diplomacy the best way to try to get to that point? >> i'm not going to comment on that. [ laughter ] >> um, okay. >> nice try. >> bolton did not talk about president trump's conversation with the president of ukraine. that wraps up this hour of "msnbc live." thank you, craig melvin. right now on "andrea mitchell reports" united front. speaker pelosi tells house democrats we are ready to take on impeachment saying it's about patriotism not partisanship. >> we could not ignore what the president did. he gave us no choice. >> the offense here is the president using the power of his office to coerce a foreign nation into helping his presidential campaign to once again interfere in our election. >> attack mode, president trump lashing out at the whistleblower and democratic leaders as his allies struggle to put up a defense. >> why would we move forward with impeachment?

there's not something that you have to defend here. >> i think this whole thing is a sham. >> i know the difference between a whistleblower and a deep state operative. >> and "back to the future," the state department revives and expands an investigation into hillary clinton's e-mails, striking fear among many career diplomats as the president recycles attack lines against his former rival. >> so of course he's obsessed with me, and i believe that it's a guilty conscience in so much as he has a conscience. ♪ good day, drea mitchell in washington where president trump is fighting back today with twitter attacks against the whistleblower and house democrats, even questioning whether intelligence chair adam schiff should be arrested for treason. but after the white house itself released extended notes from that phone call with ukraine's president, his aides are having a hard time mounting a coherent

defense. >> why did he use three private lawyers to get information on biden from the ukrainian government rather than go through all of the agencies of his government? >> two different points. number one -- >> how about answering my question? >> john durham as you know -- >> john durham is investigating something completely different. why did the president use private attorneys rather than go to the state department? if you don't know that's an acceptable answer but let's not talk about john durham. >> there's two issues that were brought up on the phone call. >> why did he do it? why did the president, if the argument is corruption, why did the president go against his own pentagon and state department? >> chris, i don't understand how you can ask that question while at the same time admonishing the president for wanting to get to the bottom of perhaps one of the biggest corruption scandals concerning ukraine in the last few years. >> i'm simply asking why --

>> chris, chris, chris, i like you a lot -- >> this is an exercise in obfuscation. >> chris wallace on fox news sunday. why the fury? our white house correspondents kristin welker and jeff bennett are both reporting that the president told allies days ago he would start worrying about losing republican support if national polls showed support for impeachment topping 50%, which a major cbs online poll did just over the weekend. joining me now, kristin welker at the white house and jeff bennett or capitol hill. jeff mason as well and ben rhodes, former deputy national security advisor to president obama. krist kristin, the president has been absolutely on a twitter rage today and seems to be, shall we say, nervous. >> reporter: it's been tweet storm after tweet storm, andrea. so you have to think that underscores a informers nenervo

frustration on the part of the president. we know that he's watching the polls closely, as he always does. so this moment is no different. he is undoubtedly very aware of this new polling which shows public support for the impeachment inquiry topping 50%. now, of course this is an online poll and of course all these polls are subject to variation as this story develops, but there's no doubt that has to be stoking trepidation for the president and here in the white house. so what are they going to do about it? they're in the process of building up a robust strategy. a rapid response team that essential is going to be all hands on deck. it's going to be a legal and pr approach to deal with what is a growing crisis for this administration. what will the talking points include? we are told that they're looking at the clinton playbook, which tried to paint the republican congress back then as a do-nothing congress. you've already seen the president tweet about this to try to paint democrats as

do-nothing democrats on issues like gun legislation as well as other issues that they've been addressing here within the administration. online today, president trump lashing out at adam schiff, as you already noted, and also saying the president of the ukraine said there was no pressure put on him by me, end of case, reiterating his charge that this is, quote, unquote, the greatest witch hunt in the history of our country. so we expect in the coming days to see the communication strategy really beef up here at the white house. >> jeff mason, as a veteran white house correspondent, one of the key figures here rudy giuliani, he is of course a target of the investigation and might be called. we don't know what kind of witness he would be and whether or not they would call him, try to depose him, whether he would cooperate. this is what happened when george stephanopoulos tried to talk to rudy giuliani about all of this. >> are you going to cooperate

