is. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. happy to have you here. a whole bunch of news today. a senior adviser to hud secretary ben carson resigned today after being confronted with reports that he faked all the important bits on his resumé. that resignation and those questions about how people get vetted to be in this administration anyway, that resignation comes amid reports today that ben carson may himself have lied about he and his wife being personally involved in choosing $39,000 worth of new furniture for his office at hud. whether or not you like expensive office in government offices, lying about it when you're confronted about it is never a good idea and there are

multiple reports that ben carson is among several senior officials and cabinet secretaries who may be losing their jobs sometimes soon. after the firing of secretary of state rex tillerson just two days ago. on that same subject in that same theme, the treasury secretary, steven -- it is not steve, it is steven mnuchin. working on it. sorry, i've gotten it wrong 4,000 times on the air. steven mnuchin, treasury secretary, is reportedly also on the block today after documents obtained through a freedom of information act request shows he charged taxpayers for roughly $1 million worth of flights on

military aircraft just in the nine months he was in office. steven mnuchin is not in the military. the air force has better things to do than fly him around. the expense is extraordinary. private jets themselves are very expense oi expensive. just add fired secretary tom price. military flights are really, really expensive, like $25,000 an hour expensive. and apparently the treasury secretary has been enjoying military flights as what he thought should be just a regular perk of his job. and you have been paying for it through the nose, a million dollars just the first nine months he was there. that kind of spending scandal by a trump cabinet secretary is dog bites man regular news, i know. but reports like that are taking on new importance and new potential significance amid this

wave of reporting and overt hinting by the president that he's enjoying firing people right now. and that he's about to get rid of even more senior officials, including potentially from his cabinet, repeatedly saying now that he's almost got the cabinet that he wants. "the new york times" broke news this afternoon that made everyone say ah-ha maybe that's why the president seems off the rails the past few weeks. "the times" reporting sometime in the past few weeks, robert mueller's special counsel office issued a subpoena to the trump's business. it had previously been reported the trump organization was voluntarily handing over documents to mueller's team. they had responded to requests from mueller for information from the trump organization that reportedly spanned the length of trump's presidential campaign from the time he announced he was running until the time he was sworn in as president. "the times" reports mueller's

team is no longer just asking the trump organization for information, they are legally demanding that they hand over information with the subpoena and the time they want information now from -- this time they want information from before the time that trump was running for president. they have subpoenaed documents from the trump organization from before the time that trump announced he was running in 2015. the "wall street journal" is reporting that subpoena is for documents and e-mails that reference a set of russia related keywords and the subpoena is requiring the production of those materials for more than a dozen people at trump's business. now, a couple of things to know about this, one is that this might be driving the president and the white house more broadly a little bit nuts. the president had previously said that if the special counsel started looking into business activities, he would see that as a violation. one of the president's lawyers,

said in november that he would register a formal objection with the special counsel robert mueller and with deputy attorney general rod rosenstein who oversees the investigation if mueller started looking into trump's real estate dealings. he said trump's legal team would view them as outside the scope of legitimate inquiry. so if the "new york times" is right today and this subpoena arrived at the trump organization within the last few weeks, perhaps that explains why the trump white house has been operating like a blender filled up to the rim set on puree and having the lid off the past few weeks. the other thing to know about this is if the times is reporting here is right, if this subpoena is about trump organization activity specifically involving russia, well, just over the last couple days, we've been reporting on a serious allegation about the trump organization and dealings in russia and an allegation that

popped into public view a couple days ago in response to the republicans in congress abruptly shutting down the russia investigation in the house of representatives. if that is the allegation that robert mueller and his investigators are chasing at trump's business with this new subpoena and especially if that subpoena is driving this recent streak of erratic behavior by the president and these waves of departures from the white house, then just as an informed citizen, you should know everything there is to know about these allegations. we got a congressman that knows about it coming up live in a moment. i'm very much looking forward to that conversation. before we get to him, i want to look at the other thing robert mueller is doing. one month ago when robert mueller and his prosecutors brought a blockbuster indictment

against 13 russian nationals and organizations and businesses, i'm not sure the president saw that coming, it was also a landmark moment for us as a country and the story about russia attacking our election, messing with our democracy and ability to choose our leaders. because when robert mueller brought that felony criminal charges against russians that attack into the election process, that was the first time since this president has been in office any action was taken to defend us from what russian did, to punish them at all for the russia attack. the first time our government

