jill, thank you so much. this news continuing to unfold right here. thank you for watching this hour of msnbc live. we appreciate you watching. >> i will be back at 3:00 p.m. today. let's hand it over to andrea mitchell for "andrea mitchell reports." good day. breaking news. i'm andrea mitchell. we are moments away from bringing you the details of that memo, declassified in full by president trump. our investigative team will be poring over the pages, bringing you all of the information as soon as we have them. joining me now, nbc white house correspondent kristen welker, chuck todd, nbc political director, moderator of "meet the press," nbc national security and intelligence reporter, ken dilanian, nbc news justice analyst, matt miller, john mcloughlin, former acting director of the cia and national security analyst, msnbc contributor chuck rosenberg, former federal prosecutor, former chief of staff to james comey. peter alexander at the white house, i believe you were in the

photo opportunity with the president just now. what did he say? >> reporter: we will hear those remarks momentarily. we are cueing up the tape right now. but after he was done introducing some political prisoners from north korea, i asked him specifically about that memo, why he thought it should be made public. he said that he viewed the political biases here in his words as a disgrace, he said a lot of people in his words should be very ashamed of themselves. he would go on to say that he has declassified that memo, so there's the real headline, the memo has been declassified, that he says it has been sent over to congress right now, in his words, as you will hear as we play the tape momentarily, it's effectively up to the house intelligence community to do with it as they wish. he said it was important it be made public. i asked him about rod rosenstein, whether he had confidence in the deputy attorney general. he deflected on that, didn't answer that question. answered a couple other questions about north korea more broadly but again, the real headline right now, the white house has, as expected, moved forward, not objecting to the

release of this highly disputed classified, now declassified memo as it was compiled by staffers of devin nunes, the house intelligence committee chairman. >> and ken, i want to just circle back as we are waiting for the tape of the president momentarily to be released within a minute, the memo is going to report, we understand, that this fisa extension of the warrant was broadly based on the dossier, but all of our information, our own independent reporting and what the democrats and other republicans have been claiming, is that the warrant which approved the eavesdropping of carter page, preceded by far, was based on information completely separate from the dossier which is not reflected in this republican memo. >> that's right. the first thing to know is that carter page, the former trump campaign adviser, was on the fbi radar as far back as 2013, when he figured in a separate

espionage case and was actually targeted for recruitment by russian intelligence officers. he has acknowledged that. so the fbi had reason to be looking at him, and then we know that there was other reporting in addition to the christopher steele dossier about trump campaign contacts with russians that was turned over to the cia from foreign governments. the cia brought it to the attention of the fbi. we don't know because we haven't seen the memo exactly what went into the application to surveil carter page, but many legal experts who have looked at the whole situation say it would not have been very difficult for the fbi to convince a judge there was probable cause to believe that carter page was acting as an agent of a foreign power. >> and the president in the oval office just moments ago. >> thank you. thank you very much, everybody. thank you. [ inaudible question ] >> i think it's terrible. you want to know the truth, i think it's a disgrace what's going on in this country. i think it's a disgrace.

the memo sent to congress, it was declassified. congress will do whatever they're going to do but i think it's a disgrace what's happening in our country. when you look at that and you see that and so many other things, what's going on, a lot of people should be ashamed of themselves and much worse than that. so i sent it over to congress. they will do what they are going to do, whatever they do is fine. it was declassified and let's see what happens. lot of people should be ashamed. thank you very much. >> reporter: are you not concerned the fbi didn't want the memo out? >> thank you very much. >> reporter: do you still have confidence in -- >> you figure that one out. >> reporter: we haven't seen it yet, though. >> i don't think so. these are just great people that have suffered incredibly. there were many, many others like them that have suffered so much. and they were here and i said let's tell you a story very quickly. we have others in a different room, as i told you, that are

really petrified to be here. petrified. it's tough stuff. tough stuff. [ inaudible question ] >> we are doing a lot. we have done more than, i mean, we have many administrations that should have acted on this a long time ago, when it wasn't at this -- when we weren't in this kind of position. you know, we ran out of road. you know the expression, the road really ended. they could have done it 12 years ago. they could have done it 20 years ago. they could have done it four years ago and two years ago. we have no road left. so we'll see what happens. but in the meantime, we will get through the olympics and maybe something good can come out of the olympics. who knows. thank you very much, everybody. thank you. >> reporter: do you still have confidence in rosenstein? >> thank you very much, everybody. >> reporter: super bowl prediction? >> i better not get involved. >> as you just heard, the

president did not answer the question, do you still have confidence in rosenstein. that of course is rod rosenstein. chuck todd, you heard him commenting briefly about north korea with big disputes there. we can get to that later. so importantly, he has declassified the memo, it's been sent to the house. they are about to release it. we know it has been described as cherry-picked, inaccurate, of grave concern to the fbi. >> well, i have to say, the house republican intel folks are actually making their partisan case look even worse right now, because they are releasing excerpts of the memo already to friendly media outlets, almost trying to build a narrative and control the headlines, the early headlines, and create this sort of, you know, help feed a feeding frenzy. if they were trying to make this seem like less of a partisan exercise, they are doing a low ren dou horrendous job of it. this process has been so tainted by politics now on their end and as they are trying to allege

