eavali velshi, thanks for watching. nicole wallace and her guest, andrew mccabe starts now. it's 4:00 in new york. in an era where information is scarce about the exact motivation behind the trump campaign's 140 plus contacts with russians as chronicled in the mueller report, donald trump did his part last night to fill in some of the blanks, offering a window why his lawyers never wanted him to sit for an interview with robert mueller, donald trump spilled the beans saying you don't call the fbi if a foreign government wants to aid your campaign. calling his own hand picked fbi director wrong for saying any offered dirt from russia should call the fbi and making clear to

the entire world if russia is still listening or anybody else for that matter the door to his office is wide open for 2020 and he's ready to talk and listen to any foreign power willing to help the president. here's some of that extraordinary interview of donald trump. >> let's put yourself in a position, you're a congressman somebody says hey i have information on your opponent, do you call the fbi? i've seen a lot of things in my life, i don't think in my whole life i've called the fbi. my whole life. >> al gore got a stolen briefing book he called the fbi. >> this is different. this is somebody that said we have information on your opponent. oh, let me call the fbi. give me a break. life doesn't work that way. >> the fbi director said that's what should happen. >> the fbi director is wrong. >> the campaign, this time if foreigners, russia, china,

someone else, should they accept it or call the fbi? >> you do both. you might want to listen. there's nothing wrong with listening. if somebody called from a country, norway, we have information on your opponent, oh, i think i'd want to hear it. >> you want that kind of interference in our elections? >> it's not an interference, they have information. i think i'd take it. >> i think i'd take it. joining us now former acting director and former deputy director of the fbi director, andrew mccabe. >> it's incredible. it lays bare what the president was likely thinking as a candidate. i'm struck as to where to even start. his comments that you don't call the fbi? actually, you do. if you care about the safety and security of this country, if you care about the integrity of our electoral system you do call the

fbi because that's what the fbi does. and getting information like that from a candidate who's received any sort of outreach from a foreign power is incredibly powerful investigative leads for the bureau as they try to keep our country safe from that influence. >> i want to talk to you about what it must be like at the fbi today. a building you worked, an agency you served, much of your career. the commander in chief who sits atop the chain of command of the executive branch called the director wrong, essentially emasculating him, undermining his authority. i want to get to chris wray in a second but how does that land for the men and women of the fbi? >> it's a tough blow at the end of what's been a tough couple of years. imagine you are an fbi agent or an analyst or someone who works in the counterintelligence division and you have spent your entire career dedicated to

unwinding and deconstructing what the russians are doing at any given moment to try to sow division and discord in this country, that's hard and stressful work, the people who do it should be commended. so for them to hear the president of the united states say their director is wrong, those men and women know their director is not wrong and they also know that the president is. >> what does christopher wray do today? >> you know, that's a great question, nicole. i have always thought that anyone who works in this administration and maintains any level of integrity and commitment to their values and commitment to their oath will, at some point, find themselves in a conflict with the president of the united states. that day may very well have come for christopher wray. it will be very interesting to see how he handles it. i'm not sure that there is a careful, easy, keep your head down way to address this blatant

conflict between the agency and its righteous mission and this misdirection that they've received from the president of the united states. >> and i guess i want to put chris wray in the spotlight because he's now the third director of the fbi under this president to be smeared and undermined by him, jim comey who was asked to see to it to let mike flynn go and then was fired under the auspices of the rosenstein memo that turned out not to be what was on trump's mind, out the door. you served in that job, smeared maligned by this president, out the door via twitter i might add. and now his third person to act in that role called flat wrong on national television for simp simply articulating in testimony on capitol hill what the laws of the land are.

>> yeah, you know, and as i've said that time may be coming for chris to determine how forcefully he is going to reiterate for his people internally, look, this is our mission. this is what we do. we follow the law. and any steps that he takes in that direction hold him up in direct contrast to the comments of the president. i think chris is a person of integrity. i know he's a smart, careful guy. i know he's probably thinking about this very deeply today. but it is hard to imagine running an institution like the fbi and not finding yourself in a stark conflict with president trump at some point. >> i want to go back in time to something you said when you were on this program when your book came out. you revealed here you opened a full field investigation into donald trump around questions of whether the act of firing jim comey wasn't just potentially obstructing -- obstructive but

