to all of our viewers you can sign up for the newsletter at axios.com. that. does it for us on this tuesday. "morning joe" starts right now. you have to ask michael cohen. michael is my, an attorney and you'll have to ask michael cohen. >> last week the president said to ask his lawyer, michael cohen about the payment to porn star stormy daniels and yesterday, the fbi raided cohen's office and residence for documents. and an action that president trump called quote a break-in. nine times he described it as a disgrace. and when asked if he'd fire robert mueller he wouldn't give a clear answer on that. it is probably not where his staff wants the president to be focused. as he weighs whether to strike syria for waging chemical warfare. that's where we begin "morning joe" this tuesday april 10th, along with joe, willy and me, we

have msnbc contributor, mike barnacicl barnicle, and frank figliuzzi, senior reporter at "vanity fair" hand msnbc contributor emily jane fox. she recently interviewed michael cohen and has new reporting on how the raid went down. "new york times" reporter matt apuzzo who first broke the news of the cohen raid. columnist and associate editor for the "washington post," david ignatius and nbc news capitol hill correspondent and host of "kasie d.c." kasie hunt. >> on siree, we have two top senators from the armed services committee joining us, plus a preview of mark zuckerberg's appearance today on capitol hill. how tough is that hearing going to get? north korea takes another real step toward sitting down at the negotiating table. while sarah huckabee sanders twists herself into knots to

deflect, defend and dodge questions about the president's lies. but first, joe, the raid of michael cohen's office. that's not good. like from a trump perspective, that's bad. >> well, as many people have said, it is a really, really bad day for you legally, if you wake up and you're paul manafort and you have the fbi streaming newer house looking at your documents. it it is an even worse day if your, you're at the white house and you get the news that the fbi is streaming into your lawyer's offices. and getting their documents. for obvious reasons, this, very bad news. i do have to say, though, i know this will shock a lot of people, that watch our show and that follow donald trump every day. but he said so many things yesterday that need a little bit

of clarification. he talked about the conspiracy, yeah, there's, this raging conspiracy against him. they've been after him from the beginning. this is a witch hunt. let me just -- just in case, just, it's political. just in case you want to know who these witches are, that donald trump says are coming after him, they're bob mueller, a republican, this is the conspiracy. you've got rod rosenstein, who was screaming about yesterday. he's a life-long republican, despite the fact that donald trump called him a democrat from baltimore. the attorney general, jeff sessions, who he was raging at. you and i both heard not only donald trump, but jared kushner and everybody in the administration saying he was the greatest, most stand-up guy, best republican ever during the campaign. he, he is also this conspiracy, a republican. the fbi director, who donald trump appointed, republican.

the four fisa judges that were leading this conspiracy, republican, republican, republican, republican. the house run by republicans. the senate run by republicans. and yesterday's raid was run by the u.s. attorney from the southern district of new york. remember the one that replaced preet -- >> this is the person they wanted. >> he fired preet, because he didn't think he could be loyal. so who did he appoint? he appointed geoffrey berman, who executed this raid yesterday, in charge of this raid yesterday. ordered this raid yesterday. not on robert mueller's behalf, but on the behalf of the people of new york and the united states of america. he was appointed by donald trump. and also, he was, his mentor,

mika, you guessed it, rudy giuliani. he's a giuliani guy. and also, just a little-known fact this conspiracy, because mika, this is such a terrible conspiracy, all all of these people hate donald trump and they've hated donald trump forever. and they've never -- they've never donated -- wait, he donated $5,400 to donald trump's campaign. and while we are at it, everybody that i named on that list, has never been democrats, they're most of their lives like donald trump. have never contributed hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to democratic campaigns like donald trump. have never contributed to nancy pelosi like donald trump. have never contributed to rob emmanuel, because this is important, he says they've republicans say they've contributed to democrats, some

of the people who have investigating on the team. have never contributed to chuck schumer, never contributed hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to the dnc. these are republicans. most of these players that donald trump is attacking were appointed by donald trump. and this was executed yesterday by a giuliani man, who gave $5400 to donald trump, was just appointed in january, and is a trump guy through and through. but you know one thing that donald trump doesn't understand? is that every one of those republicans that i named are republicans, but they put their country and they put the rule of law above donald trump and that is something that this man will never understand. never. >> and you could really see -- >> that's the reality of yesterday's conspiracy. >> you could see in the president's reaction, defensiveness that was up to

level 10. with some of the comments he made. which we will be thoughing you later. but first, willie geist with what went down. >> leading to justice department conspiracy, was attorney general jeff sessions, the first united states senator to support donald trump in his campaign. that according to donald trump as he attacked sessions yesterday. the fbi raided the office yesterday and hotel room of president trump's long-time personal attorney, michael cohen. prosecutors and agents from the southern district of new york obtained a search warrant in coordination with the special counsel's office after receiving referral from robert mueller's team. "new york times" was informed that the payment to the porn star stormy daniels is only one of several to be topics investigated. the "washington post" reports that cohen is under investigation for possible bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violation.

federal prosecutors collected communications between cohen and his clients, including those between the lawyer and mr. trump according to two sources. in a statement cohen's lawyer said prosecutor's decision to conduct their investigation using search warrants is completely inappropriate and unnecessary, adding it resulted in the unnecessary seizure of protected attorney/client communications between a lawyer and his clients. matt apuzzo, you were one of the first reporters on this story, just suss through a little bit of how this went down. >> michael cohen's lawyer says that his understanding is that this was taken, this was done by the, this was done by the united states attorney's office in manhattan, after a referral from bob mueller's office. which means that mueller came across something that, that piqued his interest, but that he viewed as probably not in his

world. not in his mandate, not necessarily directly related to russian interference in the election or coordination with the trump campaign and referred it over to prosecutors in manhattan. to joe's point, yeah, i mean all these people are republican and i think that in the sort of world we live in in d.c. right now, that's worth pointing out. but also whether it's the obama administration, the trump administration, there's just an expectation, there should be an expectation that in washington, that federal prosecutors and fbi agents regardless of who put them there, are going to follow these things through without you know, being afraid of repercussions and without favoritism. so obviously if you got a warrant as they did, in new york, that had to be reviewed by a federal judge. and approved by a federal judge. and somebody had to decide, there's probable cause that a crime was committed here. and that document had to have been reviewed by senior

officials in washington, so i mean this was a vetted process. an extremely vetted process. >> i think as people are listening to the story, reading your reporting and trying to connect the dots, they might be wondering why bob mueller found a red flag, why was it handed off to the federal district of new york and wasn't it something that mueller himself might have pursued in his investigation. >> that's a great question. if you read the mandate that mueller has, there's a catch-all category of you can investigate any crimes that you sort of come up with. so you know it may have been a case where this was something he had the legal authority to do. but just decided it wasn't in his core mandato or he may have said listen, this isn't really what i was brought here to do and there's been a lot of criticism going back to the independent counsel years of ken starr, of a special counsel kind of run amuck. and that is very much in play right now in the paul manafort litigation. where man if the is accusing mueller of having essentially an

endless mandate, an endless brief. so by referring this to prosecutors in new york, it allows them to say bob mueller passed this information on, he's not sort of running wild. >> mika, that's a great point. i'll tell everybody what we talked about as soon as the news broke yesterday. a private conversation, i said, i don't want bob mueller spending his time investigating stormy daniels, this is about russia, this is about obstruction of justice. if he starts investigating stormy daniels, then in an aggressive way and he's raiding cohen's offices for that, then it ends up just like ken starr where a land deal morphs into what we saw with bill clinton. this shows once again, once we got the information that no, bob mueller is not investigating this. he came across something he thought he was a crime, he referred it on like any officer of the court in the united

states of america has a responsibility to do, and it shows once again what a disciplined, buttoned-up operation that he has, and also bob mueller is not going to be undisciplined. he's not going to waste the time of the american people, he's going to do what he was hired to do, and if he comes across something else, he doesn't think tightly fits into his mission. then he's going to pass it on. yesterday shows once again, he passed it onto the u.s. attorney for the southern district, a giuliani man, a trump contributor and said i came across this, here, i refer it to you, do with it what you will. and this former trump supporter who is now a u.s. attorney, whose first duty is to the constitution and the rule of law, must have seen a crime there. and actually went to work on it.

we do need, we do need this clarified. people need to stop blurring this with bob mueller. this is not part of bob mueller's investigation. >> when the news broke we were working the phones and we've been in contact with people who are extremely close on many levels. to this situation. emily jane fox. let's focus in on michael cohen. as one contact told me if trump has committed any crime, no one would know more about it than michael cohen. no one would have more information on it than michael cohen. this is a worst-case scenario. if there's any problem to be revealed. >> it is true that they are very much linked to another one and incredibly close and have been for more than a decade. michael cohen has not only worked there as an attorney for the trump organization and now as a personal attorney. but michael cohen first time i interviewed him over the summer, he basically said, this guy is

like my father. i asked him a question about, if he would continue to be loyal to him no matter what, if there was a red line. and he said, would you do that for your own father? which i thought was a very telling statement. that that is the question he was posing back to me and that is the way he thought about donald trump. and i think that is the way he thinks about the entire trump family. the way he thinks about the children, like some sort of niece, nephew, brother, sister hybrid. he's not only been there and seen everything and describes himself as a loyal fixer. but he has an emotional connection to them. and that's something that you can't discount here, and he's been involved in a number of business transactions. and the way he thinks about -- >> mike barnicle --

>> we'll have to see how it works out when he sits down with the assistant u.s. attorneys. but frank, yesterday's raid at a lawyer's office, search warrant at a lawyer's office is extremely rare, extremely dicey in how it's conducted. could you explain the mechanics of a take team that goes in with agents on a search warrant in a lawyer's office, what they would be looking for specifically in this case, and what your instinct tells you about what they can extract from this search warrant? >> it's important to understand what goes into the very sensitive search of an attorney's office because of the privileged information in there. so first of all, you've got to go to very high levels to the department of justice and get authority to search an attorney's office and particularly to get authority to ask in the affidavit to get client information. and that's what we're hearing has happened here. then you go before a u.s. magistrate. and you convince him or her that there's specific probable cause, not only that a crime has occurred, but for the very

locations that you are asking to search. when you go in front of a magistrate, you say, hey cohen is residing at the hotel over here, we want to get in there. the magistrate is going to say, that's not enough, telling me why you are seeking computers and why you think those computers are in that place. and when you answer that question, you've got to have investigative answers, what does that mean? you've had him under surveillance for period of time. you need to say i saw mr. cohen enter that room, that house, that hotel room several times with that specific computer that he conducts business on. so if people think this happened overnight -- it has not. >> and that is what it took to get there. there is now a process in which attorney/client privilege can be revoked, so everything can come out. >> it can be that's where the take team comes in. >> to protect the investigation and the integrity of it and protect the clients of cohen who had nothing to do with this, you

bring agents in to that search warrant and their job is to only execute that warrant, look at what they're seeing as pertinent to their investigation or is merely privileged client information and they set it aside. and they are called the dirty team or the take team and they will will have nothing to do with substantive underlying case so they're not tainted by privilege. >> it makes things all the more interesting because michael cohen might have a treasure trove for fbi investigators and lawyers who will be a part of that team there was a notable difference in how the white house reacted to the news of the raid. unlike previous responses, to developments in the mueller probe this time it did not issue a statement of no comment. and pledging cooperation. two administration officials tell nbc that the president was informed about the actions sometime in the afternoon after the raid began, but prior to the news breaking publicly. the president was reportedly watching cable news, coverage of the raid, sources tell the

