back here in this chair monday at 3:00 eastern. but that's going to wrap up this hour for me. i'm chris jansing. "deadline: white house" with nicolle wallace starts right now. ♪ hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. there's new bombshell reporting today about that whistleblower complaint being hidden from congress by donald trump's acting director of national intelligence. thanks to new reporting in "the washington post" and the "new york times," we now know that the whistleblower's credible and urgent concerns related to a promise donald trump made in conversations with a world leader centered on ukraine. "the washington post" reports, quote, a whistleblower complaint about president trump made by an intelligence official centers on ukraine. that's according to two people familiar with the matter which has set off a struggle between congress and the executive branch. the complaint involved communications with a foreign leader and a promise that trump made which was so alarming that

a u.s. intelligence official who had worked at the white house went to the inspector general of the intelligence community. and ukraine is already at the center of an existing political scandal. there is a known effort underway by donald trump and his lawyer rudy giuliani to pressure ukraine to launch an investigation into joe biden, who donald trump fears as a potential opponent in 2020. and if you're wondering if donald trump would be stupid enough to enlist a foreign government in dirtying up his opponent again after the russia cloud that hung over the first two years of his presidency, seems like we should take his word for it. >> your campaign this time, if russia, if china, if someone else offers you information upon it, should they accept it or should they call the fbi? >> i think maybe you do both. i think you might want to listen. i don't think 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'd want that kind of interference in our elections? >> it's not interference. they have information. i think i'd take it. if i thought there was something wrong, i'd go maybe to the fbi. you talk honestly to congressmen, they always do it, they always have. and that's the way it is. it's called opo research. >> if that's not good enough for you, though maybe we should take his lawyer's confirmation last night that yes, he did call for an investigation into the biden family. >> did you ask the ukraine to investigate joe biden? >> no. actually, i didn't. >> you never asked anything about hunter biden, you never asked anything about joe biden? >> the only thing i asked about joe biden was to get to the bottom of how it was that lutsenko dismiss the case against -- >> so you did ask ukraine to look into joe biden? >> of course i did. >> joe biden can be involved in bribery. joe biden's son can get $1.5 billion from china and you won't cover it.

and you want to cover some ridiculous charge that i urge the ukrainian government to investigate corruption. well, i did. and i'm proud of it. >> you just admitted it. did the president talk to the ukrainian president about what he wanted done with joe biden and what he wanted done with paul manafort? >> i have no idea. i don't know if he did and i wouldn't care if he did. he had every right to do it as the president of the united states. >> he is talking about a fool's errand, but that might be rudy's way of getting ahead of this story. with details of the july phone call between donald trump and the president of ukraine. from that story, quote, president trump in a july phone call repeatedly pressured the president of ukraine to investigate democratic presidential candidate joe biden's son urging zalensky about eight times to work with rudy giuliani his personal lawyer on a probe according to

people familiar with the matter. he told him that he should work with rudy giuliani on biden and that people in washington wanted to know whether allegations were true or not. mr. trump didn't mention a provision of foreign aid to ukraine on the call said this person who didn't believe mr. trump offered the ukrainian president any quid pro quo for his cooperation on an investigation. connecting the dots straight from trump to the president of ukraine in an investigation of his political opponents. that is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. with us from the "new york times," ken vogel, former assistant director for counter assistance at the fbi, frank figliuzzi, plus, former u.s. attorney joyce vance with us on set, eli stokels, rick stengel, and veteran of obama state department, and nbc and msnbc national analyst john heilemann. it's a reporter on that breaking story out of the "wall street

journal." rebecca, thank you for joining us. take us through what you're reporting. >> so, what we understand is we are reporting for the first time that the president specifically pressured the president of ukraine over this biden investigation that he wants to see and that he specifically implored the president of the ukraine to work with his personal lawyer on such an investigation. as we saw in the clip that you just played and as rudy has made clear in several public interviews, it's been no secret that giuliani has been pursuing this. he wanted to meet with zal ensky earlier this year. that meeting was subsequently canceled after the report came out. and he had said that the president was aware that he was planning to travel to ukraine to pressure the government there to mount such an investigation. but this is the first instance we have of president trump directly raising this matter with the ukrainian government

and asking him to work with his lawyer on it. >> rebecca, is there anything weird about an incumbent american president asking a foreign leader to work with his personal criminal defense attorney? >> i think it certainly raises a fair amount of ethical concerns that he would be asking a foreign government to investigate his opponent, which i think some people might consider as something that would help his campaign. the other aspect of this though and what's been really a major question in the last few days is whether the president could've dangled for an aid to the ukrainian government and said if you don't investigate biden then we won't give you aid. this is in the wake of in august his administration said that they were reviewing whether or not to send the $250 million in u.s. aid to ukraine. so what we're reporting is that this is not something that he