whether it was potentially part of a conspiracy with russia. i want to know if what you heard from donald trump in that interview with george stephanopoulos was the kind of mindset, kind of conduct that raised your antenna in the first place? >> it is, nicole. as you know, the standard for opening our case is when we have information that might indicate that a threat to national security might exist or that a federal crime may have been committed. and so, in that time, in may of 2017, we clearly had that sort of information. we knew what the russians had been doing since 2014, 2015, attacking our cyber infrastructure, our academic institutions, government institutions, think tangs, we knew they attacked the dnc, they weaponized that material to try to hurt candidate clinton and help candidate trump. we knew trump was upset about

the fact we were investigating that activity. he specifically asked us to stop investigating that activity and when we didn't follow his requests, he fired the director. so at that point we had to consider the very real prospect that the president might be presenting a threat to national security. i have to tell you the comments i heard yesterday only reaffirm for me the concerns that we had in may of 2017. look, this is what foreign intelligence services do every day. their bread and butter is building relationships and creating leverage with decision makers in government. that's how they influence policy decisions, that's how they collect information they shouldn't have. if i am a foreign intelligence officer today, the message i got from the president's own words yesterday was, it is open season on u.s. political figures in 2020. >> and i guess what i want to ask you is, is there anyone that

would see those statements the same way you did in the spring of 2017? do you think there's anybody inside our law enforcement agencies or inside our intelligence agencies who heard what we all heard? we know the president doesn't want us to believe what we see or what we hear, but what he said in that interview was abundantly clear and it's very clear why his lawyers didn't want to sit for an interview because you heard the intent, you heard the intent to conspire and people are confused how robert mueller couldn't connect the dots. maybe you can illuminate that and answer the first question, whether or not anyone inside our law enforcement agencies would hear what you just described from the president yesterday? >> i'm quite certain that our counterintelligence professionals in the fbi and other places are listening to those comments yesterday and they are very concerned. they're very concerned not just about this cavalier attitude that the president has about federal election law, they're

also concerned about this invitation effect that his comments may have to those adversaries that are best positioned to take advantage of it. so i am sure those folks are recalibrating their efforts today and figuring out how to get to the bottom of this. i would expect that to be happening. >> do you think that's easier or more difficult against the backdrop of a story that appeared in the "new york times" last night about the same time this interview with abc dropped that the attorney general is now going to start examining some of the cia analysts' work product, which is you know better than me and jump in if i don't describe it accurately. this is looking at not necessarily human intelligence or raw intelligence but the raw analysis created based on that first-hand either human intelligence or intercepted intelligence or whatever it is we gather through, i guess, traditionally the most sacred and protected sources and

methods. >> it concerns me greatly. as i said earlier, nicole. it's been a tough year for the men and women of the fbi. one of the things that makes it tough is when your institution is attacked for the work they do, when individuals in your institution are attacked for the work that they do. and then to see a development like this, absolutely has a negative impact, a sort of chilling impact on the people that do that work every day for a living. those folks who spent so much time and effort contributing the analysis and the conclusions to the intelligence community assessment at the end of 2016, beginning of 2017 have got to be very concerned right now about why exactly a federal prosecutor is coming to challenge their conclusions, to kind of peel back the onion on the work they did so many years ago and work that was universally accepted by the heads of the agencies

involved. so it's -- it's quite curious and concerning. i'm sure to those people. it is to me as well. >> why do you think they're doing it? >>, you know, i don't know, nicole. my colleagues and i have been under investigation since january of 2017. so to be quite frank, it's tough for me to sort through exactly who's investigating what at any given moment. the thing that concerns me about this one, we have definitely seen efforts by some to undermine the conclusions, be they analytical or investigative, by attacking the investigators personally, that's the concern i have for this investigation. it's certainly reasonable for the attorney general to want to know what happened before he took his position. to want to know what sort of decisions were made and why those decisions were made. but if the effort here is to undermine those conclusions, to

attack the investigation by attacking the investigators, that is something that will have real repercussions in the community and will have the effect of making our analysts and our investigators certainly hesitant to move forward. >> i want to ask you to just sort of dive into this theory. it was posited to me by a former senior intelligence official who said that one of the possible motives behind this move by barr is that your former agency, the fbi, was scrubbed, as you said for two and a half years. there was an inspector general report, john huber is investigating it, now the u.s. attorney out of connecticut is also investigating the investigators, they didn't turn up anything so now they're turning to the other side of the ledger, examining whether or not the fbi was perhaps handed off tainted information, do you think that's a scenario keeping this president on the war

footing against the deep state is essential to his political brand or is it too skon spir or the ya even for a skeptic? >> it's hard to say at any moment exactly what the president is thinking until he, of course, tells us himself. it is certainly possible that, look, i -- it seems that the president gets some value out of perpetuating this narrative that he is at war with the deep state that the government professionals are trying to stage coups, and plot coups and overturn the presidency. none of those wild and, you know, baseless predictions have come true. there is, of course, no evidence of any of that activity, because it never took place. so could this be just another effort to perpetuate that narrative, to look under another stone to find the thing they've been hoping to find all along?

