anything happen today? mostly i just took a big nap this afternoon. like cold. i tuned everything out. i figured i would come on the air tonight and ask around. i didn't hear -- jimmy cricket. this was a freaking news day. and a news night. it is still happening. it's never good when this is the out box on my desk for the first segment we're going to do tonight. there is more than one segment in this show tonight. holy mackerel, there's a lot to get to over the course of the next hour. i'm glad you're here. this isn't the show you want to be washing dishes and listening with one ear. if you have a chance to sit down or push pause to sit down later, this is the kind of show for which you might want to do that.

and we have to start tonight with some of the news breaking tonight. this evening cnn is reporting there is the possibility there will be two more very high-profile departures from the trump administration. two senior officials who may be readying their own exit strategy from the trump white house. now this you will recognize as the ongoing list we've been trying to keep updated about people who have left the trump white house already. as you can see, the font keeps getting smaller. this pace of turnover in terms of senior officials is unprecedented in any american presidency ever, in less than a year in office, there has never been a white house that turfed out this many people before but what cnn is reporting tonight, both national security advisor h.r. mcmaster and don mcgahn. they may be planning their exits. don mcgahn is right in the middle of all the legal

troubles. h.r. mcmaster was brought on to try to clean up one of the first trump administration officials with the russian government about easing sanctions. h.r. was brought in to replace flynn. both don mcgahn and h.r. mcmaster may be soon planning to leave the trump white house. this comes on a day when steve bannon, former white house chef strategist, the man brought on to run the trump campaign after paul manafort was ousted. his business dealings from the soviet union and links to pro-putin. that's why manafort was ousted from the trump campaign. steve bannon was brought in to run the trump campaign thereafter. when trump was elected, steve

bannon became white house strategist. he was fired from the white house in august. last week in the wake of michael wolff's bombshell book quoting steve bannon saying all sorts of unflattering things about the president and his family and campaign. steve bannon lost the support of the financial backers, the billionaire mercer family. today, steve bannon was fired from his website, breitbart.com. the mercers have been multi million dollar investors. whether or not the financial backing is directly connected to bannon being fired today we don't yet know. this is a landmark development in the weird right-wing soap opera where all the people that helped create the trump presidency, one by one are finding themselves destroyed, often publicly humiliated, sometimes unemployed and frequently unindicted. despite those who made him president, trump is still president. all the other people that got

him into the white house have not been faring very well since then, but he's president and today he invited members of congress into the white house for an on-camera meeting about immigration. it happened on camera for almost an hour. by the end of it, the president was offering to change a lot of his proposed immigration policies that people thought that he felt strongest about. so that was very confusing. trump is giving up what he wants to do on immigration? seemed like he was radically changing his mind. nothing was actually being decided and when you parsed what he said, trump seemed to agree both to policies and to the opposite of his policies being discuss. -- discussed at the same meeting. in the end, nothing was decided and apparently the whole hour-long meeting on camera was just a show for the cameras. shows where people pretend to make policy, though, as shows

like that go, it looked great. but that was super weird. this president has never done anything like that before. i really don't know what it was about. but speaking of things making no sense, you might remember just a few days ago, the trump administration announced a plan to open the u.s. coast to offshore oil drilling just announced a few days ago. after the weird immigration tv show, this means nothing event that they had today, very shortly thereafter the trump administration announced that florida is now going to be exempt from the new offshore drilling. now apparently the basis of this reversal is because the florida governor asked, that apparently constitutes a major policy review. i don't know if the florida governor has a magic password or something else the other governors don't have. all the other governors in the united states are opposed to this, as well, but apparently everybody else is on the hook and just florida doesn't have to do it anymore. i thought that would be the last weird thing that broke before

the show tonight, but oh, no, spencer ackerman has posted a new scoop at the daily beast tonight. spencer ackerman is a veteran very good national security reporter at the "daily beast" and tonight broken serious new news about what happened right at the start of the trump administration when it came to russia. right? time-wise this is right after russia intervened in the 2016 election to help donald trump's chances in that election and to hurt hillary clinton's chances. that is still a matter that is under investigation. we'll have more on that in a moment. but, you know, before tonight we have had some good reporting, not just about what russia did but about what trump and his team did toward russia, did back to russia right after this election in which russia tried to help them win. we knew before tonight that during the trump transition, top trump transition officials were in on the decision to have national security advisor mike flynn call the russian government secretly to try to