raised on the call, that he didn't really present a kwid quo proceed for the cooperation on investigation and didn't mention foreign aid specifically to zalensky. >> i am going to read a couple more paragraphs from this story because even though we just saw it, it feels important. an american president based on what you're reporting in a phone call with a foreign leader urged that foreign leader to work with his personal criminal defense attorney, rudy giuliani to investigate and perhaps prosecute the family of his potential political opponent. let me read a couple more paragraphs. mr. giuliani in june and august met with top ukrainian officials about the prospect of an investigation he said in an interview. the trump lawyer has suggested mr. biden his vice president worked to shield from investigation a ukrainian gas company with ties to his son hunter biden. a ukrainian official said he had no wrongdoing by biden or his son. expands to a war to ukrainian

law enforcement. it would appear this is a case that has been litigated and adjudicated and he's actually reaching into the ukrainian government and asking them to reopen anvection or prosecution. is that what that paragraph means? >> yeah. i think it's not entirely clear if he wants them just to reopen the previous investigation which was into this gas company where joe biden's son hunter worked or if he wants an entirely new investigation into the former vice president himself. but he certainly wants this area to be explored. and i think as you mentioned one of the really unusual aspects about this is the fact that his personal lawyer is playing such a major role meeting with two separate ukrainian officials and that the other part of that that was really surprising to me was that his meeting giuliani's meeting in august with the top aid to zalensky he said was set up by the state department and that he later briefed the department on what they talked about. so i think that's certainly an

unusual aspect about this. >> what's your understanding of the state of a congressional probe into some of the same topics that you cover? the president discussing with a foreign leader an investigation for political purposes into the bidens and dispatching his personal criminal attorney to meet with ukrainian government officials to reopen what sounds like a case that had been completed with you write no evidence of wrongdoing by mr. biden or his son. >> so this is actually an area that even before this whole whistleblower complaint debate birthed into the open this week that was already being investigated. i believe it was just last week actually that the house foreign affairs committee, the intelligence committee and oversight committees sent letters to the white house and state department seeking records of any interactions between trump and giuliani and the ukrainian government. as far as we know, they have not gotten responses to those requests yet. but what they are looking at is

certainly any evidence of improprietiry. i think they'd be looking exactly for what our story mentions which is whether the president brought up this biden investigation on his call with zalensky and also wltd there was any tie mentioned by trump or giuliani or anyone else between foreign u.s. aid to ukraine and a biden investigation. they want to know if there was any link suggested between the two or any kind of quid pro quo. >> rebecca, i am a big fan of your journalism. i am extremely grateful that you spent some time with us. please come back any day. thank you for sharing the scoop with us. frank figliuzzi, i don't know where to start with you. but it is truly remarkable, you know, we cover donald trump's war on justice here it. >> would appear that he's dispatched rudy giuliani to wage war on the ukrainian justice departments as well. >> look, we've got some significant reporting now in the last 24 hours that we need to break down. so let's look at this through a

lens that's very different than what the president might suggest which is that all of this is kind of oppo research. let's look at it through the lens of a criminal investigation. i would assert that what we are hearing about if accurate actually approaches a violation of criminal federal law. the law that is most commonly used to address public corruption says something like this. a public official who demands, seeks, or even directly or indirectly, very important, something of value, in this case the something of value could be a ukrainian investigation of his opponent, the bidens, in return for the promise of an official act is violating the law. in fact could face up to 15 years or more in prison. so what we're being told here is that giuliani is now the personal agent of the president. that's really important.

giuliani is private citizen, private attorney. why is that important? because he's not under the rubric of executive privilege. he is acting and we could argue he is acting to get something of value personally for the president. the reporting indicates the president is saying what during this conversation with the ukrainian counterpart? he is saying i want you to go after my opponent biden. again, that personalizes it. and by the way i think greatly erodes any argument that this is executive privilege, right? one of the defenses being asserted by the dni here is or by the attorney general as well is, hey, hey, this whistleblower stuff, this is all about executive privilege. if we're talking about a personal thing, doesn't automatically get privileged because the president's involved and because a foreign leader's involved. even without a direct quit proceed quo, i'll give you your foreign aid if you investigate my opponent. it could be implied here and indirect, and the law covers that. and now you've got even giuliani kind of as the private agent,

henchman. who investigates that the fbi. who's over the fbi? the department of justice and attorney general barr. we already know where he comes down on this. where do i come down on this? the whistleblower may need to report this to the fbi. barr can't stop a private citizen from going to the fbi and reporting a crime. >> joyce, let me reframe on some of the developments from 24 hours ago. it was reported last night around 8:00 i think in both the "new york times" and "the washington post" that this communication was with ukraine. it's been reported in the last 45 minutes that there was a conversation in which donald trump raised digging up opposition research on the bidens about eight times in a call with the leader of ukraine. can you help explain the

