commander in chief of the united states of america, and i was in almost every meeting with the president in the hours and days that followed. countless hours with the secretary of defense, is secretary of state, the heads of our intelligence community and the president was in front of and on top of it all. asking questions and requiring that america's military and intelligence community and diplomatic community would figure out how many people were dead, how many are americans, how many hostages. is the situation stable? he was in front of it all, coordinating and directing leaders who are in charge of america's national security, not

to mention our allies around the globe. for days and up until now, months. so the way that the president's demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts. and clearly politically motivated, gratuitous. and, so, i will say that when it comes to the role and responsibility of a prosecutor in a situation like that, we should expect that there would be a higher level of integrity than what we saw. thank you. thank you for the question. >> vice president harris pushing back strongly against special counsel robert hur's report. more on that coming up. good day. i am chris jansing live in new

york city. you just heard from vice president kamala harris, passionately defending the president. many others lashing out at the special counsel for portraying him as elderly and confused. one official arguing that could sway the entire campaign. some democrats are having flash backs to 2016, warning it is like jim comey and hillary clinton all over again. we're going to talk about it. plus, senate republicans are looking more and more like their colleagues in the house, chaotic, confused and unclear about what comes next. the increasingly familiar pattern. republicans demanding action but then rejecting the actions they themselves wanted. described by one of our own reporters as an endless doom loop. we'll dig into that. and special counsel jack smith filing a kind of cryptic request in trump's classified documents case. he wants the judge to conceal

details about threats to a potential government witness, not just from the public but also to keep it from trump and his lawyers as well. but why? that's coming up later in the show. but we start with president biden and his allies furious and feverishly working to repair the political damage done by that embarrassing special counsel report. it did clear president biden of my criminal wrongdoing, but it also described him as a forgetful old man whose memory is so hazy that he couldn't remember when his eldest son died. but now the president's lawyers are calling on hard calling on the author, the special counsel, robert hur to revise his descriptioning and insisting they're gratuitous and unsupported by the facts. biden himself is clearly incensed. >> there is even reference that

i don't remember when my son died. how in the hell dare he raise that. frankly, when i was the question, i thought to myself wasn't any of their damn business. i don't need anyone to remind me of when he passed away. i'm an elderly man, and i know what the hell i'm doing. my memory is fine. my memory -- take a look at what i've done since i became president. >> i want to bring in ryan riley who has gone through the report, peter baker, robert gibbs, served as white house secretary or president obama and tim who served as communications director for the jed bush 2016 campaign. all three for msnbc political analysts. okay, peter. there was an analysis in your paper today that called this is a political disaster, saying thursday's report was the worst

of all worlds. suggesting that with age comes stumbles. how do you begin to measure, peter, fall-out from something like this? >> well, look, you know, i don't know how you measure it, obviously. the polls have shown consistently for a long time now that most voters, including most democrats, worry about president biden's age. voters also worry about president trump's age, although not in the same numbers, according to the polls. this furthers that conversation, conversations the white house doesn't want to have. although, it knows it is inevitable. and the idea that it is put in writing here that he is seen as a well meaning but forgetful elderly old man is just not the conversation they want to be having. they want to talk about infrastructure, trump's indictments and a lot of things. they don't want to talk about his capacity. you can see the president's decision to come out last night that he struck a nerve. it struck a nerve in a personal way and a political way because,

obviously, they have to convince the country that not only is he capable of being president now at 81, but that he would be capable of being president until he's 86, which is the end of the second term. >> so, ryan, we have to remember that this was good news for the white house. this was what they wanted. no charges for the president for mishandling classified documents. did this report in some ways with a relatively small few words snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, at least from the democrats' perspective? >> yeah. that was a damning few lines about president biden's memory. that's something that there has been some pushback on, whether or not that was appropriate and whether robert hur could have accomplished the same goal without handing this political victory to his political opponents. he was appointed by donald trump, but he has a history of the justice department.

