e green light. that means go! oh, yeah. start saying yes to your company's best ideas. we're gonna hit our launch date! (scream) thank you! goodbye! we help all types of businesses with money, tools and know-how to get business done. american express open. ♪ morning glory, america. i'm hugh hewitt. all eyes have been reading and all reporters and pundits analyzing the house intelligence committee memo. that's of course my focus this morning. by way of background, i proceed with caution. my first guest was a special assistant to edwin meece in charge of reviewing applications. in those days, the fbi's

counterintelligence office would bring an application to the designated special assistant with the appropriate security clearances for a last look and recommendation to the a.g. before they went in for his review, and approval and submission to the court. i reviewed hundreds and hundreds of these. this is before there was a national security division which added another layer of view to these very sensitive matters. i still don't talk about the specific warrant applications, their targets or the assets or information told us is why we wanted to keep an eye on this foreigner or rarely an american citizen, the standard is higher by the way for an american citizen, then in the old days a country we knew to be an enemy of the united states. but everything was very highly classified, sensitive, compartment aa compartmentalized information. i've been on the side of caution. would its disclosure do anything

to compromise national security? that's been my first question. the memo is out of the bag and raises a lot of questions, including whether the role of rod rosenstein described in the memo provides a conflict in the role he has in the russia investigation or creates at the very least the appearance of impropriety. mr. rosenstein has an extremely high reputation at the doj. but his name is all over this memo. it in no way undermines robt mueller's work and he should be left alone to finish that work. mueller's work and he should be left alone to finish that work. you can't indict a president. as alexander hamilton made clear. i think it is far more evidence you will find no collusion by the president. it is about mueller, the doj,

and the foreign intelligence surveillance court. francesca chambers of the daily mail covering the white house, eli covering covers national security, dell wilbur of the wall street journal. he covers of course the department of justice. eli, my first question, why not tell the fisa court all the details about the information presented to support the warrant on carter page, everything, every single thing? >> first of all, i don't know the answer to that. before we get too far ahead, it would be nice to see what the democrats, and for that matter the fbi, say has been omitted from this memo. is there other evidence that was presented that if we saw it we would say, okay, it's not accurate to say that the fbi was relying upon this opposition research dossier in order to gain a warrant to spy on carter page. >> two quick follow-ups. is it material, in your opinion, that the information came from

steele that he was paid and working for the dnc and the hillary clinton campaign? is it a material fact out there disclosed to the fisa court? >> it ought to have been disclosed to the fisa court. how significant that was, whether or not the central fact is whether or not they relied upon that. if it had not been for that dossier -- >> that's true. >> -- there would not have been surveillance. that's the really important question. that's what mccabe is quoted as saying. >> we don't know if that's true. >> there is testimony. declassify that testimony. >> now we have a couple of unusual characters. papadopoulos and page. inspectors clouseau and gadget of this whole thing. why not tell president of the united states in his orbit are two people believed to be under the influence of russia or in some way suspected of collusion with russia. why not tell the president, president-elect or even

candidate? >> when carter page was surve surveilled he was no longer with the campaign. >> should they have told him? >> i believe they should have. i don't see why they hadn't. >> dell wilbur, you wrote an mazing piece in the wall street journal yesterday. you got to look at how many strokes? >> 7,000. >> in those, he's actually not a partisan. but the question arises, were they afraid hillary clinton was going to win and she'd be mad at the bureau? >> there was a text somewhat like that in the first batch released. i got the sense from reading the text that they were more down the middle, follow the evidence kind of investigators. the texts were more interpersonal, work-related. there was no overarching conspiracy that came out in my mind they were either trying to go easy on clinton or they were

trying to dump on mr. trump. >> i did see that text about she's going to be mad at us. so they ran a couple of fisa warrants from a couple of mopes from team trump that they could show her they were being hard on team trump as they were hard on her. >> eli raised a good point that we talked about yesterday when all of this stuff broke about the nunes memo. they didn't survey carter page until after he announced he was leaving the campaign. i think that was a significant fact. they were not worried -- they did that on purpose to not get into as much politics as what was going on there. that is a key point. >> jessica chambers, are people at the white house worried they were picked up of surveillance of mr. papadopoulos and mr. page in a way they had not known previously their e-mails were read, their visits being observed? >> so we have not had an opportunity to press the white

