petitioning the u.s. government on behalf of people, and we do not have any paper trails of who he represents. rosalind helderman, thank you. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. happy monday. at least today we knew in advance that there was going to be way too much news to keep up with, right, so we knew, you know as long ago as the end of last week today was a day for which we should, you know, gird our loins. i don't know what girding our loins means, it sounds terrible. bracing ourselves, if you will. if you nevertheless did end up feeling overwhelmed by the amount of news today, it may make you feel a little better to note that it wasn't just you. it wasn't just you and me and everyone we know. we are not the only people having a hard time keeping up with a news day like today.

the justice department also today had to ask for a little extra time, please. just couldn't keep up. one of the things we were expecting today was for federal prosecutors to file notice with the judge kwhowho was overseeine criminal case of this man, president trump's deputy campaign chairman, rick gates, due to notify the judge in gate's case today as to what sentence they think rick gates should get. this has been an eagerly anticipated part of this case, and indeed, part of the overall trump scandals and their criminal case components. because unlike paul manafort, the president's campaign chairman who said he would cooperate with prosecutors and then didn't, and lied to prosecutors and now he's in prison for seven-plus years because of it, unlike manafort who said he'd cooperate and didn't, manafort's deputy, rick gates, who worked with manafort, both in his ukraine work, and you know, they were working for

pro kremlin political parties who came with manafort to work on the trump campaign in 2016. rick gates, actually has been cooperating. manafort said he would and then he didn't. gates said he would cooperate and he certainly has. including testifying in multiple trials so far. gates has been a cooperating witness for prosecutors for almost two years now. so we have been really anticipating this statement from prosecutors summing up the extent of his cooperation, the value of his cooperation, how they think a judge should weigh his cooperation against his felony convictions and the stuff that he has confessed to. should be super interesting. right, this is the super cooperator of all the trump scandals in materiaterms of cri cases. seeing what prosecutors have to say about how helpful he was to them, we have been waiting for this for a long time, and that document from prosecutors was

due by close of business today, but surprise, in a last minute filing right before the close of business today, right up against the deadline, the u.s. attorney in washington, d.c. filed instead this short notice with the court acknowledging that the judge, yes, had told the prosecutors and the defense that they both had to have their sentencing memos about rick gates in today but the prosecutors say they are not ready. quote, the government is continuing to gather materials for the government's memorandum in aid of sentencing. with the court's leave we also plane to file under seal a supplemental motion regarding mr. gate's assistance. a supplemental motion that contains sensitive information related to ongoing criminal matters. oh, therefore, the government quote respectfully requests a one day extension of time to file its memorandum in aid of sentencing and moves this court for leave, its supplemental

motion. mr. gaeltes consents to the government's request. who knows why they need one extra day. i put my deadlines off too. it's one of those days, it was impossible to keep up with everything. it may be possible that there's something materially significant about exactly when day it is that they're asking for as an extension. maybe they really needed something they couldn't get until tomorrow morning. but they have asked for a one day extension, and it is news itself that rick gates is still providing assistance to prosecutors even at this last date. something that relates to ongoing criminal matters and is sen sensitive and has to be filed under seal. we kind of thought rick gates testifying against paul manafort, talking to the grand jury, rick gates testifying on the stand in the roger stone trial. we kind of thought that was it. but apparently not. apparently there is more to get out of rick gaetes and it is

sensitive enough that we the public won't be allowed to see what prosecutors are going to file. that was a little bit of a curve ball tonight. just as we were getting on the air, heading down to the studio a few minutes ago, we did get in the defense submission, gates defense lawyers telling the judge in his case why they think he shouldn't get any prison time. that alone is interesting but we're still waiting for what the prosecutors have to say, which should be fascinating. we'll have a little bit more on that coming up. i should also mention we originally thought we would be seeing trump national security adviser, mike flynn, it was this time last year that mike flynn was initially in court expecting to get his sentence for the felony count on which he has pled guilty. this time last year when he showed up for sentencing, that's when things fell apart for mike flynn in open court when the judge made clear flynn was going to get the book thrown at him with his sentencing judge. after confronting flynn with all

sorts of things he thought about him, the judge did allow flynn to delay that sentencing so he could go back to prosecutors and cooperate some more to try to alleviate what otherwise looked like it was going to be a really stiff sentence. that was a year ago that the judge sent him away and said you probably don't want to be sentenced by me right now. you probably want to help yourself a little more in terms of what you can stack up against the sentence i'm thinking about giving you. he went away a year ago on that basically advice from the judge but over the course of this past year, that's really not how it went. mike flynn didn't go to prosecutors and help them lots more so prosecutors would come back and say, wow, he's been even more helpful, we want you to be more lenient, it didn't go that way. prosecutors to the contrary are discussing dissatisfaction with the degree flynn is helpful to