intersection of those two data points and their import? >> and, you know, i think this is exactly what frank is getting to. the real issue here is whether this conduct alone or in tandem with other conduct would've justified the treatment we now know that the inspector general for the intelligence community gave the whistleblower's report saying that it was an urgent matter that needed to be passed on to congress. and here's the real program here, nicole. we now know that the president's personal lawyer was sent over to ukraine. there is some understanding that he may have had some help from the state department in setting up meetings, and he was over there for the purpose of apparently carrying out what the president had set up in this call with the new ukrainian president asking them to help in an investigation, essentially into trump's leading opponent for 2020, the prolikely democratic nominee. and the final piece of the puzzle that drops into place is

the "wall street journal's" reporting where rebecca tells us that on this same timeline, the white house is undertaking a review of $250 million in aid to ukraine. so it doesn't have to be as direct as frank points out. as a threat where the president says investigate the bidens or we won't give you this aid. instead it's enough if this is all going on, on the same timeline and it's understood that there is an implicit threat, an indirect threat, and the kicker is this. the whistleblower statute is meant to permit employees in the intelligence community as well as other areas of government to report a number of wrongful situations including a violation of law or an abuse of official authority. there is no reason for the dni to hold up this whistleblower complaint from going to congress. it's purely ministerial once the inspector general determines that it's urgent, the strongest indication that we have that something is wrong here is that

they're jumping through these unusual hoops to keep this whistleblower complaint from going to congress where it belongs. >> heilemann, i want to simplify this. i feel like i won't insult you if i put you in my category of corruption with foreign leaders for dummies. so we will -- >> nicole, you can never insult me. or you always insult me, one or the other, but either way, let's go. >> so here's what we have. and the journalism is incredible. "the times" and the "post" last night, maybe this story will make ukraine great again. he's been on the ukraine story since the beginning of time. so there are a lot of legs to the ukraine piece. this revelation in the "wall street journal" in the last 45 minutes donald trump eight times insists that a foreign leader investigate. but strip away the things that make this story opaque because i

think one of the challenges with the moo uler probe is it was so opaque. his corruption, his greed, his stupidy is oozing out, and it is so prolific that he can't keep it secret even with his hand on all the levers of power. >> yes. not just for dummies but for smart people. i think it's important to keep your eye on that ball because once you start talking about ukraine, i'm telling you, half the country, and i'm not being kind of condescending but a lot of people can't find ukraine on a map. >> can we just be blunt? it's not just ukraine. it's that people are tired. the russia thing went on for two years. >> you know, foreign story -- stormy daniels, paying on of a porn star. that's big news. people just switch off once you go to a foreign country. is important to help people understand this is -- whether

there's a quid pro quo or not, and i have a couple things to say about that, but i think the notion that the president understands that joe biden is his greatest threat, understands what joe biden's greatest weakness. he knows hunter biden is a weakness for joe biden. he knows that if he attacks hunter biden, it puts joe biden in a bad position. today joe biden could be if this was about anybody else, could be out on television attacking donald trump. joe biden's not doing that today because he doesn't want to talk about his son who's had various problems, not the kind of problems donald trump has asserted but other problems. and donald trump knows that. this is a hit job on the son, the last surviving son, his brother passed away. this is the last son. part of the reason why joe biden didn't run for president in 2016, because he wanted to take care after his family after he lost beau. this is an achilles hill of joe biden psychically. and donald trump is like where can i go to get the oppo to get at this guy's heart.

>> because i have no conscience, i have no morals and i don't care about using the united states government and possibly foreign aid to carry out my campaign. >> correct. and if that's ukraine or if that's utah, donald trump is going to go wherever he needs to go and do whatever he needs to do, no matter how unethical, immoral, or illegal it is. that's what this story is about more than anything. >> what did you want to say about quid pro quo? >> is that i never liked to try to second guess or get under the skin of the reporting of excellent journalists like those at the "wall street journal" and those in other places. the way this came out with rudy kind of coughing this thing up last night on cnn and then the source in this story saying yeah this happened but it wasn't a quid pro quo. the whole thing seems a little, like, they want the story to be it's fine for him to make this phone call to the ukrainian president but it's not okay -- stlngz there's no quid pro quo,

it reads like a play book from something they did earlier. and i think maybe those facts in the "wall street journal" are there because the trump team wants those facts to be there in a particularly framed way. >> i think it is an important point, ken vogel, as prolific consumers and fans of all of your journalism around this. there is a pattern now that rudy giuliani, and i think your colleague magee made this point on cnn earlier today when she said remember when rudy giuliani went out on sean hannity and stunned the you know what out of him when he talked about michael cohen doing some of the payoffs to women. and it seemed like he was trying to get ahead of the porn star scandal 34 scandals ago. but just -- we'll give you all the time you want. start telling the story that you've been covering for years now of corruption as it involves donald trump and his orbit and ukraine. >> yeah. just to address the question about sort of the rollout here and whether the trump folks are