politics tainting the process on the investigation end, and maybe that's part of the plan. maybe that's okay with the president. maybe that's all about trying to just make this look like a political exercise, not a national security investigation. so tactically i get what they're doing, but i think it only lessens the impact of the memo itself, because the whole thing just smacks of a partisan exercise. how they wrote the memo, how they released the memo and even now, how they, you know, it's being released to the public, but some people get the memo first, from friendly media outlets. again, this is what a campaign would do, not somebody who truly, not an entity that cared about the rule of law and trying to be above politics or something. >> as you point out, those media outlets who got it first are only reporting on what they are being told the memo says. they are not reporting on the larger context and what led up

to carter page having been surveilled by the fbi. chuck rosenberg, you of course had long experience with the fbi and know the background. what do you expect the reaction of christopher wray to be given that he had grave concerns about this being released? >> he can't be happy. i don't think anyone at the fbi is going to be happy. but sometimes when there's a lot of stuff swirling around, it's important to take a step back and look at first principles. first principle here, that a federal district court judge sitting on the fisa court had probable cause to believe that carter page was an agent of a foreign power. from what we know, although it would be helpful to see all the documents, from what we know, the answer is yes. it's really that simple. >> if this was an extension, there are 90-day periods after which they have to go back and get an extension and again prove that this is a productive surveillance. >> that's right. so renewals are done every 90 days. and you go back and tell the

court what has happened since the last extension, but remember, it's just probable cause. where does that standard come from? from the constitution, the fourth amendment. so it's not beyond -- proof beyond a reasonable doubt type of finding. it's probable cause, and did the court have probable cause, regardless of the source of funding, did it have probable cause and the answer appears to be clearly yes. >> pete williams, your take on how the justice department, the fbi, are going to be reacting to this given the fact that it is a selectively released memo which gives only one part of the evidence that had been presented to the judge. >> my guess is that we have already heard what the fbi wants to say about this, and that was the statement that came out two days ago in which they said the memo, because their senior leadership has seen it, that it's incomplete and therefore gives a misleading impression of what was in the fisa application

and they believe this does damage to the whole fisa process. as of late yesterday, early this morning, i don't think there was a plan to say anything more about it. they certainly knew what it was going to be. i think the feeling was they had their say and they didn't want to keep this sort of back and forth going between the fbi and the white house over this. so i don't know, i think the justice department is considering whether to say anything but there's been no decision about that. i think they want to sort of see how this plays out. but i think that the feeling was pretty strong at the fbi that there was no need to keep this back and forth going. >> of course, we heard from the president calling this memo a disgrace, the whole situation a disgrace, just sharing that he's been on twitter as you would expect today writing the top leadership and investigators of the fbi and the justice department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of democrats and against

republicans, something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. rank and file are great people. matt miller, this is completely out of context. >> yeah. look, andrea, motive matters here. the president has been clear for weeks now privately with friends, with allies and aides, what his motive is in both releasing this memo, declassifying it, and with interviewing at the justice department to try to get them to back down when they were opposing its release. that is he wants to undermine the investigation into himself and into his campaign. that's what this is all about. that's what this memo was designed to do when devin nunes wrote it and that's what the president is doing, his actions now. you see it with his tweet this morning. a drumbeat he's launched for months against the senior leadership at the department of justice, that drumbeat continues today and the question is, where does he go after the release of this memo? we may be in for a very dangerous time. >> john mcloughlin, used to be,

you used to as acting and deputy director of cia, be intimately involved with fisa warrants, applications, signing off on them. tell me how this affects our allied intelligence service, intelligence sharing, the confidence of fbi and cia officials to share information with house and senate committees. >> that's a very important point, andrea. in fact, we'll have to look at this memo and absorb all the details, but in truth, i think a couple months from now, we are not going to remember this memo. what we are going to remember is the way, i think chuck todd put his finger on this when he said they have handled this mostly like a campaign, not like an intelligence oversight issue, because what's happened here, this whole oversight process is based on one thing, trust. the bargain is the intelligence community gives the committees everything, in return for an intelligent, nonpartisan,

trusting evaluation of it. and they have broken that trust. so i think that's the main thing we will remember here, and it's been broken before but not to this extent. now, to your specific point, if you are in the intelligence community now, you might think twice about what you are going to write down on a piece of paper. you might think twice about what you are going to share. you may share it, but you may worry about whether in sharing it, it will be taken and used for partisan political purposes out of context. that's what these committees were set up to avoid. that's precisely what they were set up to avoid. >> after watergate, after all of that. >> exactly. >> chuck todd, there is reporting by "the washington post" and others that the president had his mind made up days before having even seen the memo, if not weeks, that he had been briefed by two members, two very conservative members of the house, and that they told him

about it and we saw his response, in fact, as he was leaving the state of the union. 100%, 100%, he said they were going to release it, even though he had not yet read it or been given any analysis of it. >> well, we shouldn't be surprised. the president, when presented with a choice here when it comes to this investigation, he

and right now, the president is putting, he's basically hoping that carter page is not a questionable -- of questionable character, number one, and he's really hoping that that steele dossier is somehow thought to be fraudulently put together. but so far, there's been no evidence that it is. >> chuck todd, i know you have got to go and you are preparing "mtp daily" but importantly, on "meet the press" you have our first interview with our newest nbc and msnbc intelligence analyst, former cia director john brennan. we certainly look forward to that. i know also reince priebus, one of his first big interviews. >> his first tv interview since leaving as chief of staff. >> that's going to be a big day indeed on sunday. thank you, chuck.

