huge thank you to anna and yamiche for coming out and hanging out on set. that does it for our hour on msnbc. ali velshi picks it up on what is another busy news day. >> thanks, hallie for a great hour. i'll try to repeat it now. president trump facing fire on three fronts. taxes, intelligence and health care. breaking overnight on the rachel maddow show, the first two pages of donald trump's 2005 personal tax return revealed. what we learned and what we still don't know. demanding answers. more pressure over the alleged trump campaign ties to russia. in just a few minutes, we'll have a live update on the house investigation. plus, fbi director james comey could confirm today

whether or not the fbi is conducting its own investigation. and breaking right now, who hacked yahoo!? we're expecting a major announcement on the attack that hit a billion yahoo! accounts. we'll be live at the justice department to hear who did it and what it means for national security. good morning. i'm ali velshi at msnbc headquarters in new york. for more on the breaking news about yahoo! justice correspondent pete williams joins me live now on the phone. pete, an official says the yahoo! hack was done with the backing of a nation state. what do we know? >> well, the nation state is russia and what senior officials tell us and we'll learn more details in a half an hour in a news conference at the justice department is that four people have been charged in the attack that compromised 500 million user accounts at yahoo!. and that two of the four are part of the russian fsb, russia's version of the fbi and the cyber division.

this was an attack that involves both employees of the russian government and if you will, cyberconsultants. the government got out of it intelligence information, user names and passwords they can use to spy on people. the people that they were doing business with in essence hiring to help them with this hack got to use the information to exploit for financial purposes. so it's another example the government says of where these indictments, to some extent, are symbolic but also open the door to possible sanctions or other punishments on russia. there's very little chance that the russians named in these indictments will ever be brought to the u.s. to face trial unless they travel and go outside of russia and can be arrested. >> pete, we'll follow that as you said, within about a half an hour. we'll get that press conference by the department of justice. pete williams for us in washington. he'll stay on that story. we'll bring it right to you. you may be one of those people that was hit by this hack of over a billion yahoo! accounts. this morning, president trump is facing new questions

over his taxes. this after our rachel maddow revealed last night a portion of the president's 2005 federal tax return. something that he's refused t do in the past. two pages that we obtained by david k. johnston, a reporter for the website d.c. report.org. a longtime "new york times" reporter and an author of a book on donald trump. the forms show that donald trump paid $38 million in federal taxes on $152 million of reported income after writing off $103 million in business losses giving him an effective tax rate of 25%. david k. johnston said this to stephanie ruhle this morning. >> except for donald being so angry, i would have thought donald did it. he has a history of leaking information about himself. sometimes information that most people would think is damaging. in all likelihood, if he didn't send it, someone who is familiar with the very sophisticated

reporting i do on taxes and knows that i'm trump's top biographer in terms of book sales, decided that i have the knowledge to extract the maximum amount of information in those two pages and sent it to me. >> nbc's kelly o'donnell joins us from the white house. interesting. david cay johnson is a very well known journalist. he's a tax expert. did write a book about donald trump which makes the tweet that donald trump sent out about this all the more interesting. you'll provide context on this. as i said to stephanie ruhle is morning, i know the names of all my biographers. >> perhaps the president was suggesting others wouldn't but certainly based on david cay johnston's history and the work he's done you'd presume the president knows who he is very well. we've seen the president try to dictate the narrative through his tweets and that's something that could arguably be part of what this is to try to discredit the report to try to diminish its impact by sort of going

after the reporter. that's been standard playbook for the president. i can tell you that he has just departed the white house. marine one we saw take off a couple minutes ago. he's on the road now for a couple of stops today in michigan and later in tennessee as you mentioned. but part of what he has talked about is after seeing this report come out, the white house has been strong in its response in two ways. first, the president, with that tweet as we've talked about, does anybody really believe that a reporter nobody has heard of went to his mailbox and found my tax returns? @nbc fake news. embedded in that is the fake news argument the president has been using but, obviously, the white house has confirmed that the two pages of documents from this return are, in fact, accurate. the white house goes on to say in its own statement, quote, you know you are desperate for ratings when you are willing to violate the law to push a story about two pages of tax returns

from over a decade ago. of course, it's more than 20 years ago to go back to that. so the white house is trying to control this by saying that it's all about the reporting of it and kind of not deal with the underlying issue where the president earned about $150 million in that year and paid about $38 million in taxes. so will this end it or will this only increase people's desire to see more information put out by the white house? the white house confirmed these two pages so it had access to that material. back to you, ali. >> kelly, thanks. kelly o'donnell at the white house. the white house claims by the way, as kelly just said, that it was illegal to steal and publish the president's tax return. joining me is chief legal correspondent, my great friend and musical maven, ari melber. this is a little more complicated than the white house seems to suggest it is. clearly for the irs to distribute this tax return is absolutely illegal and someone would go to jail. >> the question is, is this