in fact, what i remember him from from before this during the trump administration was aggressively going after domestic terrorism cases in maryland, including an individual who is a big fan of donald trump, who was targeting a lot of donald trump's enemies and had a sort of kill list to go after those individuals. his office went very aggressively against that then. so i don't think this notion, it's tough for them to push back. i think when you see those comments from the vice president trying to present robert hur as a partisan hack, that will be more difficult. you can disagree with the direct approach that he took to this and say that, you know, you don't think that that language should have been included on the margins. but overall, this attack on hur is not necessarily going to stick. >> so the least of the concerns here, probably from a political perspective is what this means for the special counsel. this is those words that we just referenced when you read the report. here is what it says. president biden, an elderly man

with poor memory, who has diminished faculties in advancing age, struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries. look, that was a pretty forceful defense we just heard from kamala harris, robert. does that, what was in the report, reflect the man you know right now, or are concerns about his age understandable? >> well, i do think -- i do think both, quite frankly. i think it's clear he's had a very successful first term. he's passed a lot of important initiatives and agenda items that are focused on middle-class economics. it is also true that he's 81 years old. so i think both of those things can be true at the same time. i think there is no doubt the white house has to join this conversation forcefully. i would push back on the gratuitous nature of the fact that he's a lawyer and not a doctor. but i also think the theory of what they were trying to do last

night was right. the execution just didn't work. i think they will have to both pretty soon and in the days and quite frankly months ahead, the line will have to come back out and answer questions and do it in a way that allows him to present the evidence both in pushing back on the report and in giving people the confidence that he has the wherewithal and the ability to, as peter said, continue to do the job. this is not just about the here and now. it is about, can you do this through the next four years. it is a voter concern, and they're going to have to face this head-on. it can't -- it can't be pushed under the rug because it is a concern and they're going to have to address it, and they will have to address it forcefully with the president. >> and the reality is, robert, you know this from your old job better than anyone. the headlines are out there, right? and you are not going to get that kind of headline from the vice president. however forceful she may be. and i'm wondering, and i've

asked this question before this week, but would it have been a golden opportunity for president biden to address this to the widest possible audience by giving an interview, pre-super bowl. 100 million, 120, 150 million, i think 200 million watch the game. and from the democrats' perspective an opportunity to put these questions, if not to rest, in a different section, a different five-alarm fire. maybe only two. >> yeah. yes. i think the short answer is yes. i think an interview -- and, look, they might need to do an interview, quite frankly, before the super bowl. but i think the idea of giving the vice president the time and the space to give full answers, i think if you watch that press conference, which i did again this morning, you know, you see he's -- you know, and peter knows this. you are getting questions yelled at you. you are trying to figure out

what to answer. you are trying to figure out who to call on next. give him the space. every president struggles with that. do it in a way in which he can present what he wants to present. quite frankly, he has to figure out a way to do this in a way that doesn't cause him to get angry. i would be angry at what the special counsel wrote about beau biden if i was joe biden. i think he can channel that anger, though, in different ways and give people the confidence that he has, the faculties to do this job and to do this job as well as he is doing. >> tim, the president was so upset about the characterization that he lost a step, let's put it that way. that the staff hastily gave him a chance to do it in person. but in doing that, he also said this. >> the conduct of the response in gaza -- in the gaza strip has

been over the top. initially, the president of mexico did not want to open up the gate to allow humanitarian material to get in. i talked to him. i convinced him to open the state. >> obviously that's from egypt. if that was the only instance, not a big deal, right? but given that he's done this before, it, again, adds to this perception. he obviously did not say the right thing there. overall, do you think the president hurt himself or helped himself last night, tim? >> i don't think it was meaningful either way in the long run for november. i think he will have to do more and more of this, and he will have to be run through the paces and demonstrate to voters that he's up for this. you can't do that by being afraid, of being overcautious by not putting him in situations.

