the table. fear itself may come in handy. that's "hardball" for now. thanks for being with us. "all in" with chris hayes starts right now. >> have ra great weekend. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. happy friday. god decided to give me an ice storm for my buried this year, so we're broadcasting from western massachusetts tonight. super happy to be here with a very nice group of people. sort of my home studio but it's been a long time since i've been here. i'm grateful to all the people who made this possible. there's a lot going on tonight. elizabeth warren and bernie sanders are in the other half of the state. they are headlining a big rally in boston. this is an event that has attracted thousands of people here in deep blue massachusetts.

bernie sanders and elizabeth warren probably still are the highest profile democratic or in bernie sanders' case democratic-ish people in the party. when times change, especially when times change radically, you never quite know who's going to be become the new center of the political universe. in the fewhort sndal-ridden weeks of the trump administration we've grown some new household name democrats as a country. they're starting to get pretty famous on their own. like this previously obscure california congressman, adam schiff. he's the top democrat on the house intelligence committee, most folks could not have picked him out of a lineup this past year.

but he's fast become one of the highest profile people in his party. not because people think of him as president schiff, it's because of the sense that when the white house turns onto tv and sees adam schiff there talking, important people in the white house with secrets to hide start grinding their teeth. and maybe throwing stuff and conceivably they start calling his republican counterpart to plot a new smoke screen to throw adam schiff off the case. newly prominent adam schiff met with donald trump today. apparently it was not a big showdown. it's possible it went even a planned event. but he went to the white house today to review intelligence documents, and apparently while he was there he had put his office is describing a cordial meeting with the president.

i bet. this trip to the white house today was to review documents, documents that were apparently thrown up as a smoke screen of the investigation. these are the documents that republican chairman devin nunes apparently obtained from white house officials and then gave a big press conference to make a big show of him carrying the documents back into the white house which is where they came om in e first place. they haven't admitted the white house is the source of those documents. there's a whole bunch of problems. devin nunes explicitly told a reporter he did not obtain those documents from white house firms, but apparently he did. apparently now the white house is at least implicitly admitting they were the source of the documents because today they

made those documents available to adam schiff. how else could they be showing them to him if they never had them in the first place? the white house has still not explained why they previously covered up where they came from even if they are implicitly admitting now it was them. in print, this is sort of the coverup part of this scandal, i guess, experiencing it though in day-to-day life it feels less like a scandal is more like a fiasco, it feels like a mess. after reviewing those documents, schiff did release this statement about what he saw. quote, today my staff director and i reviewed materials at the white house. it was represented to me these are precisely the documents presented to nunez a week ago. i could not discuss the contents if the white house had concern they should have been shared with the full committees as part of your oversight responsibilities. nothing i could see today warranted a departure from the

normal review procedures and these materials should be provided to the full membership of both committees. and then he closes with this. the white house has yet to explain why senior white house staff apparently shared these materials with but one member of either committee only for their contents to be briefed back to the white house. white house has yet to explain that. and he's right. it remains weird and unexplained that the white house is now implicitly admitting it's the source of these documents. they're still not saying why they wouldn't admit to that before. the white house will still not say who let congressman devin nunes in the white hse grounds to obtain these documents in the first place last week or why white house staffers gave the information specifically to him. all that remains unexplained. now we're left with more than just the fiasco, more than just the mess. now we're left with some serious

questions, the question of why staffers were looking at this information and leaking it in the way they did and whether that indicates that the white house was tracking the progress of the fbi's investigations. or even trying to pervert the course of those investigations in congress. today nbc news reported that before the obama administration left and the trump administration came on board, obama administration officials made a list of documents related to the russia investigation basically in order to keep them safe quoting from the nbc news report today, quote, obama administration officials were so concerned about what would happen to key classified documents once president trump took office they created a list of document serial numbers to give to senior members of the intelligence committee. after the list of documents related to the probe and russian

interference was created in early january after the list of numbers was ceded, he, the former obama administration first page u hand carried that list of serial numbers to members of the senate intelligence committee. the purpose was to make it, quote, harder to bury the information. so the investigation into the russian attack on our election last year started during the obama administration obviously. the obama administration was worried that the trump folks would erase it, would get rid of what had been found already. nbc news reports tonight that obama administration officials made a list off all the documents that existed at the time trump took over. and now the senate intelligence committee can look at that list

