the american people just won't accept those ideas. well, you know what's happened in over three years, all those ideas and many more are now part of the political mainstream. >> so you're saying the party came your way? >> well, i don't want to say that. i think most people would say that. >> bernie sanders, who announced today he is in the running to beat donald trump. and that is our broadcast on a tuesday night. thank you so very much for being here with us and good night from nbc news headquarters here in new york. so sometimes judges issue big long written orders like this one. where the judge spells out his or her reasoning and his or her ruling and how that ruling is based on legal precedent and other case law and how it reflects the facts of this case. you know, judges at every level below the supreme court, they know that their rulings are not only potentially appealable by one of the parties, they're potentially reversible by a

higher court in a case of an appeal. judges' rules are often quite detailed. they explain their reasoning in a lot of detail. they can be quite narrative. they can be quite interesting. but judges don't have to do it that way all the time. when the judge does need to make an order, the judge needs to make a ruling but it's relatively easy stuff, or at least it's a relatively simple ruling on a single point and the judge just wants to get right to it and not do too much story questions telling to back it up, a judge can do something called a minute order. for a long time i thought it was a minute order because it's small, but i think they say it as a minute order. in any case, minute and minute are spelled the same, so if i am wrong about this, i will definitely appeal that to cable news appeals court. but when a judge issues one of these minute orders, it almost always is something that takes a minute or less to read. it usually takes even less time than that to get to the point of what the judge is doing. and today this was the minute

order from the federal judge in washington, d.c. who was hearing the roger stone case. minute order as to roger j. stone jr. and here it is. quote, defendant is ordered to show cause at a hearing to be held on thursday february 21st at 2:30 p.m. as to why the media contact order entered in this case and/or his conditions of release should not be modified or revoked in light of the posts on his instagram account on or about february 18th, 2019. and then it is signed by the judge. that is the whole thing. just a minute. just takes a minute. maybe not even a minute. but that minute order was issued today, and that is how we learned that the president's longtime political adviser roger stone in all likelihood, he will be packing a toothbrush on thursday when he is ordered to appear at this show cause hearing in his case that we learned about today in this

minute order. and this, of course, follows the genius move by roger stone yesterday to -- when he decided to post a photo of the judge who was hearing his case on his instagram account. the photo included a close-up picture of the judge with little crosshairs next to the judge as if she was being targeted by someone looking through a rifle scope. after initially posting that yesterday, stone took down that image and replaced it with the exact same image but cropped a little differently so the crosshairs aren't there. he did still, though, leave up the same written caption for the photo targeting the judge. then yesterday evening somebody apparently decided to finally open up and start reading those 5,000 text messages i imagine were sent by his lawyer over the course of the day. i mean, a lawyer he's paying good money for. i am guessing that's how it went down because by this time last night even the second iteration of that instagram photo

targeting the judge in his case had also been taken todown by m stone and mr. stone's lawyers filed an apology with the court. they tried to make it look like it was a formal motion. like notices of apology are norm athings that come up in federal court. not until this president. the lawyers themselves filed that notice of apology. they also included in this improvised little wannabe notice to the court a statement signed by roger stone himself in which he wished to humbly apologize for the error of posting this thing on his instagram account. that said, this morning mr. stone was back at it, publicly linking to a right-wing blog post that defended him for posting the image targeting the judge on his instagram account. he posted that this morning. ultimately that came down today, too, and now we've got the minute order from the judge. who says she will see him in court on thursday. roger stone's lawyers at that

hearing will be expected to show cause as to why these actions by mr. stone targeting the judge should not result in her issuing a strict new gag order on everybody involved in the case, including mr. stone himself, and more importantly than that, stone's lawyers will also be expected to show cause on thursday afternoon why these actions by roger stone should not result in the judge modifying roger stone's conditions of release. because you will remember that roger stone was arrested and he was indicted. he was arraigned on seven felony charges. but thereafter he walked out of the courthouse, right? this judge that he targeted yesterday, this judge who is going to have this show cause hearing on thursday, this is the judge who set the conditions of release for roger stone. right? those conditions of release thus far have allowed mr. stone not only to be free and not in jail while he awaits the start of his trial. the judge was generous enough