"washington post" the president spent much of monday afternoon glued to the television before he opened a meeting on syria, with a lengthy scathing response. >> so i just heard that they broke in to the office of one of my personal attorneys. good man. and it's a disgraceful situation, it's a total witch hunt, i've been saying it for a long time. i've wanted to keep it down. we've given i believe over a million pages worth of documents to the special counsel. they continued to just go forward and here we are talking about syria. we're talking about a lot of serious things with the greatest fighting force, ever and i have this witch hunt constantly going on for over 12 months now. and actually much more than that you could say it was right after i won the nomination it started. and it's a disgrace, it's a real

disgrace. it's an attack on our country and it's an attack on what we all stand for. >> this is this is the most biased group of people, these people have the biggest conflicts of interest i've ever seen. democrats all, just about all, either democrats or a couple of republicans have worked for president obama. the attorney general made a terrible mistake. when he did this and when he recused himself. he should have let us know if he was going to recuse himself and we would have used a, put a different attorney general in. so he made what i consider to be a very terrible mistake for the country. but you'll figure that out. >> why don't i just fire muel r

mueller? >> i think it's a sad situation when you look at what happened. many people have said, you should fire him. again, they found nothing and in finding nothing, that's a big statement, if you know the person who is in charge of the investigation, you know about that. deputy rosenstein, rod rosenstein, he wrote the letter very critical of comey. one of the things i said, i fired comey. i turned out to do the right thing. you look at all of the things he's done and the lies and you look at what's gone on at the fbi with the insurance policy and all of the things that happened. turned out i did the right thing. he signed as you know, he also signed the fisa warrant. so rod rosenstein who was in charge of this signed a fisa warrant. and he also, he also signed a

letter. that was essentially saying to fire james coke comey. and he was right about that, he was absolutely right. so we'll see what happens, i think it's disgraceful and so does a lot of other people. this is a pure and simple witch hunt. thank you very much. thank you. >> will rod rosenstein keep his job? >> thank you all very much. thank you all. >> again i want to go back to what i said at the top of the show. he said that's the biggest conflict of interest i've ever seen. they're democrats, some republicans appointed by obama. the attorney general he was attacking was a republican appointed by donald trump. the fbi director, he was attacking, a republican appointed by donald trump. bob mueller, a life-long republican. rod rosenstein, a life-long republican and this was the u.s. attorney from the southern district of new york, aponted by donald trump, a giuliani man and

a guy that gave donald trump $5400. so that was the conspiracy that donald trump was talking about. of democrats who just all happen to be republicans. now david ignatius, let's talk about something that actually i believe that has more concerning, that attack against facts and the rule of law, let's talk about the fact we have a temperamentally unfit man who is now having to make decisions on what may be a decision that not only impacts the future of syria, but the entire region, the entire middle eastern region. as well as a man who is juggling one of the most important summits this country has had in some time, the summit that has been proposed by kim jong un. what, where are we, as a country. what are your biggest concerns.

>> it was most unsettling to me about the video that you just showed. here's the president speaking through clenched teeth, rage, evident on his face as he talks about this prosecution surrounded by generals, admirals, all of the senior military leadership as he contemplate taking military action following the syrian use of chemical weapons. i was reminded of the situation after the watergate crisis began rolling, during the october 1973 war. and there was great concern, in the administration at that time of president nixon of whether nixon would be a stable decision-maker, henry kissinger was trying to play an independent role to balance control, contain. and i think one problem in this administration is that donald trump so angry, so personally challenged by this

investigation, is also the decider. he's made it clear that nobody else makes these decisions on foreign policy. i'm glad he had his military leadership there. those generals have found a way to speak honestly to him and to at times back him off of positions that he wants to take. but we are entering a period of unusually difficult foreign policy tests, just as the preds feels personally cornered. he said it so clearly, they broke into my personal lawyer's office, that's the way the president is feeling, as he has to make these key decisions. >> kasie hunt. all the people i talked to yesterday in my reporting lines up with what you're seeing on the front pages of the papers today, is that donald trump was as angry as he's ever been in the oval office, when michael cohen's apartment and rhotel rom and office at the rockefeller center were raided bit fbi.

what are you hearing, now what hope hicks is gone, who could calm him down, what's the vibe in the white house right now? as david and joe just said, as a critical decision is being made about what to do in syria? >> i think your point about hope hicks is exactly right. this is his first major personal crisis without somebody that he trusts, you should think of hope hicks a little bit more like a family member, somebody he could speak to and have an impact on the president's emotional state. she's missing, we know there's been a lot of turmoil with this president and his chief of staff, john kely. it's been up and down and back and forth. will killy resigned or won't he? to a certain extent the buffers, such as they were around this president have sort of disappeared. one at a time. i think the one thing and the question i'm going to be asking today on capitol hill of these republican lawmakers, we haven't really focused in on the exact words that the president has used. he said the fbi broke in to his

personal attorney's office, that's not what happened. maybe they did actually have to bang down the door. but if this is, and we do have a focus on the constitution and the rule of law, and this warrant was executed in such a careful way at such a high standard as others were laying out, they didn't break into this office, they had probable cause to go into this office and find out if a crime was committed, to find information they couldn't get ahold of any other way. i think that language like this from the president of the united states is something that is going to give and should give republicans on capitol hill quite a bit of alarm. >> they're executing a search warrant. >> it's not a break-in, not a witch hunt. they didn't find anything? how does he know? >> it might be actually our obligation today to report the truth about what happened yesterday as frank just laid it out. the president is clearly setting up a separate narrative, a

different narrative for his supporters to believe and follow. as frank pointed out, there's a specific procedure that took place. that had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with the law. >> and reason to be there in in the first place. everybody stay with us. we've got a lot going on. >> and again, i'll say it one last time before we go to break. the person who went through that process, who executed this, who was calling for this, was not robert mueller. it was rudy giuliani's former law partner, who giuliani, got appointed to the southern district of new york as a prosecutor. this was a trump man, a trump contributor and a giuliani man, who executed this, this search warrant, this is his doing. it was net robert mueller's doing and there's nothing donald trump can say, there's no lies that he can try to spread that will change that fact.

>> everybody sit tight. we've got a big morning ahead. for the last few weeks, much of the focus was on what does michael cohen know about stormy daniels. it's now clear the questions go far deeper than that. we'll look to cohen's connections to russia and what investigators might be searching for, "morning joe" is coming right back. was a bad idea. [cougar growling] [passenger] what are you doing? [driver] i can't believe that worked. i dropped the keys. [burke] and we covered it. talk to farmers, we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪

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you know, mika, i was thinking back, we had a long a block there, much longer than usual. and it hit me, you know it's early in the morning and sometimes things just slip our mind. but i don't think i mentioned that this raid actually wasn't conducted by bob mueller, it was actually conducted by giuliani guy. i forgot to mention that. you actually -- >> that's a good point to point out. >> we haven't pictured this guy, this guy that conducted the raids, it wasn't robert mueller it was giuliani's guy.

and this is what rudy giuliani said of the raid. after it happened. is it surprising? yes. but is it extraordinary? no, this is way prosecutors get information. sometimes to convict and prosecute sometimes to -- exculpate. but that's rudy giuliani. who of course was a former u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york. he would know better than anybody else. and frank really quickly, it's, it is surprising, it's the president of the united states, but it's not extraordinary. giuliani knows as well as anybody else, if you're in an investigation, and you turn up information that could lead to a possible crime, it's your responsibility to pursue that. and if you get information that shows an attorney is helping further a criminal enterprise,

that's what people like rudy giuliani have to do. >> this is the rule of law, a man like mueller has probably made thousands of referrals to other district throughout his career. you see something, you let the district responsible for it, know about it and you move on and it's interesting yesterday. we saw the president saying this is an attack on what we stand for. what we stand for is exactly what we saw happen yesterday, which is that law prevails, magistrates get involved, they review it, doj gets involved and approve it. u.s. attorneys see it and approve it, prosecutors and agents execute a search warrant. that's the rule of law, that's not an attack on our system, it is our system. >> it is our system. and it is our system, mika, we saw it yesterday. no man is above the law. >> you have to consider all the options here, michael cohen is being investigated for possible

bank fraud and campaign finance violations. land most "the wall street journal" reported that first republic bank flagged cohen's $130,000 hush money payment to the treasury department as suspicious. the company that made a payment that was created in mid october. within ten days the funds went through and daniels signed the mda, cohen says he made the payment using his own money. a home equity loan. but while michael cohen is at the center of the porn star payment, days before the election, the reporting suggests that the fbi's interest could be about a lot more. during trump's 2016 campaign. cohen attempted to make a business deal in moscow and reached out to putin's government. three months after trump's announcement. cohen said this in a radio interview. >> there's a better than likely chance trump may even meet with putin when he comes here for the united nations.

