up -- my mouth is not magic today. that wraps up the hour for me. i'm going to see you back here tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. eastern with stephanie ruhl ae and 3:00 p.m. eastern. "deadline white house with nicolle wallace" starts now. hi, everyone, it's 4:00 in new york. we have a breaking news bonanza today. "the new york times" out this afternoon with an obstruction of justice opus. it's the kind of reporting that reframes how we look at questions about the potential depth and breadth of donald trump's conduct. in this instance, obstruction of justice. the new york edition. new reporting in "the new york times" making clear that donald trump sought to interfere with the investigations out of the southern district of"times" als reporting on the obstruction of justice case into the president likely being assembled by robert s. mueller. we start with the cases out of new york which many trump allies believe represent a grave legal threat to the president. from the "times" today, "as federal prosecutors in manhattan

gathered evidence late last year about president trump's role in silencing women with hush payments during the 2016 campaign, mr. trump called matthew whitaker, his newly installed a.g., with a question. he asked whether jeff berman, the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york, and a trump ally, could be put in charge of the widening investigation." that's according to several american officials with direct knowledge of the call. the "times" also writes this, "mr. whitaker, who had privately told associates that part of his role at the justice department was to, quote, jump on a grenade for the president. knew that he could not put mr. berman in charge since mr.e er e berman had already recused himself from the investigation. the president would soon sour on whitaker as he often does with his aides and complained about his inability to pull levers at the justice department that could make the president's many legal problems go away." the news that president trump may have tried to interfere with

the cohen probe and other investigations out of the southern district suggests obstruction of justice case against trump is wider than we ever knew and that it extends beyond just trump's alleged actions against robert mueller's investigation. the president today pushing back against this damning new report. >> you asked acting attorney general matthew whitaker to change the leadership of the investigation into your former personal attorney michael cohen? >> no. not at all. i don't know who gave you that. that's more fake news. lot of -- there's a lot of fake -- there's a lot of make news out there. no, i didn't. >> a lot of real news out there these days. the new allegations surrounding the cohen case in new york is just one of several unsettling new revelations exposed in the "times'" new bombshell that together help lay out the full scope of obstruction evidence robert mueller likely has in front of him. the "times" characterizes its reporting this way, "an examination by "the new york

times" reveals the extent of an even more sustained, more secretive, assault by mr. trump on the machinery of federal law enforcement." it's a chilling line in that story, when considered in the context of the full-scale character assassination under way at 1600 pennsylvania avenue this week against the former deputy fbi director, a story we'll also get to this hour. but we start with the new reporting and one of the reporters who wrote that piece, as well as some of our favorite reporters and friends. harry lippman was a deputy assistant attorney general and u.s. attorney. former federal prosecutor, glenn kirchner joins us. former assistant u.s. attorney mimi roka and "washington post" national political reporter robert costa. let's start with one of the reporters' byline on that story, mike schmidt, who joins us by phone. mike, take us through -- the piece is so sweeping in nature, but let's start with the new reporting on matt whitaker and what was desired of him. take us through it.

>> well, the president sort of went back to one of his old plays. if you remember in march of 2017 when the president was just in office, his attorney general, jeff sessions, recused himself from the investigation. this drove trump nuts and he actually tried to get sessions to unrecuse himself and put back control of the investigation. that failed and ultimately became something that mueller was looking at and whether the president obstructed justice. there was no lesson that appears to have been learned from that. trump wanted to do the same thing here, raising this idea, saying could they get berman back in control of it? berman's someone who had donated to his campaign. and had volunteered for his campaign. and trump looking for -- going back to the two central things of him, one of the biggest, loyalty. wanting loyalty. obsession with loyalty. a loyal person atop the investigation. someone who would be more loyal

to him than anything else. >> mike schmidt, are you -- we talk about the obstruction of justice investigation into the president and the context of the mueller probe. is anyone anywhere looking at examining, aware of, the president's conduct vis-a-vis the sdny cases? >> we don't have anything in our story, in our reporting, that shows mueller looking specifically at how the president has interacted with the sdny investigation. all the stuff has been focused mainly, at least based on what we understand, things the president did in office related to mueller. even before mueller was there, asking jim comey to end the investigation into his national security adviser michael flynn. his firing of comey. how in the aftermath of that, he wanted to get rid of mueller as well. that is what the focus has been. we do not know that this stuff that we reported on today is part of mueller. >> so your story is out on what

