find out how american express cards and services can help prepare you for growth at open.com. god decided to give me an ice storm for my birthday in 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 very, very long time since i've been here. i'm grateful to all the people who made this possible. thank you tonight for being with us as well. there's a lot going on tonight. elizabeth warren and bernie sanders are in the other half of this state. they are co-headlining a big, big rally in boston. this is an event that has attracted thousands of people soldout event here in deep blue massachusetts. you know, bernie sanders and elizabeth warren probably still are the highest profile

democratic, or in bernie sanders' case, democraticish people in party. they are at least the most democratic not named hillary clinton or barack obama. when times change, especially when times change radically, you never quite know who's going to become the new center of the political universe. in the few short scandal-ridden weeks of the trump administration, we have 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. adam schiff is the top democrat on the house intelligence committee. most folks could not have picked him out of a lineup this time last year. but adam schiff has fast become one of the highest profile people in his party. not necessarily because people look at him and think, hmm, president schiff, although maybe some people do think that, i think more the reason he's

become so prominent in the past few weeks, in the past couple of months is because of the sense that when the white house turns on the 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 on the intelligence committee to plot some new smoke screen to throw adam schiff off the case. well, tonight, newly prominent adam schiff met with donald trump. apparently it was not a big showdown. it's possible it wasn't even a planned event at all. but adam schiff went to the white house today to review intelligence documents. apparently while he was there he had, what his office is describing, as 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

for the trump/russia investigation that's being led in part on adam schiff and devin nunes' house intelligence committee. 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 from in the first place. the white house is still not admitted the white house itself was the source of those documents for devin nunes. at least they haven't admitted it overtly. there's a whole bunch of problems here in the way this rolled out. devin nunes explicitly told a reporter he did not obtain those documents from a white house reporter, 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 adam schiff tonight 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 that it was them. in print, this is sort of the cover-up part of the scandal, i guess. experiencing it, though n day-to-day life, it feels less like a scandal and more like a fiasco. it just feels like a mess. but after reviewing those documents at the invitation of the white house tonight, congressman adam 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 same materials provided to the chairman, chairman devin nunes, over a week ago i could not discuss the contents if the white house had concern over these materials they should have been shared with the full committee in the first part as part of our 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. the 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. that it has these documents. they can show them to adam schiff. they're still not saying why they would not admit to that before. the white house will still not say who let congressman devin nunes into the white house 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 related to the russia probe once president trump took office, they created a lis of document serial numbers to give to the senior members of the intelligence committee. after the list of documents related to the probe and russian interference in u.s. election was created in early january perform after the list of

numbers was created, he, the former obama administration member, 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 of 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 know, they can find out if any of those documents related to the investigation have, in fact, been mysteriously disappeared. they've got basically the table. contents just in case somebody's been burning the chapters. and 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. this is the national freaking security council. steve bannon is the publisher of a right-wing website who lives on "seinfeld" royalties. 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 principals committee, after furor over 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 h.r. mcmaster, they still kept steve bannon on at the national security council. 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-watnick, and the white house, including steve bannon, intervened to keep ezra cohen-watnick in his job. and now ez ka cohen wa cohen-wa the top lawyer to the national security council have been named as two of the people who took intelligence intercepts that may or may not be related to the potential collusion with russia. they took those intercepts and fed them out of the white house for political effect. it's weird that steve bannon's on the national security count krishlgs right? still. especially if the national security council is turning out to be the vehicle by which the white house is trying to kybosh the investigation. joining us is ned price.

until mid february, mr. price worked at the cia as a spokesman and senior analyst. he has in the past served as senior director at the national 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 ing preliminary indicated -- being implicated in laundering intelligence, as hiding the origination of intelligence and fed for political purpose. how does that strike you as an allegation? >> well, it's absolutely incredible 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. i think the true nature began to reveal itself this week when chairman nunes 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 or so walk from the fourth floor of the eisenhower building, where mr. cohen-watnick's office is located, to the oval office if they felt they had something important that the president needed to see. instead, as vice chair schiff said, they laundered this information through devin nunes,

