he would not let somebody get hurt if he had anything to do with it. if he had to be there to protect somebody, that's what he was going to do. >> reporter: according to the stem school schedule commencement exercises were scheduled. we don't fknow if they will hol that day. >> thank you. that wraps up this hour of msnbc live. andrea mitchell reports starts now. right now, testing trump. north korea firing off another missile. a direct challenge to the president's declaration that he and kim jong-un fell in love through their letters. >> even if these are short and medium range missile, they are violation of resolutions and put a risk to tens of thousands of americans as well as japan and south korea. family matters. donald trump junior is subpoenaed by the republican led senate intelligence committee to explain his previous statements

about the trump project in moscow and that trump tower meeting during the campaign. >> if he fails to comply with a lawful subpoena, he has no privilege. >> this is not about finding facts. this smacks of politics. coming up, the top democrat on the senate intelligence committee mark warner from virginia. constitutional crisis. the country is at a tipping point after holding the attorney general in contempt for refusing to release the full mueller report and blocking them at every turn. >> the administration has decided that they are not going to honor their oath of office. good day. president trump's foreign policy being challenged on all fronts today. mike pompeo cutting a trip to

europe short to deal with a crisis in iran and north korea. second weapons test in less than a week. vie hitting u.n. resolutions. pushing the envelope. joining me is kristen welker. first to you, kristen, the secretary of state cut short his trip because of iran and that crisis there. while he was many the air, the north korean missile test took place. they are adding that to the meetings that have taken place. do we know if there's any crisis meetings at the white house? >> reporter: we don't. frankly, they haven't commented on this latest round of missile tests which is quite remarkable in a sense. we're waiting to hear from president trump today. hopefully he'll answer some questions about this. he did tweet over the weekend. he tried to down play what happened. writing that kim jong-un knows that i'm with him and does not want to break his promise to me.

a lot of people taking note of that tweet. it's raising eyebrows because of course as you just heard there, at the open of your show, the fact they would take this move is provocative and it's notable that the president hasn't condemned the move. clearly wanting to keep diplomacy on the table. he's met with kim jong-un twice but the talks fell apart in february after kim jong-un was demanding the united states remove some sanctions before they take any significant action. something the u.s. refused to do. it's hard to see how they come back to the negotiating table. we know there are talks going on in the region but there's no doubt that this is a concern to people throughout the administration. >> in fact, to both of you, the state department negotiator with north korea was arriving in south korea just as north korea was setting off the artillery

firing, the new test artillery on saturday. saturday morning our time, friday night their time. this is a step up, is it not, the short range missiles fired today? >> it seems so far. we haven't gotten anything out of the white house or the pentagon. i've been covering these missile launches for some time. i know it's a different climate than when they were launching longer range missiles in 2017. it's very uncommon for us to get no guidance on what we're seeing. the south koreans are the only pu ones putting anything out. it appears they are shorter range missiles. the shortest traveled 250 miles. there was this high end artillery that fired last weekend. one of these missiles went about twice as far as the other one. it seems as if this is a step further. the launch was from the west northwest part of north korea. they were fired out into the

ocean. we know that the military track the launch today. this also comes at a time where the three things that president trump has been talking about diplomatically that have been working with north korea. that is no more tests. that's through tureturn of u.s. service members remain and the denuclearization of the peninsula. it seems north korea is pushing limits on all three of those things. they have done these short range tests. we got word yesterday from the dpaa that it turns out there's been this break in communications on return of remains and we have this extensive reporting by nbc news and others about how north korea has been continuing to pursue its nuclear program even not at the same level it was several years ago, andrea. it sure seems as if north korea is pushing the limits on the diploma diplomacy here. >> there's concerns at levels below the president. he's acting as though there's been nothing awry. concern after the u.s. walked

out the summit because kim would not fully denuclearize, the one particularly complex, that after that he shook up his advisers and the team negotiating with the u.s. is going to be a much tougher team as well as the team negotiating with south korea. i want to move onto iran. courtney, you have some new reporting about what caused the u.s. to very quickly begin escalating or speeding up the deployment previously deployment of that carrier group and the bomber squad. >> that's right. we have been hearing aum we ini there were multiple street strains. we have details on what one of those. u.s. intelligence determined there was someone inside iran who told iranian proxy, as you know there are iranian proxy all throughout. there are people who are often trained by iran who are acting almost as sleeper cells.