had done anything to defend us, to try to push back at what russia had done to punish them at all for the attack. almost like if the american government as a whole won't push back for fight against what the russians have been doing, the special counsel's office will do its bit to try and that's an awkward way for a country to remedy that wrong. the way to make foreign policy and stand up for yourself as a nation. prosecutors tried with those indictments, part of the national reaction to those indictments was like finally somebody is pushing back at them. and their work to push back at russia for the 2016 attack, as of today, it's no longer just the basis of those criminal indictments that we saw filed a month ago. as of today, that work done in the special counsel's office is now u.s. policy for the whole american government because today the u.s. treasury department under secretary steven mnuchin announced that basically they copied everything in the mueller indictment against those russians, copied it into a new document and called it sanctions. all those people charged by mueller and his team last month are now the subject of new u.s. sanctions against russia in

response to the russian attack on our election. lots of news coverage describe these as the most significant sanctioning taken by the president against russia since the president took office. and let the record show this is the only action taken against russia since president trump took office. there were the indictments from mueller's office a month ago and those indictments have become sanctions. that's it. that's all they have done. the obama administration before they left office, they took action and expelled 35 russian diplomats. they seized two russian controlled diplomatic facilities, one on the west coast and one on the east coast and imposed sanctions for the russia attack. the obama administration did all that, remember, after the presidential election but before trump was sworn in. they did that during the transition. and you will also remember how trump's folks responded to that. right? quite famously trump's soon to be national security advisor mike flynn and senior officials

involved in the trump transition decided it would be a good idea to have flynn have some secret conversations with the russian government undercutting obama's sanctions telling russia not to worry and maybe the obama administration wants to punish them and the incoming trump administration had no such intention so they should stand down and not worry too much. once the trump folks got in office they in fact started to have discussions immediately about how they could unilaterally move to get rid of the sanctions that obama had imposed to punish russia for the election attack. that was michael isokoff's big scoop last summer, about those efforts in the very first days of the trump administration where they were already trying to get red of the sanctions on russia. those efforts so alarmed people that congress almost unanimously passed new sanctions legislation

in response. congress passed legislation that took the sanction's decision out of trump's hands and passed legislation that legally required him to keep obama sanctions in place and legally required him to levee new sanctions of his own against the russian government. that bill, again, passed almost unanimously. trump said he would have vetoed it, he didn't want to do it but the margins were too great. he reluctantly signed it. trump is therefore required by u.s. law to institute new sanctions against russia as punishment against them for their attack on our election. despite the existence of that law, the trump administration has been dragging its feet and they have missed every single deadline imposed by that law. on one class of the sanctions, they flat out said they wouldn't do it. the law requires the trump administration to impose sanctions on people doing business with russia's weapons and military sector.

the trump administration announced they wouldn't do it. they said in their estimation, just the existence of this law itself was of such great value of deterrence against russia that no new sanctions would be necessary. the problem is those sanctions required by law were not about detouring anything but punishing russia for something they already did. trump administration opted out of that, decided not to do it. one of the other requirements is the trump administration was supposed to draw a list of ol' oligarchs that required wealth from vladimir putin's government and believed to be personally close to or linked to putin. people who are involved to be -- who are thought to be involved in pursuing the kremlin's goals in russia or around the world. the idea of an oligarch's list for sanctions of hitting putin and the cronies thee controls,

hitting them in the wallet is required by the sanctions law and it's considered to be a particularly potent way of pushing back at putin for what he did. a weird thing happened on the way to the oligarchs list. our reporting indicates a real list of the kind described in the law was made or it was at least seriously researched and worked on at the state department and other agencies responsible for producing sanctions, for whatever reason that realist disappeared. no real list of the kind required by the law was ever put out on the day of the deadline basically at midnight on the day of the deadline for the sanctions to be published, they released a laugh out loud list of kremlin officials and rich russians that had absolutely nothing to do with the requirements of the law. the treasury department was later forced to admit the way they produced their list was

literally by copying down the list of richest russians out of forbes magazine and officials they appeared to have copied and pasted off the kremlin website. if steven mnuchin was not treasury secretary and instead a high school sophomore a lazy teacher running that submission would red flag that sucker and send it back and fail him and maybe suspend him. so despite the law requiring the trump administration to sanction the russians for what they did in our election, the trump administration has gone through back flips to not do that. until today. they announced their first new sanctions today. and this is also a cut and paste job. they did just copy the new sanctions right from reform's indictment. but, okay, in this case at least

they were plagiarizing something from robert mueller who knows what he's doing. robert mueller, thank you for doing what you're doing to build us a national defense against the russian attack. but here is the other thing that happened alongside this today. we got this announcement of the sanctions copied from the mueller indictment, okay. but then we also got this. it's a big technical warning released by the department of homeland security and fbi also about russia. it is much harder to read but it is as serious as a heart attack and that story is next. ♪ ♪ next chapter ♪