who has proven himself to be a willing pawn of the white house for a couple reasons. one, they wanted to add credibility to these documents. two, of course, they wanted to obscure the source. this couldn't be coming from the white house. and, three, rachel, i think importantly, they wanted to distract from the unmitigated disaster that was the hpsci last monday, in which director comey admitted for the first time there is an active, ongoing, counterintelligence investigation that could well reach into the white house. frankly, they succeeded. if they hadn't been so ham-handed, they may have gotten rid of it but eventually this caper has caught up with them. >> one of the things people are starting to get increasingly concerned about, and this nbc news today about obama officials making a list of serial numbers of documents related to the russia investigation and taking it with them -- or taking it down the road, taking it to the senate intelligence committee so it exists somewhere outside the

administration after the trump folks got on board, people are worried about the prospect that wherein 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 of those investigations and the intelligence work on which they're based. can you tell us if those fears are based on reality? is that far-fetched? is that something people should worry about? >> up until january 20th i would have said, no that's outlandish. we wouldn't have an administration in power that would work and subvert the system in that way. unfortunately, now i'm not so sure. if that report is, in fact, accurate, i think it may well have been prudent to preserve that intelligence and to ensure that there is a documentary record. but it's also important to note that the nbc news report doesn't allege that the previous administration gave this information solely to senator warner, the democratic senator.

that we -- 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 of and vigilant against. this administration reaching directly into the department of justice. of course, attorney general sessions has purportedly 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 to ensure that this information -- this investigation can go wherever it needs to go. >> ned price, former spokesman and analyst at the cia and former spokesman and director at director at the national security council. thank you for joining us. >> happy early birthday. >> thank you very much. tonight we have a guest who

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xfinity watchathon week starts april 3. get unlimited access to all of netflix and more, free with xfinity on demand. one week from tonight, republicans say they intend to have confirmed the president's pick for the united states supreme court. they intend to put the nomination of neil gorsuch before the full senate for a vote on friday. a week from today. now, it is not at all clear whether necessity are going to get there on this vote. the top democrat in the senate, chuck schumer has been saying democrats will filibuster this nomination.

he says republicans should not get to confirm a supreme court pick while the cloud of this russia investigation is hanging over the president. chuck schumer tonight is one crucial vote closer to bringing that filibuster fight to the end of the democrats' want. progressives by and large have been on board with chuck schumer and actually pushing him in this direction. the big question for the democrats has been whether their centrist members, 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. senator mccaskill saying tonight, quote, i cannot support judge gorsuch because his opinions reveal a rigid ideology that always puts the little guy under the boot of corporation, whether it's a freezing truck driver or an autistic child he's shown a stunning lack of humanity. the president who promised

working people lift them up has nominated a judge who can't even see them. this decision by senator mccaskill takes away a vote republicans had been counting on for gorsuch. they need eight democrats on their side in order to get around the filibuster. so far they only have two. they have heidi heitkamp of north dakota and joe manchin from west virginia. that's it. will democrats stick together and successfully filibuster the gorsuch nomination? if they do that will republicans respond by using the nuclear option and taking away the power to filibuster all together? the stakes are super high. the outcome is quite unclear. that, of course, makes for right left center. happy friday. we'll be right back. you don't let anything keep you sidelined.

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this is a check -- i think question got a picture of the check -- for $7.2 million. it's an old check. hard to read. $7.2 million, a ton of money. but back when this was signed in 1867, it was tons and tons of money. $7.2 million in 1867 was about $125 million in today's money. that's what we got paid excuse me, 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 crimean war hadn't turned out awesome. they weren't getting enough out of alaska. they thought it would be hard to hold on. so they cut a deal. the u.s. secretary of state william seward gave them that check for $7.it million and they gave us territory that was one-fifth the size of the entire continental united states. nice deal. that deal was made 150 years ago yesterday. william seward took a ton of heat 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 alaska now? russia. they have seller's remorse.

i mean, they haven't been grinding their teeth about it for all 150 years, but they are sort of grinding their teeth about it now. this is a russian magazine called "military industrial courier" which i promises you do not read on the regular. this got picked up in "the new york times" yesterday. this article in ts called "the alaska we lost." darn you, william sue ard, for snookering 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 purposes of global oppression. obviously.

