has happened under trump's watch. and the real question is are the republicans on capitol hill, who have been for years bemoaning the response to russia and are now turning the other way when donald trump is showing an affinity toward vladimir putin and a willing by trump campaign to collude with the russians. are they going to say enough is enough. yes, they want health care and tax reform but are they willing to go against what they claim is the backbone of u.s. democracy and all of these institutions that they claim they revere. >> that is all for this evening. good evening, rachel. happy friday, my friend. hope you have a great weekend. thanks to you at home for joining us. happy friday to you as well. also i'm sorry. you may have been expecting to see richard engel right now. if so, i am sorry that i am not him. i am nowhere near as accomplished nor as compelling

nor as handsome as he is. but the good news is even though i'm not richard engel, richard engel is on msnbc tonight. i am taking over his hour but not taking over for him all together. richard engel on assignment is going to be here live at the end of this hour starting at 10:00 p.m. eastern. i know a little bit about what richard is going to be reporting on tonight. it is freakin' compelling stuff. you should definitely plan to stick around for that. that's right after my hour. i'm here at 9:00 eastern tonight, richard eng sl live at 10 and brian williams live at 1 is:00 eastern. so, settle in. we've got a big night ahead. i also want to tell you tonight, this hour, we've got somebody here for the interview i'm happy to have landed. the deputy director of the state department for years, senior director for russia at the national security council for years, senior person at the

pentagon on russia for years. he has stuff to tell us and he is going to be here tonight for the interview. i'm really looking forward to that. but there is, there's a bunch going on tonight. a lot of news has broken in the last 24 hours. let's get right to it. the 2014 winter olympics were held in sochi, that was controversial of course because all of of the things controversial about russia. you might remember right before the sochi olympics, just a few weeks before the opening ser many anies, vladimir putin made a concession to his human rights critics trying to take sam some of the heat off of russia for hosting the olympics, people were upset about their human rights, international aggression, trying to take the heat off of that. just a few weeks before the olympics started, putin released

some of the political prisoners who he was holding in russia prisons. and among the most high profile prisoners that putin released before the sochi olympics was a feminist punk band called pussy riot. i am such a prude i still find it embarrassing to say the name. that is the name of the band. the thing they were the most famous for before they the olympics was what they called punk prayer. basically a performance art piece, it happened in a church, very provocative in russia and critical of vladimir putin. the leaders of the band were held in prison 21 months before putin released them before the sochi olympics, right before the olympics. so last year in february, february 2016 not all of the members of the band but some of the members of the band created a song and a music video that is

the performance they are second most known for after the punk prayer that got them thrown in prison. this is the video they released last year, february. it's very well done. i don't speak russia so i'm not sure i totally get all of the lyrics but vi to say i kind of like the song as well. this is a song called "chaka." one of the things that the hero does repeatedly through the video is she make as symbol of crossing her hands over her chest. a lot of the people in the video do that. as i understand it what that symbol means in context is it's supposed to be wings, bird wings. it's supposed to signify a sea gull because that's what the word chaka in russia is sea gull. that physical gesture of crossing your hands over your chest like that this is seen as a symbol for top level

corruption in vladimir putin's government. the word chaka is also the last name of this guy, the top federal pro-court in all of russia, who is hand picked for that job by vladimir putin. and you're probably getting the idea from the pussy riot video that one of the things that the criminal justice system is known for in russia is arresting and prosecuting enemies of vladimir putin and torturing people and killing people and disappearing people in russian prisons. that's part of what this is about. part of the criminal justice system and how putin has used it in russia and his artistic criticism of that. the reason that he is not just a symbol of brutality, the reason he is a symbol of corruption is largely because of an expo say done by alexi navalny.