i think is the new attorney general's third day in his new office. let's look at how he defines who he would consider the definition of obstruction of justice to be. >> so, in my opinion, if he attempts -- if a president attempts to intervene in a matter that he has a stake in, to protect himself, that should first be looked at as a breach of his constitutional duties. >> so i'm not sure what donald trump thought he was getting in mr. barr, but it sounds like based on what you describe at the beginning of your article, it would qualify as being consistent with what barr defines as obstructing an investigation that he, quote, has a stake in to, quote, protect himself. would you agree with that? >> i'm not sure about the legalness around this, but there is a theme to this that we've seen in other things where the president sort of fails to get

what he would like done. that the president sort of struggles in his efforts to truly obstruct the investigation. he makes a lot of noise. he says things. people will not carry out his orders. and ultimately, he moves on to something else and sours on the person. it's the same exact thing that happens with jim comey. almost nearly to the day, february of 2017, asking comey to end the investigation into flynn. comey not doing that, writing about it in a memo and then when that comes out, mueller being appointed, the theme here in the reporting is the president has done a lot of things but not necessarily been successful at many times his own worst enemy, not very adept at getting the system to do, at least based on what we know, what he wants. >> your piece makes a point in the very beginning about the numbing effect of donald trump's constant efforts at trying to obstruct or intervene in these

investigations. and then goes on to sort of describe those efforts as brazen by one of his lawyers, can't be criminal, we do it in public. can you just remind us of all the flashpoints? whether it's the effort to fire robert mueller or get sessions to unrecuse, which you mentioned at the beginning. what is the body of conduct from donald trump under investigation in the wider obstruction of justice probe? >> well, it's everything. it's everything related to comey, to russia, but as you point out, there's an interesting sort of wrinkle to it, that a lot of these things may have happened in public. they may have been things he may have been trying to pressure sessions publicly through statements, through tweets. saying things like i never would have made jeff sessions my attorney general if i knew he was going to recuse himself. and sort of mixing that with other things behind the scenes to try and get sessions out or get sessions to fire mueller. sort of the intertwined nature

of them. the piece that we have here today is something he said to acting attorney general in private. but he has also gone after the investigations in public and he has tried to demonize the investigators in public and he's gone after witnesses in public. so the -- sometimes we spend a lot of time trying to figure out something the president did behind the scenes only to find out that he said it publicly and many times he hasn't hidden his feelings about the investigation and done a very good job at sort of moving public opinion, at least making it confusing for the average american because they hear so many different things about this, to actually understand what he has done. or not done. >> harry lippman, i'm not a lawyer, but is that a defense? i murdered someone in broad daylight while everybody was looking? >> i think you know the answer to that one. it sure -- you can certainly obstruct justice and do it in plain view, in plain sight.

for the president of the united states, in fact, that's often the opportunities you have when you -- you can use your bully pulpit in a way to actually influence investigations and get the word out. but what i think was so striking about what robert had to say and the report, itself, was the panorama of it. prosecutors investigate episodes and there are many episodes of possible obstruction here. but when you take a step back and look at this long article, what you see is a theme almost like a continuing criminal enterprise where the obstruction is just second nature to him. the demonization. the anything goes kind of lies about the antagonists and the prosecutors. when it's all added up, it's more than the sum of its parts. >> robert costa, i want to play for you something that i heard right when mike and his colleagues' story broke. i flipped over to fox news to see, one, if it was being covered, and to shep smith, a

great, great journalist over there, credits, of course it was. he had on judge napolitano. their analysis was damning. i want to ask you how this is playing in the west wing. >> president trump, if "the new york times" is correct, wanted his ally to be in charge of both of those investigations. matt whitaker, to his credit, apparently did not execute that command. >> but that -- that phone call, you said that's evident of corrupt intent. >> on part of president because he's making a -- >> would that be obstruction? >> yes. it would be attempted obstruction. it would only be obstruction if it succeeded. if you try to interfere with a criminal prosecution that may knock at your own door by putting your ally in there, that is clearly an attempt to obstruct justice. >> robert costa, i know they don't care what we say here on this network, but they care very, very much, most of them will admit it privately, what happens on that network. not a good oman for this

