curator in funkstown maryland. the pair known as the funkstown eagles. they're at home in the room of theodore and franklin roosevelt. thank you for being with us. good night from nbc headquarters here in new york. rick wilson is a republican political -- he's appeared on lots of different shows. part of the reason he is such a popular guest is that he is not only very connected in been politics and there's a lot about what's inside the party, he has a good sense of humor which makes him great on tv and he's one of that endangered species of modern republicans that is not afraid to be very advocately critical of president trump.

and for rick wilson that has been true all along. he was a marco rubio supporter in the primary. but unlike a lot of other professional republicans, including senator rubio himself, rick wilson didn't decide to eat his criticism of trump once he won the nomination and the election. he has stuck with his critique. he is the unusual high profile republican that started off as a no to trump guy, and he remains a no to trump guy. and he's not the only one. there are some, not many a. back during the election last july, which was right after we started getting the first reporting about how russia appeared to be involved in the hacking attacks on the democratic parties e-mail servers, last july rick wilson got a call from a reporter about something very strange and honestly very worrying. that was starting to circulate

about donald trump. a investigative reporter in the tv news business called up rick wilson and said, you're a never trump guy, have you heard anything about this private intel operation that has turned up supposedly a whole sheaf of allegations about trump being connected to russia, about compromising material on trump, trump being involved or informed of this russia hacking the democratic party? he got a call that was a inquiry as to whether or not he'd heard that stuff. he's a guy who, you know, hears about opposition research. he's been involved at a professional level in republican politics for a long time. that call last july, that's how rick wilson learned, that's the way a lot of people learned that there was something out there, rumored, right, described vaguely, something out there about trump that seemed like it might be really worse than your

standard political opo in this country. there were a bunch of reporters that started hearing about this private intel project that had turned up this russia specific information about donald trump. now, it was just people talking about it nobody published anything on it for months. lots of reporters tried to chase it down. the way you do that is exactly what you think, you try to restrays the steps of the purported investigator to try to independently corroborate what's in these reports, you call all the sources you know who might have heard something about this, to see if they can give you any other detail or angle on what you try to track down. you call around. you work your sources. that process last summer to check out this rumored thing that they had heard about, that was the very casual way that a lot of people in washington first heard about the supposed

dossier, which we now call it, the doesia, of alleged russian dirt on donald trump. now, david corn of mother jones magazine got ahead of the pack, he was the first to public a piece on this intel project, this intel reporting on trump. he published just before election on halloween night last year. in this piece he described a former western intelligence officer who was well respected in his field, who had fath erred this inflammatory information that start today circulate in political circles. but because the intel itself, the alleges themselves about trump hadn't been independently verified by the journalists who were hearing about it and reporting on it, the intel could only be described in very, very vague terms until finally will after the election was over, it all broke open. what broke the dam on this story

seems to be the news that leaked in early january, that the product of this private intelligence operation, the report that was produced by that intelligence operation about trump and russia, it was leaked information in the first ten days of january, that that reporting, which had been rumored for all these months, it was now being taken seriously enough by the u.s. intelligence community that the findings of that report had been summarized and briefed to the outgoing president, barack obama and to the incoming president donald trump, cnn was the first to break the store in the beginning of january. that went off like a flash bang grenade when it came out. that led to the urgent follow-up question, okay, they've been briefed on this intel, they've been briefed on this thing we've been hearing rumors about it, what is it? what is this intel say? what does this inflammatory explosive information that has

now been briefed to the president and the president-elect, what is it? and that's where buzz feed came in to blow the whole thing open. january 10th, two weeks before the inauguration, buzz feed went ahead and did it, up loaded the report, 35 pages of it. turns out david corn was right, it was from a respected former western intelligence operative, former mi-6 agent from britain, and had been hinted about, the claims in this intelligence product, in this report, they were in fact lurid. even if you only got through the first couple pages and then put it down and reacquainted yourself with the other side of your stomach, even if you didn't make it through all 35 pages, right up front was very blunt. and the thing that got the most attention initially was a description of alleged sell ashous personal behavior by the president-elect that the russia