he's the most visible opposition figure in russia. he plans to run for president next year, although putin says he's going to ban him from the ballot and not let him run. navalny is just getting out of prison now. organized protests across cities in russia last month. his production group produced a documentary about bt the federal prosecutor in russia last year. an english language version came out in january, a russian language version before that. and the accusations in that documentary is that in addition to being the top prosecutor in putin's brutal government, the main allegation about this video is that in addition to that he and his family and he and his cronies have somehow imagined to

e mass massive wealth and a huge business empire, including a luxury spa hotel in greece and gigantic salt mines in russia. all of these things you wouldn't think he would be able to afford on his prosecutor's salary. one of the hated members of the putin government, hand picked for the prosecutor position by putin himself. he's also now, i think, the most pronounceable russian name in this week's rotorrent of aston h astonishing information. tuesday morning is when president trump's eldest son released an e-mail chain, a meeting that has blown up into a major problem for the trump white house. the initial e-mail in that chain referenced a prosecutor. this is an e-mail from a british

guy, ron goldstone to donald trump jr. on june 3rd last year. they're acquaintances. and rob goldstone sends this first e-mail to donald trump jr. to start that chain of correspondence that leads to the meeting. his e-mail says good morning. he called and asked me to contact you with something interesting. the crown prosecutor in russia -- everybody believes that to be a mistaken title. russia doesn't have a crown. they've got a prosecutor general. but the e-mail says the crown prosecutor in russia met with e man's father this morning and in that meeting the prosecutor offered to provide the trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate hillary. this is obviously high level sensitive information but it's part of russia and its

government's support for mr. trump. what do you think is the best way to handle this information. and that is the e-mail that led to this meeting at trump tower during the campaign that has been the subject of so much focus and week and so much freak out at the white house. part of the reason that meeting is attracting so much attention is that nobody is coming right out and saying what happened. for some reason they won't just explain what happened and who was there. right. initial reports were that donald trump jr. met with a russian lawyer at trump tower last year. then the next reports were that he met with a russian lord to get information that he was told explicitly originated with the russia government. then we got a statement from donald trump jr. saying yes, he did take a meeting at trump tower last year with this lawyer but it was a meeting about adoptions mostly. then we got a subsequent statement from donald trump jr. saying okay it was to get

derogatory information about hillary clinton. then we got the e-mail chain that clarified it was a meeting where they tried to get derogatory information on hillary clinton, going to be delivered to trump tower by, what was described in the e-mail, as a russian government attorney. and then we learn that it wasn't just donald trump jr. jared kushner and paul manafort were at that meeting too and they had been notified this was a russian government attorney coming to meet with them bringing derogatory information from the russian government. and then we learned it was not just all of them and the russian government attorney, today we learned the group also include thd guy who nbc news first identified as a former soviet counter intelligence officer supported by some u.s. officials of having ongoing tie to russian intelligence. he was there too. despite all of these days of reporting and statements and admissions of this meeting, the presence of this guy, this

former russian military intelligence guy, the presence at this guy at the meeting was somehow left out of all of the earlier disclosures and we only found out about that today thanks to nbc. in addition to him there was also reportedly a translator there, a relatively well-known person himself, i suspect you'll see a bunch of reporting him about and his potal role in this. th would bring the total number of the people in the meeting, junior, manafort, kushner, the lawyer, the translator, also on the lower right-hand side guy, that's the british guy who wrote the e-mails to don jr. in the first place that that prescription the total number of the people in the meeting to seven. but cnn is also reporting that actually maybe it was eight. and maybe it was more than eight. cnn is reporting that there was somebody else in the meeting in addition who was there as a representative of the family of this putin linkeds russia

oligarch who took the meeting with the prosecutor in the first place that led to this whole thing. we're basically waiting to find out if there were any russians who were in new york that day who were not in that meeting. and if so, is that just because they wouldn't fit in the elevator. honestly, anything else to declare on this? but despite the way that story has already evolved, almost comic levels of denial and lack of transparency over the course of the week, tonight "the wall street journal" reported on something very important about the origins of that meeting. despite that russian lawyer, natalia, despite her disputing that she should ever have been described as a russian government lawyer, despite her insisting that he had no links whatsoever to the russian government, that she just happened to be a russian person, those denials i should mention coming from not just her but coming from the white house up