people want to meet donald trump. >> the outside counsel intimated you may have a meeting with the russian president. do you plan on trying to do that? >> well i had heard that he wanted to meet with me and certainly i am open to it i would love to do that if he wants to do that. i don't know that it's going to take place, i'm not sure. i know people have been talking. but we'll see what happens. >> cohen went on to pursue the construction of a trump tower in moscow. he told the "washington post" that he discussed the deal three times with trump. and that trump signed a letter of intent with the company on october 28th, 2015. in january of 2016 cohen emailed putin's personal spokesman seeking help for the moscow project. you'll recall that the steele dossier accused cohen of being a link between the russian government and the campaign. which cohen has strongly denied. and over which he has filed a lawsuit. so willie, the question here is how much information does cohen

have? especially if the attorney/client privilege is busted or revoked. and he talks? >> i think the answer is he's got a lot of information, he's been donald trump's fixer for a long time. emily you talk about the personal loyalty he feels, almost like he's a part of the trump family. i think when a prosecutor confronts michael cohen with a prison sentence or a large fine or frank would know the sentences than i would of wire fraud, bank fraud, campaign finance violations, there's a moment where a man with children says -- you know what, i'm not going to jail for that long for this and maybe is sucked in to turn state's evidence. >> i asked him this every time i've interviewed him if there is a line. if the loyalty that he talks about and projects and repeats over and over again, if it runs out. i've never gotten a straight answer on that. it's a very tough decision. he does think of the trumps like family, but he does have his own

family as well. >> frank what might be a sentence fors crimes that were reported by the "washington post"? >> if you're looking at multiple violations of everything that we've heard come out of the possible search warrant motivations, you're looking at decades, a couple of decades potentially if they're all, if they're all found guilty. but here's the tea leaves we can read from what is leaking out around the search warrant. this could be primarily about stormy daniels, if you think about the election, violation, that could be the contribution in kind by paying her off. if you think about bank fraud it could be getting a home equity loan to pay her off. if there's a tax violations, it could be the fabricated delaware corporation to pay her off. so it could be largely about that. but here's what i would focus like a laser on. there's also far more serious violations that involve physical violence. remember stormy is claiming that a threat was launched in a las vegas parking lot against her and her child there could be a federal hobbs act violation

there could be interstate travel to communicate threat. there could be interstate communication of a threat via phone or computer. if that's found in the search results if it's found that trump knew about that, we're into a conspiracy to commit hobbs act, that's a serious crime. >> and matt apuso, good job on the breaking the story. there's little to be known on what this went down. what can you tell us? what did they say to him? or what grounds might we know about what they had in it to be able to do this? >> right. what we know is they went to the fbi went to his hotel room, park avenue, where he's staying while his apartment something renovated. and they also went to his office at rockefeller center. he was, using an office space in a manhattan law firm, and got years of documents. from those searches and we're looking at tax records,

financial records and communications, between michael cohen and donald trump and that's obvious as frank talked about, that's where this thing gets complicated. what i would like to add is one of the reasons that the president is so animated this morning or last night, one of the things that you hear a lot, from people that are close to cohen and to the president is, they feel like this is essentially mueller by proxy. all the things that joe laid out about how this is a republican hear and this was reviewed there. what happened here, bob mueller, michael cohen for some russia deals, decided it would be great to take a deep dive into everything he has. that's out of my mandate. i'll kick it to new york, they'll go in and give him a full shakedown and if anything comes loose, they'll send it back to me down in washington. they feel like this is mueller kind of doing an end-around and

kind of being too cute by half. that's kind of why he keeps talking about mueller. even though this wasn't mueller. >> well, and you know, frank, though, you've talked about this before. there are so many legal safeguards, procedural safeguards that are put in place to make sure that if you do this, the bar is so high, you've got to jump through each one of those procedural hoops. on top of that, even if you look at the fisa. donald trump's complaints, donald trump's supporters, complaints about fisa judges. they act as if a fisa judge is handed him a document, it's rubber-stamped and he or she doesn't even look at it. in all of these instances these political complaints are spoken by people who sound as if none

of them have ever been before a federal judge. don't understand that a federal judge, in either of these actions, especially yesterday's actions are going to have such high procedural bars to have the fbi go in and raid a law offices of a sitting united states president, that it's, any attack against them is going -- it's going to be procedurally bulletproof. talk about these safeguards. and how extraordinary the safeguards are that are set up. to make sure that somebody can't go on a fishing expedition of a president's lawyer. >> the rules of criminal procedure are well in place here. and it's going to be very very defensible. the irony is that the president seems to want to attack the very rules and change them and would prefer to live in a country where he gets to decide who is under investigation and he gets

to run the department of justice and they get to protect him and of course that's not how it works. >> in terms of how this went down and what do you know? the president calls it a break-in. is he dragged out? was it a dramatic event? >> it's interesting. this took place at his hotel. i had a source call me yesterday saying there was a team of agents going into this hotel on park avenue and i went up there and spent hours waiting, looking around, trying to find agents, it was so remarkably calm in the building. i know they took michael cohen's phone away. his phone was going straight to voicemail yesterday when i tried to reach him. >> emily jane fox. thank you very much. matt apuzzo, thank you as well. still ahead -- >> any more clarity on who was responsible for the attack? >> we are getting clarity on that, who was responsible for the weapons attack. we are getting some very good clarity, actually we have some

pretty good answers. >> body language throughout the whole event was fascinating. he didn't get much more specific than that but president trump says there will be a price to pay for the chemical weapons attack in syria. senator richard blumenthal sits on the armed services committee. senator tim kaine serves on the foreign relations committee and congressman adam kinzinger is a pilot in the air national guard. we talk to each of them coming up on "morning joe." so we swapped your car out for the all-new chevy traverse. yes. do you think it's going to surprise your daughter? absolutely. wait, is mom here yet? where's mom? she's in this car. what the heck? whoa. yo, whose car is this? this is the all-new chevy traverse. this is beautiful. it has apple carplay compatibility.

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coming up there was another separate development in the mueller probe. why investigators are now looking into a payment trump made, made by the trump foundation by a ukrainian businessman. it's complicated. it's still ahead on "morning joe."

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>> david ignatius, as i was saying before, this raid yesterday was no democratic fishing exp fishing, pe fishing expedition, there are

rules a prosecutor has to go through to have a federal judge allow them to search attorneys' records. tell us about those rules. >> joe, talking last night with a criminal defense attorney who looked carefully at the u.s. attorneys's manual, a couple things are important that we haven't mentioned. first, in any search like this where you are going into a lawyer's office, looking perhaps at records of his attorney/client relationships, you have to assure yourself there's no other way to get the material you're seeking. in other words, it's not possible to subpoena it. it may be there was a subpoena that wasn't in the view of prosecutors adequately honored. a second reason why sometimes prosecutors want to seek a judge's permission is if they fear there may be destruction of evidence. that's why you go in quick and fast the way it was done yesterday so those are some of the things that last night as criminal lawyers looked at this they were scratching heads. this is a pretty unusual thing

that happened and there are questions why would they have done it. those are some of the answers. >> and kasie hunt, let's talk about as we always do when something like this happens, republicans on capitol hill. it makes it much harder to say it's a democratic fishing expedition or witch-hunt when all the players are republicans and the man who pushed for this yesterday and conducted the raids was interviewed personally by donald trump, gave $5400 to donald trump's campaign and is a protege of rudy giuliani. >> joe, i don't think that many members of the republican party in congress believe fundamentally that this is a witch-hunt. when you asked about that they won't say that it's a witch-hunt. there are a handful and you know who those usual suspects are who are willing to defend the president to the nth degree on this mueller probe but most say, look, we need to see the end

result of mueller's information. this may be something that came originally, was referred by mueller but was ultimately executed by somebody else. this is both something republicans want to see finished and that is also a ticking time box that they're terrified is going to go off at any moment they are in the worst of all worlds heading into the election. >> let me ask quickly. donald trump talked about the possibility of -- he was asked about firing bob mueller. it seems just about every republican on the hill including paul ryan will say this investigation has to be followed through i get the sense in the senate more than the house there would be consequences if donald trump fired bob mueller. is that your read as well? >> it is. mitch mcconnell right before the recess came out much more strongly on this topic than i was expecting and that sent a

message and there was a lot of concern behind closed doors about what the president was saying and doing around this. the language he used yesterday is likely i'll keep you posted as to what people are saying this morning and today about this but i would not be surprised if this illicits a similar reaction. >> kasie hunt, thank you very much. frank figliuzzi, thank you as well. coming up, it's been reported president trump has begun preparing for a potential interview with bob mueller after yesterday's raid how likely is it the interview will happen? sources tell nbc news the president is stewing over the raid, even as he considers how to respond to the chemical attack in syria. we'll discuss it with the former u.s. attorney and two members of the senate arms services committee richard blumenthal and tim kaine. "morning joe" is coming right back.

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>> no, no i'm not. >> reporter: why don't you just fire mueller? >> why don't i just fire snoourl well, i think it's a disgrace what's going on. i think it's really a sad situation when you look at what happened. and many people have said you should fire him. again, they found nothing and in finding nothing that's a big statement. so we'll see what happens. i think it's disgraceful and so does a lot of other people.

this is a pure and simple witch-hunt. >> reporter: will rosenstein keep his job? will rosenstein keep his job? >> thank you all very much. >> wow, the body language was fascinating in itself. what happens if the president fires bob mueller? can he do that? will republicans speak out? will there be a constitutional crisis? the president's personal lawyer in the headlines for paying off a porn star was raided yesterday by the fbi. welcome back to "morning joe," it's tuesday, april 10. still with us we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle, columnist and associate editor for the "washington post" david ignatius. joining the conversation, columnist for the "wall street journal" and political contributor for nbc news and msnbc, peggy noonan. former assistant united states attorney in the criminal division of the u.s. attorney's office for the southern district of new york, daniel goldman is with us. and former u.s. attorney for the northern district of alabama and

an msnbc contributor, joyce vance. more details, joe, about the man who would have approved this raid of michael cohen's office and home, the lead federal prosecutor of the southern district of new york is a trump appointee, jeffrey berman, who holds the position once filled by preet bharara who trump asked to stay on and then abruptly fired three months later. berman was appointed by the president in january of 2018 reportedly with the backing of jared kushner. he was an assistant u.s. attorney from 1990 to 1994 and has donated to several republican politicians over the years, including $5,400 to the trump campaign. until rejoining the department of justice, berman was a partner at the same law firm as rudy giuliani who told the "washington post" about the raid "is this surprising?

yes. is it extraordinary? no. this is the way prosecutors get information. sometimes to convict and prosecute, sometimes to exculpate." joe? yeah. willie, let's talk about what the president said briefly and you can -- maybe you can help me o out. i'm obviously a little tired this morning. i'm having spasms of lucidity as a doctor once said of riddick bowe. by the way, one of the greatest commentaries of any boxer saying "beau-- beau is showibowe is sh of lucidity." donald trump is saying this is a nothing-burger. this is the biggest fastest nothing-burger ever.

how many russians has bob mueller -- he's indicted how many? 13, 14 russians. i've got his campaign manager indicted. his national security adviser has pled guilty and is cooperating. i've got gates his cop campaign -- one of his assistant campaign managers that was around during the transition arrested, indicted, now cooperating with the investigation. somebody told the "washington post" he was the top foreign policy person then he talks about all these democrats. you have a trump contributor that led this raid yesterday. so talk about the president saying this is a democratic witch-hunt and nothing has come of it. >> well, and you have -- we could go down the list, bob mueller, republican who also

served under george w. bush. you have jeff sessions, the attorney general who the president assailed yesterday, went after him for this raid of his attorney michael cohen's office saying he should have recused himself. he called what happened yesterday a break in, it wasn't a break in, it was the execution of a search warrant. donald trump can't imagine a world where people aren't politically biased or driven by their politics. he can't imagine a world where they're driven by the rule of law and by the constitution which is what the justice department and the fbi is doing here. the other part of all the things we've seen some out of the russia investigation and all the people that have been implicated as you've just laid out, to say they found nothing, we don't know what bob mueller has found. we know what he put out publicly in manafort and gates and others, but we don't know. that's the tip of the iceberg. no one knows what bob mueller has found or is looking at here but you had president trump yesterday going on this tirade.