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today the treasury department announced they would bring new sanctions against the russians indicted by robert mueller last month. yet another payout from reform's office but at the same time, we got a technical alert on russian government agencies with energy, nuclear commercial facilities, water, aviation and critical manufacturing sectors on

indicators of compromise and x technical details on the tactics, technologies and procedures used on compromised victim networks. now, you can tell from all the weird nouns there that this is obviously a technical document, but the plain english is clear. it's a warning, it's a nationwide signal that something is wrong. says right at the top of the report, contact dhs or law enforcement immediately to report an intrusion. now, i am not tech savvy enough or commuter engineer minded enough to understand a ton of what is here, particularly the long strings of computer code included but what is clear as somebody who reads the news, this appears to be the follow up and much more serious and much more public update to something we saw that happened this past summer. this past summer you might remember this when you see this

picture of that nuclear power plant. bloomberg news and "the new york times" reported that a secret warning had been issued by the same agencies by homeland and the fbi, a secret warning had been issued to american power plant operators telling them there had been cyber attacks specifically targeting u.s. power plants, including this power plant. power plant operators are telling them there were cyber attacks targeting u.s. power

plants, didn't name who the perpetrator of the attacks was and clearly that warning was also never meant to be public. it was sent out to power plant operators and to let them know how to protect themselves and we found out about it from alarming leaks that made their way into the "new york times" and bloomberg news. now it's seven, eight months later and the government is making a public warning saying that these attacks on u.s. power plants have be committed by a known perpetrator. they have been perpetrated by the government of russia and this time the warning is public. it's not a secret warning that only goes out to power plant operators and skilled journalists. it's going to everybody. and i think what they are saying is that these attacks have gotten more serious. "the new york times" covered this last summer when the warning had been secret and hadn't named russia they are covering tonight for "the new york times" now that the warning is public and does name russia. here is how nicole pertroth is explains, in its urgent report in june, russian spies compromised the business networks, business networks of several american energy, water and nuclear plants mapping out

the corporate structures of the wolf creek nuclear plant near kansas, but in that case, russian hackers hadn't gone from nuclear operators into controls. russian hackers were looking into in roads but it want clear what their goal was. by the spring of 2017, russian attackers successfully compromised some north american and european energy operators. in the following months the russian hackers made their way to machines that had access to critical control systems at power plants. not just the business side but the stuff that actually controls the power plants. new computer screen shots released in the report today showed that russian state hackers had the foothold they would have needed to manipulate or shut down u.s. power plants.

according to eric chin, a -- we now have evidence they're sitting on machines that allow them to effectively turn the power off or effect sabotage. from what we can see, they're there and they have the ability to shut the power off. all that's missing is some political motivation. the reason this story belongs today alongside the new sanctions that were just announced against russia and the mueller investigation more broadly, the reason this belongs alongside that reporting is because in part this is something else done by the russian government to us. but it's also because of the time. what's described here in this new technical warning from homeland security and the fbi is an attack that does have roots and can you see first signs of it going several years back. but in terms of when this really got going, it parallels exactly

the timing and the pace at which russia was mounting their other attacks on their election leading up to the election victory of donald trump. quote, the strikes accelerated in late 2015 at the same time the interference in the american election was under way. by december 2015, the russian hacks had taken an aggressive turn. it would suggest that at least three separate russian cyber operations were under way simultaneously. one focused on stealing documents from the democratic national committee, a second to sew discord and division and to burrow into the infrastructure of american and european nations. and now from the "new york times," miss perlroth, thank you

very much for being here. >> thanks, rachel. >> first of all, this is technical stuff. i'm not technically minded. i will bet i got some of that wrong. can you tell me if i got anything important wrong or if the basics were correct? >> the basics were correct. did you a pretty good job there. we've been under attack by russia for a while. this was the first time the u.s. has come out and publicly named russia as the perpetrator on the attacks. the wolf creek nuclear plant was one of about a dozen that russia had targeted. today it actually included a screen shot that showed russian hackers have their fings are er the buttons here. if they wanted to, they could have shut down or sabotaged