criminal? you can't answer that without the who, who leaked it? we'll put up the federal law. up to five years in prison for a government employee or other certain persons who conduct an unauthorized disclosure of tax returns. obviously, if authorized by the person whose tax returns they are, if it is that person, if president trump dileak this. >> the other persons include your accounnts. >> and other individuals who may have it. we're simplifying there. the bottom line being a criminal leak of any kind does not mean that talking about the leak itself is illegal. so the white house is correct to say that if these were stolen or taken by someone in an unauthorized way, the person who leaked them would be breaking that federal law. they are incorrect to suggest that "the new york times" and the daily beast and fox news and the associated press and the list goes on and on and does include msnbc, that those journalists don't have a first

amendment right to report on material. while irs returns are protected, we report on all sorts of things that aren't supposed to be out there. we reportod national security issues that are unauthorized leaks. the wikileaks stuff a week or two ago. that's not criminal. >> what do they have to prove, it's in the public interest in. >> there's a question about what the underlying crime is in those cases n a question about a public interest balancing standard. but again, that's assuming it gets to court. typically we don't see prosecutions of journalists reporting on this. what would you do? selective prosecution or try to say every news outlet which by my count includes basically every major news organization in the country, you're going to haul them all in? no. i want to be clear. there's a federal law on this. but they're incorrect to suggest that discussing it, reporting on it is a crime. and the real point is we have a president who has never released his returns. there's a lot of questions. here's a partial release. it shows some things that may be good for him, like he mad a lot

of money that year. he lawfully paid less than a lot of people who make less. >> ari melber, let's bring in julian epstein. good to see you. a senior adviser to the democratic national committee issued a statement shortly after this all happened. and it said the willingness to -- the white house's willingness to release some tax information when it suits them proves donald trump's audit excuse is a sham. interesting point. sounds a little political, but the white house has been maintaining it doesn't talk about donald trump's tax returns. it's also said nobody cares. then they went and talked about it last night. >> and on the audit point, there's no evidence there is any audit, and it would be unlikely there would be any audit going on before say 2012, 2011 and any audit would be completed by then. that argument doesn't seem to have credibility. the major question is, what is the president hiding by refusing to release these tax returns? and more specifically, who is he

beholden to internationally? we know that most of his financing has come from international banks. and whether on domestic policy he's trying to feath are his cap on things like tax reform and financial regulation. the perfect storm that's coming for the president on this issue, even if the white house may have put this out as a diversary tactic, i think this is short-term pain, long-term -- short-term gain, long-term pain because the perfect storm that's emerging right now is that we're looking at an investigation by congress, potentially fbi into what could be a criminal conspiracy of espionage. and an attempt by the white house and people around the president to cover up that criminal conspiracy of espionage. it seems from all the reporting we've gotten, last night's rachel show last night, some of the other reporting about the financial entanglements of president trump with russia. leave aside china and others for a second. azerbaijan. financial entanglements with russia. it seems to me impossible now

for the congressional committees not to subpoena the tax records to find out exactly what these financial entanglements are that president trump has with the russians and whether they played a major role in this, what i say is a potentially criminal conspiracy of espionage. >> we'll have to leave it there because we've got more breaking news coming in. julian, thanks so much for joining us. let's go right to capitol hill where kasie hunt has some news for us. what do you got? >> hi, ali. we're learning more about what fbi director jim comey is dwith regards to the wiretaps. requests from capitol hill. we've learned that he is going to meet with senator chuck grassley, the chairman of the judiciary committee. they are still working on a time and place for that meeting, although grassley said earlier today it was possibly going to take place this afternoon and potentially on capitol hill. behind the scenes, grassley and feinstein have been frustrated that comey has been willing to meet with the house and senate

intelligence committees, the gang of eight and with senators lindsey graham and sheldon whitehouse who run that subcommittee having a hearing later today on this. know he was holding up the nomination of the deputy attorney general over it. it looks like comey is going to try to clear the air a little bit here. >> kasie, we'll stay on top of this with you. thank you. got to catch my breath for a second. a lot going on right now as the president hits the road to promote republicans health care plan. a plan that continues to face stiff resistance from some in the gop as well some democrats. joining me is one of those republicans. congressman, without reservations, about the american health care act. ted yoho of florida. thank you for being with us. i was listening to a conversation you were having with craig melvin yesterday to talk about health care. something you said caught me as remarkably honest and forthright. i think that health care coverage is, to some degree, an

ideological issue. some people believe that everybody should be covered. and most other developed nations in the world, in fact, all of them, have a universal health care system where it's a right. everybody gets to be covered. there are those who believe it's not a right. you said to craig that you are one of those who thinks it's not a right. you have should access to it but it's not a right that you be covered. >> right, ali. and thank you for having me on. that's the fundamental argument that we need to have. n that's what i've been saying all along. whose responsibility is it to have health care? you aren't responsible for me or my family's health care or anybody else in america provided i'm able to take care of myself and my family. we need to make sure the markets are free markets where i have access to that and can shop around to get that kind of coverage. we have government programs for the va. we have medicare, medicaid that take care of people, n was set up to take care of the indigent, disabled, the elderly who can no