people are going to want to see him. and i think they will need to see more of him this year. that same press conference that he mixed up where cc is from, trump mixes up where world leaders are from all the time, so i don't think that one example says that much. in the same press conference, he had a pretty funny, hilarious self-deprecating back and forth with deet erpeter ducey from fo. joe biden has the ability to do this. he's got to be able to do it. voters do have concerns. so pretending like they don't have concerns is not the answer, hiding them from voters is not the answer. he's got to go out there and make the case for himself. >> go up to 30,000 feet if you will. i saw this tweet where he wrote, it's funny/sad/astonishing that we're in a situation where trump's multiple indictments

were political advantageous to him and biden's exoneration is political to him. unanswerable question, but how do you explain that? >> yeah. it is a fair observation. it is really remarkable. you're right. also, it reminds me of the mueller report that found there was not a criminal charge to bring against trump, but it had a lot of critical things to say about him while he was president. trump characterized that as full exoneration and convinced his supporters it was. although, if you read the report, it was damning in a lot of ways. the trump people manage to get in front of that and characterize it before it was released. yesterday the report came out before the biden white house characterized it. they didn't set the table, in effect, for the damaging part of that report so that when it came out, they had to then try to catch up with that evening statement. you're right. he was clear. the report said he didn't commit any crime that could be proved.

as opposed to former president trump that's been charged with 40 felonies for mishandling classified documents and obstructing justice to prevent their return to the government. there is a vast difference between what president biden did and what former president trump did. this report remarked on that. but, of course, the politics of the age thing because it is an acute issue for this president are going to continue to be one of the resounding -- you know, one of the resonating factors here. >> we have to let that be the last word. thank you, peter. you are staying with me. but we have some breaking news. we now know who the five marines are who were killed in that helicopter crash outside of san diego. i want to bring in monica alba. i believe they're all in their 20s. >> of course when something like this happens, the u.s. military is first going to make sure they can inform all of the families

before they are going to release the names. now we know that that has taken place, so we can tell you a little bit about them. so the five who tragically died in this helicopter crash in the san diego mountains are lance corporal donovan davis, who was 21 years old of kansas, sergeant alec langen, 23 years of old of arizona. captain benjamin molton of idaho. captain jack casey and captain miguel nava of michigan. those are the five names of the marines who lost their lives in what we understand was a routine training mission. this is something that we have tragically seen happen time and time again. they were flying from nevada to california, and there was that massive winter storm in the area earlier this week. but now there will be a complete investigation to get more

information about what happened in the crash, the helicopter was reported missing. and then there was a large search and rescue operation that turned into a search and recovery mission once they did find that the helicopter had, indeed, crashed. so the families, of course, now mourning these lives, in addition to defense secretary lloyd austin and president biden who have all released statements over the past couple of days, expressing their deepest condolences for their loss. chris? >> five fallen heroes. the youngest 21, the holdest 28. thank you. in just 60 seconds, the chaos on capitol hill as vladimir putin gives a controversial issue in the face of potentially more aid for ukraine. we'll talk about it next. raine. we'll talk about it next st noti, which kept coming and going, i should have gone to the doctor. instead, i tried to let it pass.

if you experience irregular heartbeat, heart racing, chest pain, shortness of breath, fatigue, or light-headedness, you should talk to your doctor. afib increases the risk of stroke about 5 times. when it comes to your health, this is no time to wait. now it is the senate in

chaos. republican infighting and a promise or maybe a threat they will have to stay through super bowl sunday to work on a $95 billion foreign aid package. senators just came back into session an hour ago, and the list of combatants is large. reports that behind closed doors mitch mcconnell and the influential republican campaign chief have been going at it. while very publicly on the senate floor, temperatures have been flaring aimed at republicans who got what they asked for in the bill but saying it is not enough. vladimir putin, in a two-hour interview with tucker carlson, is clearly trying to influence house republicans to block anymore aid to ukraine. bottom line, get ready for a long and extraordinarily important weekend on the hill. nbc's ryan nobles is reporting on capitol hill. josh letterman is reporting from london. also back with us is peter baker. okay, ryan. what is the schedule in the senate looking like as we head

into super bowl sunday and just are high are tensions as they tackle this bill? >> yeah. there is no doubt there is a lot of bad blood about the way these package negotiations have been moving forward. they are going to spend most of the weekend going through the procedural hurdles of the united states senate to get into a position where they can vote on this package and send it over to the house of representatives. but it will not come without some strife. we saw that play out on the senate floor yesterday. listen to this exchange between kyrsten sinema, one of the negotiators of that supplemental package, and lindsey graham of south carolina. >> you mentioned you thought the bill we drafted and drafted yesterday was a good start but not enough. >> yeah. >> i'm wondering if you would remind us how you voted yesterday on the motion to proceed to the bill that had the border package that we worked on together. >> i'll be glad to. i voted no because i didn't see