they are ready to activate and attack if needed. there was u.s. intelligence that came in late last week and over the weekend that iran had told some of these sleepers cell, these groups they could take the gloves off. that was one of the threats that came in that really spurred the u.s. military to surge these forces forward to the area. what's interesting is these are actually threats that have existed. they have been there for years. one of the threats was they saw iranian with ballistic missiles on them and the concern was iran could try to launch missiles which would be a new capability we have not yet seen. >> this as iran suggesting it's getting out of the nuclear deal or reducing its compliance on the anniversary that took place yesterday on the iran nuclear deal. we'll be talking more about that coming up.

thank you both. wisconsin republican congressman who serves on the house arms services committee. a former counter intelligence officer served overseas. congressman, your reaction to what's happening with this crisis, a dual crisis. take iran first. >> by all accounts general mckenzie requested additional assets after receiving credible intelligence, threat reporting about potential attacks by iranian proxies. my understanding is that the carrier strike group is transitting toward the region. we have deployed some b-52 assets. in times of crisis it's good to have options. it's good to have ships that give you the most options in a crisis like this which is why we need to continue to build the navy. secondly, i think the iranian regime is in a weak position. i think the sanctions are having

an effect. the announcement we're no longer going to be waiving has put be regime in a precarious position. sustained unrest against the citizens were fed up. >> do you think the administration with the addit n additional sanctions, more were put on yesterday with the metal industry. they have been limiting the waivers so all of our closest allies can no longer buy iranian oil. are we squeezing them so hard we're really going for regime chan change? some democratic senators in the last 24 hours are saying we are trying to push them and risking and unnecessary war with iran? >> i think the maximum pressure campaign gives us the best option for avoiding war.

history in general demonstrate when we try an appeasement approach, we do not moderate their aggressive behavior. indeed, we have seen the opposite. we have given them clear choice. stop your billions of dollars that you're funneling to terrorists groups. stop your pursuit of nuclear capability or we'll continue to put ni put economic pressure on you. we're more than willing to adopt a more constructive relationship with krou. they seem to be, at the expense of their own people's livelihood choosing the path of destruction and chaos. by all accounts, they until this week, come plplied fully even th we bailed on it a year ago.

>> they were in violation of interim agreements. it gets back to the bigger point that iran has never given up nuclear ambitions. the fundamental flaw of the nuclear deal was that we conceded the right to enrich domestically. in one of the waivers we suspended is no longer allowing the iranians to swap nuclear materials with the russians. i guess it comes down to whether you think the deal was in our interest. i had the opposite view the deal would expire in 10 to 15 years and embolden iran. i think getting out of the deal gives us our best chance. >> whether you think the president should have a reality check about kim jong-un's intentions. >> kim juong-un agreed to susped testing. this was a short range missile, so it doesn't violate it.

i think it proves that kim jong-un is not serious about denuclearization. one of the unfortunate realities of the singapore summit is we got no commitment from him. they are talking about something completely different than we are. they are talking about us getting off the korean peninsula entirely, which is something we cannot do. until we get some evidence that he's seriously committed to denuclearization, we have to be skeptical. i think we have to start placing secondary sanctions on russian and chinese banks that are providing a lifeline to the kim regime. >> thank you very much. all the good to see you. coming up, capital clash. the house judiciary committee voting to hold bill barr in contempt. a possibly showdown in court. iran's ambassador joins us.

mark warner is with us. stay with us. h us stay with us here's one you guys will like.