trying to get ahead of this. first of all, i never am inclined to give them a whole lot of credit for brilliant and strategic communications here. and i think that that is correct in this case as well. i would point out that we have revealed weeks ago that rudy giuliani was attempting to push the ukrainians to investigate this stuff so there was no new revelation as to what he said last night on cnn. though the way that he said it was quite eyebrow-raising and his sort of vehements and attacking for trying to investigate something that is in the news primarily because we wrote a story about it is on may 1st which is this situation involving joe biden's son work for this ukrainian oligarch-owned gas company which is, i have to quibble with what some of your guests said is a significant liability for joe biden. like, there is a story here. we've told some of it. there is more to be told. we are going to continue to sort

of pull that back. that said, the way that rudy is inserting himself into it is both not helpful i think to rudy and to trump because it kind of jumbles it. he's getting the facts wrong, and he is making it appear as if this is just a partisan hit job, whereas if he would just kind of leave the reporters to do the work on it, i think that, you know, potentially this story might be taken more seriously. the other point about -- >> let me bite on the chum you just threw in the water. if you're covering it anyway, why is donald trump urging the ukrainian government to open an investigation if it's already under investigation? >> right. i mean, i think not to try to get into their head too much, but i think they probably think that having the ukrainians investigate it will sort of force the media to cover it more. i mean, we took a very serious thoughtful approach that took quite some time to do an investigation on this -- on the

involvement of hunter biden with this gas company and the oligarch who owned it. we found some interesting things. we laid them out. and then we kind of said, okay, we are not going to revisit this until we have something more substantive to say on the matter. and you clearly heard from rudy last night and you hear from trump in his tweets and his public comments that they're not satisfied with this. they think there's a double standard. and, like, i got to say if we were to just perform a thought exercise here and replace joe biden with donald trump and hunter biden with eric trump or donald trump jr., we probably would be seeing more coverage of this story because i think that there is something here that does speak to at least optics if not potential conflicts of interests. and that's not just me saying it, and that's just not the media sort of second-guessing retroactively. there are actually people in the obama administration as we reported high up in the state department and in other agencies who are raising a red flag about

hunter biden's involvement with this gas company at a time when joe biden was the standard bearer for the obama administration's case that ukraine needed to clean up its act including by investigating this gas company. so, again, i don't want to give that short. i think there's probably something there. that said, it makes it complicated to tell that story when rudy is stumbling through the facts and butchering them. you have trump getting them wrong as well and getting the ukrainians to do an investigation which is clearly politically motivated. so it's impossible to separate that from what may be actually the facts of the situation. >> rick stengel you are a former obama administration official. i want to just lift up ken vogel's point and say that every campaign i worked on with the subject or the target of intense opposition research. i think what we're covering is the opposite in motion. this is an american president

asking a foreign leader to do the opposition research for him. ken vogel just laid out why this story is already on his radar. he's written front-page stories. we've had him on here talking about it. >> it's in the "new york times," which is the only newspaper donald trump seems to get really agitated over and by and about. the question still seems to be donald trump's participation in asking a foreign leader to conduct an investigation that in terms of what we understand donald trump's motives to be have nothing to do with joe biden's. joe biden's it would appear, and if they were not, ken vogel would report that out or one of his competitors. donald trump is purely. was solicit a bribe. he was soliciting a bribe in the sense that as frank mentioned and as we learned during the campaign if a foreign government gives you something of value during a campaign, that is a

felony, that is a violation of federal law. he was seeking something of value from a foreign government. that's my first point. my second point about it -- >> i don't want to skip over that though. let me -- that's really important. and frank and voice are here. the only reason he wasn't indicted or recommended to be indicted by the mueller probe is because there was no intent to do that, right? it was the stupidity defense. neither junior the son as ken accurately points out. we covered his colleagues with great interest, the trump tower meeting where donald trump jr. said what they said it was, was dirt on hillary clinton. but because they didn't know it was illegal, the scenario rick lays out was something that wasn't criminal. frank, could this be a different situation? could you argue that he knew the difference this time? >> yeah. we absolutely could say he was on notice and, in fact, the statute that i was quoting earlier says corruptly requests or seeks this thing of value.