with the house intelligence committee? >> that is a question that has a lot of, a lot of implications. i wouldn't cooperate with adam schiff. i think adam schiff should be removed. >> you're not going to cooperate. >> i didn't say that. i said i will consider it. >> you said you will not cooperate with adam schiff. >> i said i will consider it. >> jeff mason and then jeff bennett, the two jeffs, let's talk about this. rudy giuliani and his extraordinary role in all of this, jeff mason? >> it certainly is an extraordinary role. i think it's worth underscoring over and over that he is a private attorney for president trump, so everything that he's done in this role has been with that sort of framework. i mean, that interview was fascinating in that it doesn't sound like he's had direction yet from the president on whether or not he should cooperate. i think he said later to george that he does have a client and if his client directs him to cooperate, then he would.

i think that exemplifies a little bit of what's going on at the white house now as well. there is a sense of we don't have a full strategy yet and that means maybe some talking points here or there. but in general, they're still working on it. that means they haven't gotten out the strategy to people like lieutenant for the president. >> and up on the hill, jeff depositions. most of congress is on recess, but the house intelligence committee already has a busy schedule this week. >> reporter: they do. to follow up what my friend jeff mason had to say about rudy giuliani, adam schiff, the chairman of the house intelligence committee, has made clear he wants to know what rudy giuliani knows. we could see a subpoena to mr. giuliani as early as today. we're not in the prediction business, but my best guess is that giuliani will not be called to testify in public because i've talked to members on that committee who suggest they would not want to invite that level of

what they consider to be a circus into the proceedings. this inquiry has to be fast and focused. you lose some of that focus if they invite what they would view as the giuliani sideshow to capitol hill. there's a number of depositions and a hearing scheduled for these next two weeks. thursday they expect to hear from kurt volker, the former special envoy to ukraine who is mentioned in the whistleblower complaint about having communications with giuliani about this whole ukrainian gambit. he resigned after the whistleblower complaint was made public because in part he believes that fwrrees him up, h can speak more openly to congress about what he knows. what's different about this time than all the other times the white house has stonewalled these oversight request is that adam schiff is making clear that

any more stonewalling could be turned into another impeachment article. it would be obstruction of justice. >> ben rhodes, there was this extraordinary moment also on this week with stephanopoulos where tom bossert, the former national security advisor for donald trump had this to say. >> the whistleblower's complaint says white house officials were deeply disturbed by the president's phone call with zelensky. what was your reaction? >> yeah, i'm deeply disturbed by it as well. this entire mess has me frustrated. i am deeply frustrated with what he and the legal team is doing in repeating that debunked theory to the president. it sticks in his mind when he hears it over and over again. for clarity, let me repeat that it has no validity. the united states government reached its conclusion on attributing to russia the dnc hack in 2016 before it even communicated it to the fbi.

>> so the debunked theory that has been fed back to the president and back from the president and was on that call with the ukrainian leader is that ukraine was responsible. that's why the president was asking about crowd strike. that ukraine was responsible for hacking in the dnc and interfering in the election, not russia, even though has tom bossert was saying it was russia and even agrees it was russia. >> it's really extraordinary that what they're really talking about here is a bizarre right wing conspiracy theory about ukraine being at the center of the effort to interfere in our election when the entire u.s. intelligence committee has found and we've seen the evidence that russia has interfered in the election. they cannot defend the president's conduct. we read the transcript, we read the whistleblower complaint. we know he was trying to corrupt u.s. foreign policy, leveraging u.s. foreign assistance to pressure a foreign government to investigate his political opponents. that's at the heart of this. and instead of being able to

defend that conduct, all they can do is attack other people. this crazy theory about ukraine in 2016, a widely debunked theory about what joe biden was up to in ukraine when all he was doing was acting on the consensus of the entire u.s. government and the european union to see a corrupt prosecutor removed. they don't have any defense for trump so all they do is go on offense and attack whoever they can. >> the "new york times" editorial board had an extraordinary editorial suggesting who should be questioned, not just rudy giuliani and william barr, but mike pompeo, mick mulvaney, who was involved in holding up the arms sale that had been approved by congress and supported by the pentagon and state department, but holding up that arms sale of $391 million to ukraine. vice president pence, who was pulled back from attending the inauguration of the ukrainian president.

