ti tickets are available for this friday november 1st swez tas we the following three fridays. plus if you're in chicago we just released some extra standing room it's going to be amazing. you can tickets for that at msnbc.com/withpodtour. good evening, chris. thanks, my friend. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. they sent him and his wife dead rats in the mail. this is from the resentencing filing that his lawyers ultimately made on his behalf. quote, mr. arbel was indeed threatened. he and his wife received a number of dead rats on various occasions in the mail. he was treat said as a target as much as a coconspirator perhaps because he was an outsider and foreigner.

he was used and extorted. this is guy who pled guilty to his role in a criminal scheme, pled guilty to help prosecutors against the other people who had been charged as defendants in that scheme. their response was to come after him including by mailing dead rats to him and his family. which is not a subtle thing. hard to miss that message. even years later when he was appealing to the court to lessen his own sentence in that case he said years later that he was still afraid to make public some of the other threats that had been made against him and his wife and his child. beyond the dead rats there was more, but he would only address those on a confidential basis for the court. he was trying to make the case to the court that he deserved more credit basically for flipping against these particular codefendants. given the kind of risk he and his family took onto do that, he was asking the court to give him more credit to do that.

and there were also his codefendant who was quote severely beaten by some of the other gentlemen involved in this crime. what this crime was a pump and dump stock chemoconnect today the mob, and it was a big one. according to the indictment the scheme produced tens of millions of dollars in illegal profits. quote, although euro atlantic held itself out as a legitimate brokerage firm it was in fact operated for the primary purpose of owning money through fraud. there was this firm euro atlantic setup in florida and that firm secretly owned big blocks of totally worthless stocks. stocks in what were essentially made up worthless companies. but then in conjunction with the

mob, with the culum bow crime family to be specific, that firm setup a new york outpost, and the mobsters and crooks who worked at that boiler room were assigned to artificially drive up demand for these worthless stocks by a variety of illegal and very mop-like means. basically forcing people to buy these stocks, tricking people into it, conning people into it, intimidating people into it. they just wouldn't allow them to sell them. there were beatings, there was intimidation. but when those stocks were ultimately bought up thanks to the work of that mobbed out boiler room, that of course would make the demand for the stock go up. that would make the price of those stocks go up, and then this firm in florida that was the heart of this scheme, once the price of those stocks were up, they would sell all of their shares at that higher price. they would get all the money, cash out.

then the price of the stocks would collapse. all the suckers who got strong armed or tricked or intimidated into buying all this worthless stuff to pump up the price of those stocks, those are all the people that got -- and i have no idea what color shirts they wore or if they wore shirts at all. this is not the kind of thing you might picture when you imagine white collar wall street like crime. for example, this one really did involve giant bags of cash money. quote, the defendants along with others wired money from the knowledge l fraudulent scheme to city check cashing. after it was wired the defendant and others went to city check's office and obtained cash from the fire transfers. the proceeds were used in to part to make cash pay offs and

prescribes that were implicated in this scheme. they're getting cash for the amount of the wire transfers. that literally means they're getting bags of cash that they're taking out of this check cashing place in new jersey. if you want to imagine the size of the bags of cash they're taking out of out there, look at the amounts spelled out in the indictment. on september 31st, it was $45,000. on october 11, $83,000. november 7th, $468,200. these are transfers they did in and out of that check cashing place $800,000 in cash on a tuesday, the follow day on a wednesday another $136,000 large. all in cash.

gigantic bags of money that they're presumably throwing in the trunk of some mobster car and driving off with in new jersey to go pay off the various crooks involved in this scheme and presumably to have like carmilla hide it in the crawl space. and also another way you know this is not the typical crime, you had name checked guys like black dom and wild bill. also went for the tabloid friendly name of billy fingers. within a couple of years of this stock scheme being shutdown and excelled from the u.s. securities industries for its crimes wild bill, aka billy fingers who's described in the indictment as a captive of the member of the organized crime family, he would soon be murdered in a basement in

brooklyn. they would not find his body until nine years later at a mob dumping-ground in long island, new york. by then his family had gone into witness protection. authorities were able to identify his body officially by his dental records. but contemporaneous reports suggests all his missing fingers helped with the identification, too. so, yeah, this was not exactly your typical wall street crime spree. but it was the end of euro atlantic securities incorporated. they were excelled formally from the u.s. securities industry. they left a regulatory trail that doesn't tell you all that much about what exactly what went wrong there. but when you check the criminal indictments and ultimately the trail of murders of the people involved that gives you all the detail you might want and more. euro atlantic securities