and he can't possibly now say i didn't know you couldn't seek help from a foreign government for a thing of value. we are painful aware, we have lived through the mueller report that he's already quite aware that you can't do it with regard to russia, and you can't do it with regard to ukraine. >> joyce, do you agree? >> i do. i agree a hundred percent. i think that this is a request for a lot from the ukrainian government. it's a request that ukraine do some of trump's oppa research. but also imagine how valuable it would be for trump if he was running against joe biden and ukraine was investigating biden and word leaked out or even if there was a prosecution. so to engage with ukraine in this sort of conduct really is getting an awful lot for the sitting president. as you point out, nicole, the only thing that kept him from being indicted by bob mueller is no longer an impediment to the government. >> and let me raise the bar on

that one a bit higher. ukraine of course is under pressure from vladimir putin. russia is attacking ukraine as we speak. so they are being pinched by the united states on one side donald trump and putin on the other. my second point about the quid pro quo. when don coriloni asked you to look into something, you look into it because you know there's an implicit quid pro quo. we give $250 million of foreign aid to ukraine. we had plans when donald trump came into office that we would actually give military aid to, to help them. and the final thing i would say about joe biden, which ken mentioned basically in passing, biden was over in ukraine to ask for the investigation of the oil company for which his son worked. it is exactly the opposite of what donald trump does for his children, which is to ask for exemptions and favors for them.

>> i want to get to how the president responded because we could have scripted it 24 hours ago. but i want to ask you a serious question. if they either think they have done nothing wrong or if they think rudy will condition the trump base or enough of them to think there's nothing wrong with colluding ukraine. why not just release the transcripts and say, hell yeah i called the code red. i mean, the president has the singular authority to declassify every transcript of every call and say look at them apples, aren't i good at being president? >> if you're innocent or you have the power -- right, show us. >> and, you know, the other tell this morning was when trump snapped at the reporters. he's obviously upset about the laechdget he hates leaks. he hates the idea about people inside his own government coming after him. about him being undermined by people within the government. it's actually people who are concerned about his behavior coming forward and taking brave

steps to do so. but he sees it as he's under attack. but when he snapped at the reporters and said why don't you keep looking at this, you will look stupid at the end. you can tell from his lack of comportment that he's upset about this. yes, he took the opportunity mean, as soon as he didn't deny that he might've had the conversation about biden, you knew that that "wall street journal" story that some story was coming, confirming it. because he took the opportunity to say someone should look into it because as john pointed out, they want to make this biden thing the 2020 equivalent to the hillary clinton private email server. that's what they're trying to do and they want to just create as much smoke as they can around this thing. and so i think there is a little bit of confidence among the trump folks that they have conditioned the country to accept the fact that -- >> collusion. >> he lives in an ethical dead zone, and that's okay because the world is tough, and we have to do certain things, and he is not a real politician.

he's just a guy trying to get stuff done. there are enough people out there who buy that that he thinks that he can just basically put this out in plain sight as it is and that there ultimately won't be any real political consequence. >> the white house is your beat. is there any effort to get the distribution list for anyone else? i mean, i understand we're covering this in part because of the whistleblower complaint, but who else knew he'd ask eight times the leader of ukraine to investigate joe biden? and if this were the obama administration or the bush administration, i dare presume that they'd be hauled up to congress testifying -- i mean, this is even though he's silly and stupid and craven, this is still a scandal in that it is congress's oversight role to know what he has promised a foreign leader, if anything, as a whistleblower suggests, and who knew about the promise.

did anyone else know? i assume the whistleblower knew or saw the transcript. >> and chairman schiff may ultimately subpoena -- >> where's burr. don't they want to know if the u.s. government is for sale? >> there's this feeling in washington that so much of this is just -- this is just this week's scandal. and nobody gets that agitated anymore on the republican side nothing really gets them that agitated. but there's just this fatigue after three years that this comes out, and this is a glaring thing. this appears to be a president whether it's an explicit quid pro quo or not, it's a president asking another foreign leader for a political favor, putting him in a terrible position. it's just something that i don't think, you know, in normal times people wouldn't want the president to be doing that. >> normal times? you still remember normal times? >> no one really knows where we are anymore in terms of what the response is to this. you already have all the stuff in the mueller report and the

speaker of the house saying, you know, the politics of this are i don't think we should move on impeachment. so something like this you layer it on top of it, i don't know that it changes the politics. i think that's what the trump people want to believe. and i think that may be the political reality dismal as that may -- >> collusion in realtime. real quick. >> i just think that that's why this thing -- it's such a finely calibrated thing for house democrats. i'm not saying what i think should be. but what i think is, is that a quid pro quo, an open quid pro quo, if there was a record of donald trump saying if you do this for me i will give you this foreign aid or if you don't do this for me i will withhold the foreign aid. i think that would be so egrejrious. is that anything short of that, a phone call where he calls and if it's implicit. i am not saying this is the right way of looking at it. i think their bet is that if

they could just say if there is corruption in your country, it'd be good to know about, even though it's one of my political -- they think that that's on the side of the line that won't push democrats to impeachment. that's the political calculation i think of the trump white house and why i think when you hear a source close to the phone call saying i didn't hear him say anything explicit about a quid pro quo, my heart says that's a trump person who wants to say, yeah, it's a phone call, heads of state talk all the time. but as long as there's no quid pro quo, that's where they want to draw this line because that's where they think the political tolerance goes from must impeach to probably don't impeach. >> all right. ken vogel, joyce vance, thank you for spending some time with us. you both made us smarter. after the break the first reaction to all of this from joe biden himself. that's next. that's next. saturdays happen.

