that lasts an hour and 20 minutes. you can always take a break from candy crush and hit us up at facebook at the beat with ari. i'll see you back here at 6:00 p.m. "hardball" with chris matthews is up next. >> above the law. let's play "hardball." good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. in a year of all-out war between the president of the united states and the american justice system, this latest battle might reach a new height all together. president trump appears now to be ready for war with his own fbi director. it's over whether or not to release a partisan report dressed up as an intelligence document. it's authored by the staff of trump's chief congressional defender, devin nunes, the battle lines are as clear as they are astounding. on one side, the people who obviously want the memo

releases. have you congressman nunes, president trump and majority of congressional republicans, even leaders like speaker paul ryan. on the other side, nearly the country's entire national security establishment. the fbi yesterday put out an unprecedented public statement saying we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo's accuracy. the fbi director christopher wray appointed by trump himself privately warning the white house against releasing this memo. the department of justice told nunes last week the release was extraordinarily reckless. deputy attorney general rod rosenstein went to the white house and appealed to president trump's chief of staff john kelly not to make the memo public. he was rebuffed. former cia director john brennan, a career intelligence officer tweeted, i had many fights with congressional democrats over the years on national security matters but i never witnessed a type of

reckless partisan behavior i am now seeing from nunes and house republicans. absence of moral and ethical leadership in the white house is fuelling this government crisis. and the cia director under president bush michael hayden said this today. >> it is the part of intelligence that most needs to keep politics out of the process. and here we have now an injection of hyper partisanship into that process. and i just fear great daniel that will be done to institutions including oversight committees in the congress, including the presidency and, of course, obviously, the fbi. >> well, white house official said today said they will tell congress probably tomorrow the president is okay releasing the memo likely with no redactions. i'm joined by eric swalwell of california, former assistant director at the fbi, frank fig

gluecy, nbc national security adviser and natasha bertrand from the atlantic and charlie savage, also an msnbc contributor. the congressman here, this is exinfratraary. i wonder, does the president understand what he's doing here basically trying to crash into the very people protecting this country's security? >> well, chris, the president is likely under investigation. so you know, he shouldn't have anything to do or be anywhere near reviewing a memo. that's a monumental conflict of interest that he or the white house counsel is able to look at this. who obviously are the adults? it's the members of the intelligence committee who obviously are trusted with our nation's secrets and hop are expected to not allow politics to invade into the independence of the department of justice and that responsibility has been advocated by chairman nunes and every member of the committee who obviously has vote odd to allow this inaccurate memo to be released.

they are risking the republicing to protect the president. for what in for tax cuts? to deregulate their friends in industry? i can't imagine what reason they would put all of us at risk. >> is the chairman of your committee working for the united states congress and fulfilling his oath or work for the white house. >> he never left the transition team. just by his actions. he continues to work hand in hand to try and protect the president. that's such a damn shame, chris, because we've always been a bipartisan committee. we travel to the roughest spots in the world to meet with our military. we've always just worked to you know, keep our nation safe and he has -- i'm afraid destroyed that. it's almost irreparable now as long as he's there. >> does he know he took an oath to the constitution and not to one man? >> i don't know. i can be tell you again his actions. his actions are destructive. chris, just to further show his

actions, he sent over to the white house a different memo than what was voted out of the committee. they altered the memo materially omitting further information causing greater confusion and that's what the house will be releasing. we think they're releasing an unauthorized memo. >> frank, your thoughts about this. i think it's a broader question. i'm going to get to the goofiness of the entire republican party led by president trump to hang their hat on the goofy performance of carter page and the goofiness of defending him against any kind of surveillance as if all his years of russian connections and selling of his russian connections to the trump campaign and his involvement as an sbeer intermediary back and forth, if that's not worthy of investigation, i don't know what is in thames of this. we know the russians screwed with our election. we know the trump people were involved and we want to get to one of the people doing it. for some reason, chairman nunes says that is man must be protected from surveillance.