incorporated, that was their story. you want to know who worked at euro atlantic securities incorporated? this guy did. lev parnas arrested earlier this month in the criminal trial unfolding in parallel alongside the impeachment inquiry in washington. cnn reporting today that since his arraignment last week in federal district court in manhattan lev parnas is under house arrest in florida. today we learned in addition to the criminal proceedings mr. parnas has also been ordered by a different federal judge in florida he needs to testify under oath in a federal civil case against him. it's a court order from 2016 that ordered him to repay more than half a million dollars he took from a family trust. despite that court order he didn't repay that money. that's why he's being pursued in federal court now. and they've been following his own money trail and assets to get their half million dollars back. today a federal judge ruled in that case lev parnas has to

appear in court to give sworn testimony about his testimony and financial assets and specifically about the hundreds of thousands of dollars he was somehow able to scratch together to pay the national republican campaign committee and various republican politicians and the super pac supporting president trump's re-election. according to this federal judge's order today in florida lev parnas needs to give that sworn testimony within 30 days, which means he will have to fit it in around the criminal case that he's facing in a different federal jurisdiction up north for allegedly funneling illegal foreign campaign donations. and it was tied to an effort by mr. parnas and his codefendant to get the u.s. ambassador to ukraine fired. she of course was testified. she recently testified in the president's impeachment inquiry in a way that gave us a good sense as to why these guys might

have wanted her fired, might have wanted her out of that embassy in ukraine. but given the links between this ongoing criminal case and the ongoing and increasingly serious impeachment proceedings against the president in washington, you know, it's interesting to look at them both at once. i mean it's interesting. this guy, you go back to his time at the dead rats in the mail mafia stock shop, i mean we know from his publicly accessible records from his own time as a broker he was there at euro atlantic at the time of the crimes for which these defendants were all charged and lev parnas himself was not indicted when his whole company was brought down in this indictment and excelled from the securities industry, shutdown by the federal government for its crimes, he personally wasn't indicted but he worked there when the crime was indicted and he had to find another place to

work. the next place he went was to another brokerage firm where he worked for less than a year and hopped to another for less than three months. and another firm thereafter was a another firm that also got excelled from the securities industries for committing financial crimes. lev parnas was listed as the director and president of that firm which got shutdown by regulators, got kicked out of wall street. after that one got shutdown the next place he landed was also excel from the securities industry and shutdown by federal regulators for committing security crimes. it's like this stuff trailed him around. imagine the bad luck. every place he worked got shushutdown as as criminal enterprise. it's weird, it's just uncanny. after the third straight firm he worked at got shutdown and excelled from the securities industry lev parnas finally appears to have given up his work in finance. of course we know he landed on

his feet because now he works for the president of the united states of america. at least he was. we're not sure if that continues now while he's under arrest and awaiting trial. but this is just a remarkable thing that is plodding along, alongside what is happening on capitol hill with all the impeachment drama. there's this guy who's under arrest, he's facing more than 30 years in prison. he's charged with funneling illegal foreign money to the president's election effort and other republican campaigns. there are enough pictures of him with the president and the president's eldest son and the president's lawyer. i mean there's enough pictures of this guy with the president that you could make a deck of cards out of these photos. when this guy was first directed to appear before the impeachment proceedings of president trump he engaged one of president trump's russia lawyers initially to handle his defense. that lawyer john dowd you see on the right there then identified congress in writing his client wasn't just any witness they could collin to testify about anything, he was a special guy. they were not going to be able

to get anything out of him because he mr. parnas according to his lawyer john dowd, assists rudy giuliani in connection with mr. giuliani's representation of president trump. so the president has a lawyer, his name is rudy giuliani. in rudy giuliani's capacity as the president's lawyer he employs this guy lev parnas as his assistant, as his little helper. which seemed crazy, not least because john dowd, that lawyer wrote his letter addressed to congress in the comic sans typeface which made it seem like it was a joke. but sure enough as mr. parnas got arraigned in new york, a different lawyer of his made the case out loud to a federal judge that lev parnas' case was going to implicate executive privilege concerns because this case does overlap with a legal representation of the president