and they can find out if any of those documents related to the investigation have in fact been mysteriously disappeared. they have contents just in case someone's been burning the chapters. maybe making that list was not such a bad idea. remember what a weird thing it was when we found out steve bannon was getting a seat on the national security council. steve bannon is the publisher of a right wing website. what is he doing on the national security council? after an initial freakout that he was on the principles community and the cia director and the chairman of the joint chiefs were not on that principles committee, after furor after that development, those other high ranking officials were reinstated at the national security council. but bannon didn't go. they kept bannon there as well. even after they got rid of general michael flynn as national security adviser and

replaced him with mcmaster, they still kept bannon on. mcmaster was reportedly told he could hire and fire at will on the national security council. that didn't turn out to be true. he did try to fire a man named ezra cohen watt nick, and the white house including steve bannon intervened. and now watt nick as well as the top lawyer at the national security council have been named as two of the people who took intelligence intercepts that may or may not be related in the potential collusion with russia. they took those intercepts and fed them out of the white house for political effect. it's weird steve bannon's on the national security council, right? still, especially if the national security city council turning outs to be the vehicle by which the white house is

trying to kibosh the investigation. joining us is ned price. until mid february, mr. price worked at the cia as a spokean and senior analyst. he has in the past served added senior director at the natiol security council. appreciate you being here. >> good to be here. >> so i highlighted the role of adam schiff here because he has been very aggressive in not just pursuing this investigation, but also raising questions about what the white house has done, how the national security council has behaved. he's basically described national security councils as being imp indicated? laundering intelligence as hiding the origination of intelligence and fed for political purposes. how does that strike you as an allegation? >> well, it's absolutely credible and it certainly

appears to be what happened here. look, rachel, president trump made a name for himself as a showman, and i think what we've seen over the past week has been little more than amateur political theater, except the stakes in this case are certainly much higher than the internship. the true nature began when chairman nunez finally confirmed that, yes, he met his sources on the white house grounds. that was the clearest indication to date that this was a scheme that was cooked up by the white house including by apparently these two senior national security council officials. and i say scheme, cooked up, because they didn't need chairman nunez to go down to the white house to have this furtive meeting. they didn't need this middle man. these two senior nsc officials could have made the five-minute walk from the fourth floor of the eisenhower building where mr. cone watt nick's office is located to the oval office if

they felt they had something important the president needed to see. instead, they laundered this information through devin nunes who has proven himself aawn of the white house for a couple reasons. one he wted add credibility to the documents, and they wanted to distract from the unmitigated disaster that was the hearing last monday in which director comey admitted there was an investigation that could reach into the white house. frankly, they've succeed. they may have gotten away with it, but eventually this caper caught up with them. >> ned, one of the things people are starting to get increasing concerned about, and this nbc report today about making a list of serial numbers of documents related to the russia

investigation and taking it with them or taking it down the road to it exists somewhere outside the administration, after the trump folks god on board, people are worried about the prospect that within the white house and within the national security council there's the possibility not just for tracking the investigations into the trump/russia situation, but potentially for sabotaging them or disappearing key aspects. can you tell us if those fears are based in reality? is that something people should worry about? >> up until january 20th, i would have said no, that's outlandish. we wouldn't have a power that would subvert the system in that way, unfortunately now i'm not so sure. if that report is accurate, it may well have been prudent to preserve that intelligence and to ensure there's a documentary record. it's also important to note that

the nbc news report doesn't -- that the obama administration gave it to the entire senate intelligence committee. look, there's another challenge here that i think we'll need to be cognizant ability reaching into the department much justice. attorney general sessions has recused himself from this investigation, but this administration, the trump administration, has shown no compunction against breaking that previously inviable wall between the white house and the department of justice. even the federal bureau of investigation and i think we need to be concerned and watch to ensure this is not the case and that this investigation can go everywhere it needs to go. >> ned price, former spokesman and analyst at the cia and senior director at the national security council. need thank you for joining us.