with roger stone that she allowed him not only to be free, she allowed him to be released on bond without him actually having to put up a single dime to secure that bond. he didn't have to put up any money for it at all. well, now those matters will be revisited in light of mr. stone's subsequent behavior. that show cause hearing will happen thursday at 2:30 p.m. eastern. and we knew this case was going to be nuts. right? we knew this. this case is proving itself to be everything we expected and more. but that news from federal court in d.c. today broke just before we got this ton of bricks dropped by "the new york times." a several thousand word piece on the front page of "the times" as of this afternoon that is basically an omnibus look at obstruction of justice issues this white house and this president may ultimately have to answer for sam day, somehow in the russia investigation. everything from one of the

president's russia lawyers reportedly offering pardons, presidential pardons to mike flynn and paul manafort after each of them had been charged. and while each of them were making important decisions about their potential testimony or their potential cooperation deals with prosecutors. presidents, of course, have the right to pardon anyone they want to pardon, but if the president through his legal team was explicitly dangling pardons to potential witnesses for the purpose of dissuading those witnesses from providing evidence that might hurt himself or his administration or his family or his business, well, that's quite a different matter. and that's just one of them. i mean, "the new york times" today runs down the whole gamut from the pardon offers to flynn and manafort to the president's efforts to coordinate with congressional republicans, to help them in their efforts to publicly undermine and disparage mueller and his investigators. not to mention trump's efforts to try to fire the special counsel himself and his multiple efforts to try to pressure then

attorney general jeff sessions into influencing the justice department's behavior in these investigations. and his multiple efforts to fire attorney general jeff sessions, specifically because he wasn't getting what he want from him on the russia matter. at one point the president, according to "the new york times" today, the president called corey lewandowski and asked corey to please fire jeff sessions, the attorney general. think about the length that means the president will go to to avoid firing someone face-to-face. i mean, corey lewandowski didn't even work at the white house. on what grounds was he in a position to fire the attorney general of the united states? i don't know. but "the new york times" reports today that he asked him to. okay. i mean, eventually if you're doing that, like why not just call people who you like who are talk radio hosts, you know what i mean? hey, buddy, would you fire the attorney general for me? i'll send you a note. like, what -- on what basis -- anyway.

so like i said, long piece released by "the new york times" today. it's basically a ton of bricks in terms of obstruction of justice issues and the president and the russia investigation. we know, for example, from the watergate era that obstruction of justice issues were front and center in the impeachment articles that were ultimately brought against nixon and that led to his resignation. so that's important stuff and it's i think important to have it all laid out in one piece and in context, but there are two pieces of this that are either brand-new or largely new tonight that aren't just, you know, a look back at stuff we had previously learned. they're -- these are new things and we're going to spend a little time talking about each of them over the course of this hour. one of them is about the federal prosecutor's office in the southern district of new york. so this is sdny, right? this is the powerful u.s. attorney's office that's based in manhattan. that prosecutor's office has been involved already in a lot of key investigations related to this administration. investigations that have already spun all the way out or some

investigations that appear to be still under way. for example, it's prosecutors from the sound district of new york that subpoenaed the trump inaugural committee a couple of weeks ago. did that cooperation and non-prosecution deal with american media, the publisher of the "national enquirer" supermarket tabloid and with its chief executive, the president's longtime friend david pecker. southern district of new york prosecutors are also prosecutors who brought charges against michael cohen, the president's longtime lawyer and a longtime executive as his business. include those campaign finance felonies in which sdny implicated the president himself in directing the commission of those felonies. sdny's involvement in all of these trump-related cases and sdny's willingness explicitly to implicate the president in two -- in two felonies already in the cohen case, going so far as

to give the president the moniker "individual one" in the cohen case. those prosecutors being willing to spell out in court explicitly that individual one is, in fact, the president of the united states, and he directed the commission of these felonies. that forward-leaning posture for this u.s. attorney's office in the southern district of new york has led to recent speculation that that prosecutor's office might ultimately decide that they're going to ignore justice department internal policy which says you're not supposed to indict a sitting president while that president is still in office. politico.com reported yesterday that there is growing speculation in legal circles that this prosecutor's office, sdny, might be willing to defy that justice department policy. they might be willing to try to indict the president out of that office, since they are pushing up against that boundary anyway in the prosecutions they have already pursued.