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access netflix, prime video, youtube and more, all with the sound of your voice. click, call or visit a store today. we've talked for a long time about approaching a constitutional crisis. we are now in it. we are now in a constitutional crisis. >> i do agree with chairman

nadler because the administration has decided that they are not going to honor their oath of office. >> the showdown between house democrats and the white house escalating over the president's refusal to honor subpoenas after the house judiciary sue pvoted hold the attorney general in contempt. welcome all ken, first, your reporting on i wanted to talk about this whole confrontation and also the subpoena by the senate intelligence committee to don junior. what's that all about? >> it's a really fascinating situation situation because you have richard burr of north carolina taking this action against the son of the

republican president. agreeing with mark warner to issue a subpoena to donald trump junior. they want to talk to him about discrepancies in his testimony that he gave back in last year to the senate judiciary committee about the trump tower moscow deal. what he knew about that and then about what he told his father and others about that trump tower new york meeting. the most important episodes in the entire russia collusion investigation. he said that he was only peripherally aware that of the deal that michael cohen was pursuing. cohen testified under oath he briefed donald trump junior and his sister some ten times. huge discrepancy there. he said he never told his father about that meeting where a russian lawyer promised incriminating information about hillary clinton. michael cohen, we learn frds the

mu -- learned from the report he recalls a conversation between don junior and his father. these are not enough to charge him with perjury but senators want to grill him about his testimony. it's very unlikely he will subject himself to that because he faces some real jeopardy here. he's really facing a choice of either resisting the subpoena that could earn him a contempt of congress citation or asserting his fifth amendment rights and refusing to testify. >> he, unlike the attorney general and even don mcgahn and robert mueller, before he leaves the justice department, they are within the orbit of the president and he's now asserting executive privilege and blocking all subpoenas, all testimony. nancy pelosi said today what she said to you in your washington post interview. let's play that. >> the president is almost self-impeaching because he is every day demonstrating more

obstruction of justice and disrespect for congress's legitimate role to subpoena. >> i was very struck by what she said to you in the interview. seems to me that nancy pelosi, who is trying to hold this caucus together and has been resisting the pressure for impeachment is facing 2020 candidates and members of her own caucus, adam schiff telling me that it looks like they will have to move toward impeachment hearings because of the steps that have taken place because of the mueller report. is she trying to put it back on the president that if they have to move to this impeachment hearing, which they know will be bad politically, it's really his fault? >> she's framing this as a choice that's going to be made by democrats not because they're doing so for political purposes but because the process collapses. that's why she's comfortable using impeachment language.

talking about things like self-impeaching and how the president rises in his behavior to the level of the talk of impeachment because the way his administration resists congressional requests. as a institutionalist she's first letting her committee chairs move forward with their process and then hold people in contempt if they do not comply with congressional demands and then once something perhaps is not even settled in federal court, could you consider impeachment proceedsings. she's inching toward that conclusion but she's not rushing toward it for many reasons. >> if they were to call the impeachment hearings then they could get through some of the legal restrictions the attorney general has placed on them getting some of the unredacted material. the president was at a rally last night with his supporters and he is making this all about he's the victim.

the democrats are trying to replay the election. let's watch. >> now the democrats are saying we want more. it was going to be like we want the mueller report. now they say, mueller report, no. we want to start all over again. it is a disgrace. >> the politics right now on this, are they on his side? >> well, it's tough to say if it's on his side because what you have is democrats sounding the alarm saying we're in a constitutional crisis and from the white house angle they are saying it's over. democrats are bitter. we should move on. public sentiment is most people still don't know support impeaching the president and most voters aren't on the campaign trail asking voters about this specifics of the mueller report. that being said, there is this idea that people, especially democrats, are looking at this president and looking at whether or not he's presidential and whether or not he should earn another term. there's this idea of self-impeaching but there's also this idea that democrats are

looking at does he self-implode. does 2020 come around and say he can't govern. this is someone directing people to lie. he does not have an honor for the office and needs to go. that will be the tough fight because hillary clinton in 2016 made a lot of those same arguments and donald trump has not changed. just yesterday he was joking about shooting immigrants. there's this idea that the president is doubling down on his brash form of politics and doesn't feel any need to change. >> let's go to white house very quickly. the president talking about north korea. >> nobody's happy about it. we're tyaking a good luck and we'll see. the relationship continues. we'll see what happens. i know they want to negotiate. they are talking about negotiating but i don't think they are ready to negotiate because we have to either do it very much like china. the vice premier is coming here today. we were getting close to a dole