had supposed documentary evidence of, the implication russia could use that tape of his behavior to blackmail him. that's the thing that resonated most loudly at first. if you could get past that alleged x rated stuff, what was also made clear in the dossier was that russia didn't necessarily need to blackmail him whether or not they had a tape. what was in the dossier was a spelled out, detailed allegation that there was a mutual operation under way here, that there was collaboration and coordination between the trump campaign and the russians, yes, during the election, as the russians tried to hurt hillary clinton and her chances to the election, but that was the product of a long standing years long relationship between the russians and donald trump. quote the russian authorities had been cultivating and supporting u.s. presidential candidate donald trump for at least five years. trump and his inner circle

accepted a regular flow of intelligence on his political arrives. the kremlin has been feeding trump and his team valuable information on his opponents, including hillary clinton. i mentioned a moment ago people in political circles first started hearing rumors about the existence of this intel right after we learned that russian hackers had been involved in breaking into the dnc and stealing those democratic documents back in june. well, there's a lot of detail in the dossier on that part of the russian attack specifically. quote, the russian regime was behind the recent leak of embarrassing e-mail messages emanating from the dnc to the wikileaks platform. the reason for using wikileaks was plausible deny eyibility from the russian regime and it was conducted with the full knowledge of trump and senior members of his campaign team.

so, this was all made public the night of january 10th by buzz feed. created a huge uproar. the day after they posted it, new york times contacted republican operative rick wilson as part of their reporting on the impact of this dossier, now that it had been made public, the reporting on the back story as to when people first started hearing about this information, how long it had been circulating, how it end he had up coming into the public domain, even though rick wilson had first heard about the existence of this intel months earlier, last summer. seeing it all come out in black and white in january, according to him, was a different thing all together. he told the times in january, quote t-it is a remarkable moment in u.s. history what world did i wake up in. that's always stuck with me since that first came out, what world is this? now, that was january.

it is now seven months down the road. trump is president, facing multiple investigations into his russia ties, multiple committees in boat houses of congress investigating his russia ties, robert mueller leading a special inquiry, the russia issue isn't just a area of focus for this presidency and for this president, it is appears to be increasingly a object of fixation for this president, probably for good reason, given the seriousness of the investigations he's facing. jonathan martin at "the new york times" tweeted that a republican senator had just called him to tell him that trump is, quote, consumed with russia. a unknown senior, unnamed senior republican aide told politico tonight, quote, it seems trump is just always focused on russia. that quote comes as part of new reporting tonight from politico that plumb in recent weeks has

been calling republican senators and bee rating them, that's it the world politico uses, berating them. politico describing trump calling republican senator bob corker to yell at him and complain to him about a russia sanctions bill that corker had sponsored and supported. politico describes the president calling up the till is to complain about a bill that was to prevent trump from firing mueller who is looking into the russia matter. it's kind of interesting. all this reporting about the president calling senators about russia, not being able to let go of russia, talking about russia all the time. it's all evidence that the president is sort of centrally focused on russia at the moment. but if you step back from it, it's evidence that lots of republican sources of willing to tell reporters about that now.

republican sources, congressional aides, maybe even republican senators themselves are getting comfortable calling up reporters to tell the press how fixated trump is on russia and what he's been saying to them about russia in individual private conversations. and that includes this bomb shell report from the new york times last night with multiple republican sources claiming to the times that trump isn't just randomly calling up republicans and yelling at them about russia, when it comes to senate majority leader mitch mcconnell, he called mcconnell on august 9th to berate him and swear at him and scream at him about mitch mcconnell not protecting the president from the russia investigations that are being conducted under mcconnell's purview in the senate. president, of course, is already reportedly facing a obstruction of justice inquiry from robert