>> happy early birthday. >> thank you very much. tonight we have a guest who is very smart who has been saying something very, very scary. we are not going to have a cocktail moment tonight, but nobody will blame you if you have a little tipple on the commercial break. we'll be right back. it's an important question you ask, but one i think with a simple answer. we have this need to peek over our neighbor's fence. and once we do, we see wonder waiting. every step you take, narrows the influence of narrow minds. bridges continents and brings this world one step closer. so, the question you asked me. what is the key? it's you. everything in one place, so you can travel the world better. experience exciting offers on sales event is here. our most elevated suvs ever. get up to $2,500 customer cash on select 2017 models for these terms.

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one week from tonight republicans say they intend to have confirmed the president's pick for the united states supreme court. they intend to approximate ut the nomination of neil gorsuch before the full senate for a vote on friday. it is not at all clear whether

they are going to get there on this vote. the top democrat in the senate, chuck schumer has been saying democrats will filibuster this nomination. the cloud of this russia investigation is hanging turnover president. chuck schumer is one crucial vote closer to bringing that filibuster fight to the end the democrats want. progressives by and large have been on board with chuck schumer and pushing him in this direction. the question is whether their more conservative members would go along with it too. well, tonight, centrist democrat claire mccaskill announced which way she is going, and she is going for the filibuster. the senator saying i cannot support judge gorsuch because his opinions reveal a rigid ideology that puts the little guy under the boot of corporations.

he's shown a stunning lack of humanity. this decision by the senator takes away a vote that republicans have been counting on for gorsuch. they need eight democrats on their side in order to get around the filibuster. they have two. will democrats stick together and successfully filibuster the gorsuch nomination? will republicans respond by using the nuclear option and taking away the power to filibuster altogether? the stakes are super high, the outcome quite unclear. happy friday. we'll be right back.

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this is a check for $7.2 million. obviously a ton of money. but back when this was signed in 1867, it was tons and tons of money. $7.2 million was about

$125 million in today's money. that's what we paid as a country to get alaska. that's what we paid for alaska. the country that cashed that check from the united states of america was russia. that's who we got alaska from. russia was sort of strapped for cash at the time. the crimeaen war didn't turn out. they weren't getting enough out of alaska. so they cut a deal. the u.s. secretary of state william seward gave them that check and they gave us territory that was 1 slash 5 the size of the country of the united states. it was made 150 years ago yesterday. william seward took a ton of heats for it.

people thought it was an expensive bad deal for america, they called it seward's folly. now of course we're quite psyched to have alaska. you know who's not psyched we have it now? russia. they have seller's remorse. they haven't been grinding their teeth a bit for all 150 years but they are now. this is a russian magazine called military industrial career which i promise i do not read on the regula this got picked up in the "new york times" yesterday. this paper is called the alaska we've last. darn you, william seward for snickering us on that deal. yesterday vladimir putin was at an international forum in the arctic where he was not only complaining about alaska, he was complaining that the united states is unfairly using alaska as part of our plot for world domination. he said, quote, what we do is contained locally, while what the u.s. does in alaska it does

on the global level. the united states is using our unfair toehold in alaska for turns of global oppression. obviously. you wouldn't expect this sort of thing if you weren't looking for it. but there is a bit of russian nationalistic fervor around the issue of alaska. in 2011, the white house under proposal started their we the people petitioning system on the white house website. if you get enough people to sign up on any petition, the white house has to answer. guy rights to the war in syria to 9 million petitions about legal pot. but in 2014 one of these petitions popped up and it was about alaska.

something about the petition itself seemed a little off. and then the response to the petition was definitely off. we have a snap of it. it's not posted online anymore. but we have the heroes at the wayback machine of capturing this screen shot. you can read it for yourself. what's wrong with this picture? quote, we've petitioned the obama administration to alaska back to russia. group siberian russians crossing the isthmus 6,000 years ago, russia began to settle on the arctic coast. first visited alaska during the expedition, 1729 to 1735 years. vote for secession of alaska from the united states and joining russia. let me guess, google translate from russian to english wasn't that awesome in 2014, right? it seemed like an odd thing at the time.