them. flynn has switched to a different legal team, a fox news pundit legal team. the legal team has made over the top allegations about the evil justice department and evil fbi and innocent mike flynn being targeted by deep state, and the fbi themselves being the real criminals. sentencing was delayed again because his new lawyers said there was this inspector general report at the justice department which would shed important new light on the bogus case against mike flynn. the judge in flynn's case, the same one who sent him away a year ago and said you might want to help yourself more before you hear the sentence. that same judge agreed to once again delay flynn's sfentencing until after the inspector general's report came out so everybody could see what the inspector general concluded about the propriety of the case,

the original decision to open an investigation into flynn. as of today, that inspector general report is out. if you read the judge in mike flynn's case, it's easy to imagine that you might be a little bit annoyed at this point if in fact you delayed the sentencing because of what you believed were good faith assertions from mike flynn's lawyers that this new report was going to change everything, it was going to, you know, make the case against mike flynn fall apart. it was going to expose the dastardly fbi for only having pursued flynn because of some political vendetta against flynn or donald trump. whatever else they thought this would give him. you might imagine the judge today having the opportunity to see this report might be annoyed. the inspector general report out today does discuss the fbi opening their investigation into mike flynn and they conclude that it was no problem. ig took a hard look at it t seems pretty kosher, definitely nothing wrong with the mike

flynn investigation. this is what's in the inspector general report on flynn. quote, the initial investigative objective of cross fire hurricane, the russia investigation, was to determine which individuals associated with the trump campaign may have been in a position to have received the alleged offer of assistance from russia. after conducting preliminary open source and fbi database inquiries intelligence analysts on the cross fire hurricane team identified three individuals, carter page, paul manafort and michael flynn associated with the trump campaign with either ties to russia or a history of travel to russia. on august 10th, 2016, the team opened separate counter intelligence cases on page, manafort, and george papadopoulos, under code famous assigned by the fbi. six days later on august 16th, a counter intelligence case was opened on flynn under another code name assigned by the fbi. each case was designated as a sensitive investigative matter

because the individual subjects were believed to be prominent in a domestic political campaign. inspector general explains the predicate information quote the opening electronic communication, the opening statement for the flynn investigation stated that there was an articulable factual basis that flynn may have been involved in tvractivity on beha of the russian federation. the document cross referenced predication to cross fire hurricane investigation and stated that flynn was an adviser to the trump campaign who had various ties to state affiliated entities of russia and who traveled to russia in december 2015. that's what the fbi did when it opened its investigation into flynn. was there anything wrong with them opening that investigation into flynn? the inspector general says no.

not at all. from page 352, quote, we concluded that the fbi had stuff predication to open full counter intelligence investigations of papadopoulos, page, flynn and manafort in august of 2016, and with the opening of cross fire hurricane itself, we concluded that the quantum of information articulated by the fbi to open individual investigations was sufficient. particularly in the context of the fbi's separate and ongoing efforts to address russian interference in the 2016 u.s. elections. so the fbi was looking at russia interfering in the 2016 elections. offering the assistance from russia or coordinate with russia witingly or unwittingly to carry out the operation. the fbi looked at people in the trump campaign who might have been in a position to do that sort of thing and flynn is one

of the people they investigatored. that's the investigation -- investigated. that's the investigation that led to a felony, that's what he's waiting to be sentence ds -- sentenced on. because the sentencing was delayed, because his lawyers were sure, and the inspector general was something the judge wanted to see before any effort to sentence mike flynn, since the fbi set him up, let's wait to see that report. the inspector general report is out. it concludes mike flynn was not set up, and the fbi did nothing wrong when they opened their investigation into him. there's also no indication in the inspector general's report that the fbi did anything wrong over the course of its case against flynn which resulted in him pleading guilty to a felony. so president trump's national security adviser mike flynn is resume app presumably running out of rabbits in terms of what his lawyers have available to

continue to try to pull out of a hat, to keep the judge from pronouncing his sentence. we know he wants a presidential pardon. it would appear he's at at end of his rope as to what he can do to continue to delay his federal court sentencing. we're waiting to hear at any time from the judge in the case. the inspector general report is out, and offers flynn no help for this somewhat crazy defense he and his fox news lawyers have been mounting in court. now when it comes to rick gates, we expect we will hear from prosecutors about the rick gates sentencing tomorrowment some will be filed under seal. it's not known if the ongoing criminal matter pertains to mike flynn. the mine flynn case is open. it could pertain to anybody else from trump land. the criminal cases adjacent to the president, all of these criminal cases, so many are live and underway.