under cut the inposition of new sanctions that the obama administration was imposing on russia in response to them messing with our election. mike flynn did not make those calls to the raugs -- russian government alone.ussian governm alone. top echelons of the trump transition knew he was doing that. they were in discussion about the strategy while he was doing that. ultimately, flynn ended up lying about that to the fbi and the rest is history. but in addition to that incident that happened after the election during the transition, we know from michael's reporting as soon as the trump people started landing at the state department, they started working right away on a proposal to have the u.s. unilaterally drop sanctions. their actions after they arrived in washington so alarmed state career department people, people at the state department contacted members of congress and that's how legislation to head this off was drawn up very quickly.

that's how president trump ended up being blocked from congress by lifting sanctions against russia on his own because his people at the state department tried to do it as soon as it got there and it freaked everybody out. we know a little bit about not just what russia did but about trump trying to take pretty dramatic action very early on to try to help russia, to try to relief the effect of sanctioniv on russia as soon as the trump folks got any power at all after the election. now tonight, spencer ackerman reports in the early days of the trump administration, one of mike flynn's hires quote proposed withdrawing some military forces from eastern europe as an overture to president clinton seeking to reposition military forces to please putin. something that smelled to a colleague like a return on russia's investment time on

president trump. the official that offered the proposal was kevin harrington. his title is senior official for -- strike that -- strategy planning. he did have one influential credential. he was a managing director for the teal macro hedge fund and thus close to trump patron and ally peter teal. according to spencer ackerman's reporting, this guy in the early days of the trump administration proposed taking all u.s. troops out of the baltic states as a gesture to the kremlin. he reportedly made this proposal in february by march, he was proposing that the u.s. should drop all sanctions on the russia oil industry. sure, why not? kevin harrington again is someone with no known national security credentials. he was memorably described as believing that the world is about to face an energy apocalypse. he believes only russia can save

the united states in the inevitable event of the apocalypse. that makes him easy to remember. how many people in national security can be known as the guy that thinks the end is nigh and only putin can save us. that is apparently his central animating national security idea. and given what we know now, it no longer seems weird somebody like mike flynn might have hired the putin is our savior guy for the position but what does seem weird is he didn't leave when flynn did. kevin harrington is still serving now and survived mike flynn's departure as national security advisor. if cnn is correct tonight and h.r. mcmaster is about to leave after he proposed removing u.s. troops from the baltics to be nice to putin?

it's been a busy news day and even busier news night, including that new reporting from ackerman at "the daily beast" about the trump administration's behavior toward russia that could be construed as potentially trying to pay russia back for their help with the election. but on that subject is where we got the really big news today courtesy of california senator diane feinstein. last night we reported on the possibility some democrats in the senate were considering extreme measures to try to get released into the public record an important transcript from the russia investigation. greg sergeant reported that democratic senators were considering gambits like maybe trying to read this contested transcript into the congressional record to force its public release even though republicans wanted to keep it under wraps. well, this morning, literally as she attended that all-for-show

immigration meeting with president trump, senator diane feinstein did an end runaround that possibility but just cutting to the chase and deciding to release the whole darn thing herself. nobody has to do a stunt. nobody has to did a gambit. she's putting it out there. what, are you going to come for her? this is the 312-page transcript of more than ten hours of testimony by glenn simpson from fusion gps that commissioned the very famous trump russia dossier. this testimony happened august 22nd behind closed doors in the judiciary committee in the senate. the chairman of the committee, senator chuck grassly said he would allow a vote whether that transcript should be released and said publicly he saw no reason why he himself would vote no on releasing that transcript. and senator orrin match of utah