he was watching cable news coverage of the raid of michael cohen's office. sources telling the "washington post" he spent much of the day glued to the tv before he opened a meeting on syria with this lengthy scathing response. >> so i just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys, good man and it's a disgraceful situation. it's a total witch-hunt. i've been saying it for a long time. i've wanted to keep it down. we've given i believe over a million pages worth of documents to the special counsel. they continue to just go forward and here we are talking about syria, we're talking about a lot of serious things with the greatest fighting force ever and i have this witch-hunt constant constantly for over 12 months now and more than that. you could say it was right after i won the nomination it started

and it's a disgrace, a real disgrace. an attack on our in a true sense, it's an attack on what we all stand for. this is the most biased group of people. these people have the biggest conflicts of interest i've ever seen. democrats all, or just about all. either democrats or a couple of republicans that work for president obama. the attorney general made a terrible mistake when he did this and when he recused himself or he should have certainly let us know if he was going to recuse himself and we would have used a -- put a different attorney general in so he made what i consider to be a very terrible mistake for the country but you'll figure that out. you know, sometimes language is cheapened, joyce. sometimes we will have political

commentators say that certain phrases are orwellian when they're not orwellian, they may just be discomfiting but what donald trump said there was -- i mean ripped from the pages of "1984" where he said -- he suggested that what happened yesterday was un-american and this goes against what we stand for as a country. actually, it was just the opposite. this proves no no man is above the law and speak to all of the procedural safeguards that are in place to make sure a raid like the one that was conducted yesterday by a rudy giuliani protege, somebody that president trump interviewed and then appointed as a u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york, talk about all the procedural safeguards that are

put in place to make sure that bob mueller or in this case the southern u.s. district attorney had sufficient evidence to go in and do what he did. >> so this was actually far from being a raid. this was the execution of a search warrant that was first vetted inside of the u.s. attorney's office that would have been approved at the highest levels of the justice department and ultimately woufb signed off on by a federal judge. under the fourth amendment of the constitution, the justice department can't execute a search warrant unless it has probable cause to believe that the specific locations that it's searching either crime was conducted there or they will find evidence that the proof of that crime or the fruits of that crime. so it's a very specific quantum of proof done through an avid

from the agents that details all of the evidence. if you believe that anyone at any step in the process didn't take it deadly seriously knowing that they were about to search the residence, the offices of the president of the united states' personal lawyer, then you're missing the whole point of this process and to make the process even more detailed and focused on outcomes, prosecutors aren't just worried about conducting the search, not even just worried about getting convictions at trial, they're worried about getting affirmed on appeal so there is an entire additional layer of analysis where skilled supreme court practitioners are making sure that nothing is going undone, nothing is left undone, nothing is going wrong, this process has integrity under the law. donald trump we know is no fan of the rule of law. in fact, if this is a witch-hunt, it's clear he's surrounded himself with a bunch of witches.

>> well, i'm fascinated with his response which was misleading and at times factionally completely incorrect and how that might inspire the fbi agents and investigators and the lawyers who will be looking at whether or not to break attorney/client privilege but there's more reaction. willie is at the tweet desk so i will have to zap over to wherever he is right next to me. >> just in the last two minutes as joyce was speaking the president tweeted twice, two brief tweets. "attorney/client privilege is dead" is the first one. the second one is all caps "a total witch-hunt." dan goldman, as a former u.s. attorney, what do you make of the first part of that? >> wouldn't that inspire them to move faster because he seems to be trying to control the situation. >> i don't think that anything that the president tweets is going to affect the pace of this investigation. i think it's going very quickly. >> what about his response yesterday, though? >> well, i think his response is

a political response and the prosecutors probably expected it given how he's been responding to mueller for a year now but to the attorney/client privilege, you make a good point which -- you bring up an interesting point. one of i think the most likely reasons why they executed a search warrant rather than just issued a subpoena is because they are concerned with something called the crime fraud exception to the attorney/client privilege which basically is a way to get around the attorney/client privilege if there's an indication that the communications relate at all to criminal activity. and the problem with the subpoena if you issue a subpoena to michael cohen is that he gets to decide what is privileged and what is he says are privileged. michael cohen is never going to say, oh, wait a minute, this is the crime fraud exception to the attorney/client privilege

because i was engaging in a crime. so one of the showings prosecutors often make in order to get a search warrant against a lawyer is to say that we need the actual documents. we're going to have an entire separate team of investigators and lawyers and prosecutors who are going to look at those communications to determine whether they are privileged or whether they fall into the crime fraud exception which only a prosecutor can know because they're the only ones that know the evidence so this is preserving the attorney/client privile privilege. >> and peggy noonan, i'm curious what your thoughts are about these republican investigations not only from bob mueller's office and the fbi, now we've got a republican who's a u.s. attorney from the southern district of new york that is conducting investigation of donald trump and then you have, of course, a democrat conducting an investigation, eric

schneiderman, the new york state attorney general. are these investigations metastasizing to such a degree that a firing of bob mueller may bring immediate rebuke from the senate but also won't stop these investigations because they're multilayered now. >> i think we have all discussed not only the president's tweet in just the past few minutes but what the president said yesterday after watching on cable a bunch of the reports of the not a break in but the raid or the executing of the search warrant on mr. cohen. here's what i thought was interesting about what the president said. he has often in the past called the mueller and events around it a witch-hunt. but yesterday he think in a serious way upped the rhetorical

ante by saying this "is an attack on our country, it is an attack on what we stand for." those are fighting words and those are words that suggest he's spinning out in his interpretation of what's going on here a bit. to me it sounds like a man who will have to be talked down over the next few days, talked down in terms of not deciding he's going to get rid of mueller, fire rod rosenstein, et cetera. or he will begin if he is not talked down to fire people and usher in a new and more dramatic crisis that i suspect won't go well for him in the congress of the united states. >> david ignatius, you did get the sense listening to president trump he was eager to answer the questions shouted at him by a reporter about whether or not he might fire bob mueller or set in motion the events with rod

rosenstein who could take bob mueller out of place. do you think yesterday's raid -- because it does feel personal to the presidents, his ire was up even more than we've seen in the the past about this investigation -- do you think this changes the calculus for the president that he may put pressure on rod rosenstein, put pressure on the justice department to unseat the special counsel? >> watching the look in his eye and the tone of voice, the arms folded across his chest, clenched teeth sometimes, you did have a sense that he was getting into battle mode. i agree with peggy that he used language that was more focused on the threat to the country. it's not about me, it's about the country blgts our institutions. this was a man who sounded to me like he was laying the predicate for taking further action to stop this investigation. and i think we are likely to be entering a new phase in which the president chak -- challenges

the investigation. as the president said during the watergate investigation, my ability to conduct my presidency when i'm supposed to meeting with kim jong-un, when i'm responding to attacks in syria is limited and compromised by these investigations, this assault so we're just beginning this next phase. you could hear it in his voice. >> so, david, can you tell where you say we are with syria? the president has been meeting with his national security team. where are we? >> joe, i think the fact that the president chose to give this indignant statement about the investigation with all of his generals and admirals surrounding him was -- it was interesting. where we are is a careful review

of military options. i'm sure all of us have been looking at our phones or computers to see if action has been taken as we've been talking. i think a couple of points i'd make. first, there is an effort to move jointly with our allies. the president talked to president macron of france. the french would like to be part of any action that's taken. i think that's a significant positive development. also there's been talk with the british. this puts the u.s.-russian relationship, which is so fraught now in a special focus. the russians are cornered in syria, backing assad. assad is the focus of international criticism. you can imagine the russians going through a retaliation process and then demanding some summit meeting with trump to

talk about what's ahead in syria. i think finally the chance that the president will be able to move troops out of eastern syria as he was saying he'd like to do, that's more limited. it would be surprising if the president didn't listen to strong advice from his military leaders to maintain the forces that we have for now. >> joyce vance, i want to focus in on the president's tweet agai again. attorney/client privilege is dead. there are cases in this it is dead. the president is right. can you explain when that would happen, how that would happen and what they would need to discover in order to revoke the concept of attorney/client privilege and read everything that michael cohen has between him and trump. >> the attorney/client privilege exists so that when you talk with your attorney you can feel comfortable sharing all of the details of your situation.

no concern uncomfortable details will be closed but what the attorney/client privilege can't do is it can't shield an attorney and a client who go off on a course of criminal conduct together. so once prosecutors have evidence, have an indication that the attorney and the client aren't engaged in the typical legal representation, but in fact they're off committing crimes together, the privilege drops away and prosecutors have the ability to look in on communications. the way that plays out in this situation, though, is that prosecution teams are very careful. they don't want to get any place close to attorney/client communications so as we've heard, there will be discussion in the last 24 hours, a separate team of agents who conducts the search warrant. they look at everything, they gather up what's responsive to the search warrant and a team of prosecutors called a taint team who will not be part of the

prosecution team. they'll review all of the evidence for deciding what should be turned over to the prosecution team and in that sense any information that involves criminal conduct between cohen and any of his clients or cohen's independent criminality, any of that information can be seized without violating attorney/client privilege. >> that could be quite revealing. >> before we end this block, i think it's important to the concept of reporting fact as to how the referral process works. we have a special prosecutor robert mueller who has specific out of bounds lines that he has to operate within. so he gets something during the course of his investigation that is extraneous to his mission as special prosecutor and he refers it to the southern district of manhattan. is that how it works.

>> he can widen his mandate to rod rosenstein and i'm surprised he didn't do that here. this is trump's personal attorney, his right hand man who is subject of this search warrant and even if cohen does not flip and cooperate they're obviously -- we know already and there are reports that there are communications between trump and cohen. i don't think that mueller is referring any aspect of an investigation that relates as the president to the southern district of new york. so my guess is that he's keeping that because there are significant constitutional and questions as to whether you can charge a sitting president and my suspicion is that mueller wants to keep that decision within his own office and not farm that out. you are correct, he can refer anything he wants and he can provide evidence he's gathered to other offices. that's how the process works and there can be sharing of

information that they get from this search warrant. just to add on to a further layer of protection because i think trump's tweets and his comments may be misleading. it's not just the prosecutor who decides whether or not something is privileged or not. it's a prosecutor can make a determination of their own but ultimately cohen or perhaps trump, most likely cohen can challenge that determination before a judge before it ever gets out and before it can ever be used so this is not a situation where this is a lawless prosecutor who's allowed to go and do whatever they want. a judge would ultimately make the decision as to whether or not these communications fall under the privilege or fallout side of the privilege under the crime fraud exception. >> daniel goldman and joyce vance, thank you both. peggy, stay with us. still ahead on "morning joe," our next guest says unlike individual members of the

government "the southern district of new york cannot be fired. neither can the judge who approved the warrant." senator richard blumenthal explains that next on "morning joe." plus, law professor jonathan turley has a warning for president trump -- beware the cohen trap. he says the greatest danger the president faces is not cohen as a defendant but cohen as bait. he'll explain that. and msnbc chief legal correspondent ari melber joins the discussion. that's all ahead on "morning joe."