and don't forget, all of these federal criminal cases are technically under the auspices of the u.s. department of justice run by attorney general william barr, and that is becoming an increasingly weird and even concerning dynamic. because the prosecutors who have brought all of these cases against manafort and against gates and against flynn and against papadopoulos, and against stone and all the russian military officers and against constantine and all of these federal criminal cases that have been brought by prosecutors that are alongside or abutting trump and his presidential scandals, all of the prosecutors who have brought all of those cases are working under the auspices of bill barr, and bill barr appears now day by day to increasingly be at war with the justice department that he is leading.

it includes the whole fantasy that the russia investigation was a deep state plot designed to sabotage donald trump's political chances. i mean, the inspector general chased down all the little fuzzy threads of that hairball conspiracy theory and found it to all be nonsense. and just look at the conclusions of the report. there's a long executive summary. look at that. look at the conclusions. conclusion, page 410. quote, the decision to open the cross fire hurricane investigation was made by the fbi's then counter intelligence decision, assistant director bill, after multiple days of discussions and meetings among fbi officials. the inspector general's office includes that priestap's, was in compliance with department and fbi policies, we did not find

documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced his decision. cross fire hurricane was opened for an authorized investigative purpose and with sufficient factual predication. as to the use of informants and confidential sources and these, you know, allegations from the president and from attorney general william barr that the trump campaign was some how spied on, we did not find any that political bias influenced the fbi's decision to conduct these operations. we found no evidence that the fbi attempted to place any confidential human sources within the trump campaign or recruit members of the trump campaign as human sources or task human sources to report on the trump campaign. so the inspect sor general looked into it in detail, and concluded that the individual

investigations, people with the trump campaign, those all sound. the russia investigation and if the trump campaign was in on what russia was doing, that was fundamentally sound. the report did criticize the way the fbi filled out the court application for the one fisa warrant they obtained over the whole investigation, a fisa warrant into carter page who we know before his involvement with the trump campaign was someone whose name surfaced in other russian intelligence investigations in the united states. the inspector general's report broadly debunks the conspiracy theories on the right that everybody in these investigations had fisa warrants against them. it turns out one guy had a fisa warrant, carter page. they take issue with the way the carter page warrant was applied for and the way the updates to those applications went. but that's it. the inspector general debunks

that there was any anti-trump political bias motivating these decisions. they debunked the idea that the christopher steele dossier was the basis for opening the fbi's russia investigation. it absolutely was not, and oh, by the way, no, there was no spying on the trump campaign. >> so you're not suggesting, though, that spying occurred? >> i don't -- well, i guess you could -- i think there's a spying did occur, yes. i think spying did occur. >> spying did not occur. according to the justice department. justice department's independent t inspector general report came out concluding definitively, the trump campaign was not spied on, which you would, i mean, given the seriousness of the allegation the trump campaign was spied on. given the fact that the attorney

general made that allegation, right, while giving sworn testimony in congress that he threw that out there, now that his own justice department has concluded, no, they weren't spied on. under normal circumstances that would be the occasion for the attorney general to resign. from having thrown out an allegation that serious, that grave, with no reason for doing so, and then being dis proven, under normal circumstances, a senior government official having being called out that badly on something that serious, you might expect a resignation. rather than, what we actually got today was attorney general william barr releasing a statement taking issue with the finders of the inspector general report and saying he doesn't believe it, trying to spin the findin findings of the inspector general report and making them seem more in line of the crazy criticism he and the white house

have been promoting for months. >> when william barr put out his report, i've read the mueller report and trust me it's awesome for donald trump. it was oddly effective for the public misunderstanding of the mueller report. it appears he is trying to do this again with the inspector general report. this inspector general report debunks the conspiracy theories about the russia investigation. barr has never the less put out a statement saying well, as far as he can tell, none of that is right. the problem this time is that number one, we've all got the report. we can read it ourselves. we don't have to rely on bill barr smiziummarizing. we can now more easily recognize, yeah, this is what bill barr does as trump's attorney general. him putting out a statement, descenting @findings of the

department. we know that's an important story about bill barr, how devoted he will apparently remain to whatever fake exculpatory theory about the behavior of the president and that of his campaign, including all the guys that are under indictment or already in jail. it tells you something about william barr as attorney general. but we know better than to expect that his statements about things like this tell you anything about what's actually in the report. so we can all read the inspector general report ourselves. in terms of the criticism of the way the fisa application for the carter page fisa warrant went, the fbi has already said they not only accept, they embrace those findings of the report and embrace the recommendations of the inspector general about how to improve those policies and procedures, apparently there will now be some sort of follow on report about reforming the way the fbi and justice department seek wire tapping applications from the fisa court, okay.