a process in place or willingness by my democratic colleagues to allow me to express i think it could be better. this has been a half [ bleep ] effort to deal with border security. to the people in the house -- no, i'm speaking. speak later. >> senator graham, i know you have been here quite a bit longer than me, but it is my understanding that in order to get to the portion of a bill where we offer amendments on the floor, we first have to pass the motion to proceed. >> you may get this bill passed without any border. but it's going nowhere in the house. >> reporter: so senator graham seemed to make it seem as though he wasn't really involved in the negotiations, but one of the other negotiators, senator chris murphy tweeted this shortly after the exchange. he said his top staff were in the room when we negotiated the bill. we negotiated key provisions directly with him, which counter acts a little bit of what you

might say was his obtuseness related to this on the senate floor. i can also tell you from my own personal experience i talked to him many times and his opinion of the bill seemed to shift with each passing day. the initial negotiations around it was he was supportive of it. he was encouraging his other colleagues to get onboard. but it became increasingly clear that the number of republicans that wanted to support the bill were starting to dwindle. he moved over to that side and seemed to be less inclined to vote for it. now, to his credit, he wants and claims he wants to make the bill better. but to senator cinema's point, by voting against the bill moving forward made that process a whole lot more difficult. >> so, peter, the frustration is the fever pitch on capitol hill. what must it be like in ukraine and for the white house? and can biden and his team do anything but sit back and wait and watch? >> it's a very frustrating moment in ukraine, of course.

they did get $50 billion approved by the europeans, despite opposition from the hungary. that's different from the united states where the arms that they would send are so much a part of their resistance to the russian invaders. washington was wondering whether or not the united states is going to be with them or not. they face an entrenched invading force that is not giving up, that has enormous advantages over ukraine. the thing that has been the balancer and the thing that helped them from taking over the country has been american arms. and it seems to them, you know, hard to imagine that a fight over america's border issue could stop the united states from wanting to keep russia from re-writing the law -- the map of europe. they don't know how to -- you know, to evaluate what's happening. but you hear a lot of concern from ambassadors afterwards like

cataclysmic, the idea that america might retreat from the international stage is causing enormous amount of anxiety right now on the other side of the ocean. >> obviously vladimir putin is watching trying to take advantage of the chaos in. can c. and hoping to amp up the pressure on conservative republicans to block aid to ukraine. what can you tell us about this? >> there is no doubt, chris, that by giving an interview to tucker carlson, president putin is demonstrating he wants to connect with an audience in the u.s., comprised of far right conservatives. we do know that nbc news, "the new york times" where peter writes and every other major news organization had been asking for interviews since this war started. we were denied. tucker carlson is someone that has been repeatedly critical of u.s. assistance to ukraine throughout this war. but take a listen to what happened when tucker carlson asked president putin about the potential for a diplomatic resolution to this war. >> why don't you just call biden

and say, let's work this out? >> what's there to work out? it's very simple. i repeat. we have contacts through various agencies. i will tell you what we are saying on this matter and what we are conveying to the u.s. leadership. if you really want to stop fighting, you need to stop flying weapons. it will be over within a few weeks. that's it. and then we can agree on some terms. before you do that, stop. >> what's so interesting there, chris, is when president putin says stop sending weapons and this war could be over in a matter of weeks, as if that is an olive branch. that is not the resolution the u.s. wants to see, if that means russia running rough shod over ukraine that has run out of weapons because the u.s. is no

longer providing that assistance. that is the opposite of the type of outcome to this that democrats and some republicans, who are now pushing in congress for this urgent aid to ukraine, want to see. but the fact that putin is suggesting he's ready to talk, wants the u.s. to push the ukrainians into diplomatic negotiations may give us some insight into how putin thinks that this war is going on a military front for the russians and his desire to see this move into a phase of negotiations. chris? >> look, peter, you spent four years in moscow covering russia. i think it was four years, yeah? what do you make of the putin interview? obviously it wasn't exactly hart hitting, but could it have been impact on the hill? >> he's trying to get his message across to an american audience. most americans are not fans of putin. what's interesting is how much he has caught a certain part of the elective, particularly on the hard right. i saw some poll numbers