to and including the president himself giving that denial -- could we play that clip for a second? >> as far as my son is concerned, my son is a wonderful young man. he took a meeting with a russian lawyer, not a government lawyer but a russian lawyer. >> tonight "the wall street journal" reports that despite those denials coming from everybody up to and including the president himself, this lawyer, who went to trump tower and met with trump's son and trump's son-in-law and trump's campaign chair last summer, along with all of those other russians that she brought with her, despite all of these denials including from the president that she had anything to do with the russian government, the lawyer herself, natalia, has now conceded to "the wall street journal" that in fact she was working with russian prosecutor general on this. according to "the wall street journal" tonight, she said in an interview that she was meeting

with russian authorities regularly and she shared information with the russian prosecutor general's auchoffice. she told the journal, quote, i personally know the general prosecutor in the course of my investigation i shared information with him. so that meeting with the upper echelons of the trump campaign in june of last year, today we learn that it also included a former russian counter intelligence officer who nobody mentioned before. he tells the associated press that he and natalia left documents about hillary clinton behind at that meeting for the trump campaign to continue to review. we didn't know that before. we also now know that the russian lawyer who was sent from moscow as the emissary to deliver this derogatory information on hillary clinton, she now admits that she was working with one of the top

officials in vladimir putin's government. the sea gull guy. one of the highest ranking officials and most recognizable officials in putin's government. so one of the things that we have learned just over the course of this week, if we didn't know it before, is don't listen to what they say. don't listen to what they say about their own behave your. i mean it is interesting to listen to the trump white house say things because then you can accurately describe the things that they have said. you can quote them. that's data of a form. but it is a mistake to take statements from this white house as an accurate representation of what has happened in the world of what they did, of who was in a meeting, of what -- about what a meeting was about or what was said or who was involved, or even the number of people in the room.

you can hear them talking. it's okay to pay attention to the words that they say so you know what they have said but don't take it as a representation of what happened in the world. i don't take pleasure no noting that is true about them but they freakin' earned it now. luckily for us as american citizens, people trying to know what's going on in our government, luckily for us we do have other ways of obtaining information beyond just having to listen to our government, which isn't proving particularly trust woworthy on these matters. if you're treating the administration like a silent movie and not hearing what they say, there are other ways to look at this and to understand what has been going on, what has happened to our country. things that don't get clouded out or occluded by whatever news they're making at the white house at the moment. one of the things we're talking about tonight is the stack of intelligence reports that have been reported on since the beginning of this scandal. we actually got a bunch of new

reporting about what our intelligence agencies knew and when they knew it as the russian attack was unfolding. this is not an exhaustive list but we learned this week from "the wall street journal" that u.s. intelligence authorities as early as the spring of 2015, months before trump announced he was running, in the spring of 2015, u.s. intelligence agencies were reporting on a surprisingly large number of meetings with people associated with donald trump and russian government officials. one year later in the spring of 2016 we know also from "the wall street journal" this week that there were reports from european intelligence agencies who alerted their intelligence colleagues in the u.s. that significant amounts of money of russian origin for some reason appeared to be flooding into the u.s. presidential election. again those intelligence reports were from european agencies notifying their u.s. intelligence counterparts that russian money was coming into our election. expect to hear a lot more about

that particular intelligence in the future. nudge nudge, wink wink. in may of 2016 u.s. intelligence agencies reportedly overheard russian military officials talking about their plans to disseminate disparaging info about hillary clinton in the united states with an eye toward the election. john brennon said that the cia observed enough contacts and interactions between russian officials and persons involved in the trump campaign that there were cia concerns about whether the trump campaign officials might be wittingly or unwitti unwittingly working with the russians. they ended up handing the investigation over to the fbi and that started the fbi investigation into the trump campaign. we've learned that by some time around labor last year, intelligence reports that had been examined by u.s. investigators shown russian