we must not note what carter page was doing with the russians over in moscow. i find it an incredible thing for the party that the long fought communism has somehow decided they're going to go down on the issue of defending carter page and the role that the trump people played with the russians. your thoughts? >> frank? >> i think in the long term, they're going to come to regret this as an party. it's going to irreparably harm in the near term and long-term the republican party. so there's many things wronging with this picture. pick one or two. first, the testimony of the committee that was released by congressman schiff where they asked nunes, did you conspire, did you talk with anybody in the white house about this memo about drafting it. the lack of response, i'm not answering any further questions. i don't know. this smacks of further obstruction because remember, the obstruction statute speaks to the need for intent. if you're talking to the white

house about crafting this memo, when to release it, what the contents are, you're conspireing to obstruct. what's one more wrong thing with this. if you don't trust your fbi director to deal with alleged misconduct involve agaffidavit submitted to court, get rid of him. if you don't trust the inspect her general to deal with allegations of misconduct, get rid of him. they're not choosing to do that but doing a release tomorrow in the form of essentially a press release. >> frank, everybody watching this show knows they're willing to get people investigating them. they got rid of comey and mccabe. now they're targeting it rosenstein. they're going after him. i mean, they're going to going after wray. what about chris wray? they put the guy as fbi director. are they going to bounce him? it looks like they might it be willing to threaten the guy. >> this is essentially what they're doing. putting him between a rock and hard place. dishonestly asking somebody when had he stopped beating their

wife. the mere fact that you have to repeat the terrible allegation is damning itself. so if wray comes out and tries to rebut the memo bullet by bullet he's forced to repeat in the public domain what he doesn't want even exposed. they've trapped hill on this. >> anyway, president trump's motives in pushing for the release of the memo seems clear to impeach the people he sees as a esis tensional threat to his presidency. he's right about that. they're trying to get to the truth. "the washington post" reports according to a person familiar with his comments, the president has told advisers the memo might make people realize how the fbi and mueller are biased against him. that could give him reasonton force rosenstein out. and cnn reports in phone calls last night and over the past few days, trump has told friends he believes the memo would expose bias within the agency's top ranks and make it easier for him

to argue the russian investigations are prejudiced against him according to two sources. today, congressman adam schiff, the ranking democrat on the house intel committee voiced a similar concern. let's watch the congressman. >> the president is looking for a reason to fire bob mueller. the president is looking for a reason to fire rod rosenstein. the bigger concern right now is for rod rosenstein. this has been true for me for some time. why rosenstein and not bob mueller? the white house knows it would face a firestorm if it fired bob mueller. what's more effective is to fire bob mueller's boss. now, why is that more effective? rod rosenstein decides the scope of bob mueller's investigation. >> let me go to natasha ber brand. thank you for copping on. here's the question. it looks they're setting this up saying if you go after the truth, you prosecutors all the way down from the fbi whoever is head of the fbi or the special

counsel's office, if you go after the truth and find out what the trump people were doing with the russians like carter page, what were they doing over there with mos moscow figures when the russians are trying to control our elections? what were they doing perhapses in collaboration and collusioning? >> if you do that, we'll attack you for doing that. if you stop us is, we'll get rid of you. they're saying to prosecutes if you prosecute, if you investigate, we're going to call you out and say, you're the enemy of the people. it's unbelievable how far they're going with this thing. >> right. basically it puts the fbi and doj in a pretty impossible position. there are a lot of ex-fbi agencies saying if the memo does come out tomorrow, over the auctions of chris wray and the doj, then wray might have to be forced to resign just because his position and his clout will have been so undermined. this whole thing started of course, at the white house. this entire debacle started when

devin nunes got out of his car in late march of 2017 after receiving a phone call from the white house telling him that they will had documents that he just had to see about alleged obama administration surveillance on trump associates. he then went out and gave a press conference. he briefed the president on this intelligence that he had seen. and that is kind of when the entire narrative of potential abuse by the fbi and the doj came into the forefront. and, of course, it had been already out there because trump had said, well, i wonder if obama had my wires tapped at trump tower. you can trace the origins of this clearly. >> who obviously wrote the memo? >> which memo? >> this memo? >> devin nunes. his staffers. >> which staffer? >> cash patel. >> and what's his background? >> cash patel worked at the doj. he's been a long-time nunes kind of loyalist. he was actually one of the staffers that was dispatched to london last year to look for