it's certainly possible. it's discouraging if that's the case. >> i'm going to hit you with breaking news, there's a connection. the president's press secretary, sarah huckabee-sanders is leaving the white house. donald trump tweeting out after three and a half years our wonderful sarah huckabee-sanders will be leaving the end of the month. i'm not going to read the rest. but i want to ask you about sarah huckabee-sanders's legacy. one of the things in the mueller report she indicated when she was interviewed that she made up from whole cloth the smears against jim comey. i think you were asked these questions in front of confidence, he lost the support of the building. i remember when she said it from the podium, i talk to lots of fbi agents, there's no reason why any political appointee

should talk to fbi agents. and i remember hearing it thinking it's bizarre. but part of the legacy will be that she lied from the white house podium about the reputation of jim comey and had to confess to those lies in the mueller report. >> you know, i knew at the time it was completely false. it was also obvious that it was very important to the president and to his staff that we all adopt that false narrative that the fbi was happy about the fact that jim comey was fired and that gleeful agents and employees were calling to the white house to express that. never happened, completely false from the beginning. so to see that admission in the mueller report was satisfying. i have to say i will not miss her after she departs the white house. >> we were the first hour to ban her tape. and so i literally and figuratively will not miss her either. let me ask you about more breaking news, michael flynn and

rick gates have been subpoenaed to testify at the house intelligence committee, you were acting director at the time both men were charged. what could their testimony inform in terms of the work and the scope of the house intel committee's mission? >> first let me say both men cooperated with the government, and i would expect that this sort of testimony to congress is a part of that cooperation, and so i can't imagine there should be any sort of, you know, obstacle to getting them to come in and speak very candidly. both were also, you know, inextricably tied into aspects of the trump organization, gates on the campaign side and flynn on the campaign and national security side. there's really no limit to the sort of information that they might have. the mueller team had a very specific remit, as you know,

director mueller thought of his responsibilities as narrowly tailored, the congressional committee will not have that same sort of limitation. so it's possible that the committee pushes into areas that gates and flynn have not covered with federal prosecutors, you never know. i think it'll be very interesting to see what comes of those appearances. >> both men told lies about russia. donald trump, in his interview yesterday, said in front of god and country and russia and every other american adversary that he would listen to any foreign government with dirt on an opponent, there's nothing wrong with that. have you in your mind unravelled why so many lies were told about those meetings in trump tower with the russians to get dirt on hillary clinton which they at one time said was about adoption, another time it was fruitless. jared kushner has this tail about an aide sending him an

email. the president said basically i called the code red. i said it was fine. how did they coordinate all of those lies? >> it's one of those enduring questions that remains after the special counsel's work and the report. you know from your own experience, nicole, 140 different contacts between people associated with the administration and the campaign and the government of russia or individuals connected to russian intelligence. it's absolutely inexplicable. never seen anything like that before. on top of that volume of contacts, you have all of these high level officials in the administration who have lied or disassembled or attempted to kind of cover up those contacts and what may have come from them. it is just one of the enduring mysteries that we have from this time of watching this administration. >> i want to ask you one last question about the abc interview last night. because this seems to be the connective tissue here.

muted criticism for the president, the republicans if they said anything critical at all, sort of took out a scalpel and carved out the language used. no blanket condemnation of the act, i worked on three presidential campaigns, you didn't even take a phone call from a representative of a foreign government. frankl frankly, when i worked on a campaign, you didn't take phone calls from an organization with aligned interests. but we heard from the president himself and we heard congress, they did a little more than you shrug but not much. does that to you explain how we are where we are, that the mueller report, for all the 140 contacts with the russian, ten acts of obstruction of justice and the collective reaction from congress is a shrug, no witnesses are there, they're sort of halting effort to get people up there and make this public case. does this make more sense when

you see the posture and almost zombie like acceptance of donald trump' trump's obliteration of the rule of law and norms. >> i think it emboldens the president to say the ridiculous things he says all the time and it explains why he feels strong enough to do these things to give in to his more baser instincts because he knows that party is not going to hold him accountable to anything. this is not the first failure of courage that we've seen on the part of congressional republicans and i'm sure it won't be the last. there's a new low in terms of the sort of activity and behavior that congressional republicans are willing to accept from this president every day. think about the idea that republicans are now completely okay with the statement by the president that he would accept information from the russians.