ken, let's talk about the background here as we wait for the memo, the full memo, to be released, not just the sections of this cherry-picked memo that have been selectively released to a couple of media outlets around town. your concerns, talking to all of your sources about how the intelligence community is responding to this now. >> well, one of my long-time sources, former cia officer, called it soul crushing. the way john mcloughlin described what this could do to the congressional oversight process. but i want to go back to something, let's be very clear-eyed about what's going on here. i do think that president trump and house republicans have succeeded in something here, because they have released a document that essentially says that this mueller investigation is based entirely on a democratic-funded opposition research document. now, the democrats say that's not true and the justice department and fbi appear to be saying that's not true, but that message is going to go out to a base of donald trump supporters

and it may allow donald trump to say, for example, i'm not going to speak to robert mueller. i'm going to assert the fifth amendment because this whole thing is an unfair, cooked-up investigation. that seems to be the motive behind this document and by breaking all these norms of congressional oversight, by releasing, using a house rule that has never before been invoked to release highly classified information about a pending criminal investigation, house republicans and the president have succeeded in getting out this one-sided message. >> chuck rosenberg, you worked closely with jim comey, who has been tweeting today also, saying that all should appreciate the fbi speaking up, i wish more of our leaders would but take heart, american history shows that in the long run, weasels and liars never hold the field so long as good people stand up. not a lot of schools or streets named for joe mccarthy. tough words from the former fbi director, but he clearly feels his institution is on the line here.

>> and he's spot-on. i did not go to joe mccarthy high school and i don't know anyone who did, anywhere in the united states. look, if this was about good government, if the folks who feel aggrieved really thought there was a procedural flaw, then there's a bunch of things you could do. you could go to the fbi. you could go to the inspector general. you could go to privacy and civil liberties oversight board. if people have got something wrong, you can help them fix it. >> you can go to the fisa judge. >> absolutely. you can go to the fisa court. but that's not what this is about. if there is a procedural flaw, it seems that they don't care to address it. it's for political gain. that's a shame, because as john mcloughlin points out, this whole system is built on trust, and the trust has been violated. >> joining me now is msnbc national security analyst and former fbi special agent clint watts. clint, your take on this as we get a good hint of what is in

the memo, as officials are telling us as well. >> yeah. it leaves out far more than it includes. i think it's a selective cherry picking of information that's extremely damaging for the country moving forward, in particular. imagine if you are an investigator on a fisa application going in now or even a public corruption case that's a title iii application in the criminal courts. if you were putting your name, if you were putting evidence in there, now you don't know if today, tomorrow or three years from now, a politician might cherry pick that information and use it to attack you, the investigation or undermine a democratic institution. this is exactly what we are seeing in the excerpts that have come out. they are leaving out many other indicators, many other reasons that the fbi might have pursued this warrant, and it's really going to be a harm on our institutions and the tools we need, particularly in counter terrorism, where fisa has been so important over the years. >> and we now have the document

itself. we are going to be putting it up onscreen as well. we are going to start going through this point by point. we are talking about first of all, a white house cover letter written by don mcgahn, white house counsel, and he points out that the constitution does vest in the president the authority to protect national security secrets from disclosure but he has the responsibility also to as well as classifying, he can declassify so it's very clear he has taken this step today to declassify this memo, send it back up to the hill and the hill has now distributed it. of course, it is only the house republicans. they also pointedly refused in advance to share this document with the senate republican chair, richard burr, who had asked for it. so there was a complete breakdown not only of political parties, but also senate and house, because there were a number of senators, we heard from senator flake, senator thune and senator burr, among other republicans, saying that they did not believe the house republicans should be releasing

this document. mike is on the hill where it has been released. mike? >> i just got off a conference call with members of devin nunes' staff. they went through what they consider to be their key findings from the memo. i can read some of them to you now. it's largely what i should say we have been led to understand by some of the members who have read the memo, i wouldn't say there are two new surprises but let me hit a few points. the first and most important they cited was that the steele dossier formed an senessential t of the fisa application targeting carter page. we knew and have been hearing from sources all along that carter page, this memo was going to heavily deal with the carter page fisa warrant. secondly, none of the fisa applications mention that the fbi had previously paid christopher steele for his work and that -- the other point being that there was also evidence of political bias on the part of christopher steele,

both the fact that fusion gps was being paid by democratic sources, a law firm affiliated with the clinton campaign as well as the dnc, but also that steele himself told an fbi agent that it was his determination not to see donald trump elected president. the exact quote they gave, they claim that steele told bruce orr, a former deputy associate fbi director, that he was desperate that donald trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president. so the larger point here is what we had been led to believe, that there is a pattern of political bias here both in how the fisa warrant was originally captured for carter page and also that there were key moments along the process at which potential political involvement, political sources behind the research in the dossier, was not revealed to the fisa court. >> julia ainsley joins us now, who has been going through this. what are your key take-aways? >> one of the things i was noticing is that the page fisa

application mentions george papadopolous, but then this memo says that they found no evidence of cooperation between the two. but if you think about all the information we have read on george papadopolous, all the back and forth he had trying to set up meetings between top level trump campaign officials and the russian government, the fact that page was mentioned in this might mean that there's more evidence behind what we are seeing. all along, we have talked about how this very skinny memo is going to leave out a lot of information that may have been used. also, when we have been hearing all week from people, from republicans as well as the president, about how this will question top leadership at the justice department, and the fbi, we have wondered who all they were talking about. some of those names mentioned were of course, sally yates, james comey, who have both left, also mentioned andrew mccabe, deputy fbi director who announced this week he would be stepping aside early. another name it mentioned was dana boente.