i will tell you right now, a bit of a programming note here, we're going to have an important addition to that story later on this week. right now we are working on a "rachel maddow show" special report specifically on that subject because we've got something new on that subject that nobody else has. we are working on that already. we're going to have that report for you some time in the next few days, as soon as it is ready. but on the michael cohen prosecution in sdny, it had previously been reported that president trump was furious about cohen being prosecuted. furious about him being prosecuted in the way he was, in the way that implicated the president for those campaign finance felonies by new york federal prosecutors and for some of the other things he had been brought up on. cnn reported in december that on at least two occasions the president had lashed out at acting attorney general matthew whitaker, both about prosecutors implicating trump in those campaign finance felonies and about cohen being charged with

lying to congress about the trump tower moscow. right? so this was, i mean, trump -- i don't know if corey lewandowski helped, right, but finally president trump did somehow figure out a way to fire jeff sessions in a way that didn't scare him too much. he finally did figure out a way to get rid of sessions. so he brought in matthew whitaker to be the acting attorney general. and very soon thereafter, there were these reports that trump was on the phone with whitaker, you know, calling him, reaming him out about what was going on with michael cohen. what was going in in that new york courtroom. what was going on with these prosecutors and what cohen was admitting to. whitaker was asked about these reports that he had been pressured by the white house about the cohen prosecution. he was asked about these reports when he testified before the house judiciary committee a couple of weeks ago. after his testimony, that committee's chairman, new york democrat jerry nadler, wrote a letter to whitaker that basically confronted him with the allegation that whitaker had

lied under oath to the committee when they had questioned him on that very subject. quote, although the committee appreciates your decision to appear, members on both sides of the aisle found many of your answers to be unsatisfactory, incomplete or contradicted by the evidence. excuse me, contradicted by other evidence. quote, for example, our members asked you about reports that president trump called you at least twice to express his frustration after michael cohen, his former lawyer, pleaded guilty in the southern district of new york to lying to congress and for arranging hush money payments on the president's behalf. representati representati representative cicilene asked you directly in the hearing. did the president lash out to you about mr. cohen's guilty plea. no, he did not. representative asked you again whether the president or anyone on the president's behalf reached out to you to express dissatisfaction. you responded no. quote, the committee has now identified several individuals with direct knowledge of the phone calls you denied receiving

from the white house. as a result, we require your clarification on this point without delay. so, so you could sort of tell something was going on here, right? we had that report from cnn in december that the president had called his newly installed acting attorney general and said, hey, what are you going to do for me about this cohen prosecution? this is really bothering me. then we have whitaker being asked about that under oath in front of the judiciary committee and him behaving quite cagily when he was asked about it. we then have that response immediately after the hearing from the committee chairman saying we think you told an untruth to the committee. we think you did not speak accurately to the committee when you said the white house didn't call you to complain about the prosecution of michael cohen and his guilty pleas. we've got evidence that suggests those phone calls you were denying getting from the white house actually happened. so we could tell this was building to something. well, now today "the new york times" has this.

quote, 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 g. whitaker, his newly installed attorney general, with a question. he asked whether jeffrey burman, the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york, who had been chosen for that job by president trump, a former law partner of the president's own lawyer, rudy giuliani. he asked whether jeffrey burman could be put in charge of the widening investigation. "the times" says, citing several american officials with direct knowledge of the call. quote, mr. whitaker knew he could not put mr. burman in charge because mr. burman had already recused himself from the investigation. quote, what exactly mr. whitaker did after this call from the white house is unclear. there is no evidence that he took any direct steps to intervene in the manhattan investigation. he did, however, tell some associates at the justice department that prosecutors in new york required, quote, adult supervision.