that was quite a snub. clearly more pressure on the ukrainian president. they sent the energy secretary rick perry instead. michael atkinson, the inspector general clearly under pressure. kurt volker, the now resigned state department envoy for ukraine. you know, all of these people from different agencies. what is the likelihood that they're going to get access to some of these people? >> an impeachment inquiry gives you far greater latitude to go after people in terms of subpoenas, compelling testimony. obviously at the heart of this is trump's conduct. but if you saturdtart to pull t threads, it's the widespread corruption of the u.s. government. in the white house someone we know used a secret classification system to take an unclassified call and try to hide it from the rest of the government. in the state department, what we know already is instead of the normal conduct of u.s. foreign policy, you had rudy giuliani, the president's personal attorney, people involved in his

campaign, interacting with state department officials to set up meetings with ukrainian officials to act on behalf of this corrupt agenda. you had in mike pence, a vice president who was supposed to attend the inauguration of the ukrainian president, held back, making himself part of a play to leverage the ukrainian president to investigate trump's political opponents. what's very important for democrats to show here is this just wasn't donald trump acting in a one-off phone call in a highly corrupt way. it was donald trump presiding over the wholesale corruption of u.s. foreign policy, implicating elements of the state department, his own white house, the actions of the vice president. it's important that all get presented to the american people. >> that's clearly one of the reasons why the president has been on such a tear today. this is implicating, if any of these charges are proved, it's implicating a lot of different people throughout the cabinet and the vice president. kristin welker, jeff bennett, jeff mason, when rhodes, thank

you all for starting us off today. coming up, republicans revealing their wobbly defense to protect president trump from impeachment proceedings. >> this seems to me like a political setup. it's all hearsay. you can't get a parking ticket conviction based on hearsay. we're not going to impeach a president on hearsay as long as i'm around. >> the inspector general determined that the whistleblower does have a political bias. >> the whistleblower wasn't on the call. the i.g. didn't read the call. but you and i have all the information we need. the president did nothing in this phone call that's impeachable. but first, object of their obsession, the trump administration's new cause to investigate hillary clinton. her former spokesman joins me next right here on msnbc. stay with us. righter he on msnc stay with us

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how's this for a 2016 dpl n campaign throwback? hillary clinton's e-mails from back in the head line-ups. state department investigators are intensifying their probe into e-mail records of at least 130 senior state department officials, both past and present, expanding it to include career diplomats who have never even sent clinton e-mails directly. their messages ended up in an e-mail chain to then secretary of state clinton's private e-mail server according to

several diplomats involved who spoke to nbc news. the state department not responding to our request for comment, but some diplomats tell us they see this as an attempt to resurrect the issue to damage democrats in 2020. you were there during that period. there is also suspicion that it seemed to die down. i frankly do not know, perhaps you do, whether any of these officials and career diplomats received clearance letters or were told that it was over. >> i don't know. there were a lot of different cases being adjudicated meaning they were still being looked at, including my own in the beginning of 2018. mine had a very specific e-mail that they looked at and i contested and they closed the books on for specific reasons that i don't think apply to other people. this is pretty transparent.