told us that he would vote yes, too, to release that transcript. but then something happened. something happened between august and now and senator grassley changed his mind. he decided as chairman he would not let the transcript be released. and because he's the chairman, he runs the committee and usually that means whatever he says goes. but diane feinstein decided to set this out on her own today. we know of no president or a senator doing something like this in the past seems like she just decided boom, why not? now, one other bit of back story here that may or may not be relevant is that there has been quite a bit of speculation over the last few days senator feinstein might be ticked off at the chairman of that committee

chuck grassley. they worked together well over the last year since they have been investigating part of the russia scandal. there has been tensions. apparently, it has been -- there has been speculation on capitol hill senator feinstein was aggravated by something chuck grassley did. last week, without a vote from the committee, and apparently without consultation or notification of any of the democrats including feinstein, last week chuck grassley and another republican senator decided to take a dramatic step of sending the justice department a referral for criminal investigation targeting christopher steele,s -- the form former agent that compiled the russian dossier. there was talk feinstein might have been mad. whatever you think of diane feinstein, you wouldn't like her if she was angry. she couldn't be more blunt that

she wanted to release this. >> senator feinstein, do you have any response to chairman grassley saying that the release of the transcripts hurts the legitimacy of the investigation by the judiciary committee? >> i haven't seen that, no, i have no response at this time. >> why did you decide to do that? >> because i think people are entitled to know what was said and the lawyers also wanted it released. i see no problem with releasing it. >> senator feinstein, senator grassley says you jeopardized their ability to get certain witnesses like kushner. your reaction? >> i don't think so. that's been difficult in any event. >> why do you think they referred steele to the justice department for potential criminal investigation? >> my own view because to my knowledge, there has not been a single fact in that report that has been proven to be incorrect, that it's really to muddy the waters and create a problem.

you know, steele brought this information into the fbi and it's quite amazing you get punished for providing information. >> senator diane feinstein speaking today about this extraordinary decision, possibly unprecedented decision she made to unilaterally release this dossier. and she says two important things about the dossier. one is that christopher steele, british intelligence agent whose reports made up the dossier, he brought this information that he found to the fbi because he thought that he had uncovered something that indicated there might be a serious crime in the process. that's the right thing to do if you uncover evidence a serious crime might be in process. the fact he's the only person in their entire congressional investigation of the russia

matter, that seems to tick her off. but then she also says, quote, to my knowledge there's not a single fact that's been proven to be incorrect. she's talking about the dossier and that is important here, big picture. as republicans over the course of the past year changed course from a year ago this week when the intelligence committee report came out saying russia meddled in the election, they changed course from conceding the interference was serious and must be investigated and americans that may have helped them must be brought to justice. republicans were in that space a year ago. over the course of this year, they have changed from that point of view to instead trying to block and divert the investigations into the russia matter to make the investigations themselves a scandal. over the course one of the counter punching tactics is to go after the dossier, to say that that dossier, that's the

real root of the problem. none of it is true. it came from bad people who had a corrupt purpose, that dossier and all of it's terribleness was the basis for the fbi looking into this stuff and the first place, it's bad information and anybody that relied on it or got near it is tainted by it. it is fake and the russia investigation is fake. that's the main counter argument by the republicans and by the white house against the investigation into what happened to our election and whether the trump campaign was in on it. if everything else dropped out, they would hold on to that. there is diane feinstein saying quote, to my knowledge, there is not a single fact that's proven to be incorrect. what we got today from her releasing these 312 pages against the wishes of republicans is a clear, readable statement about where the dossier, in fact, came from, how it came to be this former british intelligence agent was engaged by this american company

to talk to people in russia about trump's business trips there and about the russian government's interest and involvement in the election involving trump. if your counter argument against the russia investigation that threatens this presidency, if the counter argument is the dossier is corrupt and not credible and the whole investigation springs from that, if that's what you're counting on, it is damaging to that argument to have the public learn in detail how that thing actually came to be. and why the people who created it believed its credibility at the time and how they handled the information as they received it and why they all stand by it now. so let's talk about what we learned today. that's next. >> tech: at safelite autoglass we know that when you're spending time with the grandkids... ♪ music >> tech: ...every minute counts. and you don't have time for a cracked windshield. that's why at safelite, we'll show you exactly when we'll be there.