hackerings discussing amongst themselves how to obtain hillary clinton's e-mails with an eye forward delivering them to michael flynn via an intermediary. that last one also from "the wall street journal." those are all just intelligence reports that we have now learned about. right. through the press. regardless of what the white house says about them. as those intelligence reports were coming in throw the attack, we're going to be talking about what people knew who they were looking at, what professionals in this field believed they were seeing as those reports were coming in in real time. and so we've sort of say this from the beginning. silent movie. do not listen to what they say. there's plenty to keep up with just in terms of what we can see happening. i mean just today trump campaign adviser michael ka caputo testid with the house intelligence

committee. today they delayed. on the talk radio show he issued a threat to michael swalwell. the trump campaign adviser said on the radio about congressman swalwe swalwell, i think he is a yellow bellied coward. i don't think he will show up for the hearing but if he does show, he will regret it for the rest of his life. the testimony was delayed although we don't know whether it was delayed because of the threat to the congressman or if that's just a coincidence. on top of that, jared kushner lost his top lawyer today, a very regarded democratic lawyer in washington, she dropped out today of representg jared kushner when it comes to matters related to russia although she'll continue to represent him on other matters. bloomberg reported that the president himself may be replacing at the top of his

legal team his somewhat troubled lead council on russia matters, mike kasowitz. apparently trump may be considering a new lawyer named ty cobb who will head up the russian defense on the media issues. there's a lot happening. a lot going on. there's also a lot being said but trust me, it's all nonsense. what's going on is moving fast enough that it's worth focusing on that and not getting distracted by the noise honestly. noub more than ever. we've got a lot ahead tonight. stay with us. (man vo) dad forgot how to brush his teeth.

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last night we reported on a new avenue of investigation on the trump-russia affair. a new lawsuit filed by a high powered group, a former obama administration lawyers. they're suing the trump campaign for what they allege was the trump campaign's participation in the russian hack of e-mails from the dnc and their subsequent publication online. quoting from the lawsuit on information and belief, defendants, meaning the trump campaign, entered into an agreement with other parties including agents of russia to have information that was stolen from the dnc, publicly disseminated in a strategic way that would benefit the campaign to elect mr. trump as president. noe mai reason i think this lawsuit is so important nationally is because if this lawsuit goes ahead -- and i think it has a reasonable chance -- the discovery process in the lawsuit will allow the lawyers who are arguing this to obtain trump campaign documents, to desuppose trump campaign

witnesses under oath. this will become a whole new source of what will eventually be publicly available information about that part of the russian attack that the lawsuit alleges had trump campaign cooperation around the dnc documents. totally new avenue of information in this scandal if this thing goes ahead. super interesting. ails should tell you the complaint itself is like a spy novel. it's like the best cliff notes version ever of the whole scandal from beginning to end. it's like 40 pages, double spaced. you could knock it out over a couple of beers saturday night. i'm just sayin'. but reading this it has raised for me one big question. as part of the case that they're make in this lawsuit, they make one claim that i'm not sure i've ever heard before. and it's very interesting to me. this is what it is. quote, on information and belief russian sha's practice when it engages in cyberattacks related to an election in another

country is to partner with aligned parties who are on the ground in that other country. russia does have extensive experience entering into and extracting information from computer networks but its m.o. for interfering in other country's elections is to seek out domestic political operatives who can provide political expertise. now, that seems very interesting to me. it's a claim that i don't know much about. but mcclach chi reports this week that the possibility is under investigation, including by the special counsel that the trump campaign dij nal operation was russia's aligned party in this attack. the trump campaign helped russia in the part of its attack targeting the american people with disparaging information and disparaging information about hillary clinton and the campaign. i get that's under investigation.