yesterday which were fairly striking that 26% of americans told ugov they have a favorable impression of vladimir putin. that's up 15% from before the war. that's not the common view among office holders, particularly among democrats. but even most republicans. but i think it tells you that the politics of russia has shifted in america, you know, that he has presented himself as defender of western traditional values against lgbtq rights and against the moral decay in the west. that resonated with at least part of the -- you know, the hard right in america. that may be, in fact, influencing some of the votes you see against aid on the hill. >> peter, josh, ryan nobles, thank you all so much. and former president trump is riding high after a day of multiple victories. nbc's stef kornacki standing by at the big board to break down the results after this.

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so this is big political news. a key senate race that many analysts had viewed as an easy win for democrats just got a whole lot more complicated in the 11th hour. former maryland governor larry hogan, a popular republican there, announcing he will be running for democratic senator ben carden's empty seat. maryland has not had a republican senator in 37 years,

but hogan left office last year with a 77% approval rating. so one will be watching. and what a difference just a couple of days make for donald trump. after a rough start to the week, he's had arguably his best day of the year so far. victories in nevada and the virgin islands, a supreme court case that seems to be going his way and a new attack line against joe biden's age. so in a mere 48 hours, his major loss when an appeals court rejected his immunity claim and the likely shake-up at the republican national committee suddenly seem almost a distant memory. steve kornacki is at the big board. tim miller is back with us. okay. break down the results of last night's wins. >> yeah. really it was not a competition at all here. this was the second leg of nevada's very confusing republican nominating process this year. but this was the caucus run by the state republican party in nevada. and the delegates for the

convention come through the caucus, so donald trump will get all of the delegates. this is a texas pastor who has been running, not getting much attention. the reason for it was the state of nevada began a presidential primary that it would run for both parties this year. the state republican party said we don't want that primary deciding our delegates. we want to decide it ourselves in the caucus. they said candidates can either run in the primary or the caucus, but can't run in both. earlier this week, they didn't have the primary anyway. nikki haley opted to run in that. what happened was the option none of those candidates won by a better than 2 to 1 margin. in this sense, this was a win for trump. he denied haley a win and clearly showed among republicans, because this was a closed primary, no democrats, no independents, just among republicans, even with trump's

name on the bat lol, he found a way to beat haley by a 2 to 1 margin. trump takes all the delegates. it comes in two parts, but trump gets the win in nevada. when you look ahead to what's next, haley has been trying to get a win here. new hampshire she got 11 points within trump, but that was still a double digit loss. the next one is her home state, south carolina. 37 points behind there. that dynamic we have seen in every primary caucus so far and every poll is when you talk about non-republican voters, haley gets traction there. when you talk about republican voters, she's getting crushed by donald trump. it's been a major obstacle she's facing in the polling going back months now. she's trailing this much in her home state. and then you go beyond that. we asked in our national nbc poll over the weekend, we asked republicans who do you want to be the party's nominee?

donald trump with a 60-point advantage over nikki haley. what we're seeing here is it seems to be a consensus of a sentiment to coalesce behind donald trump and not to look at this and treat this as a -- as a tightly contested race. so haley just that inability to connect with core republican voters. unless that changes and changes fast and in a big way in her home state, really can't see heroining anywhere now. >> steve, thank you so much. wasn't it a couple days ago everyone suggesting donald trump had had his worst day ever? give us your assessment of his week if you wanted to. but i think the bigger question is does any of this matter much? obviously you have to get delegates. but a thousand things are going to happen between now and november, so who knows what's going to stick. >> yeah. and i think the fundamental trajectory of this race is really unchanged. it's been a crazy news week, right? lots of stuff happened.