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one year ago today, buzz feed published the russian dossier over the course of the last year, trump supporting republicans in the conservative media tried to turn the russia investigation into a scandal that's about the dossier. well, today because diane feinstein took it upon herself to release the transcript of ten hours of testimony by the

founder of "fusion gps" explaining the origin of the dossier, finally, there is on the record their own story, their own explanation about who they are, how this came to be. so, who is fusion gps? how come we have never heard of them before? are they some big political player? are they a big partisan firm? quote, we do things like policy disputes, one industry versus another. we don't do a lot of campaign consulting but every four years we've done some presidential work. most campaigns don't have the budget for the services we provide so we do things where people have resources to pay for a serious piece of research so we do things like california initiative or presidential. question, how would you describe your pitch and why would a client need your services? answer, generally speaking people tend to get referred to us when they have a sort of undefined need, like they feel they don't know what happened or they don't know what's going on. question, you described your work as open-ended and not results directed. can you explain what you mean more by that? answer, in general, when people tell us their challenges we stipulate they retain us for 30 days, agree to pay our fee, don't tell us what to do and don't tell us what result to get.

i like to call it a holistic med methodology. the reason we do it that way because we're professionals and it's not right to have people dictate how to do things and, if you predetermine the results you're looking for, you tend to miss things. that's starting on page 54 of the transcript. that's how they work broadly speaking. on page 62 we learn how they were engaged to look at donald trump and what they were looking for. this is fascinating. page 62. it was broadly speaking a kind of who wia holist iic holistic n at the bankruptcies, suppliers of products he was selling and evolved somewhat quickly into issues of relationships to organized crime figures but really the gambit of donald trump. what we do in the beginning of the case is order books about the subject from amazon so we're not reinventing the wheel.

we know what's been written and said before. this is typical. we ordered every donald trump book and to my surprise, that's a lot of books. i was never interested in donald trump. he was not a serious political figure i'd ever been exposed to so i w i was wanting to learn about. those books cover his divorces, casinos, early years with mafia and again, it was an unlimited look at, you know, his businesses, his finances, that sort of thing. as a company, we looked at where his money came from and that raised a lot of questions. we saw indications some money came from kazakhstan. some of it you just couldn't account for. we also conducted a broader look at the entire career and overseas investments in places like europe and latin america. you know, it wasn't really a russia focused investigation for the first half of it. that was just one component of a broader look at his business career, his finances. we looked at the golf courses and if they made money and the debt they had. how could someone go through so

many bankruptcies and have a billion dollars in personal assets still? we looked at his tax bills. we looked at tax bills. in the early stage of an investigation, you want to get every lawsuit the guy has been in so we collected lawsuits from around the country and around the world. question, and when did you engage mr. steele to conduct opposition research on candidate trump? answer, i don't specifically recall but it would have been may or june 2016. question, and why did you engage mr. steele in may or june of 2016? >> answer, we had done an enormous amount of work on trump generally at this point in the project and we began to drill down on specific areas. steele is not the only subcontractor we engaged. other parts of the world required other people. we were, for example, interested the trump family was selling merchandise in the u.s. made in sweatshops in asia and south america so we needed somebody else for that. there were other things. we were not totally focused on russia at the time. we did reading and research. we were drilling down on specific areas. scotland was another one.

what happens when you get to this point in an investigation when you gathered all of the public record information and began to exhaust the open source material, you tend to find specialists that can take you further into a subject. i had known christopher steele since i left the wall street journal. he was an extremely well-regarded investigator. that is broadly why i asked him to see what he could find out about donald trump's business activities in russia. question, in may of june of 2016 you hired steele to find out what he could about trump's business activities in russia. did something in particular trigger that assignment? answer, the basis for the request he made a number of trips to russia and talked about doing a number of business deals but never did one and that struck me as odd and called for an explanation. we didn't know. it was opaque what donald trump was doing on these business trips to russia. we didn't know what he was doing there. we gave chris an assignment to

see what donald trump has been doing on these trips to russia. that's only up to page 82 and that's where it gets really interesting. we'll be right back. (vo) i was born during