it's not just going back to 2016. let's remember the e-mail mess started in 2014. these involved e-mail that were written between 2009 and 2012. so you're talking about going back nearly a decade. it's clearly punitive and retribution, because the way the republicans presented this was the crime of the century. the unclassified system was used for classified information. we were putting lives and security at risk. you would think if you actually believed that, you would not let those e-mails sit on state department servers and e-mail for another decade. it's pretty clear and we're seeing now secretary pompeo is part of the gang that can't shoot straight, but is very clearly taking shots at his own personnel. >> how is he implicated in this? because it started in 2018 before he took office, but it

did seem to die down. people whom i've spoken to felt that it was over, that they were done. then they came back this past august with more requests, more classifications of e-mails for the same exact period that had already been examined. >> i think we should remember who pompeo is. before he was a cabinet member and before he was cia director, he was in the mold of jim jordan and trey gowdy on the benghazi committee. it sounds a little bit of a stretch, but the republicans lost a very powerful tool last year when they lost the house. they were using those committees, the oversight committees, the foreign affairs committees to put the screws to people they wanted to torture and punish for past crimes for their own political benefit. they lost that and they now have

turned to other means. diplomatic security in the state department doesn't wake up one morning and say, oh it's been a year since we've been looking at these e-mail, let's take another fresh look. these are things that are communicated down, if not directly, then certainly because pompeo echoes the president. pe pompeo goes on tv and says this is a witch hunt and all these things are wrong. of course people are going to pick up his body language. >> the "new york times" pointed out in their story in their coverage of this the private server was first discovered as an offshoot of the benghazi hearings. >> it's clear what pompeo is doing. this comes at the same time as we learn that rudy giuliani is making calls as i think your colleague called a shambassador.

these things don't happen without high level signoff. there's no person saying i'm going to give rudy giuliani a call and connect him with the ukrainian government on my own. these are things that are going to the secretary's suite and he is signing off on. >> i want to clarify. lawyers are asking me how can they suddenly classify something that was not classified and in talking to some of your former colleagues who were senior veteran diplomats, they're overseas. they're on an open call, not a classified call with a counterpart in another government. the secretary is walking into a meeting, they want to brief her on it. they sent an e-mail, i just talked to minister so-and-so. suddenly that's becoming classified because it involved the minister of another country. or clippings on the iran computer action.

it's being forwarded to hillary clinton and she shouldn't have used a private e-mail system. let me put that out there. she's acknowledged that. but a clipping from the "new york times" is now classified because of a title. >> the state department took the view that if you forwarded an article from the newspaper that had information in it that you were tacitly confirming the information. the easiest way to think about it would be to suddenly get a whole pile of tickets from the state police saying the speed limit really wasn't 55, it was 35 and here's 1800 tickets and $5,000 in fines. >> just to be clear, this could because of the rigid rules if you get three infractions like this, you're out. this could end the career of some of our most senior diplomats. >> what's particularly unnerving about this is, yes, this involves former clinton and

obama appointees. it involves hundreds of people who now work at the state department, career foreign service officialofficials, who y give their life over not much different than people who join the military. they are targeted really for being 6 degrees of separation from these e-mails. it's really being done because donald trump and mike pompeo don't like the state department. from the day they came into office, the state department was in their crosshairs. coming up, the fate of great britain hanging in the balance as prime minister boris johnson tries to scrape together a last-minute brexit deal. a last-minute brexit deal. >> woman: what's my safelite story? >> vo: my car is more than four wheels. it's my after-work decompression zone. so when my windshield broke... >> woman: what?! >> vo: ...i searched for someone who really knew my car. i found the experts at safelite autoglass. >> woman: hi! >> vo: with their exclusive technology, they fixed my windshield...

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in just one month, great britain is set to divorce itself from the european union if newly-elected prime minister boris johnson can figure out how. his challenge is whether to ask the eu for yet another postponement to keep negotiating a deal for leaving the union or just go it alone. he said he will not quit as

prime minister even if he does not get a deal. joining me is former british prime minister david cameron. his new book is "for the record." welcome. it's very good to see you. >> thank you. >> let's talk about brexit and how we got to this place. also, what would you do right now if you were boris johnson? >> i think the right thing for prime minister boris johnson to do is to do what he plans to do and go to brussels and try to negotiate a withdrawal agreement with the european union and to take that back and bring it to the u.k. parliament and get it passed. we voted as a country three years ago to leave the eu. it was not the choice i made. i ran the gain on the other side saying we should stay. but we're a democracy, there was a clear result. that, i think, is the right answer and i wish him well with the negotiations. i hope he's successful. if he is, that's what should happen. >> in your memoir you write that