i mean, the republican party traditionally strong on national defense, the party that fought russia, the party that won the cold war, and here we are today where things like the statements made to abc take place yesterday and you hear a collective nothing from the leadership on the republican side of the hill. >> andrew mccabe, thank you very much for spending time with us. we're grateful. >> sure. thanks nicole, it was fun. joining us now for all of today's breaking news, former republican congressman from florida, david jolly, chuck rosenburg, frank figliuzzi, and matt miller. i've been rifted by two of you, i'm always rifted by all of you, but matt miller's twitter feed and david jolly's appearance have kept me up. let me start with you. >> on reaction to the president's comments yesterday,

i made the comment i think his comments in the oval office alone, forget about a mueller report, were an impeachable moment the president suggesting he would be willing to engage in criminal activity in the election. if it resonated with the constituency out there, those begging for urgency of leadership, we debate often at this table strategy, should nancy pelosi move towards impeachment, those are strategy movements but there's an constituency across the country begging for urgency. what we were reminded yesterday is we have a president held bent on breaking the law any time it's a benefit to him, surrounded by a white house staff that's the white house version of little rascals, if you will, although less ende endearing. >> and missing their mouthpiece now. >> yes. hitting their jobs like it's a pyramid scheme.

so the nation turns to the congress, turns with heartache, begging for leadership. nancy pelosi did not ask for this moment and democrats who say don't criticize the speaker. i understand that. she didn't ask for this moment, it is not her actions that caused this moment. it's the malfeasance of donald trump but nancy pelosi is the highest ranking constitutional officer outside of the white house, where else can we turn? we lived through the last three years as if if it's a pop culture moment, the social media phenomenon in donald trump. the answers to the constitutional crisis lie in constitutional officers like the speaker of the house. it's why, i think, people are begging for her to do more. >> you and i were talking before we came on the air as former republicans, people formerly associated with the republican party, democrats are particularly pickly when they hear us calling on people like

nancy pelosi to do more. i say it's not because it's her fault. it's not to be critical. it's because she's all we got. >> many of us have called out republicans in the last few years. if you want us to do it every day going forward, i'll do it. kevin mccarthy today lied to the american people and he did so in scripted talking points to insulate the president from accountability that he should suffer from his comments in the oval office yesterday. if we cannot look to republicans, who do we look to? >> democrats. >> democrats. >> matt miller i want you to pick up that thread and weigh in on the breaking news this hour, poetic justice in broke in my hour. sarah huckabee-sanders is moving on to greener pastures. >> let me start with that, i don't want to sound rude but good riddance is all i can speak of. i used to speak on behalf of the the government, the united states. it is kind of a solemn job you

take it seriously, the most important thing is never lie to the american public. there were times i got things wrong and said something that wasn't accurate and i made sure to go back and corrected it, cleaned it up. she just used her job to lie over and over again to the american people. i hope she's not able to escape this white house and move out to whatever she does in life without the shame and stigma following her the rest of her career. >> you and i both stood behind podiums and spoke on behalf of the u.s. government she did that and one of the enduring pieces of her legacy will forever be chronicled in the mueller report where she stood behind the podium, smeared the reputation and legacy of jim comey, i just asked his former deputy, andrew mccabe about it, but i wonder your thoughts. it's not an opinion of critics of donald trump that she was a liar and used the white house

podium, a place from which wars are started and ended, to lie and smear and assassinate the character of people, it's in the mueller report that she lied. how's that for a resume? >> it shouldn't be great. she'll probably walk out with a great fox contract, we'll see. that's a great episode to mention because it showed how brazen a liar she is. that's not true to anyone who knew anything about the fbi. the moment those words came out of her mouth. she gets asked about it where if she lies, she's going to go jail so she admits she lied. and the mueller report came out and reporters say why don't you clean it up and admit you lied to us. she comes back and lies again to say what the mueller report says is not really what i told them. she had the initial lie, told the truth when she had to.