these plants in some way. there's no evidence they have done that yet but for the first time we put out publicly they have that capability. >> why the was previous warning secret in it was not a public warning. it did ultimately make it into public discussion in part because of your reporting on it. but this one is public today. does it necessarily follow that the increased severity of the cyber attacks would result in it being more important for this warning to be public or would some of the same caution apply that led them to keep the previous warning under wraps? >> i think when they first came out with it last year, it had been about three months into a series of attacks on power plants and nuclear facilities. and as we reported last year, basically they'd only gotten into the business in administrative computer networks back then. they hadn't been able to make the leap from those networks into the control systems themselves. what's different now and what they came out with today was

basically that's changed. we're now in a very serious situation where russian hackers are no longer just in the administrative networks, they actually are in the computers that have access to the machinery themselves. they're stealing screen shots and they're taking screen shots that the department of homeland security published today that shows they were there. they can turn off systems if they want to, they can manipulate them and sabotage them. we're there. we've got i don't knten to the it's gotten so serious that we were left no choice but to say, hey, we know you're there. >> identifying it, pointing out what they've done, naming in some cases the specific technical hacks, the way they were achieved, is this the sort of thing where naming it and

identifying it will allow power plant operators to stop hackers from potentially doing this or are they essentially helpless and tonight in russian hackers wanted to, they could shut these things down? >> it's a great question. i think at this point part of the reason they came out with this is to tell power plant operators, hey, look for this on your system because it's happening and it's real. the separate question is whether they can defend against it. there it's just not clear. unfortunately when you look at the critical infrastructure in the united states, first of all, most it have is controlled privately. it's not like if we're attack, the government can come in and sweep things up and fix things. this has largely been left to the private sector to do this and the private sector has relied on a lot of old legacy software, which makes it easier for some of these attacks to happen. in some cases when you talk to some of the targets, they don't even know that they have been

compromised. hopefully, we hope that in many cases when the government sees evidence or picks up evidence that russians are inside their systems, they tip off these companies as soon as possible, but there's definitely some instances out there where you have a situation where a power plant or a critical infrastructure provider, oil and pipeline operator has been compromised by some of these russian state sponsored groups and don't even know about it. >> wow. everybody's tipped off now. now it's a question of whether or not they can successfully defend themselves and fix what's already gone wrong. >> nicole, that was an absolutely terrifying discussion but clarifying as well. thank you for helping us understand it. >> thanks for having me, rachel. >> all right. hmm. i thought the scariest thing in cyber attack news today was going to be the other story that nicole had in the new york city today about a petrochemical plant in saudi arabia being hit

by a cyber attack that was designed to not just shut it down and make it explode and kill people? and then we got her follow-up story about what's happening here right under our noses in our own country. we've got some breaking news tonight on what is set to be the next high-level actions at the white house. mine's way better.

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upheaval has been the subheading on all the news over the past few weeks, hope hicks, out, gary cohn out, the secretary of state, president fired secretary of state rex tillerson, apparently learned he had been canned when the president tweeted the news. nominated the cia director mike pompeo to replace him. today we have another sign that more high-level turnover is on the way. "the washington post" just now reporting that the president is about to remove national security advisor h.r. mcmaster who was the replacement for the first national security advisor michael flynn who has pled guilty and cooperating with the special counsel's investigation. our colleague nicolle wallace here has been reporting this month h.r. mcmaster could be out as soon as the end of the month

"the washington post" adds weight to that story. president trump decided to remove h.r. mcmaster as the national security advisor and actively discussing potential replacements according to five people with knowledge of the plans preparing to deliver yet another jolt to the senior ranks of the administration. trump is comfortable with ousting mcmaster but willing to take time to execute the move to make sure the three-star army general is not humiliated and that there's a strong successor signed up. great way to make sure somebody is not humiliated is making sure for weeks people don't think you like them and you're about to fire them. the turbulence is part of a broader potential shake-up under consideration by trump, likely to include senior officials at the white house gripped by fear and uncertainty by a president who enjoys stoking conflict. are you not entertained? joining us now is washington post white house reporter, one

of four reporters on this story, ashley parker. ms. parker, thank you for joining us on short notice. appreciate you being here. >> thanks for having me. >> i find irony or difficulty in squaring the idea of trump not wanting mcmaster to be humiliated and trump telling so many people that he doesn't like mcmaster and really looking forward to getting rid of him. >> yes, there is something in incongruous and disingenuous about that, but the one thing that is true is there is a recognition within trump world and within this white house that basically everyone who leaves this white house leaves in some manner of disrepair or ill repute. so they do want mcmaster to ideally leave and have a soft landing and ideally a promotion