longer provide for themselves. it's been around for a long time. unfortunately, we're in this debate now, and candidate obama, before he got elected, he was in an interview and they asked him specifically, is health care a right or is it a privile and a responsibility of the individual? and he departmeidn't miss a lic. he said it's a right the government should provide for the people. i disagree with that. >> and i appreciate your forthrightness on it. i'm not going to debate that issue with you. what i do want to ask you is, if it is a -- if it's not a right, why then should this republican bill have any tax credits at all? why don't we just go to a free market system? i've made the argument day after day there is no working free market health care system anywhere in the world but seems to me what you think should work, right? >> we have free markets in so many other industries in america. how you buy your house and things like that. it can -- it can work that

way -- >> sir, you understand the key difference there, right? a house if you don't buy it, nothing is going to happen with it. for profit health insurance companies will not insure sick people willingly. >> but if i don't buy a house, i can't live indoors. >> you understand what i'm saying. why in your view is there any tax credit offered to anybody for health care? in a free market system, insurance companies would be compete with one another to get your business. >> absolutely. this came in in 1940s during the war era where incentivized people to have health insurance because of the lack of the jobs and the economy was so disruptive. this is something that we built on and it's like a thing you just keep adding and adding. this is a time for us to go ahead and clean up the system. go back to more free markets and access. we can't do that right now because of the affordable care act. it has the individual mandates, the employer mandates, that an insurance company right now cannot offer an insurance plan

and that's why we're introducing a bill to hold harmless insurance companies that will give them the flexibility right now to start offering insurance plans before the affordable care act gets repealed. >> congressman, i want to invite you back. the house intelligence committee on the russian probe is about to talk. i can't even keep up with the amount of breaking news there is today. please come back. i want to continue this conversation. >> i would like that opportunity. appreciate it. we've got to fix this for the american people. >> i'll ton have this conversation. congressman devin nunes and adam schiff are about to speak about the investigation into russia. >> march 28th to be here. they couldn't -- some of them couldn't make the march 20th date. most of them will be able to make the march 28th date. we don't know the location of that hearing yet, but i think the time will be 10:00 a.m. secondly, i want to say, as i told you last week, about the --

about the issue with the president talking about tapping trump tower, that evidence still remains the same that we don't have any evidence that that took place. in fact, i don't believe just in the last week of time the people we've talked to, i don't think there was an actual tap of trump tower. however, as i expressed last week and i remain even more concerned about this, which are twofold, one, the collection of american of americans that were possibly tied to the trump campaign that could have been leaked, similar to general flynn. and secondly the unmasking of americans' names, potentially for political purposes which were continuing to ask more about that. mr. schiff and i are sending a letter today to director comey, pompeo and rogers asking for the total number of names unmasked offer the course of the last six months. and that letter, we'll pass that

letter out to all of you so that you'll have it. the third issue i have to bring to you today is we are a little uncomfortable with the odni and whether or not tay ahey are goio let us have the proper computer technology that we need to go through the evidence that exists out at the cia, out at langley. and we are trying to work through that, but i can tell you that it has become a bit of a stumbling block for our investigators to actually be able to compile and go through the information. so those are the three issues that i have for you today. and i'd like to ask mr. schiff if he'd like to say a couple of comments. >> thank you, chairman. i want to join in saying that to date, i've seen no evidence that supports the claim that president trump made that his predecessor had wiretapped he and his associates at trump

tower. thus far, we have seen no basis for that whatsoever. we still want the justice department to respond to our letter. we've given them until march 20th. we're both willing to use compulsory process, if that's necessary, though neither of us believe that will be necessary. certainly at the open hearing that we have on march 20th, we'll be asking the director if he has seen any evidence that substa substantiates the president's claim. it deeply concerns me that the president would make such an accusation without basis. we think it's in the public interest that this be addressed very openly by the director, and we certainly expect that he will. it's my understanding that the three witnesses who had conflicts or other issues with the march 20th hearing are all available and i believe committed to the march 28th hearing. so the following week we'll get the testimony from those

witnesses and we'll have as much time as necessary at the hearing for our members to ask their questions. obviously, there's a substantial amount they may not be able to answer in open session but we want to conduct as much of this investigation as we can in the open so the public is informed of the progress that we're making. our members are going to the agency to review the documents. our full committee now has access to the gang of eight materials that underlie the assessment that the intelligence community put out. i spent a few hours there yesterday. and would encourage all the members to spend time out at the agency reviewing those documents. and, finally, we, i think, are continuing to make progress. and the chairman and i are doing everything that we can to ke this investigation bipartisan