president. >> what the judge over there on fox said is what republicans now are facing on capitol hill. they see the legal storm clouds over this president about his conduct. they know that paul manafort and general flynn and others may have their own issues with russian interference in the 2016 campaign, but now the president who has the republican party in his grip is facing mounting questions of obstruction or alleged obstruction of justice as outlined in "the new york times." terrific story by mike schmidt and others. and through other incidences over the past couple years. that's the critical issue right now for those on the conservative side. you may not believe in russian interference, was a big issue. it was something unrelated to the president. but the president's conduct, that is something in the spotlight and that will likely be detailed by robert mueller at some level. dozens of instances of whether you call it obstruction or not, of behavior that congress will have to scrutinize.

>> mimi, i always like to go back when something on the obstruction side, when there's a new development, and see the president in his own words reacting in a way that i don't think we've seen in his entire presidency. the way he reacted, the things he said the day of the cohen raid. and i'm going to play this because all of his closest allies say it is the cohen raid and the cases that stemmed from cohen flipping and cohen now having nothing to lose. he's on his way to prison. that gives the president the most fear on the legal front. let's watch that reaction from many months ago. >> it's a disgrace. it's, frankly, a real disgrace. it's an attack on our country, in a true sense. it's an attack on what we all stand for. >> this was a raid on the homes and offices of michael cohen, who with all due respect, was the president's fixer. he paid money to women he had alleged sexual relationships with. it was a lot of things. it was not an attack on our

nation. mimi. >> exactly, nicolle. when i was reading the article today, i thought of that day also of when trump was so incensed about the raid on michael -- i hate to call it a raid -- the lawfully executed search warrant on michael cohen's office. it's so clear. it was clear they day, it's more clear now in retrospect given what michael cohen came out and said under oath about the president that he was saying those things, trump, out of fear. he was afraid of what was going to come out of this investigation and we know the southern district did not end its investigation when michael cohen pled guilty. there have now been frequent, several statements, in court documents and by the southern district, that they have an ongoing investigation and that, to me, is what is so dangerous and striking about this attempted obstruction by trump. the firing of comey, the asking

to let the investigation go to flynn, i personally think, like many other legal experts, that that could and should constitute obstruction, but there are arguable defenses that trump could raise and he could say he was helping a friend or he was trying to an end investigation that was politically motivated and it didn't center on him at the time of the firing. he cannot say those things about the southern district of new york. there is no question that he has known from day one and it has become more and more evident, including cohen's statement under oath, that the southern district of new york's investigation centers on trump's family, trump's business, and likely trump, himself, whether or not he can be indicted. and so it is just the clearest form of obstructioobstruction, that we've seen. you know, i think that the southern district and, frankly, berman, who trump sees, i guess, as an ally, but berman did the right thing by recusing himself

in leaving this investigation in the hands of career prosecutors. >> mike schmidt, i want to ask you about some of your whitaker reporting in here, but are we looking at this today too narrowly? was trump just concerned about the cohen case and the hush money case? or was he worried about the broader scope and the broader mandate of the southern district of new york? >> it's unclear. i think with trump, it always comes back to one central question which is his finances. since july of 2017, he has said that his finances, his money, would be a red line, which would be -- for mueller. he was talking about the times saying if mueller looks at his finances, that would be going too far. i can't imagine if the southern district of new york is looking ats his finances, he would be okay with that. so she's always been very sensitive on that issue. on his money. including on the campaign trail where he wouldn't release his own taxes. so, here, you have -- the justice department has crossed

that red line. the president, you know, has tried to do different things to sort of rein it in, and if there is anything that he's most focused on, money, it is the southern district. we have no indication on the mueller side that mueller has looked at the money. on payments to the women and on the trump organization, it is his money. >> chuck rosenberg says mueller has his taxes. we'll save that for another day. i want to ask you about this reporting about acting attorney general matt whitaker. you guys write "mr. whitaker who earlier this month told a congressional committee that mr. trump never pressured him over the various investigations is now under scrutiny by house democrats for possible perjury." is anyone in the justice department looking at his testimony or is this still the democrats in their oversight role over republican-led justice department? >> i'm sure like any official who goes up to capitol hill and testifies, the justice department will go back and look at it. i don't know anything beyond