so as i mentioned, we're going to have more coming up on this tonight. but this is potentially trouble for matt whitaker, who is no longer acting attorney general, but who is staying at the justice department now that the new attorney general william barr has been sworn in. this is potentially trouble for whitaker if his adult supervision comment means that he did try to influence that prosecution in new york at the behest of the white house. it's also trouble for whitaker, obviously, if he did lie about those interactions under oath to congress. it's also potentially trouble for the president if he was going after a federal criminal case, right? if he was trying to hand pick a prosecutor for that case in order to try to protect himself. i mean, that's the kind of thing that theoretically could be prosecuted as a felony obstruction charge against a defendant, even potentially against a defendant who is a president. if the southern district of new york was in fact inclined to try to pursue something like that.

again, we will have more on that to come, both over the course of this hour and later this week in our -- in our planned special report. but the other piece of this we need to talk about is this other big new revelation from this "times" reporting. and it is about michael flynn. michael flynn was the first official fired at the brand-new trump white house. didn't even make it a month. michael flynn then became the first guilty plea and the first cooperating witness in the russia investigation. michael flynn then, surprise, just a few weeks ago, became the first mueller defendant to have his sentencing hearing completely blow up in court when, among other things, the judge that was supposed to be sentencing him, diverted into questioning prosecutors as to whether they had ever considered charging mike flynn with treason. mike flynn to this day is now cooperating with prosecutors. sentencing got put off. he is awaiting a new sentencing

date in federal court in washington, d.c. but what we learned today from this "new york times" reporting is actually a quite unexpected answer to what has been a persistent mystery about mike flynn since his story initially blew up less than one week into the trump administration. we have finally got an answer to what happened there and it is the opposite of what we expected. and that's story's next. sleep and get up on time. then i found aleve pm. the only one to combine a safe sleep aid, plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve. i'm back. aleve pm for a better am. guys do whatever it takes to deal with shave irritation. so, we re-imagined the razor with the new gillette skinguard. it has a unique guard between the blades. that's designed to reduce irritation during the shave. because we believe all men deserve a razor just for them.

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ms. yates, what did you tell the white house about mr. flynn? >> i had two in-person meetings and one phone call with the white house counsel about mr. flynn. the first meeting occurred on january 26. i called don mcgahn first thing that morning and told him that i had a very sensitive matter that i needed to discuss with him, that i couldn't talk about it on the phone and that i needed to come see him. and he agreed to me with me later that afternoon. the first thing we did was to explain to mr. mcgahn that the underlying conduct that general flynn had engaged in was problematic in and of itself. not only did we believe that the

russians knew this but that they likely had proof of this information. and that created a compromise situation, a situation where the national security adviser essentially could be blackmailed by the russians. finally, we told them that we were giving them all of this information so that they could take action, the action that they deemed appropriate. >> that was sally yates talking about something that happened at the very, very beginning of the trump administration, literally less than a week after the swearing in of the new president. it's just a few days into the new administration. sally yates, she's attorney general then, she's acting attorney general. she personally goes to the white house, to the new white house counsel to tell the new white house counsel that the brand-new president's brand-new national security adviser is compromised by a hostile foreign power and they needed to act in whatever way they felt was appropriate to act in response to that information.

>> we believed that general fwl flynn was compromised with respect to the russians. to state the obvious, you don't want your national security adviser compromised with the russians. we knew that that was not a good situation, which is why we wanted to let the white house know about it. >> it has been a persistent mystery about mike flynn and the trump administration and the president and this white house ever since sally yates gave us that information. right? how is it, why is it that after the white house received that hair on fire warning from the justice department, the attorney general coming in person to the white house to say, hey, the national security adviser is compromised by a foreign government. there is an intelligence operation that has been run by the russian government that has resulted in there being somebody who they've got leverage on, who they've got a compromise on -- they have compromised working in the white house as national

security adviser. like that warning comes to the white house, unimaginable. and the white house responded by doing nothing. for 18 days. i mean, think about how extreme this news is. how unthinkable, right? this is like, it's coming from inside the house. everybody get out. think of the implications of this. not only can this guy plainly not continue in his job as national security adviser for one more second, i mean, this guy -- anybody would hear that warning and recognize this guy has to be out right away. this guy can't have access to classified information. we need to debrief or do some sort of forensic accounting here to figure out what he's had access to because we should assume the russians now have that. i mean, him being compromised means the russians can extract whatever they want from this guy. so don't let him have access to anything at all. you got to get this guy out of the white house. you got to start -- right? you got to start the plumbing work here. i mean, that was the implication