he of course had left his position as the eastern district of virginia u.s. attorney, but just came on to be the deputy -- just came on to be back at the fbi this past week. so it could be that they already had him in the crosshairs and didn't like that he was coming back to this leadership position. so there are a number of people who could be implicated in this, but it's all based on what we know is very skinny memo. i think that chuck todd hit this earlier, this is part of the win at all costs practice, that it's okay for them to be kind of ruffling the feathers within these organizations that they think they will be able to change the culture and take out the people they see as against them. >> the other question is that this is now unchallenged, because the democratic memo, the counter memo, is not going to be released for awhile. do you know anything about the timing of that? >> we don't know anything about the timing of that at this point. it's really curious, we have been hearing this week that adam

schiff has sort of been a boy scout about this because he doesn't want to accuse republicans of releasing classified information, then go out and do the same thing. but under this pressure, they may feel like they are going to have to release that counter memo. they may do it in a more redacted version. they may want to be able to stand on their grounds of saying we don't release classified information because the last thing they want is for there to be a political war where we just throw classified information back and forth at each other. >> paul ryan did say the democratic memo should be released. he said that yesterday. paul ryan, very much on the political hot seat here, because he is the one person who could have restrained devin nunes. it is a select committee. he as speaker of the house has complete control over it and has given him free rein. peter alexander, you have more information? >> reporter: -- back into that room at the oval office when the president made those remarks, there were a pool of us reporters, i was among them. one of the questions i posed that he ignored but then did answer as we review this tape

from a separate reporter from the associated press was very simply, do you still have confidence in the deputy attorney general rod rosenstein. to which he responded you figure that one out, which would appear to be an indication that he doesn't have much confidence in rosenstein given what is a part of this memo. rosenstein was not a part of the justice department in the current position as deputy attorney general, obviously, in 2016 but did play some role obviously according to this memo in extending that surveillance warrant thereafter, and the reason that rod rosenstein's so important here is because obviously, he's the individual with jeff sessions having recused himself, that is running the russia investigation. so while white house officials, sarah sanders said it would be impossible, washington would erupt if we fired robert mueller, there are beliefs, there is a belief, there has been reporting to this effect, the president would like rod rosenstein to be removed from that position because whoever would replace rod rosenstein would be in a position to, in

effect, change the scope, to limit the scope of this russia investigation. they have their finger on the purse strings in terms of the investigation. perhaps how wide the investigation could go, the breadth of it is one thing the president publicly and privately complained about. i think that's one thing that's very significant that just came out of this brief exchange that we had with the president at the end of his remarks there today, that apparent criticism publicly about rod rosenstein. >> in fact, i had said earlier in my quick listening to the tape that he did not respond to that but as you are pointing out, there was a question we did not hear off camera, off mic, which was does he still have confidence and he said you figure that out. matt miller, this could really be the headline coming out of this eventually, if the president uses this as a predicate to fire rod rosenstein. he is the boss of robert mueller. >> he is the boss of robert mueller. if the president were to fire rod rosenstein, he could replace him with an acting deputy

attorney general. it would of course, he would have to nominate someone for the job, that person would have to go through what you would expect would be a very robust confirmation process. it could be a year. meantime, he could appoint an acting official. it wouldn't have to be someone from within the justice department. it could be a senate confirmed person from somewhere else in the government. that person, it wouldn't just have to fire bob mueller to have an impact. he could thwart mueller's investigation in a number of ways. he could refuse to approve new lines of inquiry. he could tell bob mueller to back off existing lines of inquiry. he could decline to approve indictments. he could even order bob mueller to stop seeking an interview with the president of the united states himself, something we know the president's attorneys are very worried about. i think people are right to focus on what the president is doing here because he keeps telling us, he keeps coming out and telling everyone what his motives are, and in the coming days, if he tries to move on rod rosenstein, that is a direct threat to the mueller investigation and i think a

serious, serious threat to the rule of law. >> and of course, he could also squeeze the budget. joining us, betsy woodruff, msnbc contributor. you have got some reporting on who actually wrote this memo? >> right. exactly. what i have learned, what we reported earlier this morning is that cash patel, a staffer for devin nunes on the house intelligence committee, played a central pivotal role in putting together the memo, and then moving forward, the effort to ultimately have it be dispersed. we have seen that evidence of course in the last few minutes finally come to fruition. now, i don't want to imply that this was a single solo project that cash engaged in. any time you put together a memo like this, as is evident from the document, it's a collaborative effort, but cash was really, in my understanding, the key and central mover here in this project. in fact, i have been told in some quarters it's actually called the cash memo, not the nunes memo. this is important because cash is actually an alumni of the justice department.