that that would be there. i can imagine this will be an issue that the democrats will continue to bring up time and time again. to try and get whitaker to try and pin him down. you sort of see the problem at times with allowing members of congress to ask someone a question. there are different ways that whitaker provided different answers that don't necessarily provide complete clarity to what went on. perhaps, in follow-up questions from the committees up there, whitaker will explain actually aefr everything that went on here. a reading of the transcript is not entirely career what the conversations were with the president and when they may have happened. >> glenn kirchner, it's a good point. congressional committees do give witnesses an opportunity to clean up sometimes something they said. let me put up one of statements that he might need to clean up. we'll talk about it. >> at no time has the white house asked for, nor have i provided, any promises or

commitments concerning the special counsel's investigation or any other investigation. >> glenn kirchner, you think that's something he's going to want to maybe say, oh, i remembered something, come to think of it. >> yeah, nicolle, plus one point to matthew whitaker for telling president trump that geoff berman cannot supervise the southern district of new york investigation, but minus two points for giving what sure seems to be misleading answers on that very topic. whether the president ever pressured him, approached him, tried to get him to do something with respect to the southern district of new york investigation. so i think ultimately, matthew whitaker may have gone from the least qualified acting attorney general in the history of our country, to potentially a subject or a target of a false statements investigation for what seems to be misleading

testimony to congress. >> it's amazing. it does -- it does sort of prove out, robert costa, this tenet that even people close to donald trump will say that everyone who becomes entangled, whether it's manafort who'd done years of ethically questionable business for years, gets caught and prosecuted and sentenced when he goes to work for donald trump. all of these figures come in contact with donald trump and it seems that they get scrutinized in a new way. you have any thoughts or any reporting about matt whitaker's future, robert costa? >> matthew whitaker was a commentator before he joined the justice department. his friends tell me he would like to become a conservative commentator. once again, though, at the moment, he's still lingering around the department of justice. what we're seeing with this whitaker exchange, with the corey lewandowski exchange, with the president, and "the new york times" story, is a white house that wanted to keep the russia investigation separates, bringing in emmet flood, having rudy giuliani and other lawyers

on the outside. has always found the waters to be muddy over the past two years. the white house has struggled across the board to make sure that the russia investigation remains separate. the president time and again keeps interacting with different officials, associates, bringing the russia investigation back into the west wing in different respects. that's complicated his own presidency. to say the least. >> it reminds me of something, robert costa, he said to you in an interview and said to others, chris christie told the president on, i think it was valentine's day, after comey was fired, that there's nothing he can do to make the russia investigation shorter, but lots he can do to make it longer. and it seems like he did everything he could when it came to that question. no one's going anywhere. when we come back, this new reporting in "the new york times" today about concerns that the white house counsel's office had about lies told by then-white house press secretary sean spicer about the firing of mike flynn. and new questions today about who told spicer to do that. also ahead, the white house goes into overdrive to smear the

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sometimes watching sarah huckabee sanders can make me miss the sean spicer era, but new reporting in today's "new york times" raises grave questions about who fed spicer information for the briefings, at least the one in which he stood at the white house podium and explained the rationale for firing national security adviser mike flynn. >> the evolving and eroding level of trust as a result of this situation and a series of other questionable instances, is what led the president to ask

for general flynn's resignation. that's why the president decided to ask for his resignation and he got it. he asked the white house counsel to review the situation. the first matter was whether there was a legal issue. we had to review whether there was a legal issue, which the white house counsel concluded there was not. but that's the plain and simple issue, and when he lost trust with the president, that's when the president asked for and received his resignation. the president did not feel comfortable with him serving in that position and asked for and received his resignation. >> it turns out spicer's explanation is littered with false statements. that's according to reporting today from "the new york times." the white house counsel's office even drafted a memo while that briefing was under way. a memo that's never before been widely reported on about the false account offered by spicer that day. from the "times'" report, "the lawyers' main concern was mr. spicer overstated how exhaustively the white house had investigated mr. flynn and that he said, wrongly, that administration lawyers had