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joining us now, a senator with influence over the three biggest stories happening today -- the russia probe, the facebook data controversy. is mark zuckerberg the luckiest guy on the planet this morning? also the on going war in syria. member of the judiciary, arms

services and veterans affairs committee, democratic senator richard blumenthal of connecticut. also joining us, msnbc chief legal correspondent and host of "the beat" on msnbc, ari melber. also with us, law professor at george washington university jonathan turley who has a new piece out entitled "mr. president, many people have said you should fire mueller, many people are wrong." he was considering it, jonathan you are t turley, out loud yesterday. it seems possibly like not a good idea at this point if your attorney is raided by the fbi, is that a bad day? >> the idea of his firing comey is horrendous. president trump took the ill advised course of firing james comey against the advice of everyone in the white house

excemee except jared kushner. this would be that blunder on steroids, it wouldn't change anything or stop the investigation but it could put his presidency in peril. part of the problem is the president hasn't done what many of us have been talking about for months which is he had to remove himself from his association with michael cohen. instead he had dinner with him a week ago and announced he was still his lawyer a couple days ago. he had to get out of the stormy daniels case which was clearly the biggest threat facing him. he didn't do that. instead cohen ended up triggering a ridiculous if not moronic arbitration procedure. so the problem here is not mueller. the problem is the lack of any intelligent design behind this legal strategy. >> joe? >> and jonathan of course he doesn't have a legal team now. he doesn't have somebody lead ing him.

dustin pedroia can ask you about your insights. you have been skeptical early on about obstruction of justice and other issues so you haven't jumped into the fire like so many other people saying the president is going down for obstruction or the president is going to go down for collusion but you immediately told us on set that the stormy daniels case was going to be problematic and here we find the president fatesing his biggest legal challenge and it's outside the mueller investigation. what did you know then and how did yesterday's events play out to confirm your worst suspicions early on. >> this is what i peerd in terms of how this would unfold and frankly many of trump's critics should be rejoicing.

the stormy daniels matter had all the things missing in the collusion matter. collusion was never a compelling case for a criminal charge against trump. there's too many defenses that he could raise. the stormy daniels matter from the very outset had all of those elements. john edwards had been charged criminally with a very similar set of payments but more importantly the president went out very quick ly, he denied hi relationship with stormy daniels, he kept his representation with michael cohen it couldn't have been a worse set of circumstances. they say this has the makings of what used to be called the wolf trap. he was in a good position, the president, just a few days ago. he had finally listened to his lawyers, was prepping for a negotiated interview with mueller and then this happened. then the way you get a wolf is

you get him to come out in the open and that's what michael cohen is. he has brought the president into greater peril and if the president is aggressive, if he runs toward the risk, he could put his whole presidency at risk. he could fall through that pit. that's the irony is that he's controlling the events in this case when the president does have other lawyers who have been trying to control the damage that michael cohen has caused. so the southern district of new york, the u.s. attorney's office now has a treasure trove of material after spending the better part of a day inside a hotel room where michael cohen is living where there are renovations in his apartment and law offices. you said the raid of his office was a seismic event. what makes you think it is? >> it's like a nuclear strike with multiple warheads. first remembered the to go through multibillion level -- me

levels of review by trump appointees. the assistant attorney general for the criminal division, the acting u.s. attorney in new york, not to mention rod rosenstein, the director of the fbi, they're all trump appointees. the raid on a lawyer's office is an extraordinary event, for a prosecutor as i was to contemplate is just a remarkable act of audacity when the lawyer is the sitting president ice lawyer. he has the keys to the kingdom. he notices all the secrets about donald trump and if he were to cooperate it would be indeed a transformative event so the raid is seismic and remember that when this kind of act is undertaken, there has to be more than just probable cause. the fbi and the u.s. attorney

has to convince the department of justice that they are going to come away with significant ed of a crime. >> and given what we know about the way that's happened that bob mueller found a piece of information that he then referred to the southern district of new york, based on all you've seen, do you suspect this is related to russia? were they going to look at a crime related to russia activity and the election? or is this something else entirely. >> i think cohen has been involved in trump's relationship to russia, his negotiations for the hotel that he wanted to build there, the dealings with ukrainians have been within cohen's purview, but my hunch is that it relates much more to obstruction of justice perhaps wire fraud or bank fraud or money laundering. all of those potential crimes

involve donald trump. donald trump's relationship with deutsche bank which has been convicted of money laundering through a settlement it did, all these events relate to crimes unrelated to the potential collusion charges. >> so help me out, ari. if this were related to something with russia, if we saw the raid on michael cohen's office were related to russia, why wouldn't bob mueller keep it in his investigation? why would he have to refer it to the southern district? >> rod rosenstein makes the call assuming what mueller has proposed is something that is primarily outside of the jurisdiction. so he has that authorizing language. what does that tell us? that there's evidence of a crime or belief there will be destruction of evidence by mueller's team that is primarily maybe not 100% cleanly out of their purview and then rod rosenstein says already we'll have the fbi agents deal with it new york. >> so peggy noonan, i've covered senator blumenthal for almost 30 years, back when he was the attorney general of connecticut. he's the most measured analyzer

of information i've ever met, frustratingly so at times, i've never heard him talk like this. a nuclear warhead with -- a nuclear strike with multiple warheads right on this president in terms of going after his attorney. and then the president's response. i was watching you react to that. he seemed different, very different, very concerned. >> the president? he looks to me like someone who has decided in his head what his next step is but he's trying to figure out what he's going to let us know what that step is and you can't help but think the next step is someone is going to get canned. i was struck by the senator's use of the word seismic. it's starting to occur to me listening to everybody, highly informed people this morning talk that while last night as i went to bed i thought this, the

entering of cohen's office, home, et cetera, this must be about the stormy daniels thing but i think now listening to everybody what we're saying is no, this is about -- this is looking for information on things we are not fully aware of yet and haven't been fully filled in on yet. let me just make one -- joe referred to something that i think is so key here and history will find so interesting, it is that the president of the united states in a moment of legal peril is -- does not have a legal team that is first rate killer washington accomplished experienced. those people for various reasons have not wanted to join the president in a time of real crisis, is not represented by people it seems to me who are arguably equal to the historical

moment. >> and that goes to what is happening right now, mika, which is the top criminal defense lawyer for russia out, john dowd, within the last two weeks. now donald trump's top personal lawyer, his long time aid, a trump org exec since 2006 not out completely. the only person facing this raid was paul manafort, 96 days later he was indicted. and curtis jackson has said when the feds come in the game loyalty is limited. the quo is does michael cohen's loyalty change as he feels federal prosecutorial pressure? >> they may get access to paperwork whether he likes it or not. joe, i couldn't help but notice john bolton sitting next to the president yesterday. what a great first day on the job. >> what a difficult first day on the job and i'm sure john bolton will face the same frustration as everybody else that steps into that position. peggy, i wanted to follow up on

what you were saying that the president doesn't have a legal team that's prepared to face this historic moment and this historic challenge. making matters worse the president is spending all of his time watching cable news shows that either enrage him -- >> and tweeting. >> -- or reinforce all of his pre-existing prejudices. so where there is a feedback loop where you have a cable news channel that is telling the president what he wants to hear, the president then tweets back a which hunt, then the cable news channel reports on that and you have -- if you're a donald trump supporter then this is -- these are the most dangerous of times because instead of turning off cable news and talking to your attorneys and putting together a

cogent strategy to face this historic challenge, you've got a president that watches cable news seven, eight, nine hours a day and he's hearing only what he wants to hear and as jonathan turley said, peggy, it's causing him to make one dreadful mistake after another jeopardizing not only his presidency but possibly his freedom. >> one thing i also was thinking, joe, i understand what you're saying but john bolton was next to the president at that meeting yesterday in which the talent talked about cohen and the investigation. the subject of that meeting was to be syria. we're in a great moment in syria and no matter now -- because of the cohen thing going on -- no matter what the president decides to do in syria it's going to be experienced as and painted as a political decision,

one affected by the mess he is in. >> to that point senator blumenthal at this size mick moment in american history with all of this going on we have a president who is virtually alone, a president alone waiting to make a decision on sir, waiting for the justice department and mueller investigation to proceed apace and now the southern district of manhattan to proceed apace. your view on syria, what are the president's options? what is the danger? >> well, there has to be a response, it must be robust and it must have military implications. it has to send a message to russia and iran, the enablers here that they will be held accountable as well. so stronger sanctions on putin's oligarch and on the money laundering by putin and the funneling and hidden assets involving money. that is one way to send a message but to come back to

russia in the context of this investigation criminal defense lawyer would say to donald trump turn off the tv, keep your mouth shut about the investigation, be president of the united states, the advantage he has as a potential defendant, a possibility that can no longer be ruled out is he is the only american the world who as president of the united states who can make anything look small in light of the enormous implications of world events and the threat they represent to the united states. but one more point here. the threat level to the special counsel has risen astronomically. one of the stunning points about that rant by the president yesterday facing his generals there to talk about syria was the prospect of his firing bob mueller or any of the other top officials at the department of

justice which would provoke a constitutional crisis in the midst of the syrian conflagration. >> my gosh. and then there's this other story which is in many ways related. you're monitoring, you have a role in hearing from mark zuckerberg of facebook today. what are you hoping to accomplish there? >> this moment for mark zuckerberg is like high noon, it's a moment of reckoning for facebook for its business model, not just about cambridge analytica but about whether it will commit to fully informing its users about how it uses their personal information and seek their informed consent. the days of trust me from mark zuckerberg are over. the apology tour and the contrition sonata have worked only so far now. >> okay.

firing on all cylinders this morning, richard blumenthal, thank you very much and we'll look forward to hearing from you soon. jonathan turley, thank you as well. we'll read your column on the hill. a ari melber -- i'm trying to think of which soundbite to use. >> contrition sonata comes in well. >> coming up next, syria, how and under what circumstances will the u.s. military use force? senator tim kaine joins the conversation. that's ahead on "morning joe." ♪

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>> if it's russia, if it's syria, if it's iran, if it's all of them together, we'll figure it out and we'll know the answers quite soon. >> reporter: does putin bear responsibility for this? >> he may and if he does it's

going to be very tough. >> reporter: he'll a a price if -- >> everybody's going to pay a price, he will, everybody will. >> that's the president speaking yesterday. joining us now, a member of the foreign affairs and energy and commerce committees, republican congressman adam kingzinger of illinois. also george will, george is out with a new column.