i mean, you would not expect this sort of thing if you weren't looking for it, but there is a bit of russian nationalistic fervor right now around the issue of alaska. in 2011, the white house under president obama started 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. and it turned into all sorts of stuff. from the death star to gay rights to the war in syria to 9 million different petitions about legal pot. but in 2014 up with of these petitions popped up and it was about alaska. the alaska one didn't break any records or anything in terms of the response to it, but something about the petition itself seemed a little off. and then the response to the petition was definitely off. this was it. we've got a snap of it. it's not posted online anymore. we've got the diligent national

heroes at the wayback machine for capturing this screen shot of it when it had about 7,000 signatures. check it out. you can read it for yourself. what's wrong with this picture? quote, we've petitioned the obama administration to alaska back to russia. groups siberian russians cross the 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 russia to english wasn't all that awesome in 2014, right? it seemed like an odd thing at the time. this oddly translated give us back alaska thing. i mean, who wants this? got a little bit of news pickup at the time it landed on the

white house website. then almost instantly, it got 39,000 signatures. 39,000, where did those come from? they can't all be people who think it's hilarious. former executive officer of the counterterrorism clinton watts pick up the part of the story from there. >> in april 2014, andrew weisberg and january berger and i noticed a petition on the white house, alaska back to russia appeared as a public campaign appeared to give the state back to which it was purchased. this petition was different. having gained more than 39,000 online signatures in a short period. other examination of those signing and posting on this petition revealed an odd pat irn. the accounts vary considerably

and appear to be the work of bots. they died in with other social media campaign pushing russian propaganda months before. >> clinton watts testifying at the senate intelligence committee about some of the more ham-handed russian influence operations he's noticed in his counterterrorism work -- counterintelligence work in the united states. notice how even stupid stuff like that, even when it's dumb, 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 groovy mistranslated white house petition about alaska and russia, it gave away a little bit about how they work. because of things like that, because they operate in lots of ways, serious and not, some of those signatures were already clear to counterintelligence people. bit time those same russian 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 disclose urs of wikileaks, guccifer 2.0 demonstrated how hacks would influence the power russia built so successfully in the previous two years. as an example on 30 july 2016 my colleagues and i watched as rt and sputnik news launched simultaneous false news. automated bots amplified this news story. 4,000 tweets after this false story, linked back to the accounts we tracked in the previous two years. they previously identified accounts simultaneously appearing from different geographic locations and xhujts amplified the fake news story in unison. >> clinton watts, former fbi

special agent on how the russian attack worked in a nuts and bolts way. what it looked like to see it you be fo unfolding and how they did their work. intel people call it act of measures. that's a term of artsiance like us don't use, and but as far as i understand it, it's not just grak information, not just stealing secrets and using that information back home for their own purposes, active measures means you are, instead, deploy ing whatever weapons you've got back here, back at us. in pure terms, in the platonic ideal of spy agencies, they spy, steal information. 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 throughout force of politics as opposed to the mriments of force. while russia certainly seeks to

promote western candidates sympathetic to their foreign view, winning a single election is not their end goal. russia active measures hope to topple democracies through the pursuit of five complimentary objectives. one, undermine citizen confidence. two, exasperate. three, erode trust between citizens and elected officials and institutions, four, popularize russian agagendas. five, create distrust by blurring the lines between fact and fiction. a very pertinent issue today in our country. from these objectives, the kremlin can crumble democracies from the inside/out. >> so, that's how clinton watts put it in front of the senate intelligence committee. that's generally what u.s. intelligence agencies say we're up against. why russia launched this attack and how. but there's one last piece i think we have been missing that tells us a little something about russia and potentially

tells us a lot about ourselves. at least about our current political situation. the investigation into whether or not russia had help had american collaborators in its attack is probably the most salient part of us as americans since we're quite sure russians mounted the attack and were more and more comfortable understanding exactly how they did it. thomas ridd is a british cyber security 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 this time last year, march 10th to april 7th, he testified hackers working for 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 tailored specifically to him to try to compromise his data. just in one month. so, we've now got this good understanding of how hard the democratic party and clinton campaign got hit by russia. the 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 just help trump win the general election, they helped him win the republican 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 season. may have helped sink the hopes

of can datsd long before the field narrowed. 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. just as it's interesting trivia about the general election, as to how russians helped trump there as well. i mean, honestly, none of us can say the way a particular election would have gone in the absence of any one factor, including the russian attack. but the investigations now in our country are two-fold. one is, how did the russians pull it off? we are getting more and more information about that every day. it's fascinating. they've come a long way from their give alaska back to russian petition. the other thing being investigated, the more salient

thing for us as a country is the more forward-looking thing as far as 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? were they not just incidental beneficiaries of something putin was doing not just because he hated hillary clinton. if that's true, if they did help in the primariless 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 so a not hillary candidate could win. 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 got to the general election. they specifically wanted 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.