concluded there were no legal issues surrounding mr. flynn's conduct." adding to the intrigue, spicer prepped for his briefing that day, according to the "times" in part by visiting with the president and other senior staff in the oval office. notably, the false account given by spicer and noted as false by the white house counsel's office that day, has never been corrected. one of the reporters wrote that story still with us as well as our group of reporters and friends. joining the conversation, tim o'brien, "bloomberg" opinion executive editor. mike schmidt, take us through the spicer reporting. how -- how did the counsel's office sort of co-exist or learn to live with the inaccurate account given by spicer that day and how did that inaccurate account from the podium come to be? >> so the important thing to understand here is that it's february 14th of 2017, and the white house for the first time is confronting russia in a very public way. they're having to explain why mike flynn has been -- has

resigned and has -- and why it took the white house so long to deal with this issue about his contacts with the russian ambassador. spicer getting up there painting a far better picture of how the white house handled it. the white house counsel's office going back to spicer telling him about this and sort of in typical trump white house fashion never coming back and correcting the repocord about i. they were concerned that it was one thing to provide misleading statements about crowd sizes. it was another thing to say the things that were said on the campaign trail, but it was different in the white house to be giving off things that were not true and made them look better about such an important investigation. one involving the fbi, one involving justice department, and most importantly, to sort of the nature of this story, rus a russia. so they document these different false statements. they make a memo out of it. it's sort of to cover themselves. and it's been something that mueller has looked at as he's tried to understand how the

white house handled flynn. the memo is sort of a roadmap about what the white house did around the flynn firing and why there was a delay and why there was an inaccurate account given to the public. >> you take us through the day, it starts at the oval office. the president participates in sean spicer's prep that day and contributes some of the narrative. your reporting suggests that what he contributed may not have been rooted in fact. tell us about that. >> yeah. i mean, there's an interaction in the oval office earlier in the day with trump, and they're talking about what to say about flynn. and trump is told that paul ryan said that the president asked for flynn's resignation. and spicer and the other aides are saying, well, you know, what was it? and trump says, that's sounds better, you know, let's go with that. so without it really being clear of what the truth was. sort of this indifference to the truth. sort of culture that pervaded

the president's businesses and the campaign that is then seeping into the white house, it's like, hey, let's just tell the best story possible for us. to put the best spin on it with sort of less interest in what the truth was. >> do you uncover in the piece what happens between that meeting in the oval office when trump says that sounds better to spicer? andit's unclear whether it's true or not. and the counsel's office writing out all of the -- it sounds like there are multiple inaccuracies. are there open questions? is mueller probing how the account that was false came to be? >> one of the things mueller has been interested in was there other interactions between spicer and the president in between those meetings? because spicer had been briefed beforehand by the white house counsel's office which gave him guidelines on what he could say and what he couldn't say. and then what the white house counsel's office documents is when spicer goes out there, they

think he veers from the talking points and that's what forces him to pull him aside afterwards and say, hey, you didn't give an accurate account of what goes on and why they document it. mueller has sought to figure out whether spicer talked to the president in between. we don't have any evidence, though, that that happened. >> harry litman, take me through what robert mueller sees and hears, presumably, he has access to all of this information and then some. >> yeah, he sees and hears the potential for obstruction of justice again. you're the white house counsel's office. start there. many of them have probably spoken to him. you're sitting there and you hear sean spicer get up and blithely announce there's no legal issue. when you know what has happeneded with flynn and right away think about liability for the white house and liability for yourself down the line. now, would this amount to an actual obstruction? this kind of lie about flynn. i think that's a bit of a stretch, but it's certainly of

interest to mueller that the president's impulse is immediately to say, whatever sounds best. and that spicer is specifically contradicting what white house counsel members at least think that they have told him. now, there's a little bit of a war of words going on even today between spicer and the white house counsel folks. that's what happens when people in the white house start lying. there's a bit of a circular firing squad that forms. >> so tim o'brien, this anecdote as a former white house spokesperson, was chilling for me and having prepared to brief the press, myself, at the white house, i can't think of an office outside the white house that outranks the white house counsel's office. it's sort of the last place you go. you get some of the policy folks to brief you on substance. you deal with the actors if it involves different cabinet officials. you go to the counsel's office last. what would your theory be about how the story changed from the counsel's office to the podium? >> i think the important context