evil regime. regained control by saying we're going to destroy assets to

your regime to far exceed the chemical weapons and see what we need to do. but loorks nobok, nobody's call for -- one thing we have to do is hold fast that chemical weapons have no use on the battlefield. >> george will, good morning. i have not had a chance to take a look at your column, but i'm wondering what would you like to see donald trump decide about and announce about his next step with regard to syria and i'm wondering also, do you think assad is winning and in fact will win? >> yes and yes. i think he is winning. i think he has an ally in putin who decided that civil wars are not ended no matter what the

congressman suggests by negotiations. the american civil war in 1865 did not end with negotiations. the russian civil war in 1921 did not end with negotiations. the spanish civil war in 1939, the chinese civil war in 1948 one side or the other wins and mr. putin picked a side and wants his side to win. now, the united states might want to bring about regime change. that is it was seven years ago that president obama said the time has come for mr. assad to step aside. now, mr. assad was uninterested in mr. obama's opinion on this, so he's still there. the united states, i don't understand the modalities of how regime change would be brought about, but i do think we ought to remember this. the united states became really committed to vietnam in november, 1963 when it was

complicit in some way. we're not sure the degree, in the coup against the regime changing in vietnam. after that we were stuck. if we're going to respond and we really have to because much as mr. obama made a big mistake drawing a red line regarding chemical weapons in syria, mr. trump has now drawn his own line by saying a big price will have to be paid. i'm not sure again how you make good on that rhetoric which came from him as most of his rhetoric does without cforethought. >> do you have any level of concern about apparent imminent actions to be taken by the united states within syria with a president who is nearly totally preoccupied with legal difficulties here at home? >> so the question is if the president's preoccupied with legal difficulties am i worried

about any action and the answer is -- >> are you worried about the president's behavior as a result of his preoccupation? >> no, the president has a strong team around him. the president gets put good -- he'll have good decisions, good options put in front of him and he'll make a wise decision and i think ultimately i get it, the legal questions are intense and we're going to ask everything that happens, we're going to talk every day on it but when the reality when it comes to national defense, when it comes to inflicting punishment on syria the president cannot delay simply because there is some question going on domestically. he has a responsibility. i think he knows this and i think he's going to act and at the end of the day we have to make sure that the syrian regime is paying a price that far exceeds any use of chemical weapons because there will be another response somewhere that will say we can use chemical weapons to gain leverage on the battlefield, but now instead they is look back and say if we do act in this that the cost of using chemical weapons is going to crush our military infrastructure. >> we're up against a break but

there are a lot of questions about this. we'll have you back soon. thank you so much. still ahead, new reaction from president trump on the raid of the offices of his personal attorney in two back to back tweets within the past hour the president declared this quote, attorney/compliant privilege is dead and then in all caps, a total witch hunt. and from the senate armed services committee, tim kaine on this story and the president's options when it comes to syria. "morning joe" is coming right back. ig was a success for choicehotels.com badda book. badda boom. this year, we're taking it up a notch. so in this commercial we see two travelers at a comfort inn with a glow around them, so people watching will be like, "wow, maybe i'll glow too if i book direct at choicehotels.com". who glows? just say, badda book. badda boom.

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raided cohen's office and residence for documents. an action that president trump called a quote, break-in. nine times he described it as a disgrace and when asked if he'd fire robert mueller he wouldn't give a clear answer on that. it is probably not where his staff wants the president to be focused as he weighs whether to strike syria for waging chemical warfare and that is where we begin "morning joe" this morning on this tuesday april 10th. we have mike barnicle, former fbi assistant director for counter intelligence and an nbc national contributor. and an msnbc contributor jane fox. she has now reporting on how the raid went down. new york times reporter who first broke the news of the cohen raid, columnist and associate editor for the washington post, and nbc news

capitol hill correspondent and host of kasiedc. but first the raid of michael cohen's office. that's not good. like from a trump perspective, that's bad. >> well, it -- as many people have said, it is a really, really bad day for you legally if you wake up and you're paul manafort and you have the fbi streaming into your house looking at your documents. it is an even worse day if you're at the white house and you get the news that the fbi is streaming into your lawyer's offices, and getting their documents for obvious reasons. this -- very bad news. i do have to say though, there -- i know this will shock a lot of people that watch our show and that follow donald

trump every day. but he said so many things yesterday that need a little bit of clarification. he talked about the conspiracy. there's this raging conspiracy against him. they've been after him from the beginning. this is a witch hunt. let me just -- just in case -- it's political. just in case you want to know who these witches are that donald trump says are coming after him, they're bob mueller, a republican, this is the conspiracy. you've got rod rosenstein who he was screaming about yesterday, he's a life long republican despite the fact donald trump called him a democrat from baltimore or something. the attorney general jeff sessions who he was raging at, you and i both heard not only donald trump but jared kushner and everybody at the administration saying he was the greatest most standup guy, best republican ever during the campaign. he is also this conspiracy a republican. the fbi director who donald

trump appointed republican. >> right. >> the four fisa judges that were leading this conspiracy, republican, republican, republican, republican. the house run by republicans, the senate run by clrepublicans and mika, yesterday's raid was run by the u.s. attorney from the southern district of new york. remember the one that replaced -- >> there was a jared connection. anyhow, this is the person they wanted. >> he fired priet because he didn't think he could be loyal, so who did he appoint? he appointed geoffrey berman who was in charge of this raid yesterday. ordered this raid yesterday, not on robert mueller's behalf but on the behalf of the people of

new york and the united states of america. he was appointed by donald trump, and also he was -- his mentor, mika, you guessed it, rudy giuliani. he's a giuliani guy and also just little known fact, this conspiracy because mika, this is such a terrible conspiracy and all of these people hate donald trump and they've hated donald trump forever and they 'never -- they've never donated -- wait, he donated $5,400 to donald trump's campaign. and while we are at it, everybody that i named on that list have never been democrats, most of their lives like donald trump have never contributed hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to democratic campaigns like donald trump, have never contributed to nancy pelosi like donald trump, have never contributed to emmanuel like donald trump,

because this is important. he republicans say oh, they've contributed to democrats, some of the people who investigating on the team have never contributed to chuck schumer, have never contributed hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to the dnc. these are republicans. most of these players now that donald trump is attacking were appointed by donald trump. and this was executed yesterday by a giuliani man who gave $5,400 to donald trump, was just appointed in january and is a trump guy through and through, but you know, one thing that donald trump doesn't understand, mika, is that every one of those republicans that i named are republicans but they put their country and they put the rule of law above donald trump and that is something that this man will never understand. never. >> and you could really see -- >> that's the reality of

yesterday's conspiracy. >> absolutely and you could see in the president's reaction defensiveness that was up to level 10 with some of the comments he made, which we will be showing you later, but first, willie geist with what went down. >> and leading by the way the justice department conspiracy was attorney general jeff sessions, the first united states senator to support donald trump in his campaign. that as he attacked sessions yesterday. the fbi raided a hotel room of michael cohen. prosecutors and agents obtained the search warrant in coordination with the special counsel's office after receiving referral from robert mueller's team. a person briefed on the search told the new york times that a payment cohen arranged to porn star stormy daniels is only one of many topics being investigated. the fbi also seized e-mails, tax documents and business records the person said. the washington post reports cohen is under federal investigation for possible bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign

finance violation. that according to three people with knowledge of the case. federal prosecutors collected communications between cohen and his clients including those between the lawyer and mr. trump according to two sources. in a statement cohen's lawyer said prosecutors' decision to conduct their investigation using search warrants is completely inappropriate and unnecessary, adding it resulted in the unnecessary seizure of protected attorney/client communications between a lawyer and his clients. >> wow. >> you are one of the first reporters on this story. just go through a little bit about how this went down and what all the fbi may have been looking for. >> well, michael cohen's lawyer says his understanding is that this was taken -- this was done by the special counsel -- this was done by the united states attorney's office in manhattan, excuse me, after a referral from bob mueller's office. which means that mueller came across something that -- that

piqued his interest but that he viewed as probably not in his world, not in my mandate, not necessarily directly related to russian interference in the election or coordination with the trump campaign, and then referred that over to prosecutors in manhattan, and to joe's point, yeah, i mean, all thee these people are republican and i think in the world we live in in d.c. right now that's worth pointing out but also where it's the obama administration or the trump administration there's an expectation or there should be an expectation that in washington that federal prosecutors and fbi agents regardless of who put them there are going to follow these things through without, you know, being afraid of repercussions and without favoritism and so obviously if you got a warrant as they did in new york, that had to be reviewed by a federal judge and approved by a federal judge and somebody had to decide, there's probable cause that a crime was committed here

and -- and that document had to have been reviewed by senior officials in washington, so i mean, this was a vetted process. an extremely vetted process. >> so i think as people are listening to the story, reading your reporting and connecting the dots, they might wonder ewhy if bob mueller found something that was a red flag why wasn't it something that mueller himself might have pursued in his investigation? >> that's a great question and if you read the mandate that mueller has, you know, there is a catch yawl category of you can investigate any crimes that you sort of come up with. and so you know, it may have been a case where this was something he had the legal authority to do, but just decided wasn't in his core mandate or he may have just said listen, this isn't really what i was brought here to do and there's been a lot of criticism going back to the independent council years of ken star of a special council who kind of run amok. and that is very much in play in

the paul manafort litigation where manafort is accusing mueller of having essentially an endless mandate, an endless brief. so by referring this to prosecutors in new york it allows them to say, bob mueller passed this information on. he is not running wild. >> right. joe. >> you know, mika, that's a great point and i'll just tell everybody what we talked about as soon as this news broke yesterday. and that is i -- again, just a private conversation, but i said i don't want bob mueller spending his time investigating stormy daniels. this is about russia, this is about obstruction of justice and if he starts investigating stormy daniels, then -- in an aggressive way and he's raiding cohen's offices for that. then it's like a land dealmorphs into what we saw with bill clinton. this shows once again once we got the information that no, bob mueller is not investigating

this. he ran across something he felt was a crime, he referred it on like any officer of the courts of the united states of america has a responsibility to do and it shows once again what a disciplined buttoned up operation that he has, they don't leak, and also bob mueller is not going to be undisciplined. and he's not going to waste the time of the american people. he's going to do what he was hired to do, and if he comes across something else that he doesn't think tightly fits in -- into his mission, then he's going to pass it on. so yesterday shows once again, he passed it on to the u.s. attorney for the southern district, a giuliani man, a trump contributor, and said, i came across this, here, i refer to you, do with it what you will and this former trump supporter who's now a u.s. attorney whose first duty is to the constitution and the rule of law

must have seen a crime there and actually went to work on it. >> we still have much more to come on this big story. >> this is the most biased group of people. these people have the biggest conflicts of interest i've ever seen. democrats all or just about all either democrats or a couple of republicans that worked for president obama. >> president trump somehow blames democrats for the fbi raid on his own personal lawyer. we'll show you more of his fiery comments and why the official white house response was far different from its typical reaction to developments in these investigations. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. mission to show drip coffee drinkers, it's time to wake up to keurig. wakey! wakey! rise and shine! oh my gosh! how are you? well watch this. i pop that in there. press brew. that's it. look how much coffee's in here? fresh coffee. so rich. i love it.