mueller due to him firing comb any after combmy reportedly didn't take the -- what's another obstruction of inquiry on top of that. two scoops. so all of this is proceeding. all of these investigations are ongoing. republican sources are getting increasingly aggressive against the president, specifically on the russia issue. and now today, it comes full circle. because today, more than a year after those rumors started circulating about some yeerd intel sheaf of private stuff. after those rumors started circulating, more than a year from that, seven months down the road from when we first laid eyes on this crazy private intelligence effort that produced this almost unbelievable sheaf of reports about trump and russia, seven months down the road from when we first saw the dossier, we're back to the dossier in a way

that may be a big problem for the white house if the dossier is at all real. yesterday we reported that the firm that hired christopher steele, that ex mi-6 agent, the head of the american firm that hired him to do it, fusion gps, was interviewed yesterday by the staff of the senate judiciary committee for ten total i had hours. we can confirm that glen simpson did hand over 40,000 pages of documents to the committee as well that was first reported by fox news last night, we can confirm it tonight. if you put aside 40,000 pages of documents, think about his 10 hour long interview. we know what it was about. i mean, the only reason the head of fusion gps was talking to the senate judiciary committee for 10 hours was because of their role in commissionings the does

way. when simpson came out of the view, his lawyer made a statement saying the dossier was the subject of the interview. and -- everybody calls it uncorroborated and unverified, that's not the way fusion gpa views it. richard ben-veniste is a famous political figure especially investigations of complicated sandals, he was a water gate investigator, when simpson came out of that interview, his lawyer quoted richard ben-veniste in calling the dossier a road map for the investigation. they want the congressional committees and the fbi and all of these other professional investigations, they want all those investors to follow the dossier, check it out. they want the dossier to be the basis of other people's

investigations. they are volunteering it. check it out. they stay they stand by their work. they say they are proud of their work. by their work they mean the dossier. and even though the white house and people from the trump campaign and the trump administration keep denouncing it as this dodgy dossier and reporters routinely talk about it as unverified and uncorroborated, that's less and less true all the time. it was made public by buzz feed. by february we had the first substantive reports that a lot of it was starting to independently check out. investors were following what bits they could and finding that the does way was true. u.s. intelligence confirms some of the information in the does way yai tack place with the same people and conversations as detailed in the dossier. that was by february. after that there was further core objectation. specific details in the dossier

about russian staff who were based at the u.s. embassy in washington had to get sent home in the middle of the scandal, even the russian side were checking out when people were able to independently verify them. the important thing that's now new here is that fusion gps a basically having to make itself known because of the testimony to congress by the founder of gps. and now that they've been sort of fasted to answer questions about this stuff, they are inviting scrutiny of this dossier. they are standing by it publicly. and we know that the does way itself was delivered to the fbi. it's been reported that the delivery of dossier to fbi was giving the fbi who his sources were that he used to create the document to further help him verify his information. as of today we know we've got 10 hours of testimony on that dossier.

yesterday the judiciary committee. and i have to say the dossier remains a series of allegations. but none of them have been overtly disproved through all these months of public investigations since it was first posted on line. this brings us to mount ayr eye was. it's a small town. it's really out of the way place. it's a part of iowa i've never been to. other nearby times around mount ayr iowa had names like gravity, diagonal and siam iowa. i want to go after seeing this footage tonight from senator chuck grassley's town haul in mount ayr. >> the second thing i'd like to talk on is senate judiciary committee staff members, met with ten hours, i'd like to know what they discovered in that meeting, and i would like

transcripts released. will you do that? >> the answer is it'll take a vote of the committee to do it. but i presume that they will be. but if you heard from the lawyer for simpson in the evening news, the fact that we were going to release it, we can't release it until we give simpson and his lawyer copy of it so if there's something that the transcript is wrong, give them a opportunity to change it or to correct it or at least to negotiate what was -- first of all it takes a long time for the court reporter to get it ready to go. but we'll have to give it to them before the thing you're asking me about can be done. >> will you do that? >> of course we'll put it to a vote of the committee. see. but here's what might happen as a result of this.