here is remember that sally yates went over to the white house counsel's office before all this unfolded. before spicer even made a public statement. and said you have a problem on your hands with michael flynn. we're worried about his contacts with the russians. this wasn't a new event for the white house. mcgahn essentially blew her off. he said i'll take this under advisement. he went back into the white house. as far as we know, the white house took no action after that other than she got fired shortly after that for refusing to enforce the president's muslim ban. so none of this should have taken them by surprise. and i think it's amazing given what mcgahn, we know mcgahn knew, that he didn't truth squad this more carefully. >> well, sounds like it's being reported that he tried and truth squadded the lies. >> well, but spicer went out and said what he said. >> right. >> so either mcgahn didn't have the power to get spice tore tr the truth or got overruled by someone to tell a different story. either way, it doesn't look good for the white house. >> mimi rocah, we're doing it

again, staring at the trees and missing the forest. sean spicer is another person who told another set of documented lies about, ding, ding, ding, russia, and someone's contacts with russia. >> exactly. i mean, it's just overwhelming at this point the number of lies told by trump and people around him. and everything we're talking about with this scenario reminds me a lot of the scenario regarding the trump tower meeting which we know trump was involved in crafting that false statement about the trump tower meeting and claiming it was about adoptions w s when it was really about sanctions. so, you know, he lied about being involved in that statement initially, but we know that he did. i just want to make the point, i think harry made it a little bit, but the statement lies to the press. you know, which we, again, have all become almost numb to, that we're trying not to. are not in and of themselves

crimes. but if trump is orchestrating them, as he seems to be, in some way, to also try to mislead investigators, then it certainly can be part of an obstruction crime and that is really what i think is happening here more than just the lies that trump tells. these are orchestrated, calculated, lies, to try to throw investigators off. fortunately, it doesn't seem to be working, and i think that, you know, both the southern district and mueller will get to the bottom of it, but i do think that it -- his intent is clear to me. >> mimi rocah, mike schmidt, thank you both for spendsing so much time with us. we're grateful. the former fbi director says he opened a counterintelligence investigation into the president because the president represented a potential national security threat. that's next. ty threat. that's next. get out of it? our broccoli cheddar is made with aged melted cheddar, simmered broccoli,

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let's talk about it, did you

order a counterintelligence investigation into the president? >> i did. >> is that tantamount to saying you felt there was reason to suspect that he was a national security threat? is that what that means? >> it is saying that we had information that led us to believe that there might be a threat to national security. in this case, that the president, himself, might, in fact, be a threat to the united states national security. >> so that goes to his potential motive, but when you're opening this particular kind of investigation, counterintelligence, did you suspect the president might actually be working for russia? >> we thought that might be possible. yes. we thought it might be possible. >> a day for bombshells. that was former acting director of the fbi, andrew mccabe, who this morning reveals the astounding circumstances that led him to order a counterintelligence investigation into the president and in an interview with "the atlantic" likely stoking what is trump's worst fear, "there's

absolutely no reason for me to believe that the investigation into the president is closed." and it's clear from the president's twitter feed that mccabe has struck a nerve. the president intensified his attacks on mccabe tweeting a quote from friend and fox news anchor sean hannity "the biggest abuse of power and corruption scandal in our history and it's much worse than we thought. andrew mccabe, amited to plotting a coup, parentheses, government overprobe, before he was fired for lying and leaking" to which the president added in all caps, "treason." trump also treated this odd attack not even an hour later. "remember this, andrew mccabe didn't go to the bathroom without the approval of leakin' james comey." sorry for that, guys. let's bring in "new york times" political reporter ken vogel for the potty talk. ken vocal, leakin', lyin', can't keep track of it all.

andrew mccabe, then the acting director of the fbi, at a period when you and your colleagues have chronicled to be nothing short of extraordinary, coming clean, telling our own savannah guthrie, the president, there was enough evidence the president could be a national security threat to justify and still today defend the counterintelligence investigation into him. >> yeah, in some ways, i don't want to pat ourselves on the back, but we did report this. there was some skepticism expressed -- >> never any here. never any here, but you're right. >> right. from the administration about this. and now you have andrew mccabe coming out and owning these words. more than that, saying he would testify before congress to this effect. and i think we're hearing that republican members of congress will be more than agreeable to facilitating that opportunity. they still taking their cue from the president are targeting him and. picking up on this theme that the president has laid down.