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hey, mr. vice president, president trump says that your son should be investigated. >> move over, you guys! come on. >> whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. >> hey, guys, come on. >> wait a second. not one single credible outlet has given any credibility to his assertion, not one single one. and so i have no comment except the president should start to -- >> that was joe biden responding for the first time to the story. joining our conversation michael steele. with us at the table karine jean-pierre, and garrett haake joins us who's out in iowa today with biden. i think i heard you throwing some of those questions. what are you hearing if not from him from his campaign about this episode? >> reporter: well, nicole, a couple things.

the campaign was very disciplined. last night, this morning, all day today they had no comment on the record. they were not talking about this on background. there were no tweets. he was very clear that the campaign did not want to engage on this. this is just not where they want this election battle to be fought even as other people saw this as potentially elevating joe biden in a crowded primary field. the biden campaign didn't touch this. you saw biden coming out after this event here. he spoke for more than an hour, did not bring any of this up on his own. we essentially in the press core following his campaign surrounded the event site and made sure he could not leave without addressing this in some capacity. you heard the question he chose to answer out of all of us. it was a question about hunter biden's behavior, not about the president's. you heard vice president biden say there is no credibility to any of the assertions that president trump has been making about hunter biden. then saying he wants the president to be president. it's just so abundantly clear that either for political or perhaps also for personal reasons dealing with the fact

that this is, you know, his one surviving son now caught up in this back and forth. vice president biden does not want to fight the battle on this turf. but he may not have that choice. i mean, you saw how president trump and his activities today and the questions about this just completely subsumed the news cycle. joe biden did not engage at this moment. but these questions aren't going to go away. i think it's going to be interesting to see how and when his campaign decides to engage more completely with these questions. >> well, john heilemann made a smart point, garrett, a few minutes ago. if you look back at donald trump calling mexicans rapists and murderers while jeb bush is married to a beautiful mexican woman sort of passed on the opportunity to engage for some of the same considerations he didn't want to have that fight on that turf. donald trump walked into a debate with some of the women that bill clinton i guess allegedly had sexual relationships with. hillary clinton didn't really want to engage on that ground. you engaged on the ground on

which you were engaged. is there any second guessing of the nonengagement strategy? this is who the democratic nominee will run against, a gutterball player. >> reporter: right. i mean, look, joe biden has a very big, very experienced campaign team. some folks some new folks. i suspect there is probably some discussion going on even now about how they engage with this in some more completely way. but you're absolutely right. nothing will be off limits for this president. there is nowhere he won't go including as we are learning investigating the family members of the people he's potentially running against. joe biden when this race started was still holding onto the idea that you don't criticize the president when he's overseas. the politics stops at the water's edge. here you have one of the ultimate traditionalist candidates running a lot of this candidacy on restoring norms to this country and a president who's intent on smashing all the way through them. i mean, at some point you have to bring a gun to the gun fight

or you're just going to get shot. >> that is truer words have not been said in this hour in a very long time. i saw you having some physical reactions. [ laughter ] donald trump, this is his game. there isn't a different fight -- and it's not like he plays in the gutter because he opts out of the policy debate of the day. he doesn't have a track in his brain for policy. he doesn't have a track in his brain for my path is better than your path. and slinging more mud on his opponent. >> right. he always has played in the gutter. this is who donald trump is. he did it as a businessman. he did it as a candidate. now he's doing it as a president. the thing about now is that he's using government resources to go after his political opponent. like, that's the thing that we have to remember. and -- >> well, that's true because whether it's foreign aid or not, it is still he did it from the

oval office. you're not allowed to do that. i mean, that's a good point. >> so that is the thing that we need to remember. and the reason why he continues to behave this way, at least as president because there should be guardrails but he keeps getting away with it. there is nothing reigning him in. so he goes back to this old nasty gutter-playing playbook, and that's what he's doing now. remember in 2016 he told russia please hack hillary clinton's email. guess what. they did. he enabled and encouraged and took advantage of the interference that russia did in our election. this is donald trump. the difference is he's president, and no one is stopping him. the democrats are not being very effective in reigning him in, and republicans are being silent in congress. so this is where we are today. >> i want to put you on the spot, michael steele. do you think john bolton knows in this call is true?