house on this memo yet. there was not a white house press briefing yesterday. there is not as he was traveling yet. that's not usual. but there wasn't one yesterday. and so i think that you'll -- you were asking him some of the questions do we know this or do we know that. i think you will start to see this play out next week when you have an opportunity to get the white house officials on camera and talk about this. and even on the sunday shows you'll hear a lot about this. but looking 30,000 foot at this whole situation, we got started a little bit without you before the show about this. you have three things going on here. you have the fact that we have not seen the testimony from andrew mccabe, which is in dispute here. >> true. >> you have democrats saying he never said the steele dossier was the basis for the warrant. you have republicans saying that that is exactly what you said. we haven't seen that testimony. so it's hard to make an assessment on who is right, who

is wrong. then you have the actual fisa warrant application. we also haven't seen that. >> we will never seen that. >> and devin nunes has not seen it. trey gowdy has seen it. he said this yesterday on another network, that only one person and investigators could see it. he sent trey gowdy because that would be better spaoert tease for him. he has not seen it because it is so closely held. that's how few people have seen it. so that also makes it difficult to determine how much the steele dossier was the basis. >> would rod rosenstein have seen it all? yes. what is the reaction in the white house -- no one wants to fire him, but do they think he ought to recuse himself from the supervision of mr. mueller? >> that's not what donald trump said yesterday. when he was asked about it directly, he said you figure

that out for yourself. which that wasn't a yes. that wasn't a no. and so i think that president trump will probably get asked about this again. he will have to take a very firm position on that. >> eli, this is to me the key issue. i signed off on this warrant, the extension of the carter page warrant, as did three people, including sally yates before him. would it have been obvious in your opinion that the court was not being fully informed about the dossier's role in the carter page application? >> that's not obvious to me. the memo doesn't say rod rosenstein knew about the origins of the on dossier or anything about that information. it says senior fbi and department of justice people knew. that could mean other people besides rosenstein. >> we have three minutes. i want to give you each a minute. what is the most important thing to happen next? del? >> that's a really tough question. everything changes day to day in the story. and the nunes memo was hyped up

by both sides as this being a nuclear bomb when it drops on washington. when it came out it was either a nothing burger, or as eli wrote, sit not watergate and not a nothing burger. it is is in between. >> a material fact was omitted that got an american citizen surveilled to the fourth amendment that concerns me greatly. >> what's next, i don't know. i think at the justice department there was a lot of trepidation over the release of this memo. they were concerned about what message it would send to sources across the world. you might end up in a document or being debated. >> don't talk to mother jones or yahoo! news. >> that's right. >> the president declassified the democratic talking points so we can see those. and what happened at the department of justice. does rod rosenstein get fired?

what happens next. >> i can't imagine him getting fired. i really can't. what about you, eli? >> we have to wait from the formal response from the fbi and the democrats. they will have a lot of things to say. they will make the case there were good reasons to survey carter page. let's find out what facts they specifically dispute in the memo that was released. >> the fisa judge was not told material facts? >> i'm not sure they can. but i'm waiting. i'm saying watch what they disbeauty. we have seen a lot of smoke from both sides. >> has adam schiff disputed this? >> he gets the softest treatment, a featherbed wherever he goes. >> in his multiparagraph statement he said things were not correct. what are the facts you specifically say are not true? then we can assess from there and have a better sense. >> he goes in no harm's way when

the questions are asked. thank you del wilber, francesca chambers and eli lake. alright, i brought in high protein to help get us moving. ...and help you feel more strength and energy in just two weeks! i'll take that. -yeeeeeah! ensure high protein. with 16 grams of protein and 4 grams of sugar. ensure. always be you.

♪ welcome back. i'm hugh hewitt. andrew mccarthy is a former senior federal prosecutor. the man who put the blind sheikh behind bars. welcome back, andrew. i want to get your original thoughts on the memo. >> i'm sorry, hugh. i didn't get that. >> your overarching thoughts on the memo. >> you know, i think the original sin here, hugh, is that none of this should ever be played out publicly. and the big problem here that nobody is talking about,