that this was a coup. i don't think, parentheses or otherwise, that it really fits that definition. even if they took the extraordinary step, make no bones about it, it would be extraordinary to go about thinking about our maybe counting heads of cabinet members to see if there would be enough support to invoke the 25th amendment. still, that would be something that would have to -- the cabinet would have to sign off on and actually implement that would not be the fbi. that said, that is a rather extraordinary step, and i don't think that it's necessarily wrong to be asking questions about whether this is outside the lane of the fbi even if saying that it is -- that he plotted a coup, i think, is a big exaggerated. >> ken vogel, what's your sense, though, of sort of this case? i've read andy mccabe's book and there's nothing in a 21-year career that suggests anything impulsive or erratic or

emotional. he was a very sort of methodical, you know, he investigated the russian mob. there were these meticulous cases that took a long time to build, a lot of over -- a lot of involvement with prosecutors. and he went, he was a systems guy almost. what do you make of the response, which is so hyperbolic, and really not coming from establishment legal minds, coming mostly from trump and sean hannity wing of the party? >> yeah, this has been their approach all along is to plant doubts about the legitimacy of the entire mueller investigation and whether that means focusing on officials in the department of justice who had a role in initiating the investigation or whether this means calling into question the extent to which the steele dossier was instrumental in the investigation. calling into question the steele -- the allegations in the steele dossier and highlighting some of the more salacious ones that have not been proven. this is all part of an effort to

sort of plant the seeds of doubt so that if and when the mueller report becomes public, any adverse findings are sort of softened or at least there is skepticism among trump's base enough that he can dismiss it as some kind of political document despite all evidence to the contrary that this was done very much by the book, even as we should point out that there are some questions about mccabe's credibility. the actual steps that were taken in this investigation appear to comport pretty -- pretty tightly to the way that these -- the way that such an investigation -- fbi protocol in the past and generally. >> robert costa, you and i have had a lot of conversations about what ken vogel's describing, the reliance, and it seems at this moment where donald trump is doing this very authoritarian-like measure, and usurping the power of congress to get funds for his wall, where he's really banking on his base

taking this journey with him, where three lifelong republicans, robert mueller, jim comey, and andy mccabe, somehow three republicans met at their republic b can doj clubhouse and said let's get the president. it's fanciful, it's farcical. this is their big bet, that they can convince their base that these three lifelong republicans who served democratic and republican presidents honorably until this moment, that they were all in on some fix. does anyone think there's a limit to sort of how wide and how marketable that tale is? >> as you remember from last week, the new attorney general, bill barr, was in the rose garden for the president's remarks and the president said, enjoy your life. just a few days later, the president tweeting about the justice department and his alleged view of corruption there, being rallied by conservative voices in congress like congressman mark meadows and jim jordan and matt gates and you also have a president who's at mar-a-lago talking to

his allies. inside that echo chamber. a president going to his base on the border wall. the context for all of these moves, whether the national emergency, the tweets about fox news, conversations with allies in florida, it all comes back to the mueller investigation looming over his white house. a president who sees his base as the way to have a political future. to make sure that he has that core group with him ahead of 2020. >> glenn kirchner, what does this reliance on this group that robert costa talks about and the strategy ken vogel describes, sort of clouding the facts so -- i think what everyone's getting at is should he face impeachment proceedings in the house that there's a political solution to protect himself from conviction in the senate. a scenario that was described to me almost a year ago by an outside adviser to the president. what does sort of -- trump lives out loud. sometimes they think it's their best defense. it's not obstruction, he tweeted it.

you know, what does the fact that this is all out in the open, that everyone acknowledges this is what he's doing, does that have any bearing inside sort of the airtight world of a criminal investigation? >> it doesn't have any legal bearing, nicolle. i think we all kind of suffer from something called cognitive bias. the sort of setting in which we see something tends to inform us about what we think of it. so, you know, i would use a bank robbery as an example. if some bank robber is bold enough to try to pull off a robbery not wearing a mask, and he pauses and looks at the security camera and winks and gives a little salute, well, we don't conclude that he didn't rob the bank. we conclude that there's really strong evidence that he robbed the bank, and he did a little smart alecky thing for his own purposes. that's how i see all this obstruction of justice by the president. he's doing these things for his own purposes, but i can assure you they are evidence of obstruction of justice that can

and will be used against him if he gets into a court of law as a defendant and certainly in an impeachment hearing. you know, all of this may very well be playing to his base so that he can hopefully win enough votes to avoid either impeachment or conviction and removal in the senate. but i think all of it is a horrible miscall clculation and seems like a man now who's holding onto a slippery rope. every time he takes one hand off to tweet, he's sliding down farther and farther and i think it's all going to catch up to him at the end of the day. >> all right. we have to sneak in our break. afterwards, more on andrew mccabe. he says he briefed a bipartisan group of lawmakers about that counterintelligence investigation into trump. according to him, the response speaks volumes. volumes