and nonpartisan to make sure we follow the evidence wherever it leads. and that is certainly our hope and we'll continue to be our effort to do so. and with that, we're happy to respond to any questions. >> what's the information about the trump associates gathered through incidental collection? are you satisfied this information was used lawfully? >> as it relates to -- we know for a fact because it's out there in public that incidental collection on general flynn was picked up. what i remain concerned about is whether or not there's additional incidental collection that we're not aware of, and then if any of that information was put into any types of intelligence reports, and then whether or not additional names were unmasked. so if additional names were unmasked, we'll have to understand where the proper procedures followed and then did additional names get leaked to the media or were people using

that information for other purposes that wouldn't have had intelligence value. and that's what i remain concerned about, and that's why the letter that you see today we're asking for all of those names by friday. >> [ inaudible ]. >> well, you know, i think it's certainly an appropriate part of our oversight to make sure that the agencies are following the correct procedures when it comes to unmasking any names of americans that may be gathered through incidental collection. but i do want to underscore that this is a separate matter from whether the president's allegations have any truth. and though we're talking about both these issues, the two are not related in the sense that there's no evidence that there was a wiretap of trump and his associates at trump tower. >> you said pretty clearly that you do not think that trump tower was tapped. what gives you that confidence -- >> i actually said that last week. i think the challenge here is

that the, you know, president obama wouldn't physically go over and wiretap trump tower. so now you have to decide, as i mentioned last week, are you going to take the tweets literally? if you are, then clearly the president was wrong. but if you're not going to take the tweets literally and there's a concern tat the president has about other people, other surveillance activities looking at him or his associates, either appropriately or inappropriately, we want to find that out. i think it's all in the interpretation of what you believe. >> is there anything you've seen in the evidence so far that suggests there were any conversations with people affiliated with the trump campaign, people, russian officials who are not -- anyone tied to the kremlin had conversations with the trump campaign? do you have any evidence? nonge >> not that i'm aware of.

>> i wouldn't answer that question as categorically as my colleague. we're not privileged to talk about the contents of the invest gigs, but, you know, i think we need to be very precise when we talk about this. and i just don't think we can answer that categorically and not in this forum. >> mr. chairman, the white house has said they are extremely confident the president will ultimately be vindicated in this claim. you're obviously pressing doj to release any evidence that they may have. but what about the white house? are you also pressing them and encouraging them to reveal what the president knew? his grounds for making this claim? >> we'll continue to follow the facts where they are. we'll not make any assumptions. as i've said before and for a long time here, i have been very clear about my concern about, number one, the incidental collection on general flynn. how that was put into a product. how it was unmasked. how it was leaked to the public. several crimes have been

committed here ani want to make sure that -- i don't know if you want to respond to that as well? >> i would just say that i do think it's incumbent if we get to march 20th and have the testimony, we all expect from the director that there was no substance to the accusation that barack obama illegally wiretapped trump tower. that the president explain himself. i think this -- you can't level an accusation of that type without either retracting it or explaining just why it was done. and i think there are, from a national security perspective, great concerns if the president is willing to state things like that without any basis because the country needs to be able to rely on him, particularly if we have a crisis that is an external crisis as every president does within their term

of office. so i think it is a serious matter. and i appreciate the chairman's willingness to have an open hearing on this. and i think the testimony will be very important. >> mr. chairman, you [ inaudible ]. >> i'm sorry? >> do you have any reason to believe the president himself or anyone working for him in the white house would be one of these names that may have been swept up in something that could then have ultimately been leaked, like what happened with michael flynn? >> well, i think it's very possible, but, like i said, we should know that by friday. >> you think the president himself might be one of those people that was swept up in it? >> it's possible. you know, look. we know -- i think -- we think we understand how general flynn was picked up in incidental collection and perhaps there's additional collection or the other intelligence products where there was unmasking that occurred. this is all the -- this is why we're sending a letter. let's get it all out in the

open. i'm concerned about unmasking of american' names but i think as they relate to as you'll see in the letter, as they relate to either the trump campaign and his folks or hillary clinton's campaign and her folks, we'd like to know if any names were unmasked. that would help answer these questions. >> let me just, if i can also respond on that in a couple ways. first, mr. spicer has represented that he is not aware of any investigation that was targeting the president. and no -- and presumably no court-ordered surveillance of the president. he has also said he is confident the president was speaking accurately when he said he was wiretapped by his predecessor. these two things cannot both be true unless he is suggesting that the fbi s engaged in a rogue operation unsupervised by a court to wiretap trump tower.

there is absolutely no evidence of that. and no suggestion of any evidence of that. i think to even put that forth was irresponsible of the president and his spokesman. and i also, in terms of our oversight responsibility want to make one other point and that is, why i think it perfectly appropriate that we oversee the fisa process and the unmasking of any names, if any of that is implicated in any way, i have seen no evidence of any illegality in terms of interest electronic surveillance pertaining to your question. so i don't want anything to be surmised that we are suggesting otherwise. >> if you don't get those names by friday [ inaudible ]. >> most likely, yes.