we have not given up the possibility that we would have simpson and manafort, depends what comes out of these transcripts, maybe there has to be a open session, that's something we're going to wait to -- >> will you personally vote for the release of the transcripts. >> i don't know why i wouldn't, but i don't want to say so, because i've never in all the years i've been in congress, i guess i've only been chairman of two committees, i've never gone through this process before. so, i'm not going to answer my question until i get a firm footing of what the precedence is. >> my statement is, i want to see those transcripts. >> okay. but you understand the necessity of giving it to them to make sure it's correct? >> absolutely. but i don't know that that would take a long amount of time to do so. >> i would guess even better than what you're asking to be done is if we decided to have a

hearing, a open hearing on this issue, with those three people. >> it's already been set for ten hours, at least that minimally, then have your open hearing. >> okay. go ahead. >> okay. i don't know who that guy was at the town hall, but i love you. senator chuck grassley snit knit speaking with one of his absolutely persistent and well informed and plainspoken constituents to iowa. i think the senator said he'd vote for the release of the transcript of the ten hours of testimony that the founder of gps did yesterday about the russia trump dossier. he said he has to check with precedence, but he can't think why he wouldn't vote for the release of the document. now in terms of this issue of

the transcript having to go back to simpson and fusion gps to review it before it goes public, chuck grassley makes it sound like a major barrier to releasing the transcript, like my new boyfriend in mount ayr, i don't know why that would be a problem. we have received a statement from josh leafy, zwrim simpson's lawyer, responding to what senator grassley said, the statement is exclusive to us. quote, yesterday mr. simpson spent the entire day answering questions of the senate judiciary committee staff pursuant to a written agreement from the chair and ranking member. mr. simpson told the truth and so far has been the only witness to fully cooperate with the committee. the transcript reveals all of mr. simpson's testimony based on the hours of questioning from staff. the committee can release the transcript if it so chooses.

but after spending a entire day answering questions and zero testimony from any other witness, calling mr. simpson to a hearing serves no investigative purpose other than to try to find out the identity of clients and sources which are protected as a matter of privileges, and in the case of sources, protected in the matters of safety. we appreciate the opportunity to review the transcript and will do so. they end of the day, that transcript is the committee's, it's not ours. okay. do you see what's about to happen here? the reason this is such a big deal is because again nothing in the dossier has been overtly disproved. and if it really is a rode map to the veg, that's a very serious rode map to somewhere for the white house. the two main claims in the dossier was russia was cultivating trump for years that could oe blaj him to do russia's

bidding. the other part, it alleges overt knowing conclusion between trump and russia and russia's effort to hurt hillary clinton in the election. that's what the dossier says. if it is about to be publicly defended and explained and backed up, that's conceivably the whole ball game. when is the judiciary committee going to take that vote. i love you, basement guest bathroom.

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in the public domain is this question of the steele dossier,

a document that has been around now for over a year. i'm not sure when the fbi first took possession of it, but the media had it before you had it and we had it. at the time of your departure from the fbi, was the fbi able to confirm any criminal allegations contained in the steele document? >> mr. chairman, i don't think that's a question i can answer in a open setting because it goes into the details of the investigation. >> no, that goes into the details of the investigation. the firm that commissioned that steele dossier now says that they stand by the voracity of that document. they are proud of their work on it. they have handed over 40,000 pages to the senate, and the firm's founder gave 10 hours of testimony about it to the judiciary committee yesterday. those ten hours we're told were transcribed. fusion is suggesting they are open to that transcript being made public so we can all read what happened in those ten hours