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another revelation today from andrew mccabe.

is stunning and true. he and rod rosenstein informed top lawmakers of the evidence against trump in the russia investigation. mccabe suggested he informed them there was an open counter intelligence investigation into the president. >> the purpose of the briefing was to let our congressional leadership know what we've been doing. opening a case of this nature, not something that an fbi director, an acting fbi director would do for yourself. i reviewed it with our lawyers, i discussed it at length. >> did you tell congress? >> i told congress what we had done. >> did anyone object? >> that's the important part, no one objected. not on legal grounds, not on constitutional grounds and not based on the fact. s this seems like a shoe dropping right there, it seems to blow up the white house narrative that this was a secret

strategy hatched in the halls of doj. it was an investigation into the president that was briefed on capitol hill. >> i agree on the merits and on this notion of secrecy. put yourself in their shoes back in march. we've gotten a little bit inert to it, but trump's conduct was so erratic and so potentially dangerous, they did, in fact, to all appearances play it by the book, here, the book happened to be the protagonist was the president, which, you know, he never seen before, maybe no one had seen before, but the recognition among his team, among all the professionals who look at it, and among the gang of 8, that yes, we've crossed this threshold. mccabe chose his word carefully in that interview. it's not a probable cause determination. there could be this danger out there, and we have to run it to ground. that's what they do, all the more so when it involves the president of the united states.

>> i was reminded today that the counter intelligence investigation into the trump orbit began in july 2016, with the investigation into carter paige, george papadopoulos. then manafort gets involved, the steele dossier. >> the investigation into the president came after all those other contacts, were under investigation, they've been collecting information on all those other fronts. and then donald trump makes a series of bizarre public statements. and calls on the russians to hack hillary's e-mails. is in the oval office with kiss lee ago and lavrov. since that investigation is open, would you think it would accelerate, he's distanced america from nato. he's defended the soviet invasion of afghanistan. i mean, his conduct and his intimacy and affinity for putin

has increased not decreased. >> you would think if the president was concerned, he would be supporting the nib getting to the bottom of how the u.s. election got hacked and how the russians did what they did. except for the fact that all he did was try to impede that investigation. this is the defenders of trump and the state of the fbi had no business looking into the president's decisions and actions on national security issues under article 2. that's the president's province. that supposes what he's doing is making foreign policy, as opposed to -- you know, pursuing policies, to feather his wallet or get people out of the way of an investigation that's threatening to him. in that context, the fbi should take a look. >> i often try to argue the opposite, what if the opposite were true, had he been in the oval with kiss lee ago and the fbi had done nothing. do you ever look at, what would

the opposite have looked like? >> we are looking at that right now. we're looking at the -- where the fbi internally, where there were some concerns that it was falling short. it should have done more. you hear criticism from the opposite side, it was doing too much. we understand there were concerns in realtime, that there should be a more aggressive investigation of some of those things that you just highlighted. and so i think it's illuminating none the less, that this revelation that mccabe did brief the gang of eight and no one objected. it underscores this idea that even republicans in private, even some of the republicans who are willing to defend the president in public or look the other way when he says something that's inconsistent with their orthodoxcy and private. >> it's an unbelievably important point. andrew mccabe will be our special guest live in studio

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on days like today, on any day, harry, robert, glenn and tim we're nothing without your reporting and analysis. that does it for us. mtp daily starts right now. hi, chuck. >> hi, nicole. >> where in the world are you? >> i'm out in l.a., your good friend adam nigurney, i have him on set. if it's tuesday, this message will self-obstruct in ten seconds. ♪ >> see, here we are. welcome in to "mtp daily." welcoming to a fast moving day surrounding the president. there's a couple corruption