io not get whether or not that feasibly is how this went down. whether that feasibly is how this happened. whether that really is the m.o. of how russia operates when it does that stuff, that they use domestic confederates, align forces inside the countries they're attacking to complete their attack. is that really what they do? i want to ask somebody who would know. joining us tonight for the interview is michael carpenter. he is now at the penn biden center. before that he was deputy director at the state department and the senior director of russia at the national security council and serve until january this year as the deputy secretary of defense for russia, ukraine and eurasia. mr. carpenter was here last night and kind enough to agree to come back because i put him on the spot life on national television with no warning if he would do so. i apologize for putting you on the spot last night.

thank you for coming back. >> it's a pleasure to be here. thanks. >> thank you. first of all let me ask you a big question. part of the reason i wanted you to come back tonight is awanted you to spread out and explain some of what you saw and what you think is most important about it. you were the top pentagon official on russia while the russian attack was happening during the election last year. are there things that you saw from that inside perspective that a, you can talk about in public but b, you think it's important for americans to really understand about that attack? >> yeah. so there are things that i saw obviously, classified matters that i can't talk about in public. but what i will say is what i said last night as well, you know. i have watched russian cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns in a number of other countries from up close and seen all of their various details and manifestations. ukraine being a prime example. so i have seen how the russians

do this, what their m.o. is as i said yesterday. and you cited the lawsuit. and the lawsuit is absolutely right. i mean russia uses local proxies to be able to both target disinformation -- by the way, it uses people when it can in foreign country to actually purpo perpetrate the cyberattack. sometimes that involves using a thumb drive, sticking it into a computer in order to penetrate that system, especially if it's a closed system. but russia always tries to use a multifaceted approach that relies not just on hacking from afar orb what is sometimes also called sigint or human intelligence in order to corroborate and glean better information, in order to do what it seeks to do. and by the way, now we, one of the things that we failed to

mention i think last night but that's worth saying today is that one of the prime goals of russia's intelligence services is to penetrate into foreign political circles. that is the holy grail of russian foreign intelligence, to be able to get into those networks which aspire to power and then eventually come to power so that they have the influence ultimately to be able to affect policy. that is what they seek. in the case of the united states it's quite obvious what sort of policy changes they seek, lifting of sanctions being one. but that is their ultimate goal. so the notion that they would target disinformation from gru headquarters outside of moscow and not use assets on the ground. that's not how they do things. >> on that last point, in terms of penetrating political networks. this is something you mentioned last night that i've had a hard time getting my head around until now.

there has been this reporting that russian cyberattack and russian, sort of in-person, i don't know, contacts have targeted not just things like u.s. election systems but also think tanks. and we've had information that has been sort of hard to classify about there being russian interests and sort of russian penetration in like conservative nongovernment organizations, particularly those that might be influential on the republican party. there's been a lot of reporting about how there's sort of a new russian auxiliary in the nra where there are people who have close russian ties who appear to be trying to become part of the u.s. gun rights movement and to meirror one in russia. would you describe that as basically their efforts to, to seek russian advantage by

pulling the american party in russia's direction? >> absolutely. there is no doubt -- the case you mentioned is actually a very interesting one. the russians formed this ngo in moscow called the right to bear arms. for president putin and his inner circle who hail from the kgb and its successor agencies, there is nothing more e nat ma to hem, that guns how would be floating around in streets of moscow and st. petersburg. this is a honey pot go that was designed to lure in conservatives primarily in the united states from the nra and other organizations that are like minded in order to forge relationships that could then be used in the future. >> michael corporator, former deputy secretary of defense for russia. can you stick around for a moment more, sir? >> sure.