of testimony. and tonight in iowa senator chuck grassley who runs the committee said he'll let the committee vote on putting the transcript out. he said there's no reason he would vote against it if he and the people on the committee vote, the transcript will come out. it's one thing to hear rumors about what's in the dossier, those started a year ago. it's another thing to have seen all that stuff in black and white once buzz feed published it in january, but people who commissioned it say publicly it's true, what's in the dossier is real and can be backed up. and that case looks like it will soon go public because if the dossier is right, what it has to say about trump is not just compromise by a foreign government, it is overt and knowing conclusion in the russian attack. joining us rick wilson, who is

the star of my opening anecdote this evening. rick thank you for being with us. >> thanks for having me. >> i want to get your reaction to this, this news overall. i was hoping you could talk a little, shed a little light on how people in politics first started hearing about the does kwla before it got published. >> well, sure. i mean, first off, i think the fact that the guys from fusion today gave this extensive testimony and are willing to have that put out there in the public record, and turned over 40,000 pages of documents, should absolutely ter fidonald trump's attorneys and the sort of constellation who have been deny go and denying anything is true and anything gathered by this guy is true. that 40,000 is what intel has, a

gigantic iceberg. this sort of thing has been swirling around sfor a long time, even before i got that phone call last summer, there have been rumors of trump business entangle ments and financial entangle ments with a variety of russian ol garks and they're all basically tied together as the same entity and those things have been floating around and we've been running some of that stuff down. but as the individual accusations started to be made clear inside the political community, the consultant world and people who have overlap between intelligence and government. those -- we knew there was a package floating out there. i didn't know it was kr christopher steele or fusion until january when the buzz feed document rolled out but the information was circulating. the tip of the iceberg on these things, like i said, is always

backed up by a gigantic amount of other data. the most salacious detail, the ritz carlton moment was distracting but it was the financials before that start today pop up into the dialogue. >> lot is being made as you said about how some of the allegations in the dossier remain unverified, often shorthanded as a uncorroborated document although some of the stuff has been verified. similar sons lawyer says gps stands by their work. they say they're proud of the work, inviting scrutiny of it. did you have any previous sense of fusion as a organization in terms of their credibility and research or their previous work in opposition research? >> i had never hired them as a

opposition firm. but from what i do, i'm one of the customers of opo, they weren't one of the folks i hire for work, but they were not considered anything but professionals. they're not somefully by night agency that does a rip and read off google and dufrps a 200 page document on your desk. these are professionals. when they hired steele who is a well regarded intelligence agent for mi-6, who covered russia in great depth officially and non. they said we have to find somebody to can credibly do the work. there is nothing about steele's record except a -- russia's influence operations over seas. and i think he produced a framework here, apt documents

that fusion has turned over have produced a framework that when you marry it up with the other intelligent services info, i think donald trump has exposure here and that's why he's lashing out so aggressively, why he's so angry and yelling at senators and calling senators randomly, to i'm sure the great shaw grin of his attorneys. thank you for being here. >> and what rick was saying there about this being a framework, and this stuff potentially -- if those ten hours of testimony are, they finish the transcription, they are run past fusion to make sure that they don't have okays to them, and they come out, i think we can expect that to be a ten hour defense and ex reply cation of what's in that dossier and

why fusion stands behind it. that will be the biggest new chapter in this story. we have more coming including news just breaking on president trump's proposed transgender ban in the military. it's breaking now. we'll have it for you on the other side of this break because at a dr. scholl's kiosk he got a recommendation for our best custom fit orthotic to relieve his foot, knee, or lower back pain, from being on his feet. by reducing shock and stress on his body with every step. so look out world, dad's taking charge. dr. scholl's. born to move. you're searching for something. whoooo. like the perfect deal... ...on the perfect hotel. so wouldn't it be perfect if... ....there was a single site... ...where you could find the... ...right hotel for you at the best price? there is. because tripadvisor now compares...