christopher steele kind of showed up at his lawyer's door along with another staffer, nunes staffer and demanded to talk to him. >> right. >> what's his contacts with the white house west wing and the people working over at the eisenhower executive office building? what are his kaks? why would he be over at a place like that? >> it's unclear. but a figure of interest in all of this is a guy named isenberg who obviously is alleged to have given devin nunes the documents to begin with last march. and, or course. >> he was the guy that started the midnight ride over there where nunes goes 0 over to the old executive office building next to the white house, picks up material, goes back to the white house west wing the next day and says guess what i have and clearly was carrying stuff just for trump that made it look like he was some sort of actually a u.s. congress person pretenning to be one. >> the whole thing was contrived from the beginning. it was as if the white house was

laundering kind classified information through nunes so he could make it public and create a case to go after the fbi. >> we might have more on this staffer for nunes tomorrow, cash patel. >> chris, the claims were bogus then. the claims were bogus then. that's important to note. he never produced that evidence and hasn't produced evidence now. >> what do you think of that operation, nunes staff operation? who obviously are those people? are they white house people, basically dupes? do they work for the white house? do they say they work for announce? who obviously do they work for? you're supposed to be a separate branch of government. >> they're supposed to work for the people. where i come from, the name of the person on the door is the person responsible. devin nunes is the chairman of the committee. he's responsible for what's going on right now. and paul ryan should remove him immediately. >> do you think the white house actually wrote this infamous memo? >> they worked with -- they have been working with devin nunes on this memo, yes.

that is clear. >> the president of the united states is being asked to approve over this weekend whether they put out a memo whether he had a hand and his people had a hand in creating. it's a joke. >> it gives him a window into the evidence into the russia investigation. he is a potential subject of that. it's a compromised investigation. >> we're going to talk about a constitutional crisis. it seems to me the constitution has always been turned on its butt. we've got a chairman of a committee on intelligence which has been a bipartisan committee. they're basically there to work together and find out if our intelligence committees are doing their job. it's a tool of a president playing defense. >> that's the right way to think about this in terms of going on offense as the best defense. think about what the memo is, it's sort of a three-part set. first of all, it looks at the use of steele dossier information or information from steele in this application and portrays that as a scandal because the judge wasn't fully told who obviously was funding

it. >> this is the trump case. >> right, or the nunes case. >> same difference. >> but it's not just that the that original application for carter page had this information in it. the important thing, the most important thing i think from what we're hearing it talks about extending that wiretap application applying for renewals every 90 days up to the point in which the trump administration is in charge and rod rosenstein is the official signing off on that dossier that resubmits the same information to the court saying we want to stay up on this guy. if it is a scandal to use steele information in the application, rod rosenstein is guilty of the same. >> they're going at him. >> this is the ammunition to go after rod rosenstein. >> why would is the president want to get rid of rosenstein. >> he is the only man standing between trump and mueller. trump can't fire mueller. only rod rosenstein can. he can put someone else in there willing to do his bidding. he needs an excuse. so this could give him the

excuse to replace rod rosenstein who obviously has refused to find that mueller has committed misconduct and therefore, a rational for removing him and put someone else willing to say that. >> i have a sense that the people who obviously talk to the president at night when they come to him at night when he's worried when people tend to get worried, they go to him, he has one thought. what do i have to do right now to save my butt. thank you eric swalwell, thank you, sir. great testimony for us tonight. thank you, frank and natasha and charlie savage. coming up, robert mueller wants to know more about how trump and his team crafted a fake explanation for that trump tower meeting with don junior, kushner the son-in-law and paul manafort. the one they had with the russians last, you know key figures in the trump white house are feeling the heat. when went on in that room last june with the russians? plus, role reversal. can you imagine is the outrage from republicans had it been hillary clinton who were president right now and had done

the kinds of things donald trump has been doing and chelsea. just flip it around and say suppose they had done anything like this. when you lay it out like that, it's staggering to see how republicans continue to put party over principle. the reckoning coming for the republican party as they for an whatever reasons defend trump in what is sure to be a collision with robert mule per finally, lets me finish tonight with trump watch. he won't like it. this is "hardball" where the action is. ♪ ♪