but then when she was caught in front of the american public came up with another lie to explain her story. it was a disgraceful episode that represented a disgrateful tenure quite well. >> let me get your thoughts on the news of the day, donald trump saying he would absolutely listen to a foreign government offering op on an opponent. >> the comments are unpatriotic, invite illegality. the bottom line, the problem with him, they come from a place just inside him is not centered in morality or ethics in any way. his only filter is not what is the right or wrong thing to do, not what's right for the country but what's the right thing for me, the best thing for me. to pick up on what david jolly said, i think it's fair for people to criticize nancy pelosi, she can take it, she has an important job. but i do think i see people now

kind of embowing impeachment with this magical power where if we have one house impeach the president everything will be okay. he'll be removed from office or if he's not, it'll stop him from behaving this way. it was the way i think people looked at bob mueller thinking he was going to be the person to fix everything wrong in the white house right now. i don't think that's the case. i think there are good reasons to impeach the president, sanctions for his behavior but i worry we're turning impeachment into this pipe dream that can't deliver what it might. chuck rosenburg and frank figliuzzi two former senior fbi officials i want to get both of your thoughts. let me start with you on donald trump saying christopher wray is wrong to say a campaign offered dirt should not call the fbi. >> it's hard to know if the president is being provocative

obtuse, or obcity nant or defensive. chris wray is not wrong. this is an easy question, nicole. the law prohibits taking anything of value as a contribution from a foreign government. whether or not it's a crime, let's put that aside for a minute. there may be reasons why it is a crime, why it's not a crime, but it is fundamentally wrong. that's what director wray was saying he said it a month ago, couldn't have been more clear, he's 100% right. i don't think there's a reason to say it again. anyone living on the planet, breathing the same air we're breathing knows the director is right and the president is wrong. >> a former fbi official described them as existing on an island, you have attorney general barr someone who accuses the government of spying on the trump campaign and is now rummaging around in the intelligence agencies and

investigating law enforcement agencies. you have a president who says nobody does that. all of congress gets dirt from foreign governments and i'm going to do it too. i hear you, but what is the practical implication of the person who sits atop the chain of command saying i'm not going to follow the laws. >> i worry about the long-term damage, nicole. sometimes you have to live on an island. sometimes that middle spot is a lonely place. look, even if the men and women are disgusted, as i imagine they are, the men and women of the fbi are disgusted at the words of the president and the deeds of the president, they have to occupy that middle place, they have to continue to do their work without fear or favor, they can't become partisans, can't comment on every idiotic thing the president says. maybe they do live on an island, maybe that's an apt analogy but sometimes that's where you need to be. >> frank figliuzzi let me get your thoughts on all the news of the day and let me add one for

you. gates and flynn have now been subpoenaed to the house intel committee, as i asked former director mccabe what do they know, he was a little cagey, but they are cooperating witnesses for the federal government. what kind of understanding could they offer the congress and if their testimony is public, what kind of public education job could they do about those contacts with russia? >> i'm glad to hear that the house intel committee is pushing this aggressively, they should be, and quite frankly they should have started this long ago. look, flynn had close proximity within earshot if not actually in the room and participating in conversations with regard to russia, the campaign, and remember post campaign in the white house. he knows the score with regard to the relationships with russia, who's hiding conversations with russia, i think gates similarly can give us a lot of -- a lot more information with regard to

manafort's role and maybe connect some dots up, even to the oval office and the president's knowledge of assistance being offered and/or accepted with russia. so i'm eager to see the results of that. it's disturbing that flynn has fired his counsel and gotten essentially a fox spokesperson as a lawyer who has disdain for the fbi and the law. and i think that's going to bite him when ultimately he's sentenced. but we'll stay tuned for that. with regard to the president's comments yesterday, i have to tell you, i've heard the president say, as you have, very disturbing things over recent time we heard him say he could shoot somebody in the middle of fifth avenue and get away with it, heard him brag about sexually assaulting him, the fbi would never be allowed to recruit the half brother of kim jong-un. but what he said yesterday put me over the line in favor of impeachment. i agree with matt that we can't place magical powers in the