and they started to renegotiate the deal. we can't have that. we can't have that. our country can take in $120 billion a year in tariffs paid for mostly by china, not be us. a lot of people try to steer it in a different direction. it's paid for by china. businesses will pour back into our country. instead of making the product, it will be the old fashioned way, we made our own product. i think things are going along pretty well there. a large group delegation headed by one of the most respected men and highest officials of china will be coming in today. they start at 5:00. they'll see what they can do. our alternative is an excellent one. it's an alternative i've spoken about for years. we never took in ten cents from china. not ten cents. it will be a very strong day.

we'll see. we'll see. it was there idea to come back. he wrote me a beautiful letter. i just received it. i will probably speak to him by phone. we have two great alternatives. our country is doing well. our numbers at 3.2. don't forget, 3.2, the first quarter is by far the worst quarter or almost always. first quarter is always weak. we had 3.2 gdp. our unemployment numbers are the best in the history of our country. we're doing well. our companies are really doing well. even in ohio, the great state of ohio, yesterday, general motors at my strong urging, i wasn't even nice about it but i appreciate what they did. they sold the beautiful plant. they sold that beautiful plant to a very, very good company that's going to make electric trucks. that work. that was the only thing they

could say about our whole economy. they kept saying lordstown. when you had all of these great companies spending billions and billions of dollars coming into our country, they couldn't talk about it. they only mentioned the one plan that was a gm plant from a very long time ago. now we have a great company going in and will make electric trucks. very appropriate. interesting idea. >> will you allow robert mueller to testify in congress? >> i'm going to leave that up to our very great attorney general and he'll make a decision on that. i will say this, the mueller report came out. it was done, i guess i'm hearing numbers close to $40 million with 17 or 18 very angry democrats who hated donald trump. also everything they could possibly have at their disposal. there was nobody in the history of our country more transparent than me.

i said give them every document. give them every person. let the white house counsel testify. i think he testified for 30 hours. i guess they must have asked him the same question because there wasn't very much to testify about. i said let him testify and let him -- keep him as long as you want. when i heard 30 hours, i said that's a long time. i let him testify. didn't have to add presidential privilege. i could have stopped everything. i didn't have to give them a document. i gave them 1.5 million documents. i gave them white house counsel. i gave them other -- anybody you want, you can talk to. at the end of the testimony, no collusion. essentially and no obstruction. a lot of people say how can you obstruct when there was no crime? it's worse than that. it's not only was there no crime but the crime was committed on the other side.

we're protecting against a crime committed on the other side. after spending all of that money, all of that time, two years, they come up with a report and bob mueller is no friend of mine. i had conflicts with him. we had a business dispute. we had somebody that is in love with james comey. we like james comey. they were supposedly best friends. you look at the picture file and you see hundreds of pictures of him and comey. with all of that, and other things. he wanted the fbi job. he was considered for fbi job. wanted it. the day after he didn't get it, he became the special counsel. that's a conflict. we had other things but those are tremendous conflicts. listen to this, your judge is a business dispute with me. your judge has a fantastic relationship with james comey.

he's part of this. he lied to congress. he's a liar, a leaker. your judge has a situation where he wanted to become the fbi director. we chose director wrey instead and told him i'm sorry. those are tremendous conflicts. those are tremendous conflicts. then, he puts on his staff almost all democrats, many of whom contributed to hillary clinton. none of them contributed to me. that i can tell you. it started out at 13 and went to 18. these were angry democrats. these were people that went to her in one case went to her and supposed to be party and turned out to be a funeral on election evening and was going wild. he was so angry. this man now is judging me.

you had other people make contributions. they were angry democrats in almost all cases. one of the people worked on the clinton foundation as just about the top person at the clinton foundation. with all of this, they came back no collusion. there's nobody in this room, including you, that they were -- that's you. if we looked at you with $40 million, 18 angry people that hated you and all of the other things i mentioned, they'll find something. go ahead. >> mueller is friends with mr. barr. mr. barr told lawmakers he didn't have a problem with mr. mueller testifying. >> i'm going to leave that up to the attorney general. to me it looks like a redo. the report comes back. it's perfect. it's beautiful. nobody even talks about collusion. i haven't heard the word russia in a long time. there's no more talk about russia. what happened to russia.