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speeches with much higher viewership. president trump has never let the facts get in the way of a good story. here he goes. >> we had a massive crowd of people. we had a crowd, i looked over that sea of people and i said to myself, wow. >> here's a picture of the crowd. now, audience was the biggest ever. but this crowd was massive. look how far back it goes. >> it looked like a million and a half people. whatever it was it was. it went all the way back to the washington monument. people came out and voted like they've never seen before. i guess it was the biggest electoral college win since reagan. that speech was a home run. they loved it. they gave me a standing ovation for a long period of time. they never sat down most of them for the speech. >> how do you sit down to him looking him in the face three feat away and buy that stuff without what, smirking? we'll be right back. take off for mexico with expedia. ♪

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welcome back to "hardball." the "new york times" is reporting today that special counsel robert mueller is zeroing in on the misleading story that the president and his advisers drafted to explain a now infamous campaign meeting with russians back in june of 2016. as we know, jared kushner, paul manafort, and donald trump jr. took that meeting at trump tower to get russian dirt on hoda kotb. that's why they met. it began with a business associate when the that associate e-mailed donald trump jr. offering "sensitive information that could -- that would incriminate hillary, information he said was a product of russia and its government support more mr. trump." in response is, donald trump jr. said if it's what you say, i love it. when news of the meeting came to light last summer, 2017 it, donald trump jr. offered a statement that concealed the meetings's real purpose saying we primarily discuss aid program for the adoption of russian children. well, it was revealed the

president supervised the drafting that statement for his son and his role in doing so has become a focus of the investigation into obstruction of justice by the president. now the "times" reports the special counsel is interested in speaking to mark corallo who obviously resigned shortly after that statement was issued. according to three people familiar with the special counsel's request, corallo plans to tell mueller about a previously undisclosed conference call he had with the president and communications aide hope hicks. they're all involved in this. "corallo planned to tell investigators miss hicks said during the call ta e-mails written by donald trump trump junior before the trump tower meeting "ing will never get out." the e-mails will never get out, she said. that left him with concerns she could be contemplating obstructing justice. late last night, a lawyer to hicks herself denied the allegations saying she never said that and the idea that hope

hicks said documents would be concealed or destroyed is completely false. that's what lawyers do. ken delynnian and malcolm nance. it goes back to something we all understood. the clinton family, i always them the roman nofs seemed to move as' family. the son-in-law jared and they brought in the -- i'm sorry, the son jared, the son-in-law and don junior and they all went in with the manafort has all those russian ties to get dirt on hillary clinton, the opponent and had it say we didn't do that because that seems sleazy, maybe illegal. why would they want to the cover that up? why would hope hicks say if she did, we're going to get rid of those e-mails? >> as you said, it looks incriminating. even if it wasn't incriminating. all the evidence we've seen and my reporting tells me there wasn't any significant dirt offered by the russians at this meeting. it looked horrible. the e-mail setting it up talked about a russian government

effort to help your father's campaign which is exactly what the mueller investigation is designed to root out. presumably when donald trump saw that, he knew he had a huge problem on his hands. now we're having this meeting. the significant aspect of the story is what you read. the passage that talks about hope hicks, talking with the president of the united states about potentially will hiding these e-mails. there's no way you can hide the e-mails because the lawyers had marked them already for turning over to congress. robert mueller was not aware of this meeting till it was reported by "the new york times." so it does seem that they were at least thinking about how to disguise this from investigators and even if this alone is not incriminating for hope hicks and her lawyers deny she said this, it raises a question what other behavior is out there, what other e-mails did she send, was she engaging in an effort to cover things up and does she have criminal exposure. >> let's talk about exposure by hicks and the president. they knew there was a special