about a year ago, he was a trial attorney working on counter terrorism cases in the doj's elite national security division. since then, he had some communication about going over to the national security council. that didn't pan out. then later on in 2017, he moved over to the house intelligence committee, where he worked under nunes. even though nunes himself took a big step back from the russia investigation, cash was very much involved as soon as he started there, and he really deserves a lot of i guess credit for the fact that we have this memo now. this is in large part his project. >> and ken dilanian, betsy is with us as well, you have been poring over the document? >> i just want to point out a key date in here and sort of discuss where this fits in the context of the russia investigation. this memo discloses that the original fisa application for surveillance on carter page was october 21st, 2016. we know from james comey's testimony that the actual fbi investigation into potential

trump russia collusion began months earlier, in july 2016. we also know from john brennan's testimony that the cia was gathering what he viewed as troubling information about contacts between trump campaign aides and russians in the summer of 2016 time frame. so if the premise of this is that the surveillance of carter page got the whole russia investigation started and that was based on the christopher steele dossier, therefore the mueller investigation is invalid, the dates just simply don't line up. the other point to be made is we don't know how, if at all, carter page fits into the larger russia investigation. in fact, some of our fbi sources have actually downplayed his role. really, we don't know where this memo fits in with the rest of the substantive inquiry that robert mueller is conducting into potential trump russia collusion. >> all very important points. that timeline is going to be critical. clint watts is still with us. the fbi association has put out a statement reiterating that their mission says agents have not and will not allow partisan politics to distract from their

mission. so the fbi agents association is reiterating that they are determined not to be caught up in politics. >> yeah. it's ridiculous to think that they would be. this is an organization that if it was between the two, it's more conservative than liberal but i never once saw people's political biases, whether it was the doj, fbi, department of defense, any of the intel agencies, move in when it was about the greater good of the american people. the fbi always works in collaboration. there's lots of discussions about what the best way forward is for the country. i have never seen anyone say we should pursue this path or this path based on political pressure. it's a sad day for our country that everything has to be about one side or the other, and just in the quick glance i got at part of the memo, it's obvious they selectively pulled out quotes without putting in any context from hundreds of pages of documentation to advance a story, a conspiracy that's false

about the fbi going after the president. even more disturbing is that you have director wray and deputy attorney general rosenstein who were both picked by trump coming out against the release of this memo, and as i do a quick glance of it, it's got to be hard for anybody serving in the government right now to feel confident about who has their back moving forward. >> this statement, the full statement from the fbi association that i now have, just to reiterate your point, the men and women of the fbi put their lives on the line every day in the fight against terrorists and criminals, because of their dedication to our country and the constitution. the american people should know that they continue to be well-served by the world's preeminent law enforcement agency. fbi special agents have not and will not allow partisan politics to distract us from our solemn commitment to our commission. very serious reaffirmation from the fbi agents association which represents all the fbi men and

women. mike -- i mean matt miller, you know so well the dedication, the sacrifice and the danger with which these men and women deal every day. >> yeah. that's right. one of the things that i think they have to be worried about is that the release of this memo jeopardizes their intelligence relationships, jeopardizes the work they do, and that kind of brings us to this sham process that the president has run here in deciding to declassify this. look, i participated in declassification processes, of course john has. usually what happens is the intelligence community will look at something, make a recommendation to the president afterwards. here you had the decision made first by the president. the process, afterwards. even more so, none of the people at the national security council who were involved in this can actually look at the underlying fisa application, because it relates to an investigation into their boss, the president of the united states. the only people that can are the people at the fbi and we know the director, chris wray, has said publicly that this memo not

only is misleading, but could jeopardize an underlying investigation and could jeopardize national security information, and he was point blank ignored by the president. >> i would just reiterate one other thing. the originating agency usually has the controlling power over what is declassified and what is not. we saw that with the clinton e-mails where much to her distress, it was cia that was dictating to the state department what could be or could not be declassified. >> they have broken that rule here. normally when you are declassifying something, the agency that collected that information has the authority to remecommend declassification oro redact it. to step back a bit, it's worth saying in a single sentence what's happening. we have the president of the united states now having issued to the american public a memo that the director of the fbi says is false. that has never happened in our democracy. another damaging aspect of this

is that it's going to now cascade, because someone who has read all of this material now has an obligation to put it in some context that may be representative schiff, it may be someone else, but i don't think -- i think there's now an inevitab inevitable pull toward doing some kind of public commentary on this. >> it's going to be competition to release more information. >> there's going to be competition to release more information, and then again, what you've got is something that contrasts with every other example of congressional oversight i have seen. there have been times, of course, when the republicans and democrats on these committees have disagreed strongly, but they have put out their views simultaneously. it happened on iraq. it happened on interrogation and one could quarrel with both, but they put their views out simultaneously so that the american public could see and judge what they thought to be

true. in this case, we have the spectacle of inevitably dueling views on something of extraordinary national importance, which is protection of the american people, which is what the fisa act is all about, created in the 1970s for precisely that purpose, and they have now turned this thing on its head. >> more on that point, chuck todd, here you have an echo chamber where people who go to one news organization or another are going to be reaffirmed, the president will watch fox news and say you see, i really was being victimized, and by the time the democratic memo, if they do decide to release something, catches up with it or commentary, even when the so-called torture report which john mcloughlin just referred to was released separately by dianne feinstein and by the then minority view from the