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we have breaking news about transgender service members in the united states military. about one month ago, the president surprised military leaders, surprised everybody, by

announcing without warning on twitter that thousands of transgender u.s. service members were going to be kicked out of the military basically. he said in his tweet, quote, the united states government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the u.s. military. despite that surprise summary declaration from the president on social media, since then it's not been at all clear whether or how this new announced ban on transgender troops would go into effect. or how it would go into effect. or what would happen to the thousands of american troops who are transgender, who are serving openly in the armed forces today. well, tonight "the wall street journal" has just reported that the tweet is about to get follow-up. according to the journal, we should expect new guidance soon from the white house about implementing the president's twitter announced plan on transgender troops. quote, what directs the pentagon

to admittance to transgender individuals and stop spending on medical treatment regimens for those currently serving, according to u.s. officials familiar with the document. the two and a half page memo gives james mattis six months to prepare to fully implement the transgender ban, according to the officials. mr. mattis under the new policy is expected to consider deployability, the ability to serve in a war zone, participate in exercises or live for months on a ship as the primary legal means to decide whether to separate service members from the military. again, that's just been reported moments ago in "the wall street journal." gordon is the reporter who broke this story tonight. thank you very much for joining us, especially on short notice. i appreciate it. >> of course. no problem. thank you. >> so you're describing this new memo as something the white house is expected to send to the pentagon in coming days. is it your understanding that

this is a trial ban, considering this as the implementation following the president's tweet or is this done? >> so there's a lot -- there's some we know, and a lot we still don't know. i don't know if the trump administration -- what i think that we learned here in this reporting is that there's a lot of discretion left to defense secretary jim mattis to decide at least on the -- those who are serving now, as you said in the opener, you know, it's pretty definitive in terms of no new accessions, that the military called accessions, and no more -- that the focus is on spending for medical treatment for those who are now in the military and receiving it. what's not clear on that count is, does somebody who's receiving, say, medication, is that suspended or do they have to go buy it on their own or

what, that's still unclear. >> in terms of the discretion of the secretary, in terms of the members of the military right now who are serving openly as transgender, is it your understanding from this memo that mattis will be given, at the secretary of defense level, he'll be giving discretion whether or not to kick out each individual member of the service depending what he views as their deployability as it specifically pertains to their gender? >> yes, that's correct. and there's some precedence for this, because when defense secretary ash carter was in office, he had essentially personal say and discretion on that level at that time. but i think, you know, i want to take you back to january when mattis was being confirmed, and they asked him about some of these issues, and his whole kind

of thing is, deployability, and is somebody ready to go to war. and if they are, great. if they meet the standards, great. if not, then there's a problem. so this sounds like a lot of this memo that will get to the pentagon in the next day or so, maybe early next week, will be -- it's written and kind of influenced by mattis. who i don't think wanted this on his plate. he's got a lot of other things to worry about. so this gives him a little bit of time, and gives him a lot of discretion, at least in terms of those who are actively serving. >> gordon lubold, wall street journal pentagon reporter. thank you for being with us. i appreciate it. >> thanks so much. >> we'll wait to see. i don't know if they do trial balloons. one of the things interesting about the surprise announcement from the president was to see the various service choefs, the

ghost guard, navy, all the different chiefs basically came out and undercut the twitter order on this subject. it remains to be seen whether they'll have the same resistant attitude toward the follow-up guidance as they did from the initial. but what this sounds like is an outright ban that they're going to implement in terms of transgender people joining the military, and every single person serving openly in the military right now as transgender, at risk of getting thrown out simply for that purpose. if that's a lawsuit you hear in the distance? yes, that's what you hear thundering down the hall. last week somebody said it was like the red wedding in the "game of thrones," i'm going to fire everybody. >> do you watch that like everybody else and say what the heck is going on. >> you talking about "game of

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tells us tonight that after fusion gps could founder gave ten hours of testimony on the trump russia committee, as far as glen simpson a concerned the committee is welcome to publicly release the transcript of that. similar sons lawyer says in part, quote, the transcript reveals all of mr. simpson's testimony based on the hours of questioning from staff. the committee can release the transcript if it so chooses. be my guest. that's important because snar grassley told a town hall in iowa that his committee is going to take a vote on whether or not

they want to put out that transcript of those ten hours of testimony. he says personally he sees no reason why he would vote against making that testimony public. oh, dear, intelligence veteran joins us next ♪ music edible arrangements for summer. order in store or online. we were in a german dance group. i wore lederhosen.