of the united states. because in fact lev parnas is part of the president's legal team. this guy. this guy who is under arrest, the guy with the dead rat in the mail mob stock scheme before all the other stock schemes he was associated with that also got shot down by federal regulators. i mean this thing the president is being impeached for mr. parnas does seem to be a very diligent working, a very central part of that scheme. he was making what prosecutors say were illegal donations to republican campaigns. and then for at least one of those republican members of congress to whom he gave illegal donations, he took a meeting with that member of congress to advocate that that member of congress try to get the ambassador to ukraine fired, and that member of congress went ahead and tried to get the ambassador to ukraine fired. again, we know from that ambassador's testimony in the impeachment proceedings that you can imagine why they might have wanted her fired, that she was in the way of this scheme the

president cooked up to try to get ukraine to give him help against his domestic political enemies and with hold their military aid and things like white house meetings until they did so. she was in the way of that, so, yes, she had to go. in that part of the scheme of which the president is being impeached it appears good old lev parnas played a key role in trying to organize the ousting of that ukraine ambassador. in the end that effort was successful. mr. parnas was also we now know setting up interviews on the fox news channel to setup this idea ukraine could provide important information that would look terrible for the democratic party and vice president joe biden. we know he was also involved in setting up interviews for and providing materials to this guy who until recently work said at the hill newspaper in washington. he's no longer there but he has throughout this scandal continued writing most of the script for what president trump has been trying to gin up in ukraine to use against the

democratic party. lev parnas was involved in all of that. mr. parnas has been doing all of that work on this scheme for which the president is being impeached. and while that's been going on, lawyers for this indicted ukrainian oligarch who prosecutors say is a top figure in russian organized crime has long time links to vladimir putin and the kremlin, currently under indictment in this country, fighting extradition so he won't have to go on trial here in a huge corruption and bribery case, his lawyer as he fights extradition now says lev parnas is part of his legal team. lev parnas has been working for them as they represent putin ukrainian oligarch demetri firtash. think about what this one guy represents. simultaneously as the president

is being impeached this guy is part of the legal team representing both the russian organized crime guy under indictment and at the same time what's the phrase from john dowd's note, he's also, quote, assisting mr. giuliani in his representation of president trump. i mean, pick a scandal. pick any scandal in american political history. a president facing impeachment about some scheme he's tried to cook up with some other country to help him in the next election, and what other president could you ever even imagine being up to his neck with this guy who was part of the president's legal team while he's under arrest and also while he's part of the legal time for a russian organized crime figure who's under indictment and fighting extradition to this country. he's on both legal teams simultaneously. and i will just note the claim about mr. parnas being part of the president's legal team, right, the claim there is that mr. parnas is working for

giuliani, right? lev parnas is assisting mr. giuliani in connection with his representation of president trump. okay, well if you're assisting somebody that implies you're working for somebody. this implies he's working for giuliani. when your work for someone, that implies that the person you're working for pays you, right, to work for them? well, for some reason in this case that relationship is backwards. there's no evidence whatsoever that rudy giuliani is paying this guy who was assisting him in the representation of president trump. instead it appears this guy is paying rudy. rudy giuliani admits he's received a half million dollars from parnas' firm. where did parnas' firm get the money? as "the washington post" now reports it's not totally clear why mr. parnas was paying giuliani for the privilege of helping him nor where he was getting the money to do so. "the washington post" quotes lev parnas saying to someone late last year, quote, can you loan

me $500,000 so i can get ruda off my back? you pay him a half million dollars so that you can work as his assistant in his legal representation of the president? huh? who's actually paying rudy for the work that he's doing on behalf of the president? we know the president isn't paying him. he says he's doing it pro bono, but his assistant is paying him a half million dollars, and we don't know where that money came from, and he's now under arrest and charged with funneling foreign money illegally to republican causes? i mean, that's the suit we're now in. that is team trump here in the scheme for which the president is being impeached. and so naturally the president and his supporters have declared today that this guy is the real scandal here. this guy is the guy everybody should be, what, ashamed to be