republicans on the senate intelligence committee, they were simultaneously released so you could at least look at both sets of facts. >> well, it goes to what john mcloughlin talked about earlier when he lamented the fact that this is probably permanently going to change -- i say permanently, it's going to take a good decade, i think, frankly, for the relationship between the legislative branch and the intelligence community to get repaired. this is going to be the partisan skepticism that's going to be there for frankly for some time now, i think. it's going to be something that it's going to make it feel like sort of the relationship that congress had with the cia in the '70s, to be honest, and some of that. so it is going to damage that for a long time. look, i think it's important to realize what's not in the memo, right? the memo does not make a case that carter page wasn't a person of interest. the memo doesn't make a good case that anything in the steele dossier was somehow falsified or

faked. i think those are two things that if this memo had, it would make their -- it would actually give them fodder to make the case that this was trumped up in order to go on a quote, fishing expedition of carter page. but that's the fatal flaw, i think, in the pushback that republicans are having in trying to go after the investigators here. they are essentially trying to stir up questions about the motives of the investigators and yet, they have yet to be able to undermine any of the basic facts of the investigation and then of course, you've got the one giant question that hangs over the head of white house staffers i have talked to who want to believe there's nothing there with the president, and they keep coming, they keep asking the same question. we don't see it, but what is he afraid of? why does he keep getting involved in this investigation? why is he so active? what is he afraid of? ultimately, his actions, the president's actions here only

raise the suspicion of those that aren't sort of in his sort of kool-aid orbit. outside of the kool-aid orbit, everyone else is wondering why is he so trying to thwart this investigation so much? >> and why is he also, in terms of affirmatively not following congress' mandate by more than 530 votes and following up against russia with sanctions. >> oh, mandate, please. he doesn't read the rules. there's no rules. >> it was a veto-proof majority. i know. i know. >> yeah. he doesn't -- norms are something to be blown through. i think it's been pretty clear that's his philosophy on these things. >> pete williams, chuck just made a really important point. fisa warrants have all sorts of sources of information, foreign intelligence services, others, people that are not necessarily reputable in other regards but if the information is solid and it's presented to a judge and a

judge decides there's probable cause, the warrant is granted. so by just demeaning some of these people and saying that they are biased and who paid for the dossier, even though carter page was under surveillance before the dossier was even written or presented, this does not diminish the factual basis for a warrant on carter page. >> three points. one is, the central thesis of the memo is that the fisa court should have been told about the questions about carter steele, that a lot of his work had been financed by the clinton campaign, there were questions about his credibility. that's the point the memo makes and there's a sentence in here that says that mccabe, when he was deputy director, andrew mccabe testified before the committee, obviously in a closed session in december of 2017, and said no surveillance warrant would have been sought without the steele dossier information. now, that's the conclusion among others that the fbi says

incomplete. that's the first point. the second point is that the letter accompanying this return to the house of its own document from don mcgahn, the white house counsel, answers one question that we had wondered about that we had heard about, but makes it clear that the director of national intelligence and the justice department weighed in with the white house on whether this should be released and thirdly, the memo in essence questions what happened in the foreign intelligence surveillance court. it doesn't criticize the court, but it says the court should have been told about steele's background. i did ask the chief judge of the foreign intelligence surveillance court if they were going to have anything to say when the memo was released and i was told the court would have no comment. >> now, in reading mcgahn's letter, though, it doesn't say how they weighed in. it just said the president decided the declassification was

appropriate. so we don't yet know, really, whether the dni agreed with the fbi and others and said it should not be declassified. >> well, yeah. >> or said it was of grave concern. >> we don't know whether they asked for redactions or whatever. but we do know they did communicate not only informally but there was this process where at least they were asked or at least they got on the phone and said don't do this. >> john mcloughlin, from your experience in the intelligence community, is it likely that once there was a grave -- a warning of grave concern from the fbi, that the dni would say go ahead and do it anyway? >> no. the director of national intelligence is squarely in the middle of this, because this all stems from a counter intelligence investigation and that is very much under his purview, and the national security branch of the fbi is

part of his intelligence community. so to me, it seems impossible for the dni to step aside here or to not have a view. i guess i would be surprised if before this is over, i would be surprised if we haven't heard from the dni in terms of his evaluation of this mess. >> i wanted to read devin nunes' statement which obviously is defending the decision to release. he writes the committee has discovered serious violations of the public trust and the right to know. when officials in crucial institutions are abusing their authority, intelligence and law enforcement agencies exist to defend the american people, to target one group on behalf of another. it is my hope the committees on this alarming series of events so we can make reforms that allow the american people to have continuing faith and confidence in their governing institutions. i apologize because this was clipped on the edge so we will try to get it in full. because the way this was

transmitted from the committee or at least printed. as well, we have a statement from judiciary committee democrats in the house. judiciary democrats saying republicans are complicit in efforts to obstruct justice with the release of the nunes memo. joining us now, chris matthews. host of "hardball." we have been watching and listening as this is all going down and the conclusion by the democrats and some republicans in the senate, certainly, is that this is very partisan, cherry-picked and is, in fact, undermining long-standing, decades long-standing rules of oversight for intelligence to be shared with members of congress. >> well, you know, looking at this as a spectacle, the dramatization of this memo, it goes back to the mccarthy era, getting something, calling it a document, i have in my hand