this oddly-translated give us back alaska thing. who wants this? got a little bit of news pickup at the time. but almost instantly it get 39,000 signatures. where did those come from? they can't all be from people who think it's hilarious. former executive officer of the counter terrorism. clinton watts will pick up the part of the story from there. >> in april 2014, andrew weissberg and i at night petition on the white house website, alaska back to russia appeared as a public campaign satirical or nonsense appearing on the white house website are not out of the norm but this

petition was different. it gained more than 30,000 signatures. it revealed an odd pattern. it appeared to be the work of bottoms. a closer look of the bottoms tied in with other social media campaigns we had objected pushing propaganda months before. >> that's clinton watts testifying at the senate intelligence committee about some of the more ham-handed russian influence operations he's noticed in his counterintelligence work in the united states. noticing how even stupid stuff like that around a poorly spelled white house petition, even when it's did you do it gives you a place to start in terms of seeing what tools they have, in terms of seeing how they operate. so basically getting 39,000 signatures instantly on this mistranslated petition, it gave away a little bit how they worked because they operate in lots of ways, some of those signatures were cleared by

counterintelligence people. by the time those same forces were operating inside something very high profile, they were operating inside the u.s. presidential election. >> the final piece of russia's act in the summer of 2016 hacked materials were strategically leaked. the disclosures of wikileaks, guccifer 2.0 demonstrated how hacks would influence the power in the two years. on the even of 30 july, 2016, my colleagues and i watched as at rt and sputnik news launched false news. within minutes, automated bots amplified this news story. going back to the act of measure accounts we tracked in the previous two years. these identified accounts almost simultaneously appeared

amplified the fake news story in unison. >> how the russian attack worked in a nuts and bolts way, what it looked like to see it unfolding and how they did their work. he's talking about what intel people call active measures. there's a term of art. but in this case what it means is not just grabbing information. not just stealing secrets, active measures means you are deploying whatever weapons you've got back here, back at us. in pure terms, sort of in the plutonic ideal of spy agencies, they spy, they just steainformation,ut in real life there are active measures.

in real life, they do stuff. they don't just listen in. in real life they wage war. >> today russia hopes to win the second cold war through the force of politics as opposed to the politics of force. winning a single election is not their end goal. they hope to topple democrats through objects. one, undermine citizen confidence, two, divisive political, and five, create general distrust or confusion over information sources by blurring the lines between fact and fiction, a very pertinent issue today in our country. from these objectives a criminal can crumble tells me from the inside out. >> that's how clinton watts put it front of the senate intelligence committee.

and that's generally what u.s. intelligence agencies say we are up again, why russia launched this attack and how. but there's one last piece of it i think we've been missing that tells us about russia and potentially telling us a lot about ourselves at least about our current political situation. the investigation to whether or not russia had help, had american collaborators in its attack is probably the most salient part of it now that we're sure russians mounted the attack. thomas rid is a british cybersecurity expert who also testified this week. he gave new details about how intense the attack was on the clinton campaign. in one month long period from march 10th to april 7th, he testified hackers working if the russian military service made personalized specific attacks on 109 different staffers from the clinton campaign.

109 different staffers targeted in that one month. jake sullivan, one top clinton adviser got hit 14 times alone last march, 14 separate attacks by russian military intelligence, all personally tied specifically to him to compromise his data just in one month. we've now got this good understanding how the hard democratic party and the clinton campaign got hit by russia. russians really targeted them. they really really tried hard to hurt hillary clinton and help donald trump during the presidential general election. but what we did not necessarily get before is that the russians reportedly didn't help trump just win the election, they helped him win the ren nomination as well. >> through end of 2015 and start of 2016, the russian influence system began pushing themes and messages seeking to influence the outcome of the u.s.

presidential election. they were in full swing during both the republican and democratic primary. senator rubio in my opinion, you anecdotally suffered from these efforts. >> senator marco rubio took that in stride in that moment in the hearing. he later confirmed in the hearing that his office was aware of him being targeted by russian cyber attackers. part of that is trivia about how the republican primary went down. honestly none of us can say the way a particular election would have gone in the absence of any one forks including the russian attack. but the investigations now in

our country are twofold. one is how the russians pull it off. we're getting more and more information on that every day. boy, they've come a long way from their give alaska back petitions, but the other thing that's being invested, the more salient thing for us as a country, the forward looking thing in terms of what we're doing now with who's in power now and what the accountability is now, the more important part of the investigation is did the trump campaign coordinate with them? were they in on it? if it is true that the republican primary was also a battlefield for the russians, that's an important piece of this, because if they did help in the primaries as well as helping in the general, that means they weren't just wanting hillary clinton to lose. they weren't just trying to affect the general election. if they were working in the primary as well to elect a specific candidate in the primary, that means they were not agnostic as to who get the general election. they specifically want donald

trump. they wanted him more than anybody else. why is that? what did russia find more attractive about him than anybody else on offer? stay with us. various: (shouting) heigh! ho! ( ♪ ) it's off to work we go! woman: on the gulf coast, new exxonmobil projects are expected to create over 45,000 jobs. and each job created by the energy industry supports two others in the community. altogether,