associated with? he serves as a top level stafferer on the national security counsel. he's served in the army on active duty for more than 20 years, joined as an infantry officer. in 2004 he deployed to the war in iraq and wounded in combat. he nevertheless stayed in theater, finished his deploy ed in 2005, he's earned the combat badge, a parachutist badge, wears the expert infantryman badge in addition to his purple heart for being wounded in combat. if you want to put a name to all those medal he bears on his uniform today, it would take you a long time do it as a civilian with all the medals on his chest. lieutenant colonel alexander vindman has just recently within the last few minutes left the secure hearing room where the

impeachment proceedings were hearing his testimony today. he was there for more than ten hours. despite his decades of unblemished and self-less service to this country including being wounded in combat he was denounced today by the president of the united states. he was denounced by the president's supporters and conservative media including on the fox news channel. he was denounced by the president's squeaky-clean totally above suspicion personal lawyer in this matter, rudy giuliani. giuliani's denouncing the colonel. the conservative media, the president, rudy giuliani, all casting aspirations and basically trying to bring down the hill on colonel vindman for the crime of him testifying under oath in impeachment proceedings about the president's call to ukraine in which the president solicited help against the democrats and joe biden from a foreign leader of a country. and we also know the colonel also recounted himself

internally raising alarm about the president's improper and dangerous behavior in the way that he was trying to extort ukraine for help in a personal political matter. he brought those issues up through the chain of command internally before he ever consented to speak with these committees today in response to the subpoena that they gave him. and we are used to the president and his supporters and in particular the conservative media denouncing and trying to destroy anybody who speaks against the president's interests in any context, right? go back to the republican national convention, right? or excuse me the democratic national convention and remember the president's denunciations of a gold star family who lost their son in war for this country, right? we expect it to a certain degree. but it is still jarring to see them do it today, to a 20-year military officer who they have decided to impugn as suspicious. they've decided to question his patriotism. in his case specifically because he comes from an immigrant

family, so therefore he can't really be an american. there were reports today that republicans continued to use their time in the impeachment proceedings behind closed doors to unmask the initial whistle-blower, initial intelligence official according to reports whose complaints first alerted congress what had happened between president trump and the leader of ukraine. that missile blower's complaints has been corroborated by multiple trump administration officials including the defense department and the state department and now an official from the white house. the basic claims of an improper quid pro quo between the president trying to extort something out of ukraine, also been corroborated by the president's own chief of staff, mick mulvaney. it's even been kwaubted corrobo gordon sondland who's been named as a key witness as one of the key people carrying out this

scheme. he himself has said this was an improper quid pro quo with the help of this foreign power that he was basically extorting to get them to do so. today we got this 8-page draft from the house of representatives laying out their rules, their expected format for the next phase of the impeachment inquiry as it moves from closed door depositions to open public hearings. as first reported by "the new york times" last night the resolution in fact shows the questioning from these forthcoming public hearings may in fact be led by congressional committee staff rather than just by individual members of congress, which is a blessing to anyone hoping those hearings will tell a coherent story of what happened here. it's not just going to be members of congress getting in their five minutes of incoherent questioning but trained committee staff who have continuity who are following up with witnesses without being on a timed five-minute clock. and so this is moving.

it is increasingly serious both for the president and his supporters in terms of his behavior that has been exposed and the closing off of all the various doors they've tried to sneak out of in terms of trying to avoid the core question at the heart of impeachment. it's getting increasingly serious and being handled with seriousness by the democrats that gives some sense how this is going to play out in a way that's not going to get better over time for the president let alone his supporters who have been saying nothing happened. it's the impeachment proceeding but do not sleep on the criminal case that proceeds along side it and in parallel with these capitol hill proceedings. two of the people involved in carrying out this scheme on behalf of the president are already under arrest. the president's lawyer who was apparently running point on this scheme and who was apparently being paid by those guys is reportedly a person of interest in two different federal investigations being run out of the southern district of new york. politico.com has recently

reported the main justice, meaning the justice department headquarters in washington may be honing in on those sdny investigations of giuliani. it may include some effort by bill barr to shield giuliani. but there's two things going on here. there's the impeachment and there is this criminal fight. this is not just your average washington fight over, you know, bad faith and bad actors. this is criminal, too. and it involves some fairly serious crooks. and we are nowhere near out of those woods yet. lots to come tonight. stay with us. s yet. lots to come tonight stay with us especially these days. (dad) i think it's here. (mom vo) especially at this age. (big sis) where are we going? (mom vo) it's a big, beautiful world out there. (little sis) whoa... (big sis) wow. see that? (mom vo) sometimes you just need a little help seeing it.