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simple and is what 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 14 august 2016, his campaign chairman after a debunked -- >> when you say his, who's his? >> paul manafort cited the fake story as a terrorist attack on cnn and he used it as a talking point. on 11 october president trump stood on a stage and citeded what appears to be a fake news story from sputnik news that disappeared from the internet. he denies the intel from the united states about russia. he claimed that the election could be rigged. that was the number one theme pushed by rt sputnik news, outlets all the way up until the elections. he made claims of voter fraud that president obama's not a citizen, that, you know, congressman cruz is not a citizen. part of the reason active measures works and it does today

in terms of trump tower being wiretapped is because they parrot the same lines. >> clinton watts testifying at the senate intelligence committee on the russian attack on our elections and how the trump campaign acted to amplify what the russians were doing, whether they knew that's what they were doing or not. former fbi special agent clinton watts joins us now. mr. wautts, thank you for joinig us. i know you're in demand. thanks for spending time with us 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 manager, amplifying what had been done bit russians, reiterating it, giving it more substance by repeating it, as if it was true information. is there any way to tell that's what they knewthy were doing or

whether it could have been totally unwitting? >> i can't prove that. what is remarkable is at times the synchronization and repeatedty taking propaganda and spinning them into campaign stumps or using them as talking points was quick. you see stone who says i've heard wikileaks has something coming out. he communicated openly with guccifer, which is a russian hacker. why go to russian intel operation, why go to russian 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. maybe his aides were at some point. and i think that needs to be investigated. the other is to be opportunistic. why be opportunist when your motto is america first but

clearly you're not putting america first if you're using russian propaganda. >> 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 explain, just kind of walk us through how that was -- what was fake about that, how it was used and how it then surfaced in real-time in this campaign. >> yeah, there were two real thing that were going that night. one, there was a small protest outside the gate. and two, there was increased security around the base. the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff was flying the next day so they had increased security to essentially tighten things up. this is after the coup, if you remember, in turkey. that story was then changed and manipulated into, there's a terrorist attack, a benghazi-style terrorist attack, hitting the air base and there are loose nukes out there. being overrun in terms of a

benghazi-style attack. that comes from state propaganda outlets, rt, sputnik news simultaneously. within minutes you see amplifying accounts, we call gray accounts, very pro-russian accounts websites that take those conspiracies, spin them further and amplify those stories with bots. the goal is to get it into the top-trending stories on twitter such that mainstream media needs to react to it. the way they do that is use hashtags. they wanted to create panic with nuclear, and media, and the third was trump, to get trump supporters to use it and the fourth was benghazi. you're essentially communicating the story is another benghazi-style attack, trying to bring in real trump supporters into this story to further promote the conspiracy. >> so that started as a -- that started in terms of the way they created it, and then the trump campaign cited it as if it was a

true story without reference to the origin of the news or without checking it with u.s. sources? >> right. and it wasn't even just that. the story was debunked. it happened at the end of july. we published it, i believe it was on the 8th of august. on 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 propaganda line to begin with in a story that had clearly been debunked in the days before and regurgitate that as your own talking point against the clinton campaign? >> clinton watts, would you mind sticking with us for one more quick question? i'd like to ask you about how you feel about the state of this investigation and sort of our defenses at this point. do you mind staying with us for just a sec? >> yes. >> clinton watts testified before the house intelligence committee, former officer at west point, counterterrorism expert. he'll be right back with us. stay with us.

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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 can 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 full 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. authenticity 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. their experience is coveted. their leadership is instinctive. they're experts in things you haven't heard of - some calthem theechnologies best of the best. will. some call them veterans. we call them our team.

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seems like the russian government is trying to take preemptive measures to shut those protests down. the prosecutor's general's office has asked a state media regulatory 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 comes, i 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. msnbc live is next. good morning, everyone. it's 7:00 in the east and 4:00 out west. now here is a look at what is happening. it is day 72 of the trump administration. 740 million new numbers attached to ivanka trump and her husband. the ethics questions being raised given their white house roles. immunity request, an attorney says ousted national security adviser michael flynn has a story to tell. what or who he may have to offer. plus -- >> this place is a swamp, not a hot tub. new pushback on capitol hill after president trump goes after the freedom caucus. coming up, how