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mr. watts? >> i think this answer is very simple is what is no one is really saying in this room, which is part of the reason active measures have worked in this u.s. election is because the commander in chief has used russian active measures at time against his opponents. on 134 august 2016, his campaign chairman after a debunked -- >> when you say "his". >> paul manafort cited the story as a terrorist attack on cnn and used it as a talking point. on 11 october president trump stood on a stage and kited what appears to be a fake story from sputnik news that disappeared from the internet. he claimed that the election could be rigged. that was the number one theme pushed by rt put nick news all

the way up until the election. he's made claims of voter fraud, proposal's not a citizen, that congressman cruz is not a citizen. part of the reason active measures works and it does today in terms of trump tower being wire tapped is because their parrot the same lines. >> clinton watts testifying at the senate intelligence committee about the russian attack on are our election and how the trump campaign acted to amplify what the russians were doing, whether they knew that's what we were doing or not: former fbi specialist clinton watts joins us now. thanks for spending time would you say this evening. >> thanks for having me, rachel. >> i'd like to start by asking about that question that i just raised about willingness. you described repeatedly moments where you saw donald trump the candidate and other people in his campaign including his campaign manage amplifying what had been done by the russians,

reiterating it, giving it more substance by repeating it. is there any way to tell if that was what they were doing. >> i can't prove that but sometimes the synchronization and taking russians messages that are put out by progressed -- propaganda outlets and spending them on campaign stumps or using them as talking points was quick. you see stone who says i've heard that last week has something coming out. he's communicated openly with guccifer, which is a russian hacker, why go to a russian intel operation, why go to russian propaganda sites and take their talking points to use against another american. it's curious. there's two parts. is it, one he's complicit and coordinating? i think that's unlikely. but the other part istonistic

-- is opportunistic. and wie be opportunistic when your motto is america first. but clearly you're not if you're using russian progressed. >> let me ask you about one specific incident which was about this fake story that there had been an attack on the u.s. base in turkey. can you please just kind of walk us through what was fake about that, how it was used and how it surfaced in realtime in the campaign. >> there were two real things that were going that night. there was a small protest outside the gate, and the works there wasn't increased security around the base. the joint chief of staffs were flying in the next day. this is after the coup if you remember in turkey. that story was then changed and manipulated into this is the a terrorist attack a benghazi style terrorist attack and is hitting the base and there's

loose nukes out there. that comes out from overt outets, sputnik news, rt simultaneously. within a few minutes you see many amplifying accounts, very pro-russian accounts, website that take those pictures, spin them even further and amplify those storiy ies with bots. the goal is to get it into the top trending stories on twitter so that mainstream media needs to react to it. the way they do that is using hashtags. they use the media to get reaction. the third was trump to get trump supporters to see it and fourth was benghazi, you're specially essentially communicate the story is another benghazi-style attack trying to bring real trump supporters into this story

to further promote the conspiracy. >> that started in terms of the way they created it, and then the trump campaign cited it as of it was a true story without reference to the origin of the news or without checking it with u.s. sources? >> right. it wasn't even just that. the story was debunked. it happened at the end of july. we published on the 8th of august. the 14th of august is when paul manafort went back and cited that story whenever he was doing an interview. why would you take a russian progressed line to begin with and regurgitate that as your own talking point against the clinton campaign. >> clinton watts, would you mind sticking with us for one quick question? i'd like to ask you about how you feel about the state of the investigation. clinton watts who testified before the senate intelligence committee this week's former

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we're back now with former fbi special agent clinton watts who testified at the senate intelligence committee about the russian attack on our election last year. mr. watts, thank you again for sticking with us. >> thank you. >> you have seen a little bit of this investigation close up now. you testified in this open hearing in the senate committee this week.