concept of impeachment. but sometimes you don't do the right thing because it's the winning thing. you do the right thing because it's the only thing left to do. and right now it's the only thing left to do as a matter of principle to call out this president and say, you cannot thumb your nose at the law and the constitution and create a national security threat in your very presence. >> let me follow-up with you on one of those. i gave you a platter of breaking news to bite on. let me follow-up where you ended. i asked former director mccabe if the kind of things that donald trump said in the oval office yesterday were the kinds of things that he had said that led andrew mccabe to open up that full field investigation into donald trump in the spring of his first year as president. he said, absolutely. was that your sense all along? and is this just a public facing outburst from the president who

has no filter and the second part of that question would be is this evidence for the -- the president's lawyers' decisions to never, ever, they used to say to me over my dead body trump will sit down with mueller, is this why? >> so two-pronged question. absolutely, i think. one of my initial reactions when i heard the abc piece i thought this was a glimpse of what was predicating and helping to predicate the fbi's original russian counterintelligence investigation. and i said for a long time we only saw the tip of the iceberg. i believe there was classified intel that went into this predication that was more disturbing and caused people like pete strzok, andy mccabe to say things that were horrific, the worst you could imagine is what we were concerned about. and yes, why they could never put the president in front of

mueller and the team, look what happens when you put him in front of a camera, he's going to be recorded, say things publicly disseminated and he said, i don't agree with the law, the fbi director and i'd do it again. >> bring it on. can't win by myself i need their help. there's so much to talk about, we have the right people to do that. plus donald trump angry that his son is in the hot seat. stay with us. hot seat stay with us everyone's got to listen to mom.

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mmm, mmm, mmmmm. ball. ball. ball. awww, who's a good boy? it's me. me, me, me. yuck, that's gross. you got to get that under control. [ dogs howling ] seriously? embrace the mischief. say "get pets tickets" into your x1 voice remote to see it in theaters. your son, don junior is before the senate intelligence committee today, he was not charged with anything -- >> not only wasn't he charged, if you read it with all of the horrible fake news, i was reading that my son was going to go to jail, this is a good young man, that he was going to go to jail. >> mr. lock her up itself, aghast at the idea of a good young man like husband son going to jail.

now both of them facing new scrutiny thanks to donald trump's expressed public disinterest in notifying the fbi about foreign contacts and research from for an governments. joining us now is robert costa. >> i saw you at 11:00 juggling all these breaking news -- they're not just balls, they're balls of fires. any white house would be under water for days perhaps its their volume of business that keeps them afloat. i want to ask you about donald trump jr., ashley parker was helping up sift through the tea leaves it was a possibility he took the fifth before robert mueller's investigators, it was murky. but the president as usual has sort of opposite day in his analysis of his son's conduct and the scrutiny it received. >> don't want to speculate about

whether he pled or not, but when you think about donald trump jr., robert mueller had a narrow mandate to investigate russian interference in the election and possible obstruction by president trump. they certainly looked at donald trump jr.'s intent of how he put together the meeting. but he was never the target of the administration in terms of what they were looking at at the administration, it was back to president trump what was he aware of at that meeting was there an attempt to have interference and welcome interference, it was never clear to the mueller side that was going to be the onus of their entire probe. >> robert costa you're in receipt of opposition research and to make sure everyone is sharing the same terms, opposition research is damaging information about a political opponent. in a primary it's developed by

campaign osthe same side of the aisle in the jgeneral it's by superpacks or packs. i worked for campaigns until 27 months ago. never in a million years did i try to market from a reporter information from a foreign government. can you weigh in as the political journalist with the most stature on this beat, how it is to listen to a president say i'd listen to opo. >> to say the least it makes president an outlier in the entire scene. when you talk to democrats and republican campaigns, they're always on edge about foreign interference and having any kind of foreign actors not only intervening but giving information because it means they're vulnerable legally speaking not only politically, but legally so they're trying to

protect themselves from prosecution, protect the candidate so they're always involving counsels, that's why you have counsels to protect you from election law but crime in general. so for the trump campaign to not function when you covered it up close like any other campaign i or others have covered in the sense this was a business operation with a titan at the top in donald trump, a real estate mogul, he had don mcghan there as counsel but he was not running things by counsel all the time like other campaigns would. that made him open in an unusual fashion, unorthodox to these kind of meetings and not having things scrutinized by his own lawyers. >> my colleague, ari melber just twe tweeted something along the