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because it's a day since we've been on the air there's new breaking news to bring you tonight. this time it's the "the new york times" that's just broken news, some fairly explosive news about the testimony that just wrapped up today from lieutenant colonel alexander vindman who's the top ukrainian expert on the national security counsel. we know because "the new york

times" was the first to report last night on the content of colonel vindman's opening statement. we know he was due to tell congress today in the impeachment proceedings about his concerns and the fact he raised an internal alarm after listening in on the president's call to the president of ukraine because he believed what he heard was improper and he reported it up the chain of command. now according to "the new york times" we've got more detail as to what colonel vindman testified about. let me just tell you what the lead of their piece is. quote, lieutenant colonel alexander vindman told house impeachment investigators today that the white house transcript of a july call between president trump and ukraine's president omitted crucial words and phrases and that his attempts to restore them failed. citing three people familiar with the testimony, they described this basic process. "the times" says, quote, there's no recording of the call and

note taking as well as voice recognition software but names and technical terms are frequently missed by the software according to people familiar with the matter. after the call took place in which colonel vindman listened in he was given a hard copy of the rough transcript to make updates and corrections. colonel vindman went through the transcript, made changes and gave his written edits to his boss, timothy morrison, who's the current director of russian and european affairs at the security counsel. but in term of what vindman tried to correct in that testimony, this is explosive, the omissions colonel vindman said included president trump's assertion that there were recordings of joe biden discussing ukraine corruption and an explicit mention by ukraine's president zelensky of burisma holdings.

colonel vindman told the impeachment investigators today he tried to change the constructed transcript made by white house staff to those omissions but those two corrections were not made. colonel vindman -- driving further questions how officials handled the call and the decision to put it into the white house's most classified computer system and also drive questions whether those moves were meant to conseal the call's most controversial aspects. yeah, it will. joining us now is michael mcfall, former ambassador to russia. thank you for joining us tonight. i really appreciate you making the time. >> sure. glad to be here, rachel. >> couple of things going on here. i want to talk to you about your experience with colonel vindman, your reaction to the way his testimony was treated today. i do have to ask your reaction to the breaking news just coming out from "the new york times" he

may have been involved and seems like was properly involved in trying to make sure the white house transcripts slash notes of that call were accurate but when he tried to materially fill in notes left out of that transcript it was rejected. >> i worked three years as the senior director, listened to many phone calls and my directors write the equivalent, they frequently would sit down there in the situation room next to the transcribers so the directors would listen as well and then correct the record just to make sure they get all the facts right, especially as you just noted the proper nouns, right? who knows what burisma?

there's a guy who does know what burisma is, it's colonel vindman. it's supposed to be an official record. so that was left out. it is shocking to me. that is not standard operating procedure. >> if there is a scandal here, if there is something potentially criminal here in terms of the white house trying to basically lock down the evidence about the president's behavior here, improperly classifying this material or moving it or making sure that the records were not correct, deliberately to try to prevent people from knowing either inside the government or ultimately in this kind of impeachment proceeding knowing an accurate record of what happened, do you believe the impeachment proceedings will be able to get to the bottom of that? are these processes in the white house leave enough of a trail that investigators will be able to find it? >> i'm not sure, rachel. that's a great question. i don't know the answer. it would be hard -- i had read multiple transcripts in my time at the white house. it would be hard for me to

retrace like who is the one that actually did it final edits. usually it's the director in charge, right? usually it would be me, the senior director and my directors, that is people at the level that colonel vindman was serving that would have the final say. this sounds like it obviously wasn't. but who was responsible for that, i don't know how you would trace that. i do think it underscores something we've talked about before. if this was a perfect call and there's nothing to hide, why did they put it on this super secret server? why are we now learning that they did not put in factually correct corrections that colonel vindman was trying to put in the official record? >> one of the reasons i wanted to talk to you tonight, sir, is because i know from your twitter feed today you said you served with colonel vindman in moskow. you called him a patriot and a first rate military attache, one of the best on the team.