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the fbi investigation did not begin because of opposition research. it did not begin because researchers or journalists or security officials fell victim to russian disinformation. it did not begin because of fake news or because democrats needed

an explanation for losing an election. it began when multiple allies, friends of the united states warned us the russian government was interfering in our democratic process. >> senator sheldon whitehouse of rhode island will be live with us in a minute. he was on the senate floor giving a barn burner speech and how the congressional investigations are diverted and thwarted by the republican-led congress and those turning the russia scandal into a scandal about the trump russia dossier, which blew wide open today on the eve of the one-year anniversary on the day the dossier was published by buzz feed news. so today, surprise, senator diane feinstein decided to unilaterally make the decision to release the ten-hour transcript of testimony from fusion gps' founder from when the judiciary committee interviewed him about the firm

and role in the dossier and the dossier central to the republicans and the white house push back against the investigation. now, one of the things that is a revelation in the transcripts today is that fusion gps and christopher steele apparently didn't know, had no idea that they were going to find what they found about donald trump when steele first started making his reports. so from page 143 of the transcript that was released today. this is glen simpson speaking. so with the purpose of this was to see if we can learn more about his business dealings in russia and what came back was something that had to do with, you know, outlined a political

conspiracy and much broader set of issues than what we went looking for. initially, we didn't know what to do with this. page 147. so this was unusual in what we were doing here and not what i had in mind when i asked chris steele to collect information. it was something less interesting, more on the lines of a typical corruption investigation. so they asked steele to look into trump's business trips to russia, his business dealings in russia. they got this information collected by christopher steele, which fusion says is not at all what they were expecting to get but had to decide what to do with it. they were unprepared according to fusion gps and we get the human drama from the guy with fusion, glenn simpson and chris steele, this intelligence guy, he's engaged to find this oh my god, what did you find about donald trump. quote, page 159, after the first memo, chris said he was very concerned about whether this represented a national security threat. he said he wanted to. he said he thought we were obligated to tell someone in our government about this information. he thought from his perspective there was an issue, security issue about whether a presidential candidate was being blackmailed.

so he proposed to, he said we should tell the fbi. it's a national security issue. i didn't originally agree or disagree. i just put it off. i said i need to think about it then he raised it again with me. my recollection is that i questioned how we would do that because i didn't know anybody there i could report something like this to and be believed and i didn't think it was necessarily appropriate for me to do that. in any event, he said, meaning steele said, i know the perfect person. i have a contact there. they will listen to me. they know who i am. i'll take care of it. i said okay. i agreed. it's potentially a crime in progress. if we can do that in the most appropriate way, i said it was okay for him to do that. question, who was involved in discussions about whether it was appropriate to take the memo or information in the memo to the fbi? answer, it was chris and me. question, you said you asked for some time to think it over. what in particular did he articulate that was of significant national security concern to indicate it should be

taken to the fbi? >> answer, his concern, which is something counter intelligence people deal with a lot, was whether or not there was blackmail going on, whether a political candidate was being blackmailed or had been compromised, he honed in on this issue of blackmail as being a significant national security issue. joining us now is senator sheldon whitehouse of rhode island, who made a big public stink about the fact the transcripts ought to be released. sir, thank you for your time tonight. i really appreciate you being here. >> good to be with you. >> first, let me ask you about the process by which these came to light. you and senator blumenthal had been very articulate in making the case that these transcripts should be released, that senator grassley was wrong to be holding them back from the public. what do you make of the decision by your colleague to unilaterally release them today? >> i think she made the right call. the senate judiciary committee

has been essentially divided by chairman grassley saying we're going to do our own investigations on the republican side and you should go do your own investigations on the democratic side. so given that and given the, i guess, misleading way in which some of this information has been handled in the past, i think the ranking member, senator feinstein, felt it was appropriate on the democratic side for her to release the actual transcript of this information, which i think helps rebut a lot of the narrative that has been build around a very few selected facts and frankly, the best way to do that is simply let the american public see what this guy actually said and puts it into a very different context. >> this information in this transcript is obviously new to us in the public. it's not new to you and colleagues in the committee and this information has been