counsel coming for them and looking exactly at this, their relations with the russians and in terms of dirty stuff. promising that. they knew it. if they were talking about destroying evidence like she was quoted there saying, i'm going to erase e-mails, they'll never see the light of day, isn't that prima facie on its surface obstructing evidence? >> but the allegation is not she said destroy them. she was raising the question whether she's would come out, whether they would be discovered because they were such a small group of people. that col either be naive or malicious. it depends on what other evidence there is out there about her conduct, chris. >> since when is e-mail disappear. >> it doesn't disappear. it lasts forever. let me bring in malcolm for a thought about this. i see the pattern. what do you see? i think everybody watching knows this. they were playing hanky panky with the russians and tried to cover it up.

it ain't complicated this game. >> no, it's not. this didn't happen in a vacuum. there is now this whole constellation of contacts. take a quick walk through memory lane and look at some of the more significant. in november of 2015, trump's personal lawyer, cohn, sending e-mail saying russia would be working in their interests and soon after putin gives trump a thumbs up saying he's a colorful personality. move on that. we find papadopoulos was making contact with people connected to moscow and saying they will 20,000 e-mails. soon after that, carter page is going over to russia and talking supposedly, well he has a fisa warrant on him and supposedly in communications with russian personnel. and in the middle of that is the donald trump jr. e-mail conference where they say they're going to get dirt on hoda kotb. there was a dirty tricks campaign afoot.

when that information came out last year, the first thing the white house team decided to do was sit down and figure out a cover story. that almost immediately became inoperative. >> let me go back to ken. when i think about donald trump on the plane, president of the united states and that fabulous new air force one we've had the last couple presidents sitting on that plane fixing screw ups of his kids what, do they do, what did they say? we've got to come up with a story. and hope hicks is a smart pr person. probably somebody says we're just trying to get adoptions. we all know about the problems of adopting kids from russia, tricky stuff there and medical records played with and everything. okay. let's say that was what it was. is that obstruction to make up a complete story and sell it in the media to cover up for a very, very tricky meeting you had with the russians? >> as you know, chris, it's not a lie to -- for politicians to lie to the american public. if it was, everybody in

washington would be in jail. but there are legal theories under which. >> except jimmy carter. >> there are legal theories under which repeated lies by public officials to the public designed to op fuss indicate, designed to mislead investigators, congressional investigators, federal investigators, there's legal theories that could become part of a pattern of obstruction, particularly if there's a conspiracy. this could be construed as an overt act of the conspiracy. >> the "new york times" describes how trump and his aides scrambled to formulate a response to the reports of that trump tower meeting aboard air force one. a fierce debate erupted how much information if the news release should include. mr. trump was insistent about including language that the meeting was about russian adoptions. according to two people with knowledge of the discussion. trump's attorneys were not consulted about this statement before it was released. in his book, "fire and fury," michael wolff said that the trump's legal spokesman resigned over the episode. soon thereafter, corallo seeing

no good outcome and privately confiding he believes the meeting on air force one represented a likely obstruction of justice quit. malcolm? when people start to walk away, i think the special prosecutor, the special counsel starts to bring in people to talk. he walked away. why did he walk away? let's listen to him. corallo must be talking. >> corallo must be talking. look, he saw a crime in progress. and he didn't want to have any part of it even though he himself waet a lawyer. but more important, more importantly, donald trump himself insisted that they use the cover story of the adoptions. he knew about that at least one year ago that that was the reason that the vessel knitskaya and the others met with donald trump jr. in the i love it meeting. that itself, he had to -- he could not possibly have believed that would hold water.