from a three-star to what he is now to a four-star because they want to prove and show to people that you can actually work in this white house and not suffer severe reputational damage. >> wow. a striking note there. i'm going to read to you a portion of the reporting tonight, which you and your colleagues just posted just to have you talk me down off the ledge what this might mean. the mood verged on mania as trump increasingly keeps his counsel and senior aides struggle between rumor and truth. at times they are anxious and nervous wondering which each headline may mean but in moments they appear as characters openly joking about whose career might end with the next presidential tweet, some white house officials have begun betting

which staffer will be ousted next, though few if any have any relation what is going on. ashley, that's worrying for -- that would be worrying for a small business that i don't pate news. it's very worrying when it's the white house. are you saying there that the president is no longer talking to his senior staff about these major moves he's making? >> it's a little of that. some of that to be fair and to be clear is a function of the fact that the president has spent the first part of this week traveling in california and making his way back. and part of it, though, what is a striking departure for us who have covered the president, the campaign and into this white house, this is a white house that's always chaotic and turbulent. that's not new. what is so new is how little even very senior people, even people who should know, like people in the communications department know what is actually going to happen. so in our reporting, we go to them with rumors and say look, i have to check this out. it sounds crazy but we think it might be true and the response back is always kind of you know what? that absolutely does sound crazy but you're right, it might be true and that sort of is the difference and the sort of

manic cycling between being worried and nervous what this means generally and personally, but also this gallow humor because it's reached these absurd levels where rumors ran rampant and people know what's coming. >> the mood inside the white house. remarkable reporting. ashley parker, really appreciate you joining us with this scoop. thank you for being with us. >> thank you. >> breaking news tonight. washington post reporting as our colleague nicole wallace said president trump decided to remove his second national security advisor h.r. mcmaster, the post reporting tonight among the people potentially being considered to replace him are john bolton, famous for his various stints on the george w. bush administration and also keith kellogg who is chief of staff to the national security council according to the "washington post" tonight, part of the reason keith kellogg is

in contention to be national security is because in part the president likes his company and thinks he is fun. we'll be right back.

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on tuesday night democrats on the house intelligence committee released a 21-page status report in response to the republicans in the house announcing their own surprise on monday that they would be abruptly shutting down their investigation. well, one line in the status report that the democrats released jumped out at me like it glowed in the dark. it was on page 6 of their report. this is the line. the committee has learned that candidate trump's private business was actively negotiating a business deal with moscow with a sanctioned russian bank during the election period. trump's private business actively negotiating a business

deal with a bank it's illegal for them to negotiate business deal with. it's illegal for americans to negotiate with it and it seems relevant to the hairy question at the center of this scandal, which is about russia's attack on our election and the question whether the trump campaign might have helped with that or known about it or been in on it in someway. we have since asked the committee democrats for more information about what they mean here. a source familiar with this reporting told us that there were troubling inconsistencies between public assertions made by the trump team regarding a trump tower moscow project the organization pursued in 2015 and '16 and troubling inconsistencies between their public assertions about it and what the committee learned in it's investigation through documentary evidence and testimony. so we reported that last night. then today, "the new york times" reported that robert mueller has subpoenaed the trump organization for documents related to the trump organization's dealings in russia.

this is the first known time robert mueller demanded documents directly related to president trump's businesses and specifically president trump's business in russia. why subpoena the trump organization now rather than just continuing to request stuff from them voluntarily? why do this now at all and in light of this subpoena, why are house democrats now confidently asserting they have document evidence and testimonial evidence that the trump organization was actively negotiating with a sanctioned russian bank. that's a very serious allegation and democrats say they've got the evidence of it. why is that? that's next with somebody who knows. stay with us. goes here. test drive the ztrak z540r at your john deere dealer and learn why it's not how fast you mow,