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we're back for more of tonight's interview with mike carpenter, deputy secretary of defense for russia, the top pentagon guy on russian matters. thank you for staying with us. appreciate it. i'm going to read you a list of names and i'm going to butcher the pronunciation. i'm sorry in advance. i hope you the still follow the people i'm about. con tan stein fa limb nick, former intelligence officer were

let go from his job working for an american nonprofit in moscow. sergey gorkogorkov, hand picked vladimir putin to lead one of russia's largest state run banks which uts has been linked to a russian spy ring that operated in the u.s. it faces sanctions from the u.s. government. also victor ma ved chuck, an oligarch, personally close to vladimir putin, also personally sanctioned by the u.s. government. and now this week we got a couple new names, natalia sky ya, working with the russian prosecutor general, yury chaika, a russian american operative lobbying against russian

sanctions, a top priority of the government. even bf you get to the rsian ambassador who met with all of those people in the trump campaign, all of those other people that i just listed are known now to have met with or communicated with senior people on the trump campaign during the campaign or in the case of sergey gorkov, during the transition. having worked where you have worked and seen what you have seen, is that list normal? is that amount of contact by that list of those types of folks, is that the kind of thing that you would see typically in a u.s. campaign or is that very far out of the norm. >> i would say it's out of the norm in the united states. i would say it's typical in ukraine or georgia or moldova. i got to say when you read that list of names, the one thing i kind of laughed about when i hear former military intelligence officer, i mentally

scratch out the former. i mean, that goes without saying. so a lot of these individuals are tied to the intelligence services in one way, shape or form, or tied to very powerful people, as you mentioned the prosecutor general, yura chaika. >> from your perspective of having observed russia in all of these years at the pentagon, why would all of those people be meeting with one, with one political campaign? >> well, they're trying to establish relationships so that they can then influence members of that campaign. sometimes it's through the accumulation of compromising material that can then later be used for blackmail. in other cases it's through a series of business ties so that some of these individuals will then be sympathetic to the cause that's being espoused by these

russians and there's a whole variety of other tactics that are employed. by the way, victor is the by mayor intermediary that putin uses in ukraine on the ukraine crisis. his daughter -- putin is god father to his daughter. these are people who are all linked, some of them to the inner circle, to putin himself and some of them to some of the outer concentric rings around putin. >> one last question for you mr. carpenter and i thank you again for coming back and doing this longer interview with us tonight. i know you can't talk about the classified material that you've seen. i listed some of what's been reported in the press in terms of intelligence reports that have been described to reporters that came out starting in as early 2015 and carried right through the election. from what you say in your time in government, on a scale of one to ten, how would you describe

how alarmed you are about the scale of the russian attack and the possibility of american confederacy in that attack? >> well, i don't know on the scale of one to ten, but i was alarm as hell when i first saw it and i remain incredibly alarmed. and i remain alarmed because of reports that russians are still probing into u.s. networks, they're probing into in fact networks associated with nuclear power plants, not the actual supervisory control and data acquisition networks but administrative and business networks. they're looking at voter databases. so they can gathering the ability to influence not just potentially future elections but also other aspects of our critical infrastructure. and so far they haven't really suffered any consequences for what they've done. and you know, in you know anything about putin it's that if there is no cost or consequence to his course of action, he will keep going.

and so i think we can expect to see more of this action. we'll obviously see more interference in elections in germany in the fall and in other countries but we'll see more here in the united states as well. >> mike carpenter, former top pentagon official on russia, former top national security council on russia. thank you for coming back tonight. i really appreciate all of this time. thank you. >> thanks for having me. >> more to come tonight. stay with us 37 .

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we are here to make sure that -- because the real rob po portman needs to answer to all of us. >> that's right. what do we want? health care. when do we want it? >> now! >> flat rob. since their real life senator refused to meet with them, some of ohio senator rob portman's constituents printed out a life-size flat rob. they propped him outside his downtown office in toledo, ohio,

and they've told the kin co-'s version of their senator that they want him to vote no on the republican bill for health care. in missouri today, about 25 of senator roy blunt's constituents stood outside his kansas city office with megaphones. eventually one of senator blunt's staffers got dispatched down to meet them. protesters handed them a stack of mocked up release forms, freeing up their senator from his campaign promise to vote to repeal obamacare. at senator james lankford's office, dability rights activists staged a protest. they were blocked from recording video so they took pictures instead. they told the senator's staff as far as they were concerned, they were not going to sit around and let the republican health care plan kill them. over in texas, congressman lamar smith got a visit his group of constituents including this

young woman speaking in the foreground here who is a cancer survivor. watch her explain her situation to lamar smith's staffers. >> if i lose this insurance, i don't have insurance. i will be pre-existing again. that's terrifying. one of my best friends two years ago, her life was prolonged because of the health care that was given to her from the affordable care act. she died a horrible death because that's what cancer does. i held her hand as she took her last breath in hospice. the hospice that was available to her because -- because of the insurance. she would not have died as peacefully as she did or had that extra time with her family and friends if it wasn't for that.