he insisted that they do it. and it immediately fell apart. you know what i'm watching here, ken and malcolm, a guy who obviously came to washington with street smarts like trump does. he thought he didn't need washington expertise. the kind of mistakes he made here, ken, you both understand this, you bring in the smart washington lawyers. they know how to protect you from make making stupid mistakes and help you avoid getting into trouble. he was so arrogant, he said i'll listen to hope hicks. she'll help me out here. i'll get out there on a ledge defending carter page. give me a break. a smart lawyer in this town would have warned from day one, don't kill yourself over this crap. thank you ken, thank you malcolm nance. this thing is getting hot err every day. time for a role reversal. this is speculative. whatful hillary clinton were president right now and trying to get away with the sort of things this crowd has done? this is pure imagination. think about how the other side,

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president trump's first year in office has been clouded by the russia investigation and still will be. just a month into his second year, the president and his republican cowho ares are working together to undermine the investigation itself being

headed by special counsel mueller. here's what we know. in july we found out that donald trump jr. was offered incriminating information on hillary clinton. just talked about that. in october, we learned that foreign policy adviser george papadopoulos got a tip that the russian government had dirt on hillary clinton in e-mails. we learned michael flynn lied about his calls with the russian ambassador. jared kushner tried to set up secret communications with the same russian ambassador. and the president's attorney general jeff sessions failed to tell congress about his own meetings with the same russian ambassador. given all we have learned, "new york times" columnist brett stevens today posed an important question, what if hillary clinton had done all this stuff? if there were her presidency, he says, i would be writing columns calling for further investigations of a corrupt clinton administration and raising impeachment. i was there for the prequel back in '98 going after bill. more more, dana milbank, a man

with a gift for satire. i often like to do this, turn the tables. but hillary, this stuff is dealing with the reds with the russians, i mean all these meetings with this kislyak, over there in moscow, all the dinners, all the money going back and forth, bringing manafort, bringing all these russian people types. >> we have a pretty good idea of how the republicans would be reacting if a president clinton. >> levitating right now. >> think about it, after benghazi, seven investigations came up with nothing. the e-mail scandal, nobody charged. >> 11 hourses of hearings for nothing. >> even then they were saying is the leap yent people were saying lock her up. others like roger stone were saying execution by firing squad. now we have an investigation where already in just a year or so, we have two guilty pleas and two further indictments. at the least they would have impeached her. the only question is would she

now be in gitmo where would they be arranging the firing line. >> don't they see this? the answer is no. >> that hob goblin of consistency rarely surfaces. >> but the willingness to defend going after a guy who is as goofy seeming as carter page. he seems goofy. and the fact he has all these russian connections and turned them over to trump's people so they can use the connection with a government we know was screwing with our elections. it's coming together in one big goulash and they say we're going to go down to the line on this guy. the president is going out this weekend and saying i'm on the side of carter page. he should not have been surveilled. the fbi should not have been looking at him. what? it's goofy. >> it's an extraordinary thing. everybody in politics switches sides depending who is the president. this takes it to another degree. previously the republicans were devigs conspiracy theorys to see why clinton did something wrong. now to see why trump didn't do

something sfwloong suppose barack obama had gotten involved with an adult performer without getting in detail, somebody named stormy. just think about it. would they have given him a mulligan? >> no other politician has experienced anything like the things that trump has gone through and survived it. that would be clinton, obama, that would be everybody else in either party. but there's just that other extraordinary element here. they were going after clinton for mishandling classified information. what are they doing now? they are mishandling it classified information to protect trump. >> giving it out. thank you. you have a great -- are your column today is fabulous. up next, will there be a republican reckoning? the party of law and order is abandoning that principle to protect the president as he heads to a collision course with mueller. you're watching "hardball." creating the world's first state-of-the-art drone testing facility in central new york and the mohawk valley,