he's in court and there is a biden special counsel report. but the fundamentals are the same. the republican voters want donald trump overwhelmingly. and the reason only nikki haley got within 11 of new hampshire is because a lot of democrats crossed over because they disliked trump so much and undeclared voters in new hampshire. they like him. democratic voters, they loathe him. and, so, the question is going to be what of the donald trump's laws do they stick and do they out weigh joe biden. obviously donald trump is pretty old. but you have more importantly the fact that he will spend most of the year in court. that's not changing. he's winning the republican nomination in a landslide. and all this news this week didn't change those two fundamental facts. >> it does bring me, tim, to nikki haley because she's still on the campaign trail. we saw that poll 19%.

last night trump attacked her. though, he did not mention her name. here it is. >> i'd like to congratulate none of the above. i was one of those none if ever aboves. i was one of them. so i watched that last night, and they won by 44 points, none of the above. so i want to congratulate. >> it wasn't last night. it had been two nights before. nevertheless, "the wall street journal" is reporting that nikki haley makes no apologies for hurting donald trump. she has been drawing crowds of up to a thousand. even if her campaign is doomed, is there some benefit of her staying in the race that she might be damaging trump? >> depends on what she does when the race is over and what she does when she speaks about the race, i think. i can have a contrarian view. a lot of folks think her staying in the race longer helps.

her criticizing donald trump, making fun of her age helps. but i'm concerned that nikki haley levels these criticisms against donald trump over the next few weeks, gets out of the race and then says she's endorsing him any way. in a lot of ways, that may create a permission structure for nikki haley's voters that don't like donald trump. that's the most encouraging thing. it's a small number of those voting against him. if you look at the poll numbers, are those people going to hold their nose and vote for him in december? will some crossover and vote for joe biden? nikki haley may have some influence. so what she does after she gets out of the race is more important than what she does over the last two weeks. >> tim miller, always good to see. have a good weekend. thanks. the new fed investigation into threats against a potential witness in the mar-a-lago documents expert, a legal expert

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we have now learned that the federal government is investigating threats targeting a potential witness in the mar-a-lago documents case against former president trump. in a new filing, special counsel jack smith asked the court to seal off evidence in the case until the federal probe is resolved. but there's more. he also asked the judge to hide it from trump and his legal

team. joining me now to discuss, msnbc legal analyst and former prosecutor charles coleman. good to see you. this filing is cryptic, but you have years of experience, so what's going on here? >> well, chris, as the basis of what we're talking about here, jack smith is trying to preserve the integrity of his investigation and avoid any issues around witness tampering by trying to keep as many details around the probe as well as the witness under wraps, what you are basically trying to do is keep donald trump or anyone from his camp from leaking this out in such a way that could have this witness doxed or become uncooperative. donald trump's platform is so large that his followers are so avid that it is possible they will go after everyone they can in terms of someone they can get information about. what he's trying to do is let the court know, look, this is somebody valuable to the integrity of this case, and we

can't have the information out there because if we do, there may be further threats and this person may not agree to cooperate. >> yeah. we know a lot of people around the trump trials faced threats, harassment, intimidation, anyone involved really. after the verdict in the carol case, i thought it was notable -- sorry, we have to thank you for that because we have to go to the white house where the white house counsel spokesperson is talking about the hur report. >> the president spoke powerfully about this last night. after a long investigation that turned over every stone and explored every theory, the special decided there was no case there. notably, he said this would be true whether president biden was president or private citizen. the special counsel's assignment was to determine whether any criminal conduct occurred. he found it didn't. that was the finding. the case is closed. i want to read you something from none other than ken star, who most people in this room

will remember is the independent counsel who investigated former president clinton. he said, quote, what i see the conclusion is being is just a determination that no criminal charges would be brought, period, full stop. that is it. it's all over at that stage, end quote. that rings true here. the special counsel goes on about the president's unprecedented cooperation in that case. i want to share a few things about it. one, when the classified documents were found, it was self-reported. the president directed his team to ensure that any classified documents were returned immeed imimmediate ya -- immediately. why did he do that? because he takes it seriously. he understands documents like that belong with the government. he never, never made any attempt to obstruct.