of what they told the white house. and it has been a persistent mystery since then that they had no reaction and flynn stayed on as national security adviser for 18 days thereafter. the white house had no visible response to this whatsoever for 18 days before flynn finally departed. ultimately to be charged with a felony, plead guilty and become a cooperating witness. last year i was able to interview sally yates, and i asked her here on this program whether with the passing of time she had any better insight into why the white house took so long in responding at all to that warning that she brought them. >> is there anything that you can tell us now or even just remind us of now about the urgency with which you warned the white house about him? for me, i'm asking because of this persistent mystery about

why the white house waited so long, waited 18 days before they took any action in response to your warning. is there anything you can tell us that might shed light on why that happened? >> no, i certainly can't figure it out myself. >> still? >> as to why they took all that time. i came knocking on the door telling them that they had a serious problem with their national security adviser. that their national security adviser could be compromised with the russians and came back the next day to give them even more information about that and made it really clear to them that we were telling them this so that they could act. this was not a casual heads up. this was not an fyi. that we're giving you this information so that you can act and then nothing happened. >> and then nothing happened. well, today what we learned in "the new york times" is that in fact we might have been looking at this the wrong way. what has seemed mysterious before now is that it took the white house 18 days to take any action in response to that hair on fire totally unprecedented

warning about there being a huge national security threat inside the white house in the form of the compromised national security adviser. today, according to "the times," what we learned is that's that it's not that they waited 18 days after that warning to act, to get rid of him, what this new reporting says is that even after those 18 days, they still didn't act at all. quote, it was february 14th, 2017 and mr. trump and his advisers were in the oval office debating how to explain the resignation of mr. flynn, the national security adviser, the previous night. the justice department had already raised questions that flynn might be subject to blackmail by the russians for misleading white house officials about his russian contacts. as the group in the oval office talked, one of trump's advisers mentioned in passing what paul ryan, then the speaker of the house, had told reporters, which is that mr. trump had asked mr. flynn to resign. it was under -- excuse me. it was unclear where speaker ryan had gotten that

information, but president trump seized on mr. ryan's words. quote, that sounds better, the president said, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. mr. trump turned to the white house press secretary at the time, sean spicer, who was preparing to brief the news media. say that, mr. trump ordered. but was that true, mr. spicer pressed? say that i asked for his resignation, mr. trump repeated. and after that sean spicer in fact walked out to brief reporters on mike flynn's leaving the white house the previous night, resigning the previous night. he told reporters that flythe president asked for flynn's resignation. apparently that was not true. the president did not ask for flynn to resign. oh. spicer also told reporters that the white house exhaustively investigated flynn after they received that warning from the justice department, according to white house lawyers concerned about mr. spicer's comments at the time, that also was not true. they had not exhaustively investigated flynn after that

warning. spicer also told reporters that trump administration lawyers had exhaustively reviewed flynn's contacts with the russian government. and the way he had talked about it and they had concluded there were no legal issues whatsoever surrounding what mike flynn had done. that was also not true. the white house lawyers had reached no such conclusion about flynn being legally in the clear. according to "the times" today, given all those concerns about what then became the white house public line about flynn's departure, white house lawyers wrote up a confidential memo detailing all of the lies that the white house was officially telling the public about mike flynn's departure from the white house, including the lie that the president had fired him, that the president had asked for his resignation when, in fact, the president did not. white house lawyers wrote a confidential memo expressing concern about those lies. "the times" also reports that the white house never went back, despited documented nature of those lies, and cleared up with