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. mall number nans is a intelligence veteran, he's the author of the plot to hack america which is about the russia attack on our election last year. but particularly pertinent to

the trump russia dossier, we believe he may have been one of the first people in this country to be briefed on the existence of this dossier when it was first created. m malcolm joins us now. >> how is it you were one of the first people to learn about the dossier. >> i may have been the second person. david corn managed to get a hold of the dossier relatively yernl on, more than a month and a half before the leak, and he called me out of the blue. and he had known that i had published plot to hack america which came out about eight weeks before the election. prior to that i hadn't heard anything about this dossier. but what's interesting about it is when he called me, he said, what are the method olgs that a intelligence officer would use to go out and verify the information. and we had a very long

conversation about what we call rument, rumor intelligence, people come out and tell the stories as they know it. the information he had in the steele dossier as i said it was a enormous amount of rument rks but it is int in it, intelligence in it, when the final dossier came out in its fullness, it was very clear that christopher steele had something enormous on his hands. this was not a joke. everything that i had written in the, you know, months prior to that dossier coming out was almost identical to what the cia had written because we are intelligence officers, this is what we do. but the steele dossier had the details of our conjecture. and so enormous things that are coming out now such as, you know, manafort's dealing with the anna cove itch government

and being paid off, that was detailed in that dossier in great detail. and all of the individual players who are now being investigated by the mueller investigation. so what this does is this gave the u.s. intelligence committee, which as we're finding out now had already as early as june had its hair on fire over the russian hackings into the dnc and a campaign to essentially get donald trump elected president, but christopher steele was way ahead of it and so was david corn. >> i'm struck by the fact of sort of the way this has been furthered in the last 48 hours. the cofounder of fusion gps which commissioned the dossier, he's done in ten hour interview with the senate, handed over 40,000 pages of documents to the senate, very obviously cooperating with the investigation, and fusion is saying openly we stand by the dossier, basically we think it's true, check it out.

if that testimony that he just gave us, that ten hours of testimony, the transcript is going to be made public, do you think that changes the stakes materially for the white house? >> i think it does. what it does, if he turned over 40,000 documents, forget about the ten hours of answering questions, if he turned over the raw material, the traffic that he used to, you know, christopher steele used and the little notes he took to actually bring that about, trained intelligence analysts at the cia and the counter intelligence officers at the fbi, they're going to make a lot of links back to known intelligence that comes from the broader u.s. intelligence community. and we had heard about that from john brennen earlier this year that u.s. intelligence had some indications that many of the things or at least some of the things in the steele document were verifiable through our independent multi billion dollars systems.

if that's the case it will create a verifiable framework for the mueller investigation to go through, and it is a damming document, let's not make any jokes about it, that document is explosive. >> author of the plot to plot against -- the man who makes sense of the dark stuff we talk about in the news. thank you for being with us. i no longer live with the uncertainties of hep c. wondering, what if? i let go of all those feelings.

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in that the white house a apparently following up on the president's surprise twitter declaration from last month of a ban on transgender people serving in the military. wall street journal has just reported that the white house is about to reported that the white house is about to send new guidance to the pentagon on implementing that ban, that openly transgender people will not be able to join the military anymore and spells out the discretion that defense secretary james mattis will have to throw out currently serving transgender troops one by one. there are thousands serving in every conceivable role in the u.s. military right now in all branches. "the wall street journal" is describing this planned guidance from the pentagon but we have not seen it directly yet. now it's time for "the last word" with lawrence o'donnell. good evenings, lawrence. >> good evening, rachel. more breaking news, rachel maddow has a new boyfriend. >> i do. i don't know his name, is the sad thing.