frankly, is the classified leaks. what is supposed to happen in an investigation like this is somebody like mr. page, if they think that there really is a basis to believe he's not only a russian agent but involved in clandestine activities that violate u.s. law, we know that is the standard you have to meet to get a warrant on a citizen, this is also supposed to happen in a secret setting. the reason it hasn't is because there was a steady flow of leaks of classified information to the media, which was designed to attack trump, his campaign, and his government ultimately. and that's the reason this is all being played out in the press. there may be any number of situations in which a fisa warrant such as this one has in sufficiencies in it. we hope the justice department meets up with the fisa court and

they have exchanges over these surveillance applications. but none of this is supposed to be played out in the press. for whatever anybody thinks of the nunes memo, i think that given the torrent of leaks that we've had, it was valuable and it is valuable to get a real sense from a process of what actually went on here. and i think the memo serves that purpose. >> and there are two things that stand out to me. the first is rod rosenstein approved the last extension of the carter page. here's a tape of me asking late last year what happens if rod rosenstein had to recuse himself. >> what happened if mr. rosenstein, god forbid gets hit by a bus or gets recused? do you take it over then? >> in the order of succession, yes, but i don't want to engage in hypotheticals. i'm focused on doing my job every day, which does not

include that. >> so andrew mccarthy, rod rosenstein co authored with pete sessions urging comey be fired. and now it turns up he is enter 2009ed with this whole thing. do you think he ought to recuse himself from supervising mueller. >> it depends on what this whole thing is. if this whole thing is what it was represented to be from the beginning by the testimony that former fbi director comey gave and from everything that was described to us at the beginning, that is to say this is a counterintelligence investigation, the principle aim of which is to get to the bottom of russian efforts to interfere with an american election, i don't see any reason why rosenstein needs to be recused. you know, i've been critical of some of the steps he's taken in the course of the investigation. but if what we're about here is

an intelligence gathering exercise, i don't see the need to recuse him. >> let me ask a second -- >> if i could just finish. if this is a criminal investigation, and if, for example, they're trying to make an obstruction of justice case on trump and there's anything to do with that case that has to do with jim comey's being fired and if there's anything to do with this case that has to do with the evidence that was gathered in this fisa, if it's going to be thrown over the intelligence wall and become part of a criminal investigation, then i don't see how he can stay. >> interesting. okay. that's very knnuanced. this came to me this morning fray former federal judge about whom there is nearly universal respect. i'm not going to tell you the name. hugh, there is not an officer of the court in the land who in the context of this particular application to the fisa court would not have identified the source of the information as having been the dnc and the clinton campaign. if i had granted the application

and then subsequently learned that the information was sourced to the dnc and the campaign, i, the judge, would have rescinded the authorization and issued a cause order to explain who and why this sourcing was not made known to the court. the fact that the the government told the court it was awe political source but did not identify who in this particular instance is highly problem active that they purposely misled the court. what say you, andrew? >> i would agree with that. if a federal judge was made to understand the precise sourcing here, they would have told the justice department to go back and redraft the application and put all of the relevant information in. you know, to say it's a political source doesn't do justice to what actually happened here. this is during the course of a political campaign and it's information that's bought and paid for and unverified based on fourthhand unidentified sources,

bought and paid for by one political campaign. and it is targeting at another political campaign. so any federal judge would want to have that information. and an important reason for that is unlike a criminal wiretap situation where everybody goes in with their eyes open, whatever work we give here, you know that some day this is going to be ape criminal case. it's all going to be disclosed. it's all going to be revealed. defense lawyers will pick over it. the trial judge will pick over it. you have a certain discipline about what you do in the way of disclosure and respect for the party's rights. this is the black box of intelligence information where we never get to see this stuff. and if there's not a level of candor between the justice department and the fisa court where the court feels it can trust what it's being told and the justice department is putting all of its cards on the

table, warts and all, if i can mix my metaphors, then the process breaks down. >> it is clearly broken down. i go back to the material fact was omitted for surveillance of an american citizen. four people approved it. director comey approved it three times. acting director mccabe approved it once. i go back to my experience. i get hundreds of these. they're thick. you might miss stuff. do you think they knowingly from your understanding and opinion, do you think they knowingly withheld that information from the court? >> i sure hope not. i think there's two things going on we have to consider. one is the law and one is practical reality. the law is that you would expect that the approval that the attorney general and the heads of the fbi have to give is at a 10,000 foot level to make sure that the statute is being complied with. that is all the things that you

have to show are being shown. under those circumstances, you could easily see an attorney general and fbi director missing some important facts because that's not their job. that's the job of the people closer to the actual investigation. but here you have a really fraught political situation where you are targeting for investigation somebody who has -- and i know the connection was formally broken. but you have somebody who does have a connection to the trump campaign. you know that you're relying on information that you have gotten from the opposition campaign. and it seems to me there was a higher obligation in this particular circumstance for the highest level people to become more acquainted with the facts than maybe they would in a different situation. >> i agree with that. my many thanks. i'll be right back.