the public what actually happened. and, no, we don't have that legal memo that was written up by white house lawyers detailing all of those lies and the lawyers' concerns about it. but, boy, does that seem like the sort of thing that maybe congress should ask for now. and now the mystery about flynn is no longer why did the president take so long to act in response to that warning about the danger of flynn? now the mystery is, why did the president never act to fire flynn or demand his resignation after that warning from the justice department? it isn't just that they waited 18 days. at the end of 18 days, they still hadn't acted and he just left on his own. why did they tell an elaborate series of lies to the public, trying to make it seem like they responded to that warning when they never did? and on top of that, the oversight committee in the house today just dropped another bomb having to do with flynn and other senior white house officials pursuing a secret deal in which they themselves appear

to have had a large private financial stake, even after they were warned by national security council lawyers that pursuing that deal inside the white house would be illegal. the oversight committee and the intelligence committee have now opened a new investigation into this matter. they say this is something that appears to have been a mike flynn joint that was illegal on a couple of different levels and it is not something that ended when mike flynn left the white house. it is something, according to the oversight committee today, that the white house is still pursuing as recently as last week. and that's next. stay with us.

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today the house oversight committee released this preliminary report that is titled "whistle-blowers raise grave concerns with trump administration's effort to transfer sensitive nuclear technology to saudi arabia." now, if you know nothing else about saudi arabia at all, the one thing you probably know is that saudi floats on a sea of oil. given that, you might wonder why that country of all countries might want to put nuclear power plants in saudi arabia, right? i mean, saudi arabia has a lot of problems. access to energy is not one of those problems. but getting nuclear power plants maybe isn't their end game here. the crown prince of saudi arabia has started to say out loud and bluntly in recent years that his country may soon develop nuclear weapons. will, scientifically, nuclear

power plant technology and nuclear weapons technology are kissing cousins. so there are laws in the united states and around the world about restricting the transfer of nuclear technology abroad. those laws apply to nuclear power plant technology because if you get nuclear power plant technology, you're pretty far down the road toward having nuclear weapons tech. well, now in this report today the oversight committee, together with the intelligence committee, they say they are investigating whistle-blower reports from inside the federal government that senior trump administration officials have been pursuing a plan to give nuclear technology to saudi arabia in contravention of u.s. law that prohibits that. even after they were warned it would be illegal for them to pursue this plan. according to these whistle-blower reports, these trump administration officials have been pursuing this plan along the lines of a business proposal from which some of them would personally financially benefit. joining us now is congressman

raja chr raja krishna murphy. thank you very much for joining us. the whistle-blowers bringing these concerns to your committee are suggesting that this plan was advanced by trump national security adviser mike flynn back in the hot minute when he was in the administration, back in 2017. >> right. >> but there is also the implication it didn't die with flynn leaving the administration, that it's still being pursued today. >> that's right. even after michael flynn left, some of his deputies, along with jared kushner, the president's son-in-law, basically took it upon themselves to continue with this plan to basically trade secret nuclear technology from america in return for contracts to build and of race nuclear reactors in saudi arabia. >> in terms of the potential criminal implications here, right, there is a self-dealing concern in whether or not

officials pursuing this where themselves in a position to financially benefit from any knock-on effects on this change in american policy, but then the transfer of the technology itself is also something that's highly regulated, not just by american sort of tradition or reasonable restraint, but also by law. >> absolutely. there's something called the atomic energy act of 1954, and specifically section 123 of that act, which specifically requires congressional approval for the export of sensitive nuclear technology to other countries. this was clearly an end-run around congress. not to mention, as you previously said, an end-run around conflicts of interest rules. also michael flynn committed a felony in omitting his contacts with saudi arabia prior to coming to the administration on his sf-86 form. that's the form that's required for security clearance and so forth. >> in terms of that last point

there, one of the things that we have since come to learn is that as far as i understand it, there was a criminal referral from the democrats on oversight committee to robert mueller, to the special counsel's office, specifically on that issue of mike flynn and his security clearance operation and whether or not he was forthcoming about his contacts with saudi arabia about this plan. one of the things that i found interesting about that, i feel like we've heard a lot of stories about trump administration officials leaving things off those security clearance applications. >> yeah. >> not mentioning things. >> correct. >> but in the case of mike flynn, in this case, it sounds like, i mean, he invented the name of a hotel that he supposedly stayed at, which is a hotel that doesn't exist. >> right. something like the king khalid hotel in saudi arabia, which doesn't exist. >> which doesn't exist. that's literally the name of the airport at riyadh, but there is no hotel by that name. >> i haven't been there, but yeah. >> he said he spoke at a conference which doesn't appear to have existed.