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collision course was robert mueller. republicans are desperate to give him cover. house republicans including minority leader kevin mccarthy and house speaker paul ryan are bull dozing ahead calling for the release of that controversial memo authored by committee chairman devin nunes and probably with help from the white house. earlier this week, ryan called the memo completely separate from the mule sher investigation. today he doubled down saying congress is doing his job and rejected that the memo has anything to do with the mueller investigation. >> what will this is not is the an indictment on our institutions of our justice system. this memo is not an indictment of the fbi of the department of justice. it does not impugn the mueller investigation or the deputy attorney general. people should not be implicating independence issues. this does not implicate the

mueller investigation. this does not implicate the d.a.g. this is about us holding the system accountable. >> let's bring in the roundtable to decide that question. cornell belcher, a democratic strategist, john feehery and caitlin huey-burns from real clear politics. caitlin, the speaker of the house says this has nothing to do with trying to get rid of rosenstein, the slow motion saturday night massacre because he got rid of comey, he's gunning for rosenstein. he says it's not. what do you say? >> it asks the question of why is the white house so eager to get this out. you heard the president on the record. >> because it damns somebody at the fbi. >> exactly. and there aren't any other conclusions to be drawn but that. so my question is, you know, the white house has repeatedly tried to undermine this investigation. my question is, what this memo if published would allow the white house or compel the president to do? actually take action beyond

rhetoric. that's what a lot of people are wondering. > i feel johnny had a hand in writing this. i think the staffs are basically working together, the drafting. now the president like he was that time that nunes did that midnight right of paul referee, came back the next morning and said guess what i got for you. he's working with the white house. i'm sorry. i think you know. >> let me make a couple points. i haven't read the memo. let's figure out. >> i know it came from the intelligence committee. i like devin nunes. he's a great guy he's getting unfairly ma lined. his committee is all behind him, all the members. >> all the members? >> the republican side of the committee, guys can like peter king, it's not just devin nunes. the third point i would make is if hillary clinton were elected, she would have the same questions, she's raise the same questions about the fbi. the fbi got involved in the politics of this and should not have gotten involved in the

politics. >> which side were they on. >> i don't know which side. >> 11 days before the election, they dropped this bomb on hillary clinton and you're saying they were on hillary's side. >> no, i'm not saying that. if hillary were elected she would do the same thing saying you almost cost me the election. she didn't because she didn't win. the fbi got involved in the election on both sides and made a mess of it. >> trump's contention is the fbi's against him, there's some bunch of lefties. >> that is a problem for both sides. >> do you believe they're a bunch of lefties at the fbi? if your whole life did you ever think of the fbi as a career for somebody on left side politically. >> i don't believe that at all. the fbi got involved in the politics on both sides and made a mess of it. that needs some oversight from congress. >> the president of the united states it always happens independence politics, you take the weirdest positions to make your point. he's defending carter page. he's kato kaelin. he's one of these weird guys that somehow gets into the story

like the o.j. case and there with that weird look on television. he's involved with the russians and becomes the man with the russians for the trump people. somehow, somehow trump says he should never be investigated for being the liaison with me and the run yashs even though that's exactly who obviously he was. >> it's unconscionable. chris, you've been around washington long enough. >> look at this. just watch, judge for yourself. >> there's some committees beyond partisanship to a certain extent you leave it at the door. the ethics committee and intelligence committee. >> that's the man they're basing everything on in the future of the republican party. >> nice hat though. >> take the hat. not what's in it. >> what's the real danger is that you will are undermining institutions and organizations that are important for democracy. look, you know, don't take it from me. leon panetta was on talking about how this endangers us with our allies, people and sources we have to work with on the frontlines of terrorism.

this is not only -- this is a dangerous to our democracy, undermines our safety. govern kasich was right. speaker ryan should tell nunes to cut it out because he's undermining one of the few committees once upon a time you left partisanship at the door. >> i've got to bring this up. the guy they've been killing is this guy named peter strzok, some sort of romance with somebody else. fair enough. he shouldn't have been. the e-mail stuff just blows me away. i don't know what they're up to. he wrote the document that basically came out 11 days before the election and the hillary people, lanny davis saying that's the reason hillary lost and it's a good argument. in october, she was leading in the polls. all of a sudden they open up this thing with huma abedin and anthony weiner and nothing really came out but it ruined her. now they're saying that guy was a sneak -- no, he was a little mole for hillary. give me a break.