two, he took unprecedented action to get the special counsel what he needed. he opened up every room in his family home and his beach house for comprehensive fbi searches, a first time in history. he sat for two days of interviews, an interview i'll add, and the president talked about this last night, took place the day after the brutal attack on israel. the president was managing an intensive international crisis. you just heard the vice president talk about this. he answered dozens of follow-up questions to the special counsel in writing. three, he didn't exert executive privilege over any contents of the report. he was transparent. he had nothing to hide. there was a long, intensive and in many ways, yes, excessive investigation. but for context, you shall remember, in the case of former vice president mike pence, who had a very, very similar incident occur right after president biden, the case was closed within a few months.

it was a brief one-page letter to mike pence. but in this case, there was a 15-month investigation. the special counsel interviewed 150 witnesses. he saw and obtained 7 million pages of documents down to e-mails about moving trucks during the transition in 2016 and 2017. he spent more than three and a half million taxpayer dollars exploring every possible theory that he could. and what was the result? he reached the inevitable conclusion based on the facts and the evidence that there was no case here. and this is important to think about in context of how this report is being viewed and by many of you being covered. this is the first special counsel investigation ever that hasn't indicted anyone. every theory was explored. but the facts and the evidence disputed them. the decision was that there was no case to be made.

in that reality, we also need to talk about the environment that we are in. for the past few years, republicans in congress and elsewhere have been attacking prosecutors who aren't doing what republicans want politically. they have made up claims of a two-tiered system of justice between republicans and democrats. they have denigrated the rule of law for political purposes. that reality creates a ton of pressure. and in that pressurized political environment, when the inevitable conclusion is that the and the evidence don't support any charges, you're left to wonder why this report spends time making gratuitous and inappropriate criticisms of the president. over the past 24 hours, we've actually seen legal experts and former prosecutors come out and give their analysis. former attorney general eric holder said the report, quote, contains way too many gratuitous remarks and is flatly

inconsistent with long standing doj traditions. the former acting fbi director said he had overseen many cases like this, and quote, you have to have explicit evidence of willful retention of these documents and that just is not present in this case. the former fbi general counsel who i'll add was also the lead prosecutor in the special counsel mueller investigation said it was, quote, exactly what you're not supposed to do, which is putting your thumb on the scale that could have political repercussions. that's the assessment of seasoned professional law enforcement officials and prosecutors with deep experience at the department of justice. unfortunately, the gratuitous remarks that the former attorney general talked about have naturally caught headlines and all of your attention. they're wrong, and they're inaccurate, and they obscure a simple truth that i want to repeat one last time, since i know it's hard to wade through 400 full pages. one, the report lays out example

after example of how the president did not willfully take classified documents. the report lays out how the president did not share classified documents with anyone. the report lays out how the president did not knowingly share classified information with anyone. on page 2, which i know you all read, the report argues that president willfully retained materials, and buried way later on 215, the report says, and i quote, there is in fact a shortage of evidence on these points. 200 pages later, put simply, this case is closed because the facts and the evidence don't support the theories here. the gratuitous comments that respected experts say are out of line is inappropriate, and they shouldn't distract from the fact that the case is closed and the

facts and evidence show they've reached the right conclusion. with that i'm happy to take questions. >> reporter: when and whom was the president briefed about the contents of the report? >> the president was briefed by his lawyers. >> reporter: second, as you mentioned, some of the characterizations were gratuitous. does the president still have confidence in merrick garland? >> if the president spoke last night, i can't remember which of you asked him what his thoughts were on the appointment of special counsel, and he answered that i think thoughtfully and powerfully, and i don't have anything to add beyond what the president said. >> reporter: does the president's release of the entire transcript of his interview to put to rest some of the things that you think are being overlooked. >> it's a reasonable question. it's important to note we're dealing with classified materials in this conversation. there are classification issues there. i don't have any announcement on, you know, releasing anything