the russian witch hunt. they don't talk because it was so on collusion. which is by far that's the big deal. it was all about russia. i haven't heard the word russia. they don't use the word russia anymore. there's no crime. there never was a crime. it was a hoax. it was a witch hunt. this comes back and it comes back toetsly exonerating donald trump and a lot of other people. this was a terrible thing that happened. they are asking about how did this whole thing start. that's what people want to know. i want to tell you i had an event last night. a lot of you were there. thousands and thousands of people standing in a field. never seen anything like it. meaning even the press. it's always that way. we never had an empty seat. thousands of people last night. you know what they want to know, how did this whole thing start. it's going to be hard for them to answer that.

>> are you satisfied with the advise you received from john bolton bolton? >> yeah. he has strong views on things but that's okay. i actually temper john, which is pretty amazing. i'm the one that tempers him. that's okay. i have different sides. i have john bolton and other people that are a little more dovish than him. i like john. >> mr. president, as you saw the senate intelligence committee has subpoenaed don junior. that's the republican led senate intelligence committee. what do you make of that? >> i was very surprised. i saw richard burr saying there was no collusion two or three weeks ago. we found no collusion. i was very surprised to see my son. my son is a very good person. works very hard. the last thing he needs is washington, d.c.

i think he'd rather not be involved. he said to me, if i can help, it's not my expertise. it's not something i really like but whatever i can do you're my father. whatever i can do. he's now testified for 20 hours or something. a massive amount of time. the mueller report came out. that's the bible. the mueller report came out and they said he did nothing wrong. the only thing is, it's opo research. if he did wrong, everybody standing with me exsecept for jn and lamar. lamar is pretty. did you ever do opo research. i know john never did opposition research because he's a fine, fine man. i would say 99% of the rest of the folks. they didn't -- what they didn't discuss is this woman that came in who i watched during the

today show when it all started. i'm just an innocent. nobody even knows. the halls of congress knows her well. for years she's walked around all over congress. she came in and she left supposedly gps fusion. they talk about a subject as very well advertised and put out. it was a nothing meeting. jared left. he said get me out of this meeting. she then went back to gps fusion. they were the ones that wrote the phony dossier. why was she going to gps fusion? why did she go back? then i heard that don, for years, made three phone calls with an unmarked number. they called it unmarked. this was a tremendous event because they all knew, the fake

news, you were fair on that john. they all knew these phone calls, these tremendous phone calls before the meeting and after the meeting there were three. they all knew it had to be to his father. unmarked, it's perfect. he reported about meeting and then reported what happened at the meeting. except after looking and spending a tremendous amount of time and money, they were able to go back years and find out who made the calls. one was a local real estate developer. the other was a great person from nascar. he took two of them and a friend of don's. this went on for a year and a half. john you heard all about the phone calls to obviously the father where i knew. i never knew about the meeting. the phone calls to the father. turned out not to be the phone calls. my son is a good person.

my son testified for hours and hours. my son was totally exonerated by mueller who frankly does not like donald trump. me, this donald trump. frankly for my son after being exonerated to now get a subpoena to go again and speak again after close to 20 hours of telling everybody that would listen about a nothing meeting, yeah, i'm pretty surprised. >> should he fight that subpoena? >> we'll see what happens. i'm very surprised. >> did iran send an aircraft carrier to the region? >> they were threatening. we have information that you don't want to know about. they were threatening. we have to have great security for this country and a lot of other places. >> military confrontation, sir? >> i guess you could say that always. i don't want to say no.