if they don't have a good reason for give us that. fisa is a critical tool our agencies use. we want to make sure it's done lawfully and legally and part of that is going to be, even if it has to be at the gang of eight level, that would be fine. we have to have a good understanding of how that process worked. >> mr. chairman, can you say whether it was -- whether you think trump associates were targeted without a proper warrant but they were tasked to look at anything that was incidentally collected and is that essentially what you're looking for? >> i don't want to -- look. let's wait until friday for them to come out with the information, and then we'll have the open hearing on monday before we start to speculate. but, clearly, i just want to make sure that the fisa processes were properly followed and that the unmasking of names did not occur improperly. >> and i'll -- i just want to add that i certainly have seen

no evidence of that. >> over here we had a question. >> you mentioned earlier about -- set out to review some of the intelligence -- >> the office of director of national intelligence, which is overseeing how we have access to these documents, one of the simple things that i think should be -- everyone should understand this is that we should be able to get a basic type of computer system out there to be able to catalog all of the data that went into the intelligence report that was produced, and the beginning of january, whatever that was. january 6th or 7th. i just think that's a no-brainer and why they would even stop us on this is beyond me. >> any reason? are they stalling or you saying you can't have access to those? >> the bottom line is that we don't have a computer out there to actually be able to catalog the information. >> and if i could just add, too,

one of the reasons this is significant and, obviously there was a big iss with the agency over the senate's use of a computer and whether that computer was viewed by the agency while it was in the process of review of the enhanced interrogation techniques, it -- we feel a real sense of urgency about conducting this investigation not only thoroughly but as swiftly as possible given the magnitude investigation. so anything that slows us down is a problem. and i'm confident this will be ultimately resolved but the long ter takes to resolve it, you know, the longer it takes us to do our work. and we had to work through the issue of gaining access to the full committee of the gang of eight materials. now we have to work through the issue of getting access to computers to do our work. we're also working our way through the budget process here to get increased staff to help us with the investigation. it's going to take time to get

the staff cleared. so these are all some of the challenges we're dealing with in trying to do this expeditiously. >> [ inaudible ]. >> right now i was there yesterday taking a lot of handwritten notes, which is not ideal and obviously we have to leave our notes behind. at the end of the day what we hope to do is when the invest gigs is finished is compile a report and having the information that we go through indexed with our comments will be very important in terms of putting that report together. so this will be resolved hopefully what the chairman and i are saying today will help nudge the agency along. >> has the fbi confirmed there's an investigation ongoing into russia and the trump campaign? >> we're not going to get into what the fbi tells us or doesn't tell us as the ranking member said earlier. as you can imagine, this committee's -- has a long track record of trying to shine the

light on the russian government and their activities. we as the house intelligence committee have long had an investigation into russian activities, especially cyberactivities. that continues and, clearly, i think the concerns we've raised over cyberattacks alone, you know, we would hope that many throughout the ic are conducting investigations into the russians and their ongoing bad activity around the globe. >> do you have any evidence that there was contact with the trump campaign? >> i don't have any evidence of that, and we're not going to get into -- this gets to the whole issue of, incidental collection. who else was talking to the russian ambassador. this is a slippery slope. you need to let the appropriate agencies get us the information in a timely manner, whic i agree with the ranking member on. the more they stall, the more theyake it more complicated for uthe slower the investigation goes and the more time it takes to answer your

questions. >> and i do want to say on that question, because director clapper was asked a similar question. i cannot answer that question in the same way. same categorical response. i don't share that summary conclusion and that's about all i can say on that subject. >> [ inaudible ]. are you going to give access to those computers of past investigations? is this something -- >> this is a little unprecedented in terms of the whole committee now has access to all of the members on the intelligence committee have access to what are called the gang of eight source documents. we now have investigators out there. many members from my side and the ranking member side have been out there and the challenge

we're having now is that we need to be able to catalog all of this in a simple way. if not, it's going to take us longer to get through it if we have to do it all by hand. >> you said several crimes have been committed , but it's not illegal to unmask a name if it deals with domestic issues having to deal with national security, right? i want you to expand on that. and secondly, congressman schiff you said the fbi hadn't been cooperating and then you said they started cooperating. what has occurred in between those two statements. >> as it relates to crimes that have been committed, i am quite confident that it is illegal to leak fisa collected names of americans. that's illegal. it's also illegal to leak any classified -- additional classified information. so that has happened. it remains the crimes that we know that have been committed, which i'm sure we'll get into

more of that on -- >> the news is not cooperate with my schedule today. we're going to leave that conversation and go to the justice department. mary mccord, acting assistant attorney general on the yahoo! breach. let's listen to that. >> the executive assistant director, u.s. attorney for the northern district of california, brian stretch and office of international affairs director vaughn erie. we're here to announce a major law enforcement action related to one of the largest data breaches in u.s. history. today we are announcing the indictment of four individuals responsible for the 2014 hack into the network of e-mail provider yahoo!. the theft of information about at least 500 million yahoo! accounts and the u.s. of that information to obtain the contents of accounts at yahoo! and other e-mail providers. the defendants include two officers of the russian federal