document, that is sort of a ceremonial aspect. a document. it's just a staff-written memo. perhaps written with the help of the white house. if you look at the pattern of mr. nunes, his midnight ride down to the eisenhower building and going back the next morning and delivering the materials he was given there, then you look at this document, and you look at the way it was written, it's almost like an indictment of comey, mccabe and rosenstein. >> with dana boente thrown in. and sally yates. >> clearly the targets are there. the next bull's eye is of course, mr. rosenstein. i also thought the language was kind of hm, mischievous. they say the document, the steele document, the dossier, is written ultimately for hillary clinton. in other words, not previously was he working for her, but he's ultimately working for her. in other words, in a continuing way, this document and the work being done by steele for the

fbi, was in fact for hillary. look at the way he wrote it. he said the application does not mention steele was ultimately working on behalf of and paid by the dnc ultimately. in other words, they are continuing to be the parents of this whole investigation. it just makes it look scurrilous. i think it's a political document. i think that i have great questions whether it was actually a document that you could argue is even sourced from the legislative branch. i am very suspicious that this is a staff written by somebody who is very much involved with the trump people, hangs out with them, who engineered that little ride down there last march to get those materials. i think this is probably one of those times where trump created something, his people did, his operatives, then got it basically farmed out to the nunes team to give it his imprint, then it goes back to the white house to be approved. this is a trump document, it

looks like, and the staff, we will find out whether it's cash patel, whoever it is, whoever the staff people involved in this, are really running this for the white house. i think we will learn that. that's what it looks like. >> one thing we should point out, john mcloughlin, just briefly in terms of the background of christopher steele, christopher steele was a very valued mi-6 operative in russia for years and years. he was highly regarded by both the uk and by u.s. colleagues in our own intelligence community, most recently he was revalidated by british intelligence as having been someone with a sterling reputation. >> he's very well respected. he oversaw their interest in moscow and you know, without commenting on the dossier itself, because -- >> we know it was raw intelligence. >> we know it was raw intelligence. eventually we will know how much of it was true or not. there is no reason to suspect

that christopher steele simply made it up or approached it from a political point of view. he was basically probing his sources to see what he would come up with, and what he came up with is now out there for everyone to see and judge. but christopher steele is a reputable british intelligence officer and a close colleague of many americans. >> and again, to reiterate that carter page was first picked up as a result of a counter intelligence operation against a russia spy ring in new york city. he was mentioned in some of their communications as an energy or economic consultant in new york and this was before he had joined the trump campaign. >> you know, there's something to be added to what chuck said earlier before he had to leave, which is that, see if matt agrees with this, a fisa application is to find out about something. when you have probable cause to look at it. i used to sign a lot of these when they involved foreign intelligence. big, thick documents, 50, 60 pages at least, lots of lawyers

involved. many more sources than one, always. and sometimes they would lead you to conclude that there's nothing going on here but we had to look at it because it represented a potential threat to the united states. represented a potential threat to the united states. and that's all done with court approval. it's all been done up until now with nonpartisan involvement of everyone who is cleared to be involved in this. so it's -- again, i think people are misunderstanding the whole fisa process. you see it that way, matt? >> yeah, that's exactly right. two things. one, there's no reason to believe that christopher steele was the only source that went into this application. when the schiff memo is ever released if the president declassified, which he may not, we may find out christopher steele was not the only source that went into that application. their entire argument rests on the fact that christopher steele was somehow biased. source comes to the fbi for all kinds of reasons. law enforcement looks at sources for all kinds of reasons.

some of them have axes to grind. some bring their biases to the table. we don't know that's the case about christopher steele. it doesn't matter from a law enforcement purpose. >> once they check the facts -- >> once they check the facts and assess there's probable cause or criminal pred cat, history is replete with whistleblowers who act for all sorts of reasons and motives. it doesn't matter if the facts they bring to bear prove out. >> ken dilanian has a statement from carter page. >> i'm read it to you. the brave and deciduous oversight by leaders in discovering this abuse of process represents a giant historic leap in the repair of america's democracy. now that a few of the misdeeds against the trump movement have been partially revealed i look forward to updating my pending legal action in opposition to doj this weekend in preparation for monday's next small step on the long potholed road toward helping to restore law and in

order our great country. that's typical of the e-mails many of us have been getting from carter page. he's consistently denied that he is an agent of russia but also advocated a pro-russia line all along and said there's a great misunderstanding between the two countries and he advocates better relations between the u.s. and russia. >> and mike, you've got the statement, we are both looking at now from adam schiff and house intelligence democrats. >> yeah, we expect to hear from adam schiff. he's put out a statement. he says the premise of the nunes memo is the fbi and doj correctly saw a fisa water on a carter page and misled the court as part of a systematic abuse perfect as the minority memo makes clear, this is not true. >> this is -- none of this is true is what it says actually, mike. >> that's right. none of this is true. >> and matt makes a very important point about the schiff memo that i want to underscore