hopefully that won't happen. we have one of the most powerful shich shi ships in the world loaded up. what i'd like to see with iran, i'd like them to call me. john kerry tells them not to call. that's a violation of the logan act. he should be prosecuted in that. my people don't want to do anything that's only the democrats do that kind of stuff. if it were the opposite way, they'd prosecute him under the logan act. john kerry violated the logan act. he's talking to iran and has been. has many meetings and many phone calls and he's telling them what to do. that is total violation of the logan act. what they should be doing is they're economy is a mess ever since they took away the iran deal. they have inflation that's the highest number i've ever heard. they are having riots every weekend and during the week. what they should be doing is

calling me up, sitting down, we can make a deal, a fair deal. we just don't want them to have nuclear weapons. not too much to ask. we would help put them back into great shape. they are in bad shape right now. i look forward to the day with we can help iran. we're not looking to hurt iran. i want them to be strong and great and have a great economy, but they are listening to john kerry who is violated a very important element of what he's supposed to be doing. he violated the logan act. plain and simple. they should call, and if they do, we're open to talk to them. we have no secrets. they can be very, very strong financially. they have great potential. north korea has tremendous potential economically. i don't think he's going to blow that. i don't think so. >> is it still possible to get a trade deal with chinese this

week. >> the vice premier is one of the most respected men and highest officials in china coming. you heard he wasn't coming. he's coming. once the tariffs went on, they upped the meeting. it was supposed to take place on thursday and then about foive weeks ago they said about how friday. how about next week. i said let's tyke ake in a hund billion a year. they upped the meeting. how about let's go back to thursday? i have no idea what's going to happen. i did get last night a very beautiful letter from president xi. let's work together. let's see if we can get something done. they renegotiated the deal. they took whether it's intellectual property theft, they took many parts of that deal and renegotiated. you can't do that. i'm different than a lot of people. i happen to think the tariffs for our country are very powerful. we're the piggy bank that

everybody steals from including china. we have been paying china $500 billion a year for many years. china rebuilt their country because of us. they couldn't have done what they're doing. their building a ship every three weeks. they are building aircraft like you've never seen. i respect it. i blame past leadership for allowing this to happen. what i'm doing with china should have happened many years before. not just obama, long before obama. china was flat lining for many, many decades. many, many -- it was flat, right here. the wto came along. we allowed china into the wto and they became a rocket ship.

an economic chart. they are here and they went up like a rocket ship. well, they did it with our money and others and they did it because they are very smart and good people. i like the president a lot. he's a friend of mine. i'm representing the usa. he's representing china. we're not going to pay china $500 billion a year. we put heavy tariffs on china as of friday. when people looked at the economic numbers they were shocked. they said, wow, how did they get to this point? this was very good. that was a very good report. they never seen that for many years. billions and billions of

dollars. now we're raising it to 25% on friday. it will be $250 billion at 25%. it will be $325 billion at 25%. we're starting that paper work today. we'll see. you know what, as president of our country, i had to do something about it. as president of our great country, we're going to be taking in more money than we have taken in. all of these countries, many of them have taken advantage of us, including our allies. they have taken advantage of us on trade. they have taken advantage of us on military. we defend all these countries for nothing or a tiny fraction of what it costs. we take care of nato.

i'm all for nato. i'm all for nato. i think it's just wonderful. it's different than it was 25 years ago and 40 years ago. i got nato to put up an extra $100 billion. >> we'll rejoin the president and monitor if he makes anymore news. we want to get reaction to some of the allegations he's just made talking about don junior. talking about john kerry. virginia democratic senator mark warner is the top democratic on the intelligence committee and joins me now. you heard part of what the president said, i believe. saying it was unfair that don junior testified for hours and hours. there was nothing untoward. he was doing opo research in that trump tower meeting. we understand that the request from your committee is to get him to explain conflicting reports from the mueller report and his testimony before to you about russia. >> andrea, as has been our

procedure since the beginning of this investigation, neither i or the chairman will comment about specific witnesses. i think it's very clear that as we went through this investigation, we always said to witnesses, we reserve the right to bring you back. a number of witnesses have come back and clarified or retestified. as already been reported, including other members of the trump family. i'm not going to comment on the actions of mr. trump junior or his lawyers or some of the materials they may be putting out. we will continue this investigation. we'll follow the facts. what we need to make sure and this is what's been so disturbing to me about the white house is that they don't take seriously the threat not only that russia did this in 2016 but they will be back.