i want to give you a chance to respond to the attacks on him, from some of the president's supporters in congress essentially questioning his patriotism, describing him oz having some sort of suspect loyalties because he's from an immigrant family. >> first, rachel, i want to thank you for what you already said about him before the break. second, we live in a polarized society. here at stanford we study the causes of polarization. i personally deal with it. i know you personally deal with. i felt yesterday we reached a new low, however. when i say what people were saying about dual loyaltities, hyphenated hyphenat hyphenated adjectives and even one suggestion of espionage because he talks to ukrainian officials, that's in his job description, by the way working at the national security counsel. and i found it completely outrageous. you know, what have we come to that people that sign-up to

serve in our country in harms way, in iraq and also the national security counsel and in our embassies and kiev and moskow, we've done this before and it really troubles me anyone would insinuate anything about that. he was a first rate military officer and he was out standing and appointed because he is one of the best and brightest. and the idea that someone with his résume would not serve the united states of america is just disgusting. it's outrageous. and i want those people to apologize to remember what they're doing when they take cheap shots at people like colonel vindman when they don't know his background and they don't know his history. >> sir, thank you for being here. i really appreciate you taking the time. >> thanks for letting me say all

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awarded a purple heart for being wounded in combat. his name is lieutenant colonel alexander vindman. and we saw his opening remarks last night which were distributed by huz lawyers. we're now getting the first reports as to what colonel vindman said behind closed doors today. quote, white house ukraine expert sought to correct transcript of trump call. lieutenant colonel alexander vindman who heard president trump's july phone call with ukraine's president and was alarmed by it testified that he tried and failed to add key details that were left out of the white house's rough transcript of that call. it has been an interesting part of this impeachment inquiry. not just the president's behavior toward ukraine but the question of whether or not people inside the white house may have acted improperly in trying to basically cover up evidence of that by among other things securing the white house notes of that collin a secure

server that was never designed for material of that sort. joining us here on set i'm honored to say is john brennen, a former cia director. thank you for making time tonight. i want to get your reaction first to this news from colonel vindman, his testimony today and this specific account of his testimony about the way the notes of the president's call was handled. >> i think as mike mcfall said this is really an aberration for the way the process is supposed to work. as mike said, the transcription basically software in the white house situation room is used but it's the white house listeners to this phone call that will put it together consist with what they hear but also the experts with them. it's usually the directors such as colonel vindman who will go over those notes and make sure it's accurate and complete. it sound as though when he did that some of his changes were accepted and some were not. and i think very substantive

ones and important ones were left out intentionally in this transcript. >> one of the prospects that's raised in "the new york times" report and i don't know enough about these systems to know it it's possible, there was the suggestion that while in the normal course of him adding in velvent context, filling in proper noun that were hard for the software to pick up and stuff like that, and essentially corrected the transcript, maybe that wasn't possible here specifically because of the way the notes were handled. because it was moved to the super secure server and effectively no one else could access it. does that resonate with you? >> the transcript that was released publicly was released after it was put in the highly sensitive server. it was taken out of that so there would be at least a version of it put out. and there were ellipses in there that suggested there were words, phrases, sentences that were left out. so i think it was very

intentional. but this has a whole host of questions associated with it. why was it put into this highly sensitive classified server, which is out of the course of normal business. if the president has a kafrgz with somebody of something that is super secret or sensitive, it might be put in there. but for this conversation particularly one politically charged as this, there's no reason to hide it. so i think there's a lot of questions that need to be answered. >> obviously the impeachment inquiry that is driving these revelations is focused very much on the president's behavior. it's not an impeachment inquiry into cabinet officials. there's not a pending case against anyone else involved in the administration. what do you think about the idea that part of what's been exposed already is behavior by people other than the president to try to cover up the evidence of what the president did, that there may have been an effort by both people helping him carry out this scheme and then not telling the truth about it but also in

the white house as the scheme was become evident and people were becoming concerned about it, trying to close down access to information that might prove those concerns warranted? i mean, the president is alt the top of this, but what about culpability for other people involved? >> i think this is consistent with what the administration's record has been. when trump goes out and either makes a policy decision or takes some type of action people try to scurry to either explain or cover the tracks. and when he's involved in this type of behavior which i think is clearly inappropriate, unethical and i think maybe criminal they're trying to prehavenpr prevent that exposure. the trump vortex brings people into it, but thank goodness we have people like colonel vindman, that we have people like ambassador yovanovitch or ambassador taylor and others who are going to say, enough, this is not consistent with what professional responsibilities call for, which is to not allow this type of political corruption to seep certainly