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next chapter ♪

dot number one, special counsel robert mueller's office has reportedly subpoenaed the trump organization for any business with russia. dot number two, the house committee democrats have asserted candidate trump's private business was looking for a business in russia during the election, dot one and two. should those dots be connected? congressman swalwell sits on the committee and joins us now. thank you for being with us. >> thanks for having me back,

rachel. >> you and your fellow democrats have released a status report on the russia investigation, basically a snapshot of how far the investigation had gotten before republicans shut it down abruptly this week. one of the assertions made in the report is that the committee has learned that trump's business was negotiating a business deal in moscow with a sanctioned russian bank during the election. what do you mean the committee has learned that? what sort of evidence are you talking about? >> i'm heartened to see that bob mueller is willing to do what the committee was not. which was subpoena information. we saw evidence from witnesses and documents we reviewed that during the campaign, donald trump's organization was seeking to do business in russia through a sanctioned russian bank. and remember, this would not be the only time this happened. this also happened when jared kushner sat down with a sanctioned russian bank during the transition period where the bank said the reason was for business and jared said the

reason for that meeting was not. i can put this in context. if you recall felix sater was central to the trump tower -- moscow tower project. he helped finance donald trump's soho project. he's a friend of the trump family. in october 2016, the first offer to connect donald trump and vladimir putin was made from felix sater to michael cohen. he said lets build a trump tower, let's get him in vladimir putin together. let's get him elected. we can engineer this and make him president. throughout the campaign, other previews of what getting donald trump and vladimir putin together looked like would mean for the trump campaign would materialize. but felix sater, it was just reported by buzz feed was somebody for decades delivered

intelligence on osama bin laden and the north koreans. if he was able to deliver bin laden information and the north koreans, i think we have to assess him as someone who could have assisted the trump campaign and working with russia to interfere in the election. >> can you tell us tonight which sanctioned russian bank we're talking about here? >> i cannot. i can tell you we believe, and ranking member schiff has been leading the charge, we believe the transcripts of this investigation should be made public. that is a promise that republicans made throughout the investigation and now as we saw yesterday in reports, chairman conway, the acting chairman of the committee is backing away from. the public should be able to see the transcripts and judge for themselves. they would find this information in those transcripts. >> there was a similar dispute in the senate judiciary committee where democrats and republicans had different views

about what transcripts should be released to the public. and then they were slow walking. and diane feinstein made a decision she was going to release one transcript she thought was of public interest and she just did it on her own. is it possible that democrats in the house could do something similar? >> that isn't somewhere i want to go yet. i know the democrats have been talking about it on the committee about what best to do to inform the public about our findings on our side of the investigation, but also rachel, just remember the whole investigation essentially was a sham. they declared that there was no collusion, the fact is we saw significant evidence of collusion. they have just chosen to bury it, most evidence by the recent declaration that they won't show the public the transcripts. >> if you have what you're describing here as basically direct evidence that the trump organization as an american

business was netting with a sanctioned russian bank, i'm no expert on these things, that sounds to me like illegal behavior, illegal activity. is there a question whether something like that should be directly referred to the justice department or whether it should be handled as a law enforcement matter? >> that's why i was heartened to see bob mueller was subpoenaing trump organization documents, and if our transcripts were made public, the special counsel would be able to view those. the bigger issue is we have done a great disservice by ending this investigation in an inaccurate and incomplete fashion. my fear is that we will go into this upcoming election inviting russia to interfere again. and that if democrats win the majority, we will be charged not only with investigating the interference in the 2016 election, but we will also have to vinvestigate the interferenc

the republicans have invited and given a green light to in this upcoming election. >> i had a discussion with a "new york times" reporter who's covering this emergency alert, essentially, this technical alert from the homeland security department and the fbi alerting people who operate networks and systems around american power plants that there's been a serious cyber attack on the united states and russian government hackers appear to have obtained command and control ability over u.s. -- parts of the u.s. power grid. over u.s. power plants. it's a technical alert from dhs and the fbi, but it's very serious. it follows a secret alert that went out last summer, this is a public alert. do you have any insight into that warning and how serious this is? >> i can only tell you we've seen a number of signs that russian seeks to continue to attack us. we have our guard down against

russia and they're continuing to throw punches and they have us on the ropes. today president trump announcing sanctions. that can't be a one-off, that was the least he could do. he needs to declare a strategy against russia to counter their interference and attacks on our infrastructure system, whether it's elections or electricity grids. that includes tactics of sanctions, directly confronting the russians, spending the money already funded through the state department and making sure that we harden our election systems as we go to the ballot box this november. >> congressman eric swalwell, thank you for joining us. >> my pleasure. >> stay with us. we'll be right back.

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washington post" website, a story citing 19 advisers and administration officials saying the mood at the white house verges on mania and the president has decided to remove another top national security official, president trump according to "the washington post" deciding to remove h.r. mcmaster as his national security advisor. why not. that does it for us, it's time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." >> i read that, and i wondered what was the mood before? what was the word for it? why wouldn't it be mania. i have to say some of what the postwas describing is what people in the country tell me they're feeling every day when