david. what's going on? oh hey! ♪ that's it? yeah. ♪ everybody two seconds! ♪ "dear sebastian, after careful consideration of your application, it is with great pleasure that we offer our congratulations on your acceptance..." through the tuition assistance program, every day mcdonald's helps more people go to college. it's part of our commitment to being america's best first job. ♪ this new day. looks nothing like yesterday. roads nowhere to be found. and it's exactly what you're looking for.

you may be at increased risk for pneumococcal pneumonia, that can take you out of the game for weeks, even if you're healthy. pneumococcal pneumonia is a potentially serious bacterial lung disease that in severe cases can lead to hospitalization. it may hit quickly, without warning, causing you to miss out on the things you enjoy most. prevnar 13® is not a treatment for pneumococcal pneumonia... it's a vaccine you can get to help protect against it. prevnar 13® is approved for adults to help prevent infections from 13 strains of the bacteria that cause pneumococcal pneumonia. you should not receive prevnar 13® if you have had a severe allergic reaction to the vaccine or its ingredients. if you have a weakened immune system, you may have a lower response to the vaccine. the most common side effects were pain, redness and swelling at the injection site, limited arm movement, fatigue, headache, muscle pain, joint pain, less appetite, vomiting, fever, chills, and rash. help protect yourself against pneumococcal pneumonia.

ask your doctor or pharmacist about prevnar 13®. because um, i've been meaning to talk to you, uh oh. well, you know, you're getting older. um, you might be experiencing some, ah, sensations. ah, it happened to your dad..uh with.. oh, look the tow trucks here! can't wait to be rescued? esurance roadside assistance lets you know when help will arrive. that's insurance for the modern world. esurance. an allstate company. click or call. you have any questions, uh.. i'm good. awesome. thank you for watching this morning.

keep the conversation going on msnbc.com/hugh-hewitt. see you next weekend saturday morning here on msnbc. n evans: . 40 million americans are waking up to a gillette shave. and at our factory in boston, 1,200 workers are starting their day building on over a hundred years of heritage, craftsmanship and innovation. today we're bringing you america's number one shave at lower prices every day. putting money back in the pockets of millions of americans. as one of those workers, i'm proud to bring you gillette quality for less, because nobody can beat the men and women of gillette. gillette - the best a man can get. like you do sometimes, grandpa? and puffed... well, when you have copd, it can be hard to breathe.

it can be hard to get air out, which can make it hard to get air in. so i talked to my doctor. she said... symbicort could help you breathe better, starting within 5 minutes. symbicort doesn't replace a rescue inhaler for sudden symptoms. symbicort helps provide significant improvement of your lung function. symbicort is for copd, including chronic bronchitis and emphysema. it should not be taken more than twice a day. symbicort contains formoterol. medicines like formoterol increase the risk of death from asthma problems. symbicort may increase your risk of lung infections, osteoporosis, and some eye problems. you should tell your doctor if you have a heart condition or high blood pressure before taking it. symbicort could mean a day with better breathing. watch out, piggies! get symbicort free for up to one year. visit saveonsymbicort.com today to learn more. if you can't afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help. you know how painful heartburn can be. for fast-acting, long-lasting relief, try doctor recommended gaviscon. it quickly neutralizes stomach acid

and helps keep acid down for hours. relieve heartburn with fast- acting, long-lasting gaviscon.

good morning, everyone. i'm alex wilt here at msnbc world headquarters in new york at the half hour. here's what we're watching for you. an even more fractured congress this morning o. nearly 24 hours since the release of that gop memo alleging the fbi and the justice department abused their surveillance authority to target a trump campaign adviser. and house intel democrats get ready to push for the release of their own memo. it's unclear whether there will ever be a working relationship with republicans on this matter. >> this all began on march 20th when james comey testified before our committee in the first open hearing and said there was surveillance going on of the trump campaign.