security service and intelligence and law enforcement agency of the russian federation and two criminal hackers with whom they conspired to accomplish these intrusions. dimitri dokochayey and, i gor suchen protected, directed, facilitated and paid criminal hackers to collect information through computer intrusions in the united states and elsewhere. they worked with co-conspirors alexi bailon and kareem belatov to hack into the computers of american companies provide e-mail and internet-related services to maintain unauthorized access to those computers and to steal information, including information about individual users and the private contents of their accounts. the defendants targeted yahoo! accounts of russian and u.s. government officials, including

cybersecurity diplomatic and military personnel. they also targeted russian journalists, numerous employees of other providers whose networks the conspirators sought to exploit and employees of financial services and other commercial entities. belan has been indicted twice before for three intrusions into e-commerce companies that victimized millions of customers. and he has been one of the fbi's most wanted criminals for more than three years. belan's notorious criminal conduct and a pending interpol red notice did not stop the fsb officers who instead of detaining him used him to break into yahoo!'s networks. meanwhile, belan used his relationship with the two fsb officers and his access to yahoo! to commit additional crimes to line his own pockets with money. specifically, belan used his

access to yahoo! to search for and steal financial information such as gift card and credit card numbers from users' e-mail accounts. he also gained access to more than 30 million yahoo! accounts whose contacts he then stole to facilitate an e-mail scam. with these charges, the department of justice is continuing to send the powerful message that we will not allow individuals, groups, nation states or a combination of them to compromise the privacy of our citizens, the economic interests of our companies or the security of our country. for those who may not be familiar with the fsb, it is an intelligence and law enforcement agency and a successor to the soviet union's kgb. the fsb unit that the defendants worked for, the center for information security also known as center 18, is also the fbi's point of contact in moscow for

cybercrime matters. the involvement and direction of fsb officers with law enforcement responsibilities makes this conduct that much more egregious. there are no free passes for foreign state-sponsored criminal behavior. through the work of the national security division, the fbi, the united states attorney's offices around the country we continue to pursue national security cyberthreats using all available tools to investigate malicious activity and attribute it to the country, agency and even the individuals involved. when possible and supported by the evidence, we intent to charge those individuals and bring them to justice. as i wrap up, i am also pleased to announce that a fourth co-conspirator charged in the indictment, kareem baratov, was arrested just yesterday in canada on a u.s. government provisional arrest warrant. i'd like to thank all of those who worked dill giantly to bring

the investigation to this point, including the men and women of the national security division, the fbi and the u.s. attorney's offices for the northern district of california and the criminal division's office of international affairs for their tireless work. i'd also like to extend a special thanks to yahoo! and google whose customers were targeted and who cooperated with law enforcement. it is very important for corporations around the world to know that when you are going against the resources and backing of a nation state, it is not a fair fight, and it is not a fight you are likely to win alone. but you do not have to go it alone. we can put the full capabilities of the united states behind you to make cases like this. but we cannot do it without your help. at this time, i'd like to introduce fbi executive assistant director paul labate who will provide additional details on today's announcement.

>> thank you, mary. good morning, everyone, and welcome. today's announcement is a testament to the tremendous work and extraordinary efforts that have been done to identify and hold accountable those individuals believed to be responsible for this significant breach of yahoo!'s networks and information technology systems. this indictment details how russian federal security service officers working together with criminal hackers conspired to plan and carry out one of the largest cyberintrusions in u.s. histor these perpetrators compromised the company's networks along with the accounts and personal information of approximately 500 million yahoo! users and further stole millions of user contacts in order to carry out fraud schemes for their own personal financial gain and enrichment, among other things. >> we've been listening to the justice department talking about the breach, the massive breach

of yahoo! accounts that actually caused a lot of problems. it didn't come out until about a year later. and the fact that there are now four indictments for that breach. two of whom are russian fsb officers. this is a very big deal. we've got a team -- we've got team coverage on these new indictments. terrorism analyst malcolm nance is standing by and joline kent is in washington covering the yahoo! hack for some time. bring us up to speed on this. this was the biggest of hacks. >> this is what you need to know right now. four people were indicted, and the defendants, two of them were officers from the russian federal security service. now people at home, what we need to share with you is that 30 million accounts were accessed. credit card information, debit card information was stolen and then it was used for a major e-mail scam. so we're looking through this right now. we're awaiting a reaction from yahoo! and the ceo marissa