lines, no collusion for 2016, but i'm hoping for collusion in 2020. the idea it was like robert described but he just laid down a new marker, moved the goal post, no collusion, no obstruction, but 2020 that's another question. >> this is where he conditioned the nation to somehow accept this. why the points i continue to make about action on capitol hill we need to see capitol hill reset the playing field on this. our republican -- i appreciate matt miller's comments earlier that impeachment is not a salve for all this. our nation is 230 years young. and rarely have we seen a leader come to office by accepting information from russians, don junior saying yes, i'll meet with you -- >> it's what you say it is, i love it. >> donald trump as a candidate broke the law, campaign finance law and has been named in as a conspirator in the southern district of new york. he tried to have his own

investigator fired, that is the mueller report, he tried to have the investigation into him shutdown and yesterday invites foreign interference for his own reelection purposes. these are impeachable moments. i understand not everybody agrees i do. but i think what's missed on capitol hill is for a large constituency of the country this is impeachable right now. >> it's mob tactics to stave off that outcome. the twitter war between republican congressman justin amash and the president's good boy donald trump jr. about whether or not there'd be a primary it's descended into something so beneath what our politics have been before trump entered the arena. i want your thoughts on sort of the parallels to mob-like conduct, something jim comey said he noticed in this group, something he talked about in the long interview with you in your podcast. but i also want your thoughts on

this ideas that collusion is their brand. they got away with it criminally, but it doesn't mean they didn't do it in '16 and it doesn't mean they aren't eager to do it in '20. >> the mueller report, particularly volume two which lays out the obstruction of justice, nicole, discusses mob tactics where you dangle favors, in this case pardons, and ask people to lie. i hope a lot of people read it, i know they haven't but i hope they do. you see mob tactics but you can also recall a couple things the president said that come out of the mouth of mobsters with george stephanopoulos he said he's seen lots and lots of bad things but he never picked up the phone to call the fbi, why would he. the president also said i've been around flippers all my life, using a slang term for people who cooperate. who the heck has been around

flippers all his life. what president of the united states has spent his adult life with criminals. >> criminal i might posit. >> i think you probably got that right. if you analogize the president to a mobster, i hate to say it, but it's not crazy. in his own words and by his own deeds that's how he talks and how he acts. >> over that long-winded two-part question they seem to have gotten off in the mueller probe from committing a conspiracy by stupidity. mueller writes on the facts the government would unlikely be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the june 9th meeting participants had general knowledge that their conduct was unlawful. that seems to say they were too stupid to inclucollude. >> the mueller team talks about

how hard it is to prove willfulness, intent, that's true. i was a white collar criminal prosecutor, it's hard to prove somebody did intentionally in the white collar world. and i think the president has taken willfulness off the table. if he doesn't know now that accepting a thing of value from a foreign government or foreign individual is a crime, if prosecutors couldn't prove that subsequently, i'd be shocked. you know, it is hard to prove these cases. and the mueller team wrestles with it. sometimes i think we get lost in a sea of words and we talk about willfulness or things of value or valevaluation, these are thi the prosecutors have to assess. what the president did and said was fundamentally wrong and whether or not it constitutes a crime, whether or not you can prosecute a sitting president, let's put that aside for a

minute, it's plane fundamentally wrong. >> we are going to sneak in a break. joyce vance joins us after the break. break. joyce vance joins us after the break. here are even more reasons to join t-mobile. 1. do you like netflix? sure you do. that's why it's on us. 2. unlimited data. use as much as you want, when you want. 3. no surprises on your bill. taxes and fees included. still think you have a better deal? bring in your discount, and we'll match it. that's right. t-mobile will match your discount.

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should he have gone to fbi when he got that e-mail? >> somebody comes up and says i have information on your opponent. do you call the fbi? >> you do. >> i've seen a lot of things over my life, i don't think in my whole life i've called the fbi. you don't call the fbi. you throw somebody out of your office. >> al gore got a stolen briefing book, he called the fbi. >> that's different. this is something that said we have information on your opponent. oh, let me call the fbi. give me break. life doesn't work that way. >> the fbi director said that's what should happen. >> the fbi director is wrong. >> it hurts my hair follicles. i have a question for you.

the substance of this interview connects the lax dot. if this is what mueller would have had if he sat him down in an interview. openness, willingness, eagerness, inabilities to seep it as a crime. >> this seems to be why the president could not sit for an interview because he kwoulwould given the candy store away. this is close to the evidence mueller would have needed for conspiracy. it's evidence that would have linked up to the campaign finance charges showing as chuck just mentioned willfulness, intent, knowledge. this is president who said i'm willing to sit down and hear the evidence. >> jump in. >> he just took willfulness off the table. this president said no, it's not. wrey is wrong. donald trump said i don't care what the law says. i'm going to act as i believe i can act.