today, but it's a reasonable question, and there are classified stuff, and we'll have to work through that. >> reporter: once you work through, would the president support the release as long as you can obvious keep what needs to be kept secret, secret. >> we'll take a look at that and make a determination. >> reporter: you said that the president takes classified information seriously, and the president said he never discussed classified material with anyone, but the special counsel's report said that on three different occasions, he did discuss it with his ghost writer. i understand it didn't meet the bar for prosecution, but how do you reconcile the president's statement with what's in the report? >> if you read the full report, it gets into each of those three instances. justin rightly points out we're talking about three instances out of 250 pages of evidence that they're talking about criticizing. i think it's important to look the at three examples. two are his own notes to his

personal diary. for a memoir about his life after his son beau died. he was reading these massages that he had written to himself to share information with them, and he took pains to express how sensitive some of the information and we should be careful with it. of those two passages from his diaries that he talked about with his ghost writer, one in the book, there's no classified information in the book. i want to make that point. and the willfully, he was talking about a handwritten letter that he had sent to president obama and faxed to him about the afghanistan troop surge. these are the presidents own personal writings. the presidents own diary notes to himself. there's an important to think about here. there's plenty of historical analogs, the most notable which

is ronald reagan, president reagan whose diaries became the subject of a lot of attention in the country. the justice department knew that president reagan's diaries had classified information in them. knew it at the time. he took those diaries home, he read those diaries to people. he shared the physical copy of the diaries, which the special counsel report talks about. joe biden never gave occurred of the notebooks to anybody, and they never even asked for those diaries back, and they never launched an investigation. why is that? it's because historically, going back to the beginning of the country, presidents keep diaries. we should want our president to be thoughtful and deliberative about the decisions they make on the most consequential issues of our time. we have entrusted presidents to be safe keepers of this information and we have expressed, you know, great gratitude, including many of you in the press, when presidents share through books and other

things. so i think it's lost in the shuffle of all of this that the president did what all of his predecessors had done. take notes of himself, keep a diary of his own daily life so he could think back of big moments in time. >> reporter: is your contention that just because the president rewrote classified material in his own words and shared it with somebody who didn't have the security clearance for it that it was okay? >> let's look at the report. i understand it's long. 400 pages. i'm not sure how many people in this room have read the entire thing. page 3, which everybody is asking about understandably, quote, mr. biden shared information, incluing classified information with his ghost writer. page 248, the report says, quote, we conclude that the evidence does not establish that

mr. biden willfully disclosed national defense information to his writing assistant. that's in the report. that was the conclusion made based on the evidence, and there's something else i want to add about this. we've gone back and forth. on page 1 of the report. it says the president willfully obtained classified documents related to afghanistan. page 2, it says there's a shortage of evidence on these points. page 5 says, quote, mr. biden's memory was significantly limited. but here's something that everybody should make sure they see, elsewhere in the report, he says, quote, we expect the evidence of mr. biden's state of mind to be compelling. pointing to him providing, quote, clear and forceful testimony. that's his comments on his state of mind later in the report. and so i think it's important to kind of take the report in its totality and understand that in that report, the facts and evidence refute the theories that are floated that they

explored. >> reporter: i think maybe we disagree on if he should have used the word willful. his attorneys said they were going to work on the process to make sure that none of this happens again. obviously there's the potential that this administration has less than a year left. i wonder if you could detail what the time line is on that, what you guys are considering for that process? >> i think that something that this issue a year ago brought to light is that this is a unfortunately very common occurrence in our country. the national archives has talked about how 80 different libraries and collections in the last decade or so have called and said, oh, we found classified documents in these papers, and they have a process that you're supposed to turn those back in. then we had the issue with president biden, immediately after that we had the issue with vice president pence. i think it's important to understand that this is a common occurrence, and the president thinks we should fix it.

he gave all of these documents back. he knew that the government should be in possession of these documents. the president is going to appoint a task force to review how transitions look at classified material to ensure there are better processes in place so that when, you know, staff is around the building, rushly packing up boxes to get out during a transition as quickly as possible, at the same time, and up until the moment that they're governing and doing matters of state. they're going to try to make recommendations that that can be fixed and appoint a senior government leader to do that. we'll have more on that. >> 2017, he had classified material. he boasted about it. >> in your advocacy here and in the president's counsel, writing back to mr. hur, you're saying that there were gratuitous comments, that there were false pieces of information. how is the american public supposed to process this when we also live in a world where

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