available to you. can i just ask about senator feinstein's assertion today that nothing in this report, meaning the dossier, has been disproven. the witness who is the subject of this transcript, glenn simpson, says that in the year this dossier has been public now, none of it has been proven to be disinformation. do you share that believe that nothing in the dossier has been conclusively disproven? >> i think there is one, there are a few typos. alpha bank is spelled a different way and there is a location, prague, where a meeting was asserted to have taken place and i don't think it can be shown the individual was actually there, but that could be a question of just getting

the jegeography wrong. i think what you have here is a dossier that was put together as a draft initial intelligence product, but one of the senior people from the london desk of m 16 looking at russia and so he's a very credible person. he's a person who our law enforcement community have relied on for analysis and information fairly regularly. so he's not an unknown and he comes in, i think, with a very thoughtful and thorough report but it is a first cut so there are going to be likely some errors in it, which most astonishing is when you consider how politically charged this is and how this whole investigation is for the trumps, that with everything that the republicans have had to level at this report were down to discussing was the meeting really in prag -- prague and did you spell alpha bank

right. against the pressure brought to bear against the report and considering it was only offered as a preliminary intelligence survey, i think the report held up dammed well. >> we seen some evolution on the subject of this report among your republican colleagues as i pointed out earlier in the show, in august shortly after this testimony was given, senator grassley seemed to be releasing this information, pee he said he didn't see any reason why he would vote to keep this information from the public and told constituents he would allow the committee to vote whether this should be released and one other republican member told us he also, senator hatch would vote to release it. since then senator grassley changed his mind.

we've had that sort of an evolution and seen a little bit of evolution just today since this was released. senator graham today made comments he essentially is glad this is now out in the public record. he had not previously been saying it should be released. senator cornyn is saying he's glad this is out now. where do you assess your republican colleagues in terms of where they are at on the russia investigation at large? your speech today on the senate floor was scathing in terms of the way they tried to divert the russia investigation into chasing other kinds of rabbits as you describe tonight. >> yeah, that goes back to the famous senator sam irvin and watergate talking about when you try to go out on a bear hunt, the people don't want you to get the bear, try to get you chasing rabbits instead. i went through a list of the rabbits the republicans have put in front of us and public to try to divert what is going on. this came into that world when they were able to begin to create the narrative that somehow the russians were not only going after hillary, but they are going after trump. they weren't trying to help both of them and the fusion gps contract and the steele dossier were somehow involved in all of that. and i think at that point things got complicated and departs from

the facts as disclosed by the transcript. you have to take a little bit of information here and there and build a narrative around them that the real context explodes, and i think that's been the difficulty, is that they've built this narrative, or at least some have built this narrative on a very selected little set of facts. but now that the whole thing is out there, the story that they were shopping just doesn't stand up. >> if the argument is well-run, the people who have the facts on their side should win the argument in the end and persuade the people who had a misunderstanding of the facts. >> typically but your start is an incomplete and selective set of facts chosen for the purpose of a particular narrative. >> senator sheldon, thanks for being with us. >> my pleasure.

>> we'll be right back. stay with us. heartburn.

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michael cohen has been the president's personal attorney and executive at the trump organization for a long time. he features prominently by name in the dossier and very vocal about the denials he did any of the things he's described of doing. as of tonight, he sued buzz feed news for publishing that document a year ago. he's suing them for defamation saying he had no involvement in the conspiracy. mr. cohen is suing gps that turned the news upside down today. if you thought this story had gone to 11, turns out the dial goes to 12. congressman adam schiff joins us next. ♪

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joining us now is congressman adam schiff. he is the top democrat on the house intelligence committee. congressman schiff, thank you for being here tonight. we really brought it. >> it's good to be with you. >> i was looking forward to getting your reaction to this dramatic move by senator dianne feinstein. if your home state california she made a unilateral decision to release this transcript today against the wishes of the committee chairman. what is your reaction to her decision to do that and to what we've learned based on this new transcript? >> well, a couple of reactions. first of all, i'm very glad that she did it. the senate judiciary committee operates under different rules than we do in the house intelligence committee and they have more latitude than to release transcripts than we do. but i was also calling for the their release so the public could see exactly what glenn simpson had to say and what the situation was in terms of christopher steele and put away some of the misinformation campaign that has been put out there by the administration and its allies. so i think it's very positive