here. when the committee met monday to vote to send the nunes memo to the white house, democrats attempted to make multiple motions for their own memo, the minority memo to be made public at the same time. those were all rejected, mostly on party line votes. and if -- now schiff has invited members of the house to view his memo and they're allowed to do so. they have to sign a nondisclosure but they're now able to read some of his memo. but even if -- even with speaker ryan saying he's okay releasing the schiff memo and nunes saying he's okay, president trump has to be okay with releasing the schiff memo because it includes classified information. and i think we have to question based on how the president's reacted today and throughout this whole process whether he would ultimately allow that schiff memo, the opposing view, to be entered into the public debate. it's important to underscore the president did decide to declassify the nunes memo. that allows members and other

parties to comment on it more freely. and one last point on carter page. carter page sat before the house intelligence committee in november. he spoke on the record. there's a transcript of that interview for hours. and through the course of questioning from democrats on that committee, he detailed his interactions with russians, travels to russia and said he has a moscow sim card which would be able to use when traveling overseas. so the idea that carter page -- that there's no evidence beyond the simpson memo, the steele memo, to underscore why he might have been subject of scrutiny, it's belied by the carter page's own testimony before the very members of the committee that are releasing this report. >> and in fact, he came back on their radar after the election by going back to moscow and giving a public speech. the embassy was alerted to it. a public speech praising the russians and discounting any criticism of their involvement in the election.

peter alexander at the white house with all this comment on the nunes memo and its provenance and whether there wases now nsc involvement or whatever in the writing of it. questions about that and whether the president would agree to declassify the schiff memo. >> they are good questions. i want to get back to the point chris matthews was making about the providence of this. let's be clear about something that happened. nbc news obtained a transcript from that closed door house intelligence meeting earlier this week where they voted for this memo to be made public. mike and i have talked about this as well. and at the end of one of the exchanges there one of the democratic lawmakers in the room pressed the chairman, the republican chairman devin nunes and said did anybody on your staff that compeeled this memo, did they have any contact, consult in any way during, before or after the production of this memo with anybody at the white house? and devin nunes refused to

answer that question. so that is a question without an answer right now. what role did the white house play in the production of this memo. we know how it played out several months ago when devin nunes made that midnight run to the white house and was getting help from people inside the white house. i think that's critical. another point i would make is how striking it has been for me covering this story over the course of this week. speaking to those officials here at the white house and how haphazard this process has really been. just yesterday an official, multiple officials told me that the white house agreed to some redakss in the memo. moments later the same officials contacted me to say, no, we're only evaluating those redactions. we haven't agreed to those redactions. by the end of the day, multiple officials said it turned out there were so many requests for redaction we ultimately decided we don't think there need to be any redactions at all before

ultimately providing that classified, now declassified memo back to the hill. >> peter, that's all such great information. also, i want to point out a couple of other things. mark warner, the senate intelligence chair who has been working in sync with richard burr. they have been remarkably bipartisan for the most part, while things have been going really off the rails on the house side. he is calling this reckless demonstrating an astonishing disregard for the truth. this unprecedented public disclosure of classified material during an ongoing criminal investigation is dangerous to our national security. and one other line from the adam schiff statement is, if potential intelligence sources know their identities might be compromised when political wins arise, those sources of vital information will simply dry up at great cost to our national security. chris matthews? >> you have to wonder if you look at this, how extraordinary it is that a member of congress has behaved like an operative. going down to the eob and picking up that material.

who invited him down there? which staffers down there had that material to give to him? which staffers working for nunes are really working with hand and glove with the people down there the trump people. there's a trump party at work here. it's not the republican party, the democratic party or is it the legislative branch? >> it's blessed by paul ryan. this could not have happened if paul ryan had not let devin nunes run roughshod over these policies. >> you know how odd this is. the fact that the legislative leadership is, in fact, going along with what's really sort of a staff operation. somebody decided to use nunes to get this information out last spring. they did it again this time. i'm very suspicious about the authorship. the way it's written, it seems like it's almost they were hired guns to go after the targets of the president. the first item here, the first paragraph, comey, mccabe, rosenstein. they signed on to this one or more times. numerous times. the whole idea is trying to get this signature of these people

that are trying to destroy on the document on the fisa application. it just seems like a staff operation. i'd take a very good look at this young fellow cash patel. he wanted a job at the nsc. got a job with nunes and is working hand in glove with the people in the eisenhower building. this is not normal politics. this is a hit job here. >> this is not normal at all. i want to thank you, chris, john mclaughlin, matt miller, chuck todd as well. pete williams, julia ainsley, ken dilanian and mike memley. extraordinary coverage. it's a privilege to be part of this operation and our breaking news coverage of this unprecedented day in national security and intelligence continues with katy tur in new york. >> as you said, none of this is normal. let us reset. it's 1:00 here in the east.

good afternoon from msnbc headquarters. i'm katy tur. we'll continue our coverage of that breaking news of the gop memo release. a short time ago president trump approved the release of the nunes memo which was compiled by republicans on the house intelligence committee because he says it shows people in the doj and fbi should be ashamed of themselves. >> i think it's a disgrace what's going on in this country. it's a disgrace. the memo was sent to congress. it was declassified. congress will do whatever they're going to do, but i think it's a disgrace what's happening in our country. when you look at that and see that and so many other things, what's going on, a lot of people should be ashamed of themselves. >> among the allegations, the steele dossier formed an essential part against carter page. the dossier was compiled by christopher steele on behalf of the dnc and the clinton