mayer, but what we see is that this was done in concert with unit called center 18 in russia. this is fbi's -- the fbi's point of contact in moscow for cybercrime and doj saying it's extremely egre lly egregious, e on that point. >> jo ling kent. malcolm has spent decades for a counterterrorism executive. he's the director of the terror asymmetric project. how significant is this? does it surprise you at all? and what should our viewers think about the fact that not only was yahoo! hacked but yahoo! was hacked by russian fsb officers? >> i think it's very significant. and what this does is this shows that the russian intelligence agencies, particularly this one that they referenced in the press conference, which is russia's version of nsa. the communications information

security agency. and that organization is the one that directs and carries out all of the hackings in collusion with what we call criminal hackers. you know, criminal bearers. these are people who are subcontractors to russia's intelligence agencies and when there are certain things that they have access to, they will hack for russian intelligence. and then russian intelligence will focus on other aspects of it. for justice to actually name russian officers and officers of these subcontractors is extremely significant. >> what happens by the way? these guys are clearly not going to be arrested by american officials if they are actually russian intelligence officers. what does this all mean? >> of course they'll be placed on international sanctions list and also have warrants put out internationally for them. it means they generally won't be able to travel outside of russia. but for the most part, it sends a message that, number one, these russian hackings, which go on all the time, are going to be

taken very seriously by the justice department. and it also sends a message out to chinese hackers, iranian hackers and anybody else out there that for all of the confusion of what's happening now in other discussions of russian hacking, the justice department is on target and will go after the individuals. >> jo, does this vindicate yahoo! at all? first of all, yahoo! disclosed this long after it happened, which upset a lot of people. in the takeover of yahoo! it cost them $350 million or something? everybody looked at yahoo! at marissa and said this was badly handled. does the fact it was russian intelligence officers, does that have any impact on this? >> it may. we're await yahoo! to react to this. it did take a big hit. $350 million. verizon in its acquisition by verizon of yahoo!. now what people need to know is that their e-mail accounts are supposed to be secure now. but the real question is, are

there continued issues regarding the russians hacking into e-mail? no indication from the justice department on that point. what we do see, we also have a separate 1 billion people who were hacked back in 2013. no clear link on this. this particular hack the doj is talking about is really about the 500 million yahoo! accounts accessed in 2014. so there's still a lot of major questions about the other attack that affected so many americans. >> how can you say people are supposed to think their e-mail accounts are safe? our microwaves are listening to us now. i want to take you back to the other news conference before this of devin nunes and adam schiff. no reason to believe that donald trump was wiretapped by president obama. they have had no information on that. does this move us any closer to a resolution on this matter? >> well, i certainly hope that it moves the fbi director to

come out and clearly say that there were no hackings being carried out by the obama white house against the trump campaign. that on its face is without evidence is almost demonstrably false. and it really needs to be brought out. but i found a very interesting component of what senator nunes said. several times he mentioned incidental collection, which is a technical intelligence term for when we are going after a very specific target who might be a foreign agent, a spy, a diplomat, and an american citizen comes into conversation with that person. and they are caught up in the collection stream. so incidental collection means you can be found to be in contact with foreign powers. it just means that there is no warrant in place for that collection to come out and to be developed into an investigation. so that was actually very significant that he said that, considering he seems to have some reticence about going

deeper into the investigation process. >> jim comey's boss jeff sessions met with reporters a short time ago. one reporter asked if he ever had a chance to brief the president on investigations related to the campaign or if he gave him any reason to believe that he was wiretapped by the obama administration. here's what jeff sessions said. >> look, the answer is no, but what happened in my case was that i was active in the campaign. i held a role in the campaign. there's a code of federal regulations rules, statute, really, that says if you are involved as a department of justice employee in a campaign, have a role in that campaign, you cannot investigate your own campaign. even though you may have had nothing whatsoever to do with anything improper. you should not investigate your own campaign. so i have recused myself. i'm not talking to the president or the people who are

investigating the case. and am unable to comment on any of these details. >> that's interesting because malcolm, the recusal came after the accusation of wiretapping. so what do you of it? >> well, he's absolutely right. he was part of the campaign and what he did was absolutely proper. the way that it has always been done, it was a norm that had been kept for virtually since the attorney general started operating. so for the most part, i think that the attorney general will continue to recuse himself. >> i want to ask you, the fbi director, james comey, is kind of like the rodney dangerfield. he's on the wrong side of the trump administration and now he's getting pushed around saying he had to have this stuff done by monday. he didn't. now they've given him the 20th.