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well kcome back to "morning joe." we've been talking about the fbi raid on the office and hotel

room of president's long time lawyer michael cohen. there was a noticeable difference in how the white house reacted to the news of the raid. unlike previous responses to domentes do questions of the mueller probe, it reacted different. the president was informed about the actions sometime in the afternoon after the raid began, but prior to the news breaking publicly. the president was reportedly watching cable news coverage of the raid. sources tell the washington post the president spent much of monday afternoon glued to the television before he opened a meeting on syria with a lengthy scathing response. >> so i just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys, good man, and it's a disgraceful situation it's a total witch hunt. i've been saying it for a long time. i've wanted to keep it down.

we've given i believe over a million pages worth of documents to the special counsel. they continue to just go forward and here we are talking about syria, we're talking about a lot of serious things with the greatest fighting force ever and i have this witch hunt constantly going on for over 12 months now, and actually much more than that. you would say it was right after i won the nomination it started. and it's a disgrace. it's frankly a real disgrace. it's a -- an attack on our country in a true sense. it's an attack on what we all stand for. >> why don't you just fire mueller? >> well, i think it's a disgrace what's going on. we'll see what happens. but it's really a sad situation when you look at what happened and many people have said you should fire him. again, they found nothing, and

in finding nothing, that's a big statement. if you know the person who's in charge of the investigation, you know all about that, deputy rosenstein, rod rosenstein, he wrote the letter very critical of comey, one of the things i said i fired comey, well, i turned out to do the right thing because you look at all of the things he's done and the lies, and you look at what's gone on at the fub wibi and the insuran policy and all the things that happened, turned out i did the right thing, but he signed, as you know, he also signed the fisa warrant. so rod rosenstein who's in charge of this signed a fisa warrant and he also -- he also signed a letter that was essentially saying to fire james comey and he was right about that. he was absolutely right. so we'll see what happens. i think it's disgraceful and so does a lot of other people.

this is a pure and simple witch hunt. thank you very much. thank you. thank you very much. >> will rod rosenstein keep his job? >> thank you. >> thank you all very much. >> now, david, let's talk about something that actually i believe is more concerning than that attack against the facts and the rule of law and let's talk about the fact that we have a temperamentally unfit man who is now having to make decisions on what may be a decision that not only impacts the -- the future of syria, but the entire region, the entire middle eastern region as well as a man who is juggling one of the most important summits this country has had in some time and that is the summit that has been proposed by kim jong-un.

what -- where are we as -- as a country and what are your biggest concerns? >> joe, what was most unsettling for me about the video that you just showed, here's the president speaking through clenched teeth, rage evident on his face as he talks about this prosecution surrounded by generals, admirals, all of his senior military leadership as he contemplates taking major military action following the syrian use of chemical weapons. t i'm glad he had his military leadership there. those generals have found a way to speak honestly to him and at time to back him off of positions that we hasn'ts to take but we are entering a period of unusual difficult foreign policy tests just as the president feels personally cornered. he said it so clearly, they broke into my personal lawyer's office. that's the way the president's feeling as he has to make these

key decisions. >> coming up on "morning joe," from the armed services committee, tim kaine is standing by. does he support a strike against syria? we'll ask him next on "morning joe."

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joining us now member of both the armed services and foreign relations committee, democratic senator tim kaine of virginia and the washington post george will are back with us as well along with barnicle, willie, joe and me. so senator, donald trump's lawyer is now the focus of the mueller investigation right now. if attorney/client privilege is dropped, if they find that they can do that how concerned or how hopeful are you that this case is move ng the right direction? >> you know, my whole goal here is i just want the director mueller to have the runway to finish his job. i don't -- i don't want him to be fired. i don't want him to be limited. i don't want democrats jumping

to the end point before the job is done, because this is ultimately about our people criminally culpable but it's also the story on future elections. >> the president calls this a witch hunt. they said they didn't find anything and he really was quite defensive yesterday about -- that this was a sad situation and he's not sure whether or not mueller will be fired. are you concerned that this investigation it would be thwart thwarted? >> yes, i think the president is panicked. that became obvious to me about the time of the state of the union. he's been more and more panicked by mueller's work and mueller's not going to stop nor should he. congress needs to make very plain that the mueller investigation will be protected and whether it's an attempt to fire mueller or pre-emptively pardon folks we would view that as the president pushing the nation into a constitutional

crisis and we would need to respond as the article i branch that we need to protect the country. >> senator kaine, syria, a president clearly preoccupied with his legal difficulties or his lawyer's legal difficulties. he addressed that yesterday in the rambling address before the joint chiefs and everybody else in the white house, the authorization for the use of military forces has not been renegotiated or rewritten in nearly 15 years. what can you do to enhance the role of the united states senate, the congress specifically in guaranteeing more safeguards than are usually there in terms of use of force? >> mike, that's a passion of mine. senator jeff flake and i have had a bipartisan authorization focusing upon all of the military action we're currently taking against nonstate actors. the president currently does not have any deal authority to wage war against nation states,

missile strikes against syria for example without coming to congress. but our committee chair, senator corker has announced that he will take up military action against the nonstate actors. isis, al qaeda, the taliban shortly and i have been working very significantly with senator corker to try to come up with a proposal that will limit rewrite and limit the 2001 authorization and put more constraints on the when, where and who we are fighting against. that 2001 authorization is a complete blank check to the president and it's long past time that we impose some reasonable limitations. >> what's your level of concern right now about this imminent apparent strike of something that will happen with regard to syria. what's your level of concern about that and other things? >> i'm very concerned about it were this reason. i voted in august of 2014 that the united states should take military action against syria

for gassing its own citizens. there needs to be a consequence for that, but it can't be the president just deciding on his own without congress. if we let president trump unilaterally initiate a military campaign against syria what's to stop him from doing it against north korea or iran or some other nation particularly when he's so stressed out and rambling and worrying about domestic investigation into the legitimacy of his presidency, this is exactly the reason that congress needs to quit acting like an article 2.5 banch and start acting like an article 1 branch again. >> good to see you this morning. >> good morning. >> as you know well, president obama's secretary f ostate john kerry believed they had 100% of their words chemical weapons out of syria, that their policy had worked. clearly that was wrong we know now. how did they get it so wrong there? >> it was clear that massive amounts of the chemical weapons

stock pile was destroyed. virginians were involved in that effort to destroy chemical weapons, but there were both chemical weapons they carried away but syria uses some kind of chemicals that were not officially on the banned list but wagner theless have significant health impacts when they're used and when a nation is using chemical weapons against their own civilians it's a humanitarian disaster. there has to be a robust response. that's why i voted for pinpoint military action in 2014 and i'd be very open to it again. i don't think he can do it on his own. >> but you agree the obama administration had missteps there and didn't take care of it the way they declared publicly? >> other aspects were either hidden away or they've been remanufactured since and that has led to this set of just horrific atrocities committed by the assad regime.

>> senator, good morning. >> good morning. >> i've got a question for you. you've been very amusing on twitter about the president's announced intention to send u.s. forces to the southern border. let me ask just a big plain question. >> sure. >> why can't the u.s. control its southern border by which i mean it wasn't controlling it during the george w. bush era, it wasn't controlling it during the obama era. what is the reason we have not been able to do that or are we controlling the border, you think, and no one's noticing? >> peggy, look, i think we do need to do more border control. in june of 2013 i voted for a comprehensive immigration reform bill that would have put $40 billion into better border security and just a month ago, six weeks ago we presented to

the president a proposal, i was the lead democratic negotiator to do $25 billion of border security and permanent protection for dreamers. we asked the president, can you take yes for an answer and he turned us down. so i do think there are some steps that we need to take at the border but what i object to -- >> i've been surrounded for 20 years by republicans and democrats in the house and senate speaking about better border security. somehow it never gets secured. it's never the number one item on the list. it's always number 3, 4 or 5. why can't we do this? 20 years now. >> we should be able to. i don't -- peggy, i don't have a good answer for you. when we presented the president in mid february with a proposal, i mean, get this, he said, dreamers deserve a path to citizenship and congress should fix it so we did. he asked for $25 billion in border security, and we gave him a deal that wasn't 24 billion.

it was $25 billion. and he turned it down. and then a month later when we passed the budget he acted surprised that there wasn't border money in it. we came to the president with a bipartisan deal saying do you want to secure the border or not and he said no. i -- i sometimes wonder that -- whether he likes to keep this as a live issue just to rev up his base and the other thing i object to is a member of the armed services committee with a kid in the marines, i don't like him using the military as a palace guard. we're going to have a parade. oh, no, now the guardsmen can go do weed whacking on the border based on a tweet. i want to see a strategy. if the right strategy is to send guard troops to the border, look, when i was a virginia governor we sent virginia guard to the border but it was pursuant to a strategy not just the president acting like the military was his palace guard and he could do whatever he wanted.

>> in your border enforcement proposals over the years has there been any provision that would successfully pass congress that would impose rigorous penalties, rigorous financial penalties on employers here in the united states who hire illegals? >> mike, i -- you're testing my memory a little bit. i do believe in the comprehensive -- what was called the gang of 8 bill that we passed with nearly 70 votes in the senate in june of 2013, that the senate put in both the ability for employers to check the bona fide ease of employees but also penalties if they did not do it or knowingly hired people who were not appropriately legal. that was one of the pillars of the comprehensive immigration reform bill in 2013. >> thank you very much for being on the show this morning. >> you bet, guys. >> george, i just sort of want to try and look at this all from 20,000 feet and get your perspective. we saw the president's reaction to the raid on his personal

attorney. we saw something very different yesterday. everything from his body language to the way he was breathing to the words he was saying which were factually incorrect, something we're used to, but extremely defensive. we have a new national security advisor sitting next to him. this was his first day in office. and major decisions to be made on syria. how concerned do you think we should be that this president and his administration which involves and includes a poorly run, not really staffed up state department in terms of at least the president not who's running it, how concerned should we be that a decision on syria will be made for the right reasons and with clarity? >> i don't know whether i was hearing things that weren't really there but i thought i heard in some of the conversations this morning an invocation of the old wag the dog phenomenon. the president might need a war

at this point as the ultimate distraction. senator kaine who was just on together with mike lee, the republican from utah are among the very few members of the legislative branch who are worried that congresss making powers have afterthought from disuse. there's no reason in the world why congress should not be heard from to authorize any use of force against syria. this is not a case of the president acting unilaterally to repel these -- some extraordinary unanticipated attack. to go to the other side of your question about the president's investigation, mika, i have a feeling that the key to a lot of what's going on in the mueller investigation is like the letter in edgar allen poe's short story. it's hiding in plain sight. we have known for at least two years that mr. trump by not

releasing his tax returns by violating and taking some political heat for it is hiding something. there's the only reasonable inference. we know also that he is not a very good businessman. four bankruptcies is evidence of that. so it seems to me that we're back where we have two years ago when people were saying, what is he hiding? not is he hiding something, obviously he's hiding something. so the path to a resolution of what mueller's looking at is going to run through financial transactions, the key to which are probably in the man's tax returns. >> and his lawyer would have access to a lot. thank you very much for being on. up next privacy concerns. fake news and getting played by russia during the 2016 election. facebook's ceo mark zukberg

prepares for a two-day grill on capitol hill. we set the stage next on "morning joe."