>> that's a good question. my bet and suspicion is probably yeah. and probably a few other people as well. and i don't know or wouldn't say that that was part of the mix that moved john to leave the administration. i'm sure that there was, you know, a pound of other things that measured up that was enough for him, too much for him to take. but, yeah. i cannot imagine knowing the way trump operates, which is generally when he wants something, he wants everyone in his particular universe to go move heaven and earth to get that something for him. if he wants something done, it's the same thing. so it is not outside the realm of reality in a reality television presidency that he could say to someone in significant authority or at least make aware that he would like to use this as a political

kujil in the political campaign and how to go about doing that. yeah, we make the phone call and we rock and roll from there. all i need you to do is go back and reinforce the ask at the particular time. >> and this point, john heilemann, is about the "wall street journal" story. and i want to be perfectly clear. we have no assumptions about their sources. it's just these stories land in a way that you can predict having worked in government who's going to like them. there's something in there about admitting to or having it be out there now that there were eight contacts eight times that donald trump raised with the ukrainians investigating joe biden. but i want to stitch this together with what michael steele just said. i want to ask you something. so the whistleblower from the intelligence community who may or may not have worked at the white house, went to the i.g. because there was a promise made to a world leader. that's why we're asking questions about kwquid pro quo. you are already using your government role in a government position. how many -- you know, i worked

in the white house. calls with foreign leaders with cia directors, it's a white house staffer or sometimes someone from the nsc dechltsz but everyone who gets notes of every call with a foreign leader should either lawyer up or get ready to walk up to capitol hill and testify as to whether or not they knew having a foreign leader investigate a political opponent because if they knew, they may have some exposure around the hatch act and other violations. >> right. i think one of the questions is how widely this stuff would've been circulated. you probably know better than i do. there is obviously people who are in the room, there are notetakers in the room. there's the notes from transcripts from conversations like this are often distributed on like a need to know basis within the national security council so you'll have limited distributions of certain calls to certain people. what's the universe you think that would touch a thing like this, maybe 12, 15? >> transcripts are small, but

read-out notes? >> and that would be read out to the state department. >> i'm just going to make a point about the quid pro quo thing. what we don't know, even if you get the transcript of the call and frame it as a solicitation of a bribe which everybody can understand. what you don't know is after he hangs up the phone, he turns to someone and says tell pompeo to tell him that i'll give him the aid or we'll double the aid. >> tell kellyanne to call rudy and push it on fox tonight. we don't know who he told. >> and just by the way let's commend the whistleblower for doing this. it took tremendous courage and patriotism. >> no one's going anywhere. we are not switching gears. after the break will the president's tried and true political tool chest work if the whistleblower case ends up in court? we are joined by jeremy bash next. sh next panera's new warm grain bowls are full of good.

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which means there is a real risk even in coming to congress and that is obviously a supreme problem. i would love to be able to say that the president won't be vindictive, that the justice department won't be vindictive, but i can't make that assurance if the department of justice takes the position you're not covered. and the people that do come forward, they're assured if they do, their complaint will get to congress, so a lot is riding on this. if those promises are hollow, it means these important sources of information about wrongdoing are going to dry up. >> the stakes could not be any higher, the risk to his career or her career and reputation and perhaps legal standing could not be any higher for this whistleblower. we're glad to be joined by national security analyst, former chief of staff of the cia and department of defense, someone i wanted to talk to about this story all week, jeremy bash. >> hey, nicole. assuming the reports are true, i see three crimes here.

one is extortion by the president, using a threat of withholding aid to obtain something of value. second crime is conspiracy to engage in extortion between the president and rudy giuliani. and third crime is conspiracy to violate election law, given there may be three underlying crimes, i think we're beyond the issue of the whistleblower. the whistleblower issue was about surfacing this, bringing it to the attention of congress so congress could investigate. i think congress now will begin a thorough, comprehensive investigation. this isn't going to turn to the courts, it turns on executive privilege. the united states supreme court ruled in u.s. versus richard nixon that a president could not shield those infamous audiotapes if they were evidence of criminal activity by claiming executive privilege. >> can we take those one at a time. extortion.