he left off who paid for him to go there. this seems like not something he forgot but something he tried to create a whole fake cover story about. >> absolutely. his errors and omissions are only rivalled by jared kushner's, which i've kind of been after in the last two years. as you might recall, jared kushner had 100 errors and omissions on his own security clearance form. so these guys are, in my opinion, walking, talking conflicts of interest. >> congressman raja krishnamoorthi. am i right you are now a representative of the intelligence committee? >> yes, ma'am. >> have you slept at all since you found out these are your two committees. >> it's been busy, but we have something caffeine. >> i'm well aware. sir, thanks for your time tonight. much appreciate it. >> thank you, rachel. >> all right. lots more to get to tonight. stay with us. stay with us

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discuss a case in front of the southern district of new york where he was identified as individual one? >> no, congressman. >> did anyone on the president's behalf either inside the white house or outside the white house contact you to lash out or express dissatisfaction? >> did they contact me to lash out? >> yes. did they reach out to you in some way to express dissatisfaction. >> we watch wassed that testimony a couple of weeks ago from acting attorney general matt whitaker. and whether you found it credible at the time, plenty of people on that committee apparently did not. the chairman of that committee, gerald nadler, followed up that testimony with a letter to whitaker that said in so many words, we believe you lied to us in that testimony. now they're told whitaker, quote, we require your clarification on this point without delay. tonight, "the new york times" adds fuel to chairman nadler's smolders doubts. "the times" reports that president trump himself called

matt whitaker, his acting attorney general and asked if somebody else could be put in charge of the investigation of michael cohen, somebody's the federal prosecutor's office in new york. "the times" reports specifically that the president wanted to know if the prosecutor he had hand-picked for that u.s. attorney job in that office could please take over the cohen investigation. so that is a serious allegation about the president trying to interfere in that prosecution of his longtime lawyer. the prosecution in which the president himself is allegedly implicated in some of the felonies to which cohen has confessed. but the question is still hanging over matt whitaker, did the white house let him know the president was not happy about the cohen investigation, as "the times" reports tonight, as cnn reported in december? is chairman nadler correct in charging whitaker's testimony? jerry nadler's letter to matt whitaker has gone unanswered for almost a week now. though i was told tonight from capitol hill that they think matthew whitaker might still

reply. then again we expected matt whitaker to leave the justice department when william barr took over as the new attorney general, but instead matt whitaker has stayed on. they've given him a different job at the justice department. if he is still a justice department official tonight, that means he is still under the oversight of the house judiciary committee in congress. that committee could bring him back in if he lied to them, pur purgered himself under oath pur purgered himself under oat >> tech: at safelite autoglass

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joining us now here on set is congressman eric swalwell. he's a member of the intelligence committee in the house and also the judiciary committee in the house. congressman, it's great to have you here. >> thanks for having me. >> i wanted to ask you about a few of the didn't stories that broke today, but specifically because of your role in the judiciary committee, your chairman jerry nadler is saying pretty directly to the recently departed attorney general matt whitaker he may have perjured himself before your committee. "the times" added to the weight of that allegation when whitaker got not call, that's not true. the president had pressured him about that. what do you make of the story and the controversy and the matter of his potential perjury? >> well, the acting attorney general is not worthy of being taken at his word and his word is contradicted by a lot of credible "new york times" reporting. so, yes, on the president lashing out, we care about that

only because what does it say about the president trying to put pressure on the attorney general? if he's lashing out because he wants the acting attorney general to do something differently, that affects the rule of law. >> the president is trying to choose the prosecutor who is bringing the case and pursuing the case against his lawyer, a case in which the president himself is implicated, that's a serious obstruction of justice allegation. >> that's right. and then also on the question of pardons, i asked the acting attorney general if pardons were ever discussed. he said, you know, there is a rigorous process. yes, there was a rigorous process. donald trump doesn't follow it. he said there was no discussion of pardons. this "new york times" story says the trump lawyers were dangling out pardons to manafort, flynn, et cetera. the question did whitaker when he was interviewing for the job to be donald trump's lawyer inside the white house, tid he talk about his previously held views of the mueller investigation? a couple of different buckets where "the new york times" and other press accounts say, no, he did talk about his views. he wanted to be the president's