if not them, other nations. the play book is out there and how we need to protect ourselves on a going forward basis. very briefly, it ought to be the fact there were 100 contacts between trump officials and russians, the fact trump campaign manager gave campaign data to a russian agent. the fact we still don't know the full role that roger stone played with wikileaks. even if you accept mueller's conclusions that didn't meet the conspiracy test, on a going forward basis, there ought to be affirmative obligation to make sure if a foreign contacts you during elections and offers dirts dirt, there ought to be an obligation to report that. there should be a bipartisan election security bill in place. i'm worried we may not do well in 2020 since you have the former homeland security secretary who wanted to have cabinet meeting and my understanding the chief of staff told her don't bring that up because it makes the president

uncomfortable. candidly, what makes the president uncomfortable isn't as important as making sure our elections are secure. we need to put some guard rails around social media. we want to fin sh oish our repod get that information out. we need to take these actions to make sure we're safe in 2020. >> don junior's attorney and other republicans are attacking your chairman richard burr. the republicans have been all over him today. don junior's lawyer said no one would agree to allow their client to participate an obvious pr stunt from a republican senator too cowardly to stand up to his boss and the rest of the democrats on the committee. this is from someone close to the lawyer. at this point, you also have mitch mcconnell saying case

closed. you have kevin mccarthy attacking the subpoena to don junior. can you respond to that? >> again, i'm not going to comment on a process and procedures but senate intelligence committee and its members are aware of those procedures, have been part of those procedures and i would simply say that throughout this whole now over two years investigation, the chairman has been under assault to shut the investigation down. i've been under pressure from democrats to reach a final conclusion before we finish our report. we have tried and very proud of this committee. we have kept it going after the facts. we're the only bipartisan committee left investigating the russia intervention. we may be one of the only bipartisan committees left in the senate. we're going to stay to our duty which is get the facts out.

make sure we put in mace procedures and processes to make sure it doesn't happen again whether it's election security, social media or making sure an affirmative obligation. if a foreign company tries to intervene, a campaign ought to have an obligation to report that to the fbi. that's where i want us to head. my hope is we won't have further outside intervention so we can finish our work. >> don junior spent the last 16 hours retweeting attacks on senator burr and supporters and telling him to fight malicious hostile intent. how do you combat that? >> well, at the appropriate time i hope the chairman and i can agree on maybe laying out the timeline which will totally rebut mr. trump junior. again, i'm not going to comment on witnesses. i'm going to comment that we have always said witnesses we reserve the right to call back witnesses if there's inconsistent testimony or

inaccuracies. we have worked that way with other witnesses, including trump family members and what we see too often from this white house and we see it with mr. trump himself who is willing to say he's fine with mueller testifying. then he's not fine with mueller testifying. then he's exerting executive privilege. these are not the actions of an individual that doesn't have anything to hide . if you have nothing to hide, let the truth come out. let mueller and every one testify. >> what do you think about the president of accusing senator kerry of violatie ining the logt which has never been prosecuted? accusing secretary kerry of violating logan act by telling the iranians not to talk to donald trump and saying that he is willing, as president, to talk to the iranians but john kerry is interfering with u.s. policy.

we reached out to former secretary kerry. >> i did not see those accusations coming out of mr. trump today. i'm not surprised. this is a white house that cons a smoke screen or distract the public when folks get too close to the truth or when there's pressure on them. again, this is a white house -- every white house doesn't like congress. that's uniform whether you are democrat or republican. but the idea that this white house is now basically in a sense blowing off virtually every request from the house is one more example of this white house's, frankly, disrespect for rule of law. what i'm so afraid of is if this is allowed to become the new norm, then, you know, the next time there will be a democratic president he or she will act this way, and that is not the way our constitution was set up. we are three co-equal branches

of government, the congress, the executive and the judiciary. it feels like this white house doesn't like to acknowledge or recognize that. >> senator mark warner, the vice-chairman of the senate intelligence committee on the spot today. thank you very much. >> thank you, andrea. >> joining me now is iran's ambassador to the united nations. thank you very much for being with us today. >> good to be with you. >> it is good to see you again. first of all, the president of the united states has just said that he would be willing to talk to iran, but he says that former secretary kerry has been interfering with that by telling iran not to talk to the trump administration. >> this is something new to us that john kerry has told us not to talk to the current president or his administration. he just said something else, the president just said that what he wants from iran is not to have nuclear weapons.