boris johnson risked at outcome he did not believe in because it would help his political career, saying that he wanted to become the darling of the tar party, i your words. expand on that. >> what i say in the book is that boris had never previously supported leaving the european union. he was quite a strong euro skeptic. but he'd never argued for leave. the argument i had with him was, like you, i want reform and here's a package of reform that i've achieved. safeguards the pound, vitally important when the euro zone is driving such a change in the european union. but nonetheless, i couldn't persuade him to stay on my side of the argument, which i obviously regret. but the canountry has voted, we are a democracy. it was a referendum that was set out several years before the general election. it was voted for after that

general election by almost 9 out of 10 members of parliament. so i think that's what ought to happen. but it may be that a deal isn't possible and it may be that he can't get a deal through parliament. i think in those circumstances it would be a very big mistake to try to leave the eu without a deal. i think that will be bad for our economy, bad for the united kingdom. we can't rule out general elections or some other way of unblocking the blocking that we're experiencing today. we can't go on like that. >> how would you get to a second referendum? that would seem to those of us outside as the logical solution here. >> well i think there are three ways of unblocking where we are. the first is to do a deal, to leave the eu on the basis of a deal. i think that will provide a lot of certainty although it's obviously not the path i

recommended to the country. the second way is to have a general election. that might produce a parliament that can make decisions but it might not. the third way is, yes, to have a second referendum to say parliament hasn't been able to resolve this and we'll put it back to the people in a referendum. as i say, it shouldn't be ruled out because we have to find a way out of this impasse. i think one of the problems has been that not enough has been done to try and reach out across the aisle as you'd say here in the united states to get politicians of different parties to vote for a deal. that has been part of the problem. >> on the subject of ukraine, which is obviously an overwhelming subject right now for the u.s. with president trump and the release of those notes from his conversation with president zelensky, the new president in ukraine, can you imagine that kind of conversation between an american president, a british prime minister saying very clearly having held up $400 million that

was approved by our congress, by our pentagon, by our state department, holding up that money, pressuring him and saying, but i have a favor and then coming up with this conspiracy theory really that ukraine interfered with the u.s. election rather than russia. >> well, i can't personally imagine having that conversation, but i'll be careful in what i say because i so value the relationship between the united kingdom and the united states and i so want that to work out whoever is the prime minister, whoever is the president, that i don't think british politicians saying too much about domestic united states politics is a good idea. you have processes, you have procedures. they seem to be now getting underway and i think we should let you sort that out in the way that you do here in the u.s. without too much interference from us. >> what about the u.s. withdrawing from the iran nuclear deal? >> i think that was a matter of regret. i mean, barack obama and i and

others put together the iran deal. it certainly wasn't perfect, but what it did was that it kept iran verifiably away from a nuclear weapon and we had ability to inspect and verify what they were doing. and i think that was better than the uncertainty that we're now in. i think there might have been room to improve on the deal or try and extend the deal, but i worry that we're in a more unstable situation today. >> david cameron, really a very honest and forthcoming book. the memoir is "for the record." thank you. >> my pleasure. coming up, to protect and deflect? republicans grasping for facts to protect and defend the president. stay with us right here on "andrea mitchell reports" right here on msnbc. ll reports" right here on msnbc.