that is intent. that is willfulness. if he engages in collusion going into 2020, the president is a criminal. that's what he said in that statement yesterday. >> why didn't robert mueller push for the interview if he could have yielded something as fruitful as what we saw from the president? >> well, we're right back to the constraints that mueller felt handcuffed and barr kind of stabbed him in the back. mueller said i can't push hard. what's the point. i can't indict the sitting president. this will end up in courts. we'll be here for years. i can't indict the guy and barr said probably said to mueller, that's right. you can't. it's not a criminal. don't worry about it. now bar makr makes a call sayin there's no crime here. the rules for different for both actors and now we're seeing all of this play out in front of our eyes. here is what concerns me from my counter intelligence perspective. does the message being sent by

this president is not only a green light to accept help from all adversarieadversaries. let me tell you how this is being received. this is interesting. the bureau, the intel community is onto us. they know how we did this in 2016. we're going to change our methodology. we have a receptive environment with a president who says he'll take what we give him. he just can't get caught by the pesky law enforcement. it will be so much more hard for the fbi and u.s. intel community to catch it next time. it's not going to look like this anymore. it's not going to be somebody with a russian accent or someone with a chinese accent. they will use extended cut outs. they will use co-opees. we'll see this on steroids and it will get all the more hard to

catch it and neutralize it. >> i'm going to make an abrupt turn to keeping up with the kardashians with you. kim kardashian at the white house. i think we have a picture of that. also kellyanne conway, her firing an removal from the u.s. government was recommended by the other office of special counsel. your thoughts if you have any on sarah huckabee sanders saying good-bye to the white house briefing roof she rarely visited. >> miss kardashian is the spouse of kanye west and she worked with jared kushner and criminal justice reform. she's been an advocate on those issues. the departure of issarah huckab sanders, she's a top adviser to president trump. the president encouraging her to run for governor in arkansas. that's going to be race to watch. it's a deeply red state. someone with president trump's support could do well in arkansas but at this point there's some talk among

republicans could senator cotten ever go to the pentagon, would that up up a senate seat. the president is talking about a possible gubernatorial race. >> kellyanne conway, her firing was recommended by an independent watchdog agency for repeated violations of the hatch act. i imagine they are busy dodging collusion, conspiracy and corruption and the little hatch act doesn't break anyone out into hives or a suiweat at this white house? >> it will be a test for president trump. the president has to make a choice about whether to pursue some kind of action based on hatch act violations that have been recommended by these independent watchdog groups within the federal apparatus. based on my reporting the president remains close to miss conway and not going to pursue any punitive action on her part. >> you're shaking your head. >> in the administration that i worked in, you might have had a

counselling session after your first violation. after the second one, you would have been told it was time to resign. this means that taxpayers, democrat, republicans, everybody else is paying her salary while she engages in political activity on behalf of the president. that's not how it's supposed to work. >> matt miller, i guess kim kardashian wins the day. if you look at this white house being so desperate to change the headlin headlines, not a bad move. >> i wish she was there more often. she won the pardon of a woman named alice johnson who i've had the privilege to know. >> let me get your advice on the mosaic. this picture coming into clearer view about 22 and a half hours after that abc clip first hit

the air waves. we know we have a president eager and enthusiastic to listen. who thinks the fbi director is wrong to say accepting dirt from a foreign adversary is illegal. we have a white house with one of the most senior add vieszvis the hatch act. we have an out going press secretary who is donald trump's pick to be governor of arkansas. her misconduct is detailed in mueller report. where are we? >> i've been thinking about a lot of these things and i don't say this lightly. i was not shocked and that makes me sad. the things you've described should be shocking and you know, i'm reflecting on something that andy said at the meeting of the beginning of the program. that foreign intelligence sfrss will be elated. this is an invitation.

americans are sad. foreign intelligence sfrervices are elated and americans are sad. that tells you what you need know. >> my thanks to you, my friend and also to you robert costa, david jolly, joyce vance and matt miller. mtp daily starts right now. if it's thursday, a dilemma for democracy. it's been a day of intense fall out after the president admits he would take dirt from a foreign government now to help him win an election. the biggest question facing l d