>> yeah, extortion is basically threatening somebody and saying if you don't give me something, i'm going to harm you. effectively what the president of the united states said to president of ukraine was if you don't give me what i want which is support in my presidential election, i'm going to withhold american military support. every diplomatic engagement is a quid pro quo. everything is a bargain, a transaction. the question is what is being offered and what is being received. >> let me take you through the idea then of a campaign finance violation because we have been down this road. donald trump is already an unindicted co-conspirator in a finance scheme that the southern district of new york investigated. >> i think here it is even a little clearer. obviously he and rudy giuliani discussed and the conspiracy is simply an agreement by two people to engage in a criminal act, and they have to take an overt act in furtherance of the

conspiracy. they engaged in a meeting of the minds to have rudy giuliani go to ukraine and obtain foreign interference in the united states election to benefit donald trump. >> let me just ask you, i started this trying to dumb the story down, i think there's fatigue. how could mueller have investigated ties to russia, found 150 ties, 10 criminal acts of obstruction of justice after southern district of new york found criminal campaign finance violations. how do we stand at the precipice of another potentially criminal impeachable act by this president? >> nicole, hey, i'm not so into the fatigue narrative. i think that's a self fulfilling prophesy. if this is important, a constitutional matter, we should talk about it and i think members of congress will. >> what would you advise joe biden to do, he didn't engage today. was that a mistake? >> i think he should stay low. i don't think he needs to engage. i think if he wants to point something out, it is that the

president of the united states is engaging conduct unbecoming the office, abuse of power. that's part of the rationale for the biden campaign. >> jeremy bash, i love you for a lot of reasons. not buying into the fatigue one is the top of my list. thank you for jumping on the phone with us. jeremy makes it so clear, so clear. and i'm going to record that and send it out. i haven't heard it put out with that clarity, strength, with that determination to seek and obtain justice for the american taxpayer, the american public for many elected democrats yet. >> i agree with you. we should not be numb to this, never become numb to what donald trump is doing. it is not just that he is attacking the norms or breaking norms, he is literally throwing a wrecking ball into our democracy and we capital n't ber to this. someone else said that what donald trump is doing, he

doesn't care about the legal aspect or being in the courts, he cares about the political play, the political game. and that's what's really kind of engaging him. he is going to the gutter because this is the way he believes that he can win. and it is incredibly nasty. and that's what democrats also have to be ready for. like how do you take on donald trump who is going to take it to the lowest of the lows, but at the same time you have to continue fighting and you can't be numb to this. >> on the lowest of the low, i want to hear from michael steele and john who wiholloman. >> what do you want to talk about? >> this is like old days, guys. handed breaking news in "the washington post." donald trump pressed yukian leader to investigate biden's son according to people familiar with the matter. "the washington post" matching "the wall street journal scoop. president trump pressed the

leader of ukraine to investigate the son of former vice president joe biden in a call between the two leaders that is at the center of an extraordinary whistleblower complaint, according to two people familiar with the matter. trump used the july 25th conversation with the ukraine president to pressure the recently elected leader to more aggressively pursue an investigation trump believed would deliver potential political dirt against one of the president's political adversaries. what the post built on from the journal reporting is tying the request of investigating biden to the whistleblower complaint and giving us a date, a point in time, on july 25th. the significance of that is three days later, dni coats resigned, insisted sue gordon resign with him. unrelated coincidence? >> not likely unrelated coincidence. i think that there's so much to talk about here. just the process of this reporting, these reporters,

newspapers as they have been throughout the trump administration are on their game. right now, watching the magic of "new york times," "the washington post," "the wall street journal" building incremental stories, this is whether we get all the way to some explicit quid pro quo , around the back or implicit, this is a story with enormous potential, national security implications. what you see now is the way the white house is behaving in the middle of if, which i suggested before, they have a play book. but they're clearly uncomfortable. they have been the last 48 hours, continue to be uncomfortable with this. they recognize if this goes in a certain direction, and i continue to think there's a place over which this becomes -- nancy pelosi says i don't want to do impeachment, but i have to now, this story could get there. they're going to fight to keep it from getting there, as details pile in, we'll see whether it gets there. but we could get there.

that's the kind of stakes we're talking about. >> michael steele, the thing that gets them there faster, if there's a single [bleep]ing republican with a conscience or soul. where do you put the odds on that? >> elvis has left the building. >> you don't think richard burr? i remember when portman had a soul. are they gone, awal? >> i think they sit on their heels and wait. >> on this, michael steele? he pressed the leader of the ukraine to investigate biden's son. >> we're 48 hours into the story. who have you heard from. >> they all have my cell phone number, that's a good point. >> i talked to a lot, i haven't heard a thing, no one said here's a little background, this is what we're concerned about. no one has come out and said look, this is serious here, mr. president, let's walk it through, see where we are.

and this takes me back to the point of the discussion before the breaking news and that is i think we are kind of immune to this, sort of sitting back. i don't see the outrage publicly by anything that this president has been doing. so we'll see. >> we'll see. my thanks to michael steele. most of all to you for watching. that does it for our hour. "mtp daily" with chuck todd starts now. well, welcome to friday. not like any other friday. "mtp daily." good evening, chuck todd in washington. we begin with a big story breaking the last 24 hours. we told you yesterday, could be big, keeps getting