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the days of trust me for mark zuckerberg are over. the apology tour and the contrition sonata i think have worked only so far now. >> wow. he did not hold back this morning, joe. senator bloomenthal. they may not be in a forgiving mood when mark zuckerberg testifies in just a few hours from now. sophia nelson, happy equal payday. also with us bloomberg reporter sarah friar. she writes this week's cover

story entitled instagram has a facebook problem. oh, no. they do, sarah? >> they absolutely do. facebook has -- basically separated itself from instagram in the minds of the consumers. people see instagram as an alternative to facebook but let's be clear that instagram is owned by facebook and rose to the current prominence they have in part by learning lessons from facebook on how to grow. they have also learned from facebook mistakes and today in facebook's testimony we'll see if they mention the app at all. >> well, joe, when we were talking and listening to the interview with sheryl sandberg and looking at some of the testimony that mark zuckerberg is going to be putzing forward, i will say senator bloomenthal nailed it. trying to be naive and it not working out can only go so far.

>> they know exactly what they're doing. they know exactly what they have been doing. this is not like you know, this is a kid that just got out of harvard with a startup and they're experiencing growing pains. they've gone public, obviously made billions and billions of dollars and know exactly what they're doing, so the shucks routine, i'm surprised about it just as you. and what's so fascinating here is that you're going to have mark zuckerberg going before a congress that for the most part has been compliant and they've been compliant because there's a lot of money that silicon valley gives to republicans and democrats alike, but probably more democrats than republicans. so it's going to be fascinating to see exactly what democratic senators are going to have the courage who want to run for president to jump out and actually speak truth to power and speak truth to a very important part of their

contributor base. >> joe, you know, if you remember a few months ago, the heads of twitter, facebook, et cetera, were asked to come up and testify before the congress and they declined. now you see mark zuckerberg having no choice but to go up before the congress and yes, i concur that these statements about gee, you know, we have to do better and we're looking into it but it's going to take a few years, i don't think it's going to cut it and look for some of the senators who want to run for president to really zoom in because this privacy issue for the regular person out there is a big thing. it's not just those of us in the beltway and those of us who are in the know. it's the average person that uses facebook that now thinks, my god, what do they have on me? what are they doing? so i think there's going to be a public outcry and i don't think it's just facebook by the way. i suspect that more people have data on us that any of us want to nope about and i think that's a real challenge for the american people. they like facebook. they like talking to your high school friends and they thought it was harmless.

there was a trust that's broken. >> that's it. a breach of trust. >> there are people i've talked to in silicon valley and people who have written articles that says this is a crisis for facebook, it goes to the core of who they are, trusting data with its users. what are the stakes today for mark zuckerberg as he sits in front of a couple of panels who are going to go hard on him. we already heard a preview. they're talking about perhaps regulating facebook in new ways, regulating social media in new ways. what could happen today to change the direction of facebook? >> i think the reckoning has already happened and today's theatrics shouldn't distract us from the real problem for facebook which is not cambridge analytica but the way they've built their products over the years. remember facebook in its early days had a move fast, break things mentally. they simply can't afford to break things anymore. they are going to have to be a

lot more thoughtful as they create new problems -- new products for users thinking about the problems with data security, facebook's future includes products like voice devices in your home, like virtual reality, those are all going to be a lot harder for them to build if users don't trust them with their data and their precious personal moments. >> thank you very much. we'll be reading the new issue of bloomberg business week. we will also have our eye on facebook's stock which is down nearly 15% since the beginning of last month as mark zuckerberg testifies on capitol hill. tomorrow on "morning joe," former secretary of state madeline albright will join us on set. plus, her new book starkly titled "fascism, a warning." that's tomorrow on "morning joe." incredible timing and we'll be back this morning with more "morning joe" in three minutes.

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mr. president, if it's a witch hunt -- >> why don't you just fire mueller? just fire the guy. >> well, i think it's a disgrace what's going on. we'll see what happens. really a sad situation when you look at what happened. many people have said you should fire him. again, they found nothing. and in finding nothing, that's a

big statement. so we'll see what happens. i think it's disgraceful and so does a lot of other people. this is a pure and simple witch-hunt. >> an update on the big story we're following this morning. sources tell "the washington post" that the president spent much of monday afternoon glued to the television before he opened a meeting on syria with that lengthy scathing response. part of which you just saw. the president was reportedly watching cable news coverage of the fbi's raid of his longtime personal lawyer michael cohen. prosecutors and agents from the southern district of new york obtained the search warrant in coordination with the special counsel's office after receiving a referral from robert mueller's team. the president tweeting attorney/client privilege is dead, and that it's a witch hunt. so the president in defense mode this morning and not appearing to be thinking about syria,

which is incredible. joining us now on equal payday, founder of tina brown live media and the women of the world summit tina brown that starts thursday. >> it's an amazing lineup. >> the timing is amazing with equal payday and especially with this president who many women see as just a massive insult on many levels. what do you have on tap? >> well, we have an amazing group. we have viola davis coming, who's been so outstanding about this whole issue. she said to us in l.a. when she joined us, you know, don't tell me i'm the black meryl streep, right. if i'm the black meryl streep, why don't i have that resume? because she found it so hard as a woman to sort of break through that. we have margaret atwood. we have hillary clinton moderating a panel. >> that will be fun. >> she has four incredible global journalists from russia, china, turkey, talking about the rise of authoritarianism and how this is a creeping trend.

>> and you'll look at me too. >> opening night, we have a remarkable panel, because we have asha agenta, who was raped by harvey weinstein. we have the model who was in the fbi sting with weinstein. and an incredible woman, an italian politician, and we'll talk about how me too in italy really doesn't exist and how since she went back to italy after the weinstein revelations, she was slut-shamed, she was called a whore. these women have been trashed. in italy, the post-berlusconi world trashes women. >> the list that she has of incredible women is like three or four pages long but it's like how tina puts them together that creates really kind of explosions on stage. >> hillary clinton as the interviewer is a very interesting idea. >> in america, #metoo. in france, #nameyourpig.

italy has no amusing hash tag for the movement? >> the only hash tag we're seeing now is like whore. >> that's a problem. >> they actually burned -- >> kind of rough. >> -- in effigy, when you see signs -- you know, being burned in effigy, it's absolutely incredible. >> what's great about equal payday is not only doing this amazing forum. mika, your books, i just read "knowing your value and grow your value." i'm laid but they'te but they'r thank you. >> thank you. >> women of color, it take us even longer. we're getting paid even less than our caucasian sisters. we have to remember, we lift, we climb. we should be working together. >> no doubt because it's 80% pay gap for white women but i think it's 58% for women of color and it is just so hard for them to

get the kind of pay that they're expecting. that's what viola davis talks about. >> yes, it's opportunity as well as pay so -- >> exactly. >> this starts thursday. i want to ask you what you thought, the big news of the morning and president trump's very defensive response yesterday when he came out with john bolton sitting next to him his first day in office and he's apparently going to be speaking about syria and yet he seems a little perturbed by the events of the day. >> that was a stunning visual. also what is scary about trump is he has no ability to compartmentalize. he's in a war department and he's got this, you know, self-defensive whining in a sense about what's happened. everyone involved in that sting has been a trump appointee. rosenstein signed off on it. the district attorney, trump appointee signed off on it. he cannot say this is a democratic plot. >> no, but he does.

>> i want to say to the american people, be clear, this is not a witch hunt. a judge has to approved this. i know it's been said all day, but you know what's a disgrace, you know what's a shame, the president of the united states attacking yet again every institution we have and calling it into question. this was not a mueller thing. this was u.s. attorneys going to a judge. it's a big bar, willie, for that judge to authorize that, they had some there there. there's something there. >> he was reeling yesterday. that was just one of many things he said that -- just absolutely untrue. democrats all on the panel -- >> they found nothing. >> republicans actually. >> something like total panic. >> you can go right downed line, and i think what we were talking about earlier which concerned a lot of people was he sounded like a man ready to take the next step. whatever that is in his mind. >> i think he's going to fire him. i do. >> well that would be a man who's cornered. he tweeted attorney/client privilege is dead. just as a service, i also

tweeted it is in the case of an attorney and client being deemed or proven to have committed a crime. so actually the president is right in his tweet, and i know he watches cable news so just trying to be helpful. >> i know that he will appreciate, as always, your support. it's very humbling to him in these difficult times. that's when you really know who your friends are. so we've been talking for some time about the fact this is not bob mueller who executed this. it was a donald trump supporter. he also was the republican that replace replaced this individual. when he said the attorney/client is dead, preet responded, long live the crime fraud exemption. bill krystal tweeted, the attorney/client privilege takes

flight if the relation is abused. a client who consults an attorney for advice that will serve him in the commission of fraud will have no help from the law. he must tell the truth and let the truth be told and that is exactly what happened yesterday. and if donald trump fires, mika, if donald trump fires bob mueller, i think that what we've heard throughout this morning will be true, and what we've heard for several weeks will be true. the republicans will stand up in the senate. and it may be the beginning of the end of his presidency. >> well, i'm looking forward to what sally yates has to say. she's coming to women of the world friday and she's been on a tear. >> i think we all need to buckle up. tina brown, thank you. the ninth annual women in the world summit kicks off this thursday at the lincoln center here in new york. we look forward to it. it's amazing.

we have some know your value news. olympic gold medalist jocelin davidson and monique. that does it for us this morning. chris jansing picks up the coverage right now. >> to quote my great friend mika brzezins brzezinski, buckle up. good morning, i'm chris jansing, in for stephanie ruhle. the fbi searches the office of the president's longtime lawyer michael cohen. the president is furious, lashing out at what he called, yet again, a witch-hunt. >> it's frankly a real disgrace. it's an attack on a country in a sense, an attack on what we all stand for. >> now lawmakers increasingly worry he'll take an unprecedented step and fire special counsel robert mueller.