senator lindsey graham has said it, devin nunes has said they will use the force of law to get the fbi to tell them what's going on. >> now that is significant. i think director comey is caught between a rock and the hard place because the activities that they are requesting are amongst the most secret activities that the bureau has and that is counterintelligence investigations. count counterintelligence to the layperson means spy hunting and that particular division of the fbi is extremely secretive, it's extremely small. the activities that they do must be kept absolutely secret. so some of the more partisan statements made earlier in the year, which have come out from other fbi agents, weren't the type of people involved in counterterrorism and i think that if he is forced to take

this information up to the hill and goes out and gives them what he wants, it's going to have to be doneertainly atthe most secret level that they can muster because he just cannot really afford to have, if there is an active investigation, for that to come out in a partisan way. >> kasie hunt was just talking about that. a few developments there, including the fact that they are adding another day for the hearings, not just march 20th but another day. what else did we hear? >> reporter: that's right, ali. i think first and foremost, i want to draw everyone's attention to what the chairman, the republican chairman of this committee said, about those wiretap tweets that donald trump sent now a couple of weeks ago. he said if you take the tweets literally, clearly president trump was wrong. but we also have a couple of new pieces of information that

suggest that they are trying to figure out if you don't take the tweets literally, which is what chairman nunes said, what might have happened that would have prompted the president to go down this line of questioning. and that helps explain this letter that they are sending to directors roger at the nsa and pompeo at the cia and comey at the fbi. this includes additional americans who may have been swept up in wiretaps that, for example, we know michael flynn's name appeared in these transcripts of conversations. he was unmasked and that was published in the press. the republicans have very angry that those leaks occurred in general but this is also potentially important for shedding light on what other surveillance may or may not have insneared trump campaign officials and i asked devin nunes if he thought the president himself may have been

involved in this. he said it was very possible it was the president or other people who were part of the president's campaign. we are learning pieces of information eache we ge one of these press conferences. the question is going to be what does it add up to in the end. they are also, i will say, ali -- and i think this is important given what's going on the other side of the capitol hill -- the fbi is being more cooperative than they were before but they won't say whether or not the fbi has told them that there is an investigation. that's interesting to me because lindt d lindsey graham is doing an investigation on that side. >> ten more pieces of the puzzle before we see a nostril or something. malcolm, jo ling, kasie, thank you. we have a lot of things going on today, including keeping an eye on wall street

with the fedex expected to raise interest rates. so far, all green arrows. the dow, s&p 500, nasdaq are all higher as they await the fed's announcement set for 2:00 p.m. i want to bring in the chief investment strategist and senior vice president at charles schwab. liz ann, great to see you. thank you for being here. i want to put up a chart of the dow jones industrial for the last ten years or so, before the recession, to see -- that's the fed fund chart. let's put up the dow. it's done pretty well in tat time. there's the dow. up 218% since the bottom. >> this is a different cycle, obviously, than those that we have seen in the past, not least because of the pace at which the fed has been moving up off the zero balance, which i think is a factor. if you look at the history during cycles when the fed was moving quite slowly, the market

starts to do quite well. i think we are far from the point at which monetary policy has gotten overly tight and i think it's also why you're seeing a positive correlation between longer term bond yields and stock prices because what this move up in rates is significa signaling is that we're moving from a deflationary environment to reflation. this move for now, anyway, is a positive for the market. >> you just mentioned rates. i want to take that chart we just showed you and show you the interest rates. i have a chart that goes back to the '70s. basically, the last ten years have looked flat and zero. >> not only that but if you look at household assets in this post-leveraging era, remember, although, on the federal government side, have no deleveraging side.

on the household side, household debt is a share of disposable income that has come down. we've got more on the deposit side than the interest paying side. that's been lost in this conversation as well. >> it's kind of exciting because i get mailers at my house that say you can open an account with us and you can get 1.3% or things like that. but for a lot of americans, if you don't invest in the stock market, you've been on the wrong end of this thing. >> the experiment has been to the disadvantaged significantly of retireees. it's forced them out. the risk spectrum at a time when they couldn't afford to be further out the risk spem trum. i think this move towards

normalization, the fed no longer treating the economic patient like it's in the trauma room, it's a positive not just for the market but for the economy. >> when you say normalization, what does normal look like for interest rates? if you have good interest, 30-year loan, it's still low by historical standards. >> and that's a good point. even know mortgage rates are up, they are still at a significant level below what we've seen in the last 20, 30, 40, 50 years. one of the reasons you're seeing the confidence expressed as recently as today with the nihb survey, oftentimes the rate move takes people off the fence. it eliminates a deflationary mindset. >> liz ann, so great to see you.

thanks for your patience while breaking news was happening all over the place. liz ann from schwab. thank you. that does it for me. right now chris jansing is taking over in the next hour on "andrea mitchell reports." >> thanks, ali. unanswered questions. the role of russia in the 2016 presidential race. was anyone from the trump campaign involved? and there is still no proof of president obama wiretapping trump tower during the election. and t >> we don't have any evidence that that took place. in fact, i don't believe in the last week of time that there was an actual tap of trump tower. >> we will be asking the director if he has seen any

evidence that substantiates the claim. >> today, we are announcing the indictment of four individuals responsible for the 2014 hack into the network of e-mail provider yahoo. >> trump goes on offense and will the public ever see more than these two pages? >> you know, the only one that cares about my tax returns is the american public. >> you don't think the american public is concerned? >>. and why no one has been held accountable since reports of the online harassment surfaced for female marines more than two years ago. >> when you say to