i just have to ask you, given what you have seen in your own work on this, what you testified about, and what you know of how the united states is responding, what do you make of the state of the investigations thus far? >> i think what's interesting is i saw a really great bipartisan whitey -- committee yesterday when i was at the senate. great questions from both republicans and democrats, very responsible. there wasn't a lot of politics thrown into it. and that's not necessarily what i expected, having watched the house investigation a week before. to be honest, i was a little bit nervous about going in there. but every senator that was there yesterday i truly believe had america's best interests at heart. i felt the chairman and the co-chairman did a great job on moderating that session. it did restore my hope a good bit that we can get so some regulation on what's really going on with the russian meddling and get a full picture of that. i'm only speaking of it in terms of the influence approach. yet a fu understanding of everything that is going on.

>> as a former fbi special agent, do you believe the fbi has the capacity to get to the bottom of this, get to the bottom even of the possibility of collusion? some people have suggested that some issues would be better handled by the cia than the fbi for example. do you think the fbi is up to it? >> i think the fbi is not only up to it, but the right place to do it. they the investigations, especially retroactively like this one better than anyone in the world. i think what would help them a lot is the political meddling to not short circuit the investigations. every time we have alternative processes running through the white house, when we have legislators moving between the executive branch for special briefings, that's going to shut down sources of information. that's going to extend and cloud the investigation. we need to give the fbi time to do the good investigation and clear things up. they can only do that if they're given the resources and space to do it, and not pushed politically in one direction or another.

>> clinton watts, former fbi special agent, counterterrorism agent. i think we understand more about this than we did before your testimony this week. thank you, sir. i appreciate you being here tonight. >> thanks for having me. >> all right. we've got more ahead tonight. do stay with us.

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protest against corruption. in moscow alone, tens of thousands of people showed up. there may be a repeat of the russia ptests this weekend. and we know this because it seems like the russian governments tryio take preemptive measures to shut those protests down. the prosecutor's general's office has asked a state media regulator to block access in russia to youtube videos and social media posts that call for people to take to the streets on sunday. i don't speak russian, but these are reportedly scans of a letter the prosecutor's office sent to the media regulator to block access to the videos and posts so people won't know that they are being called on to go out and protest. it's unclear exactly who is behind what would be this weekend's new round of protests. the guy who was behind the last one's anti-corruption opposition later leader alexei navalny. he was given a 15-day prison sentence. he is still in jail now. no word whether they're going to try to stretch out his sentence longer.

in addition to him being in jail, basically everybody who works for him also got put in jail. more than a dozen of his staffers and anti-corruption group got arrest and put in jail. they all too tonight are still in jail. their offices were apparently ransacked. all their paperwork and computers were taken by the russian police. this is the sort of thing that would have lit up the u.s. state department as recently as a few months ago. but so far in this case, the united states has released exactly one statement about russia's treatment of its citizens in this regard. it was from the state department. it came out in the middle of the night russia time, and there has been nothing other than that. russian president vladimir putin threatening a further crackdown on protest, threatening to make penalties for protesting even stronger. even with that brand-new threat, there is no response from our white house. crickets. at that same public appearance, vladimir putin tried hard to downplay his connection was the trump white house, saying this guy rex tillerson everybody says

i know him. i've only met him a couple of times. he said, quote, if mr. tillerson corp., i've met with him several times before. two or three times. well will be sure to discuss this issue if i meet him again. two or three times? really. here are five times when vladimir putin met with our now secretary of state rex tillerson. these are all from when tillerson was the head of exxon. and that's rile rally from just the first page of a google image search. the oldest picture in our cursory search was 2005. that's him all the way on the left, rex there. then there is this lovely one from 2011 when he went to putin's summer home in sochi to sign a giant oil deal. the most memorable is from the summer of 2013 when putin awarded tillerson the highest noncitizen honor anyone can get in russia. he shook his hand, toasted him with champagne. see? they're buddies. they go way back. but as russians plan to take too the streets if they dare this weekend with the leading presidential candidate opposition figure still in jail and his organization having all

its staffers jailed and having its papers torn apart and having its computers confiscated by the russian government, that is the sort of thing that the u.s. used to rail against. in this case, i think that vladimir putin knows that there is no threat he is going to hear from his old buddy rex giving him any heat this time. that's it for tonight. now for time for a special edition of "the last word." march madness, a look at this chaotic month in the very young trump presidency. good night.