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what do you make of this exchange, president zelensky says "we are almost ready to buy more javelins from the united states for defense purposes." and president trump replies "i would like you to do us a favor, though." >> you just added another word. >> no. >> you said i'd like you to do a favor, though. >> yes. it's in the white house transcript. >> when i read the transcript, president zelensky brings up a javelin as a protection for anti-tank, something that president obama would not sell.

that president trump did to protect the ukraine. >> and then he held up $391 million in congressionally approved weapons. house republican leader kevin mccarthy getting tripped up on "60 minutes" as republican leaders band together to fight the impeachment inquiry. joining me now charlie sykes and jonathan capehart "washington post" opinion writer. charlie, the republicans are looking for a narrative but they're not finding it in the transcript. >> no. i mean, obviously what their strategy is denial, distraction and intimidation, the bullying of the whistleblower. but i think what you saw yesterday morning was an illustration of how hard it is to put together a narrative, because in fact we do know what the president did. we know what he says. the president released the transcript or the quasi

transcript himself. we may see the full transcript. as you said earlier in the hour, a lot of what's happened took place in plain sight. what they're left with is this misleading narrative, a little bit of nitpicking that's going on here, but i think a lot of other republicans should have been watching jim jordan and kevin mccarthy on television and saying do i want to become that guy, do i want to become the next jim jordan, am i going to be in this position over the next several months? >> the democrats have to figure out how to focus and how to keep this from potentially going off the rails. that's one reason not to call rudy giuliani, who will just spout conspiracy theories and misstate facts and pull another lewandowski and make them look stupid. >> that's right. they have to be very selective about who they put in front of the cameras. they should be doing definitely any kind of testimony with giuliani behind closed doors. you can't give him an audience.

but there might be others who are also looking to show the president their undying loyalty and to try to blow up the democrats' inquiry. they're going to have to be sure about how many people they call, what documents they demand from the white house, what avenues they actually pursue. i think the people they want to get to right away are the people who backed up the account of the whistleblower, who are still in the white house or were at the time. those are the witnesses the republicans are most worried about. charlie's right, they're staying on process, it's all about hearsay and secondhand and the whistleblower and he might be partisan. it has nothing to do with that. the lawyers moved stuff to another server, they admitted that and a transcript came out that backed up the whistleblower. those are the people who the republicans who are staying quiet and not going out to defend the president are the

most worried will bring more revelations. >> you're hearing a different tone even from mitch mcconnell. this is mitch mcconnell during the last hour on cnbc. >> no. it's not an impeachment rules are very clear. the senate would have to take up an impeachment resolution if it came over from the house. >> so, you know, that makes it very clear no one is going to have to fight the legality if the house votes, the senate will take it up. there's obviously a big question that it dies in the senate no matter what, but it still would begin a trial. >> right. part of the parlay game was, sure, the house votes to impeach the president and then the articles go over to the senate where senate majority leader mitch mcconnell is all powerful and knows how the senate rules work. one of the conjectures was maybe

mcconnell doesn't do anything with them at all, maybe he stymies it before it can even go to trial. with the majority leader saying flat out today, hey, if this happens, we have to take it up, the signal to the white house is don't look to me to stop this cold in its tracks. >> and one reason why there may be a different tone, at least in part from mitch mcconnell, take a look at the polls. the cbs news online poll had 55% now approving of the impeachment inquiry, just 45% disapproving. there was an npr poll that found quite a change also. 49% improving of impeachment. the country's evenly divided but that's quite a big change to jump from just a couple of weeks ago. >> it is a big change. frankly, if i were the white house, i would also be very concerned about the republican numbers. republicans are still overwhelmingly behind the president, but there's around

30% that are open to this or are waiting for more facts. i have to say, though, that the president's behavior over the past 24 hours cannot give republicans a lot of comfort. some of the tweets that you have been talking about suggesting that adam schiff should be investigated for treason or speculating about civil war -- i mean, when you're starting to see republicans like adam kinsinger saying that he's appalled by all of this, you're starting to see people distancing themselves from a white house that ishaving in a less than disciplined matter. the crazy has been on display over the last 48 hours and that has got to spread some worry among republicans. >> adam kinsing eer tweeting in response to the president saying if this happens civil war would break out if he's impeached. he tweeted i have visited

nations ravaged by civil war. this is beyond repugnant. >> in a civil war, americans are killing one another. i mean, that is how reckless and irresponsible this is. the president is not only peddling debunked conspiracy theories, he's engaging in the kind of rhetoric that only would have been found in the pafarthe reaches of the most extreme fever swamps on the right and it's got to be very concerning. >> thanks so much to all of you. coming up, family ties. how the president's son helped in propelling congress to start impeachment proceedings. and live from new york "saturday night live" back for its 45th season on nbc. true to form, already taking on the race for the white house. >> i'm also america's cool aunt. a fun aunt.

