying that the fisa court is corrupt because the fisa court, which we all -- right, it's obscure, super important, but the standards of evidence in the fisa court are really high. >> really high. >> they're basically making the argument not just there was corrupt intent on the part of the fbi and justice department to take down donald trump, but the fisa court was in on it because they looked at this

corrupt evidence and said fine, we're going to let you tap carter page's phones. i mean, it's the craziest conspiracy theory you ever heard. >> they could have been misled by the fbi. mueller is investigating -- mueller is going to present his findings with huge amounts of back up evidence which will or will not prove or suggest crimes -- >> if he's still in the job. >> right. none of it depends, zero of it depends on anything learned as a result of this fisa -- i think you're absclutolutely right. they want to say it originated or dubious questionable claim somehow corrupts the whole thing. that is not true, i don't believe. certainly in terms of impeachment. it might be true in narrow criminal sense, fruit of the poison tree doctrine i think it's called. i don't think it's true in that case. they can throw out that part of the evidence. >> it's not the case of the warrant and the dossier. >> it was lerntd about the trump tower meeting, learned about air force one. the idea -- don't look at all that stuff. don't look at those conversations. don't look at -- don't look at

mark corral owe resigning. >> i asked this question. when we look at the totality of the behavior of house republicans around this what has unfolded, if the objective is to fire rosenstein and ultimately get to mueller who at this table thinks there is a red line along that? if trump crosses the read line and fired mueller that would provoke republicans. who at this table thinks republicans on capital had i would rise up in unison and say no, you must not fire robert mueller? anybody at that table think there is a red line any more? >> the court has fallen. there was more support six months ago when trump was acteding like a crazy man. >> who else thinks there is a red line? >> there are no more red lines. up next, those talking points about text messages revealing a bias in the fbi against trump, they may have just blown up in the faces of their champions.

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as we speak in the process of successfully recovering many of those text messages in that five-month period of time from the trump aide fbi official. >> and he will likely send your kids to prison that your grandkids will learn from years from now. and it is vital that his integrity are beyond question. we are no longer convinced of either one. >> so he is conservative media with the fbi with alleged against trump. he reopened the clinton e-mail investigation right before the 2016 election. and we all know how that turned out. do you think there will be any recognition -- and let yes ju-- let me just say, offer peter stryzk, the texts with chelsea

clinton and eric holder and plenty of democrats to suggest that he like many fbi agents wasn't fond of politicians. >> like many people. being snarky about politicians and having an affair and they are sharing -- i don't approve of it. i think it is right when people say that it would be better if people were involved in these investigations. would not be sending these things. for purposes of both appearance and also for substance. it is also the case that people are human and they have opinions and as we've heard from conservative and liberals that people in the justice department of all political stripes who have been professionals for years and i have a personal opinion about politics but i put them aside when it comes to the application of the law. there was a time when both democrats and republicans looked at this i.g. report that would look at what happened in the d.o.j. and the fbi in the campaign and said this is

important. because there may have been things that were wrong that happened. we should all want to know about them. when the i.g. report got announced, the clinton campaign was cheerleading because they thought james comey and his colleagues behaved properly. and if it wasn't for the nunes side show it would come out and we would learn important things about whether bad things happened in these institutions, instead we are in the side show and i just -- i wish that we had stayed on that track because again no one should want to look away from wrongdoing in those institutions. there may have been wrongdoing, let's find out about that but in a neutral way but not in a partisan way. >> mueller removed him from his probe. but the right wing media where we used to be welcome, i'm sure we're on the enemy list, they have made this a cost of facts and he is their number one punching back. it turns out he's not what they

detected. he may have sent e-mails suggesting he wasn't a fan of donald trump. but donald trump's own secretary of state called him a moron and didn't didn'ty -- deny it. he made half a dozen cabinet secretaries and how his family feels about him. so the idea that an agent who was investigating hillary clinton who many democrats think tipped the election in donald trump's favor, is the entire reason that you paint the fbi with a bias brush seems pretty unfair. >> and just to go after him personally. no one knows him. he is a career guys. he may have made bad judgment calls along with james comey and others, at different junctures in this complicated situation, some of which might have helped clinton or trump. none of us has a clue as to the totality of the evidence they have to balance and you just trash this one person who

they've never met. he is not a public figure or senate confirmed figure, he is now a public figure, but it is wrong. what did joe mccarthy do, he waved around listed of traitors in the state department and it was some guy working on the deputy desk to china. >> we'll sneak in one last break but we'll be right back. oh! there's one. manatees in novelty ts? surprising. what's "come at me bro?" it's something you say to a friend. what's not surprising? how much money matt saved by switching to geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more.

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nick and bill, "mtp daily" started right now. i'm sorry we're late. >> that is okay. we'll dock your pay. if it is thursday, things are getting curiouser and curiouser. good evening. i'm chuck todd in washington. sometimes we wonder if we're alice in wonder land. welcome to "mtp daily." if there something more absurd than the shenanigans around the memo, it is the stuff you have