defense attorney inside the white house first. there has been discussion of pardons and he was lashed out at. we need to bring him back under subpoena and start to see what really happened. >> does it matter that he has stayed at the justice department? right? >> no-show job. >> well, is it a no-show job? they've sort of invented a new job title for him, which i was surprised by. i thought it actually might be harder for you guys to get him back in to answer the kinds of questions if he was no longer a justice department employee. >> well, you know, our subpoenas go anywhere in the united states. whether it's inside government or outside government. and we're going to press them. and i have the confidence as i sit here today that we are going to hear from him again. if we had not won the majority, we would be powerless as these abuses occur, but we have the majority now. we have subpoena power. we have the rule of law that we want to make sure is still standing so we're going to press on this. >> the other -- for me, the other real bombshell in "the new york times" reporting today is this report that the white house told a long series of lies about the departure of mike flynn as

the president's first national security adviser. we'd all been wondering why it took them 18 days for flynn to get fired after they got that dramatic warning from the justice department about him being compromised by russia. "the times" is now reporting that even after those 18 days, he still wasn't fired, the president didn't in fact ask for his resignation. flynn was allowed to go on his own terms and there was no real investigation of what he had done. there was certainly no review and conclusion by white house lawyers that he hadn't done anything legally problematic. for me, brand-new revelations, is this something that is more familiar to you because of your committee work? >> in our committee work, i don't think donald trump has ever fired someone off camera. i think he's only fired people on camera. >> right. >> but, you know, we found that -- i think the reason he didn't fire michael flynn. i don't think he was offended by it. it became a public relations crisis for him and i think flynn was even more qualified that he was, you know, doing this bidding on the president's behalf, offering to reduce sanctions for the russians.

if you look at this as a quid pro quo, that's part of the quo, the payback to the country that helped you. so i think the president truly isn't capable of firing somebody because, you know, he, as you laid out, had so many people that had done offensive things to him but they stayed around. >> i am not going to ask you right now about running for president in a substantive way, but i am going to -- >> that's a longer block. >> that's a longer block. but i would ask you that if you are going to form an exploratory committee or if you are going to announce you're getting into this race, will you come back here and set aside some time to talk to me? >> i would love that. >> thank you, sir. >> pleasure. >> all right. we'll be right back. stay with us. ay with us i hear it in the background and she's watching too, saying

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reporting from cnn and reuters, nbc news has since confirmed, that the deputy attorney general rod rosenstein, who has had such a key role at the justice department during the mueller investigation overseeing the mueller investigation after attorney general jeff sessions was recused from having any involvement in that. we learned this time last night that rosenstein is now planning to leave the justice department as expected, now that a new attorney general, william barr, has been sworn in. he's planning to leave in mid-march. well, as of right now, we've got the news about who is on slate to replace him. a man named jeffrey rosen is being nominated by the trump administration to be the new deputy attorney general under the new attorney general william barr. one thing that's a little bit unusual about this choice is that currently rosen serves as a deputy secretary in the transportation department, and mr. rosen apparently does not have justice department experience. that is not unheard of for a deputy attorney general, but the deputy attorney general really is the person who runs as a day-to-day thing the justice department.

they are the chief operating officer of doj. so to have somebody come in to take that job with zero doj experience, again, not unheard of, but an an unusual choice. that does it again for us tonight. now it's time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." good evening, lawrence. i'm very excited about your show tonight. >> good evening. having a deputy attorney general with no prosecutorial experience is unheard of. >> it is unusual, especially gifren what's going on in the justice department right now, where institutionalists are probably the most valuable thing we could have in country to have someone there is who is new. >> we will have conversation with rod rosenstein about his replacement, including this, rachel. i don't think you've heard anybody mention this from his book.