into the national security realm. they really see it as a threat to our national security, and they're putting their careers at risk. >> john brennen, a former cia director. sir, there's a another aspect of this you have a lot of experience with i'd like to ask you about after the break. stay with us. u about after the . stay with us you need for your home at a great price, the way it works best for you, i'll take that. wait honey, no. when you want it. you get a delivery experience you can always count on. you get your perfect find at a price to match, on your own schedule. you get fast and free shipping on the things that make your home feel like you. that's what you get when you've got wayfair. so shop now!

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you want to go sell some tacos? progressive knows small business makes big demands. doug, where do we get a replacement chili pepper bulb? so we'll design the insurance solution that fits your business. it's a very niche bulb. it's a specialty bulb. i want to thank colonel vindman for his courage in coming forward, his willingness to follow the law, to do his duty. we have the greatest respect for his service to the country, service that continues and today took the form of coming in before our committees to bravely answer these questions. we hope that his example of patriotism will be emulated lie others. i want to say also how deeply appalled i was at the pernicious

attacks on him last night on fox. the suggestion that because he's of ukrainian origin he has some sort of dual loyalty. this purple heart recipient deserved more than that attack. >> adam schiff today the close of testimony by alex vindman. we're back with john brennen. part of the reason why i wanted to talk to you about this because what chairman schiff was just decrying there, attacks on colonel vindman, the efforts to portray him as a traitor, echoes some of the ways the president has come after you because of your role at the center intelligence agency at the time of the 2016 election. i want to know if it sort reactivates everything for you or what your reaction is. >> first of all, i think everybody should be quite proud of someone like colonel vindman. frequently it is those citizens

who are citizens not by birth but by choice that really understand the responsibilities of citizenship. it's not just the rights and privileges that go along with it, it's the responsibilities. and unfortunately i think we have somebody in the white house right now who fears people who are willing to speak out about what is wrong and be able to expose the i think corruption that is going on right now. so i have for the last three years spoken out because i believe that mr. trump is unworthy of the office of the presidency. having served with six presidents, three democrat and three republican, i was always very proud of having served with them. i didn't agree with a lot of their policies but i always thought they were doing what they thought were in the best interest of this country. but i think mr. trump has shown time and time again he has a personal political agenda he's going to pursue. and unfortunately too many individuals including elected representative of congress are willing to give him a pass on things wholly inappropriate, wholly inconsistent with the

trust the american people have put into mr. trump's hands. so i think we're going to see, in fact, maybe more examples of bravery and courage that we have seen in the past couple of weeks as people have gone up to congress defying the direction about not appearing. but saying this is too important to allow the individuals who are taking advantage of the great trust that we have put in them. >> john brennen, former cia director. sir, thank you for coming in. we'll be right back. stay with us. coming in we'll be right back. stay with us

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so today we got the new rules from the house in terms of how the next phase of the impeachment inquiry is going to go, the part with the public hearings. in the meantime, though, they've still got more closed door depositions with more witnesses coming down the pipe. going to depose catherine croft tomorrow morning at 9:00 eastern. right after that an official who may have been her predecessor in ukraine is going to testify, and worked directly with the former u.s. special envoy for ukraine kirk volker who himself testified himself right after he resigned his post. he's the one who turned over the text messages which have since become an essential part of the inquiry. so tomorrow committee members are going to hear basically his direct reports. this week is going to continue to be like this every day. it's only tuesday now. stay tight. y. it's only tuesday now. stay tight ♪ (dramatic orchestra)

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that's going to do it for us tonight. i will warn you that this week, like i said it's only tuesday and the fact we've had big breaking news stories from "the new york times" about the impeachment inquiry in the middle of our night, both monday and tuesday night, and we've got a double deposition tomorrow and then there will be more thereafter, just this is one of those weeks. i'm just giving it to you the way i see it. this is one of those weeks to pace yourself. we'll see you again tomorrow night. and now time for the "last word" with lawrence o'donnell. >> and congressman swalwell was on this program last night. and i asked him when the colonel testifies given he's the first witness who listened in on the phone call, will you be questioning him about the