he drafted the thing that blew her apart how can they say this stuff. >> this report undermines all of that. it's important to have congress have oversight of these agencies. i don't think any of us want to say the fbi should run without any oversight or any agencies. but the kind of the cherry picking of information apartment rush to get information out there to prove a point, on either side, is troubling. i think that's the bigger picture that people need to look at. you also have as ig report, an ig, the ig at the fbi looking into this, as well. >> who obviously let a grown-up on roundtable? what's going on? sticking with us. you're watching "hardball." what can a president do in thirty seconds? he can fire an fbi director who won't pledge his loyalty. he can order the deportation of a million immigrant children. he can threaten an unstable dictator armed with nuclear weapons. he can go into a rage

and enter the nuclear launch codes. how bad does it have to get before congress does something? when this guy got a flat tire in the middle of the night, so he got home safe.

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♪ ♪ fight security threats 60 times faster with ai that sees threats coming. the ibm cloud. the cloud for smarter business. now the "hardball" round table. cornell? >> we just came out of field with a poll in battleground states. millennials only 27% now approve of the job the president trump is doing. a majority of them strongly disapprove of the job he's doing. millennials are the key group pushing against donald trump right now. >> jooun john feehery. >> republicans have a problem in new york state. if they don't get anybody at the top of the ticket for the governor, senate or the lieutenant governor, they're not going to have anybody bringing any republicans to the polls and they can have an impact on house races.

they've got to get someone at the top of the ticket. >> mitt romney is teasing his senate announcement today. he would possibly be running as an anti-trump republican in utah. republicans say that republicans are running as close to trump as they can. >> can he get through the convention. >> yes, it looks like he'll be the nominee. >> thank you, cornell. let me finish tonight with trump watch. you're watching "hardball." actually, this is good. because um, i've been meaning to talk to you, uh oh. well, you know, you're getting older.

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trump watch thursday, february 1st, 2018. wouldn't you want to know if a foreign government worked to help change the course of a u.s. election? and that some americans gladly worked with them to their own electoral advantage? this is precisely the question now on the national debating table. should the fbi have tried to find out if a campaign helper for donald trump was working with or possibly for the russians during the 2016 election. trump's guy in congress says no, the fbi had no right to surveil the trump campaign helper. the fbi had no right to bug carter page to see what he might have been up to with the russians even though the bureau had been watching his russian connections well before he offered those connections to trump. here's another way to put it. suppose we all learned the russians were working to influence our presidential election and the fbi learned there there was someone with russian elections who obviously

turned those over to trump. what if the fbi didn't investigate that guy? wouldn't that be a concern for us? look, the dangerous game that trump republicans are playing here is to take this side of the russians against u.s. law enforcement officials trying to protect this country's security. especially in this case the security of our democratic process itself. of all the goofy aspects of the trump operation now under investigation, from the many meetings of trump's children and-in-laws with russians to the strange lack of memory of his attorney general of meetings he had with russians their decision now as all this comes near is whether to place their cards on the head of one carter page whose goofiness is obvious to the most loyal of the trump loyalists. that's "hardball" for now. thanks for being with us. all in with chris hayes. tonight on "all in." >> we actually, it was very

interesting. we talked about adoption. >> as robert mueller closes in. >> which is interesting because that was a part of the conversation that don had in that meeting. >> new reporting that the president himself directed the cover-up of his son's trump tower meeting with russians and why hope hicks is at the center of it all. >> hope, say a couple of words. >> plus, as republicans join the fbi to warn against releasing it, rising white house fears that the nunes memo is a dud. will the fbi director quit if the president releases the document? and he's the man his hometown paper calls trump's stooge. >> i think it should bother the president. >> just what is the deal with devin nunes? when "all in" starts right now. >> good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes. the e-mails "will never get out." those are the words that hope hicks the white house communications director