that she has done this. also say i can certainly understand her concern if this was a part of our calculation with the letter that senators grassley and graham wrote urging an investigation of christopher steele. i think that's a terrible thing to do. and just part of an effort to go after christopher steele and go after fusion gps, go after the fbi, go after the doj. look at anything except what russia did in our election. tremendous disservice i think to christopher steele who really did a patriotic duty in alerting the fbi that a presidential campaign may be compromised by the russians. >> senator grassley has raised the concern that releasing this transcript will affect the ability of his committee to get other witnesses to come in. it may affect the integrity of the investigation by giving other witnesses information about what simpson has testified to which might affect their own version of events. what do you think about those concerns?

>> well, i know one of the concerns that he expressed was that others would be chilled from testifying. i don't think that's true because here you had glenn simpson calling for his own transcript to be released. if you have a witness who doesn't want that to take place, that's quite a different circumstance. there are from time to time good investigative reasons to do things in closed session and not to release the transcripts so people don't link up their stories together. but here i don't think you can really complain about it when you see so much misinformation being put out about mr. simpson. and there is a certain basic level of fairness you have to consider in allowing a witness to defend themselves. so i think it was the right decision by senator feinstein. it certainly seems like some of the gop members of the committee can now concur with that. >> congressman, i wanted to ask you about one of the things that appeared in this transcript that i think will not be new to you, because of your role in the intelligence committee. but i think is probably new to much of the public. and so i'll only ask you to comment on this.

obviously not in terms of your knowledge of classified information, but in terms of what has been publicly discussed. but there's a dramatic moment late in the transcript, page 279 to be precise when a question questioner -- an investigator is asking mr. simpson about how fusion assessed the credibility of christopher steele's source, his sources in russia for this document, these reports that he produced. without getting into naming the sources or anything like that, what steps did you take to try to verify their credibility? simpson declines to answer, that and clearly there has been some negotiation between simpson and the committee as to what he would talk about. but the investigator then asks why? why are you refusing to answer this question? and simpson's lawyer responds as

such, quote, it's a voluntary a interview, and in addition to that, he wants to be very careful to protect his sources. somebody has already been killed as a result of the publication of this dossier, and no harm should come to anybody related to this honest work. can you tell us anything about what that's about? >> well, i mean, there has been a lot of speculation about who the sources might be. certainly a lot of speculation in the united states. you have to imagine there is a lot of speculation going on in russia as well. they're watching this very carefully. and anyone that is providing information that went to christopher steele, it ultimately went to the fbi, they would have the greatest desire to find and to kill. and when people have died under mysterious circumstances in russia, there have been profound questions about whether those deaths or death -- death or deaths are connected here. now i can't say whether they are or they aren't. but i can say glenn simpson has i think a well-founded concern as does christopher steele over the safety of anyone that was a source for these reports. so that information has to be very jealously guarded. and i can understand why he would have such a tremendous hesitation than.

>> congressman adam schiff, the top democrat on the intelligence committee. thank you so much for being with us tonight, sir. i really appreciate your time. >> you bet. thank you, rachel. >> all right. somebody's already been killed as a result of the publication of this dossier. it's been a big day of news. stay with us. we'll be right back. ♪

with expedia, you can book a flight, then add a hotel, and save. ♪ everything you need to go. expedia congressman ron desantis is a republican congressman from florida. he is running for governor there. you might have heard his name in national news recently when president trump apparently saw him on the fox news channel and volunteered publicly how great he thought ron desantis would be as florida governor.

since then congressman desantis has stepped up his involvement in the republican campaign against the russia investigations. tonight he has written to house speaker paul ryan telling the house speaker to declassify release classified documents about that dossier. mr. desantis says, quote, the people have the right to know if the fbi used its considerable resources to interfere, period. we don't yet know whether speaker ryan has replied whoor or what he will say, but anything is possible. that's it for us tonight. november we'll see you tomorrow. now it's time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." >> good evening, rachel. when i got the transcript today, i knew you had it in your hands. surely before i did, before we managed to get it printed, because it takes a while. as i s