>> that's what it's like in congressional offices around the country right now. republicans on the hill came out with their new and improved version of their obamacare repeal bill on yesterday. did make some miner tweaks but the bottom line is the same. it takes a blowtorch to medicaid. medicaid provides more people with health insurance than any other health insurance provider in this country. the republican bill is expected to cause millions of americans who currently have health insurance to lose not just whatever insurance coverage they've got now, but to lose all health insurance altogether. so far two republican senators have comeut again the repuican bill, rand paul and susan collins. they can't afford any more defections. otherwise, the bill will die. senator mitch mcconnell is making the senators of his caucus and all of the caucuses skip the beginning of their august recess. he's keeping all the republicans in d.c. for basically multi-ball bonus time so he can have more access to them for back room dealing and arm twisting.

a problem for him, though is that there's a giant boulder rolling toward him on monday. a new cbo score, a new estimate of exactly how many people will lose all health insurance because of what they're trying to do. that new cbo score is due on monday. if, as is expected, it is terrible news, that will presumably only make it harder for him to hold on to his zero-vote margin of error. meanwhile, there really is a nationwide groundswell of voters who are expressing their feelings about this bill. that is only getting louder and bigger. finding new pressure points the longer this fight drags on. new cbo score expected monday, maybe tuesday. tick tock. i was wondering if an electric toothbrush really cleans...

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so look out world, dad's taking charge. dr. scholl's. born to move. file this under proving the point. we have been following a very controversial request from kaas secretary of state kris kobach w wants your voter information. kris kobach, as part of the president's new voter fraud task force thingy, he's asked every state in the nation to land over voters' full names, home addresses, dates of birth, political parties, partial social security numbers, the works including your voting activity for the past few elections. he wants that on every voter in the country, which is a little unnerving, right? everybody in the country who votes gets all that data about themselves handed over to the trump administration. don't worry, though. right now they say they plan to keep all of this voter data,

quote, on white house computers, under the direction of a member of vice president mike pence's staff. oh, so it will be fine, then. today we got a glimpse of how the white house is handling people's personal information on this subject. today the white house posted a trove of mostly angry e-mails from over the past two weeks about this election commission. it was the public comments and in posting this trove of e-mails, they did not bother to redact any of the personal information contained in them, including e-mail addresses, home addresses, work addresses, even phone numbers of these people who had the temerity to make public comment. we asked the white house about that. they said they warned people that their comments including any personal information in them might be made public. they say they made that warning notice posted in the federal register on july 5th. so you should have seen it. but sorry if you missed that notice in the federal register. too bad. w we're publishing your phone number. don't worry. all the rest of your personal information that gets sent to the white house, it will be nice and safe and tucked away for you

on mike pence's staff laptop. that should be fine, right? that does it for us tonight. we will see you again on monday but do not go anywhere because right now it is time for "richard engel on assignment." richard is reporting from iraq tonight. i am so glad we were able to make this happen. good evening, my friend. it's good to have you here. >> well, there's a lot going on. so many people have been focused on what's been happening in the states, but a major accomplishment has just happened in iraq. the war on isis has taken a major step forward, and we've been focusing on that for the last several weeks. it's good to join you and join the people at home. >> looking forward to your report, richard. thank you. >> thanks, rachel. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. welcome to erbil in northern iraq where the sun is just coming up. the last several weeks we've been covering the fight to drive isis from the city of mosul about 50 miles away. the fighting isn't entirely over yet. there