i call that a funt. can i win the presidency? probably not. i don't know. can i successfully seduce a much younger man? you better funting believe it. >> don't talk to me about patience. it takes me 40 minutes to figure out how to turn on the tv. if i accidentally hit input that's a whole day, gone, done. >> i have the energy of a mother of five boys who all play a different sport. let's do this. >> i'm like plastic straws. i've been around forever. i've always worked but now you're mad at me? [ laughter ] >> drink up, america. in closing, i'd like to just say one more time, barack. e more tim worked like that. well have you tried thinkorswim? this is totally customizable,

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new reporting from nbc news shows how the trump inner circle coordinated allegations against joe biden and his son just as biden was declaring h iing his

candidacy. joining me now is carol lee who wrote the article. let's go through the timeline. why don't you take us through? >> sure, early april about three weeks before biden got into the race, the president's son and his campaign manager put out there first statements on twitter about this ukraine and the bidens raising questions about whether or not there was something there, sort of putting it out there. and then you had the april 21st phone call between president trump and the president of ukraine and biden gets into the race. all the while it is happening is rudy giuliani effort to get the ukrainian government to

investiga investigate. throughout the summer as it heats up, you can see the president's campaign arm really aggressively start to go after the ukraine issue and putting things out frequently and the super pac is doing that and the chairwoman of the republican national committee starts doing it. so these parallel efforts going on. one of the take aways when you look at this time frame is the argument that there was nothing political here in requesting an investigation of the vice president maintains is really under cut now it would be political malpractice for them not to have flip it out there. but, it is clearly very a political effort and at the same time you have the president and

rudy giuliani saying this was all about corruption in ukraine and that's a hard argument to make when your political allies are pushing this so much. >> in fact they got the timeline wrong because the prosecutor who was forced out was the western alliance, the amf world bank, eu, and united states all wanted him out. and hunter biden was not on that board at the time. i travel with president biden at that time to ukraine going on trips with him. he was not only on a mission with president obama at the time and the rest of the administration behind this. all these other entities, the eu and the imf and others. this is investigated and debunk and you see the president's

political allies and trying to manipulate the time. >> it was part of that phone call that's central. >> absolutely. one of the other things that seems so transparent here. the state department is opening relitigating reviving i should say, reigniting a classification so that they got a number of themes they are trying to put out there. as they did in the previous campaign repeating it over and over again of clinton's e-mail. they're trying to make it front and center. could really damage biden and hurt the ability to get the message he needs the get out of the primary candidate. >> this is what they know about this. you see time and again the president's allies will throw things out there and say well, it is worth asking the questions about this. they continue to talk about it until it gets in the public

domain in a way that could undermine the cabinet like joe biden and others. >> great reporting as always. carol lee, thank you so much for being here. >> coming up next, protecting the whistleblower as the president trump demands to meet his accuser. a a ali velshi and stephanie ruhle will talk to one author how hard it is to keep whistle blowers safe. stay with us. e blowers safe stay with us geico p with our renters insurance. yeah, switching and saving was really easy! drink it all up. good! could have used a little salt. visit geico.com and see how easy saving on renters insurance can be.

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thanks for being with us, that does it for this edition of "andrea mitchell reports." remember to follow us online. here is "velshi & ruhle," stephanie ruhle and ali velshi. we get new information president trump is increasingly concerned of losing republicans support. what he says has to happen before he gets really worried. #. >> new questions over the classified server that held the read out of trump call with the president of ukraine. turns out other sensitive conversations are being held on that very specific server as well. the big question is does congress have the ability to get all these transcripts. >> the 2020 candidates spreading for tonight's deadline for third quarters fund raising. >> the w