apparently he hasn't read the 14 reports of the iaea, international atomic energy agency, saying that iran has been up holding all of its obligations based on the jcpoa, the nuclear deal. so we are not interested in nuclear weapons. in fact, our supreme leader has a verdict saying that nuclear weapon is forbidden in islam. so there is no need for us to go for nuclear weapons, and apparently, as i said, he is not aware that iran is not looking after nuclear weapons. >> and would you be willing to have -- would your leader be willing to talk to the united states? the president said, would like to see -- i would like to see them call me, and then he went on his attack against john kerry, accusing john kerry of interfering in that process. but he said he would sit down and negotiate with iran. >> the first question that he has to answer is why he left the

negotiating table because we were talking to all participants of the nuclear deal, including the united states, within the framework of the joint commission, of that deal. so all of a sudden he decided to leave the negotiating table. so why he has not answered this, proposing to have, you know, fresh rounds of talks with iranians, with this history of just tearing apart a nuclear agreement which is not only between iran and the united states. it has been negotiated between iran and other war powers, endorsed by the un security council, it has become part of the international law. all of a sudden he said, i don't like this and let's sit down and talk about another rounds of negotiations. what is the guarantee that he will not renege again on the future talks between iran and

the united states? >> now, some of your allies in europe who have been supporting iran and the u.s. has, frankly, been isolated diplomatically are concerned at what they saw as a break yesterday where president rouhani said that he's beginning to, first of all, not comply with all of the provisions of this agreement that the u.s. walked away from a year ago, and in 60 days if the europeans do not resume or continue buying iranian oil and make up for what the u.s. is doing, because you haven't had any benefits. you have, in fact, suffered economically as a result of the u.s. withdrawal. that he will walk away from other very important procedures, including enriching uranium. do you give up the high ground here by beginning to walk away from something that as you have pointed out you have complied with? >> what is important for us is the national interests of iran. we have been adhering to our parts of the deal.

the jcpoa or the nuclear deal was more or less a balanced text. when the u.s. administration withdrew from that treaty, that balance has badly hurt. europeans have told us not to rush to get out of the nuclear deal, and we did. we accepted their suggestion and we have for the last year, we have been waiting for any response, any credible response, any practical response. not just words, words of support, which are good, but it is not enough. >> let me just give you -- because we are running out of time. i am apologizing. >> sure. >> i have to ask you to respond to the nbc report that -- and the president just repeated that there was an iranian threat and that's why they sent the carrier group. >> no, these are all allegations which are being produced by the same people who in the run-up to the u.s. invasion of iraq did the same. so we do not accept such an allegation, and all of these are

fake intelligence. >> u.n. ambassador, it is a great pleasure. thank you very much for responding. >> thank you. >> appreciate it. we will be right back. coming up in the next hour -- m it's tough to quit smoking

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and coming up this hour, two 2020 democratic contenders joining ali very situate and stephanie ruhle, massachusetts congressman seth molton and bernie sanders. take it away. >> thank you, andrea.

have a great afternoon. >> thank you. >> i'm ali velshi. >> i'm stephanie ruhle. it is thursday, may 9th. let's get smarter. a republican-led committee issuing a subpoena to donald trump jr. this on the same day the house judiciary committee votes to hold attorney general bill barr in contempt of court. >> will you allow robert mueller to testify in congress? >> i'm going to leave it up to our very great attorney general, and he will make a decision on that. but i will say this. look, the mueller report came out. it was done. there's no crime. there never was a crime. it was a hoax. >> donald trump jr. is absolutely not out of the woods yet. he is in criminal jeopardy and that's probably why you will not see him answering questions before the committee any time soon. >> you saw the senate intelligence committee subpoenaed don jr. that's the republican-led intelligence committee. what do you maybe of that? >> i was very surprised. >> from the department of justice your argument is that you can't break the law and if william barr were