but the whole witch hunt idea, the deep state kabal, the russia investigation being a coup against president trump, all of those talking points today, took a hard blow from this 476 page deep examination of all of those crazy claims. and that report arrives in the middle of what may be the climactic impeachment hearing today before the judiciary committee. the committee spent the first several hours of this impeachment hearing today having one long opening statement after the other from the committee chair from the ranking member, the committee counsel, then the other committee council and the witness who was a committee council and other witness who was also a committee counsel. for many hours at the start of the hearing, it was individual guy lawyers talking out loud. when they finally started mixing it up and cross examining the witnesses and having actual back and forth between the questioners and interrogating

the president's behavior in the impeachment scandal. that moment in the hearing is when they released the inspector general report, and everybody had to go pay attention to something else for a while when the hearing was finally getting super interesting. we have to pay attention to everything at once. this is just what it's like in our nation's history and the news cycle. the impeachment hearing today will go down in the record of the scandal as the sort of definitive summation of what the president is accused of having done. what he's being impeached for, and some of the questioning, members of the judiciary committee did a good job, not just drilling into the nature of the crime but the direct culpability for it and the ongoing danger of what the president did, which is ultimately why the house of representatives said they are moving fast now to get this resolved before the next election is monkey wrenched too. >>. just two days ago, president trump stated publicly that he

hopes that his personal attorney rouge wi rudy giuliani will report to the department of justice and congress the results of mr. giuliani's efforts in ukraine last week to pursue these false allegations meant to tarnish vice president biden. president trump's attempt to coerce a foreign country to help him cheat to win an election and a clear and present danger to our free and fair elections and to our national security. >> mr. goldman, who sent rudy giuliani to ukraine to smear joe biden? >> president trump. >> who fired the anti-corruption ambassador in ukraine, marie yovanovitch. >> president trump. >> who told ambassador sondland and ambassador volker to work with rudy giuliani on ukraine? >> president trump. >> who told vice president pence to not go to president zelensky's inauguration. >> president trump. >> who ordered his own chief of

staff mick mulvaney to withhold critical military assistance to ukraine. >> president trump. >> who refused to meet with president zelensky in the oval office? >> president trump. >> who ignored on july 25 his own national security council's anti-corruption talking points? >> president trump. >> who asked president zelensky for a favor? >> president trump. >> who personally asked president zelensky to investigate his political rival joe biden? >> president trump. >> who stood on the white house lawn and confirmed that he wanted ukraine to investigate vice president biden? >> president trump. >> who stood on that same lawn and said china should also investigate joe biden. >> president trump. >> as to anything we do not know in this investigation, who has blocked us from knowing it? >> president trump and the white house. >> so there's a lot of moving

parts here. right now a lot of stuff happening at once. i should tell you this is important breaking news, the head of the foreign affairs committee, congressman elliot engel tonight said we should expect a press conference early tomorrow morning in which the chairs of the committees are going to announce their next steps on articles of impeachment. we had been expecting that that announcement might actually include their plans for what they are going to put in the articles of impeachment against president trump. that's what -- i was comfortable saying we are expecting that when we got on the air. since i have been on the air in the past few minutes a senior democratic aide has confirmed to nbc news that the house will introduce articles of impeachment tomorrow morning. "the washington post" has just in the past few minutes reported that their expectations, that the house of representatives is going to draft two articles of impeachment against trump, one

on abuse of power and the other on obstruction of congress. that's breaking news, from elliot engel, the chairman of foreign affairs, one of the committees that has been investigating this thing, saying at the press conference the chairs of the committees, we may be getting the articles of impeachment against the president as early as then. so it's just a remarkable bookend on this time in our history, right, the night before we're apparently going to get the impeachment articles against donald trump, for him inviting a foreign country to interfere on his behalf of the 2020 election, the eve of those impeachment articles being unveiled. we also get the validation that the russia investigation was sound and when the fbi looked at russia interfering in our election, and started investigating whether anybody on the trump campaign was wittingly or unwittingly coordinating with

russia on that interference, that decision by the fbi to launch that investigation was sound. it was not a witch hunt. it was not the product of political bias. these bookends, right, i mean for this to be happening the day before we're going to get the impeachment articles for him trying to get interference in 2020, the spin coming out of washington on both of tehese developments, the inspector general report, the spin coming out of washington on these things is like, you know, a blender or puree with a lid off. it's an absolute chaotic whirlwind of messy spin, and it will stay like that for a while. there are simple facts at the heart of this that we are going through. we'll be talking with a member of the judiciary committee, and talking with somebody that has a significant role himself in this inspector general report reviewing the origins of the russia investigation. big night for us tonight. stay with us. tion htg night for us tonig stay with us

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this is from section 2, subsection a, department of

justice national security division. the department was first notified about the opening of cross fire hurricane on august 2nd, 2016, when fbi official bill priestap, briefed several representatives from the national security division, including deputy assistant attorney adam hicky, and david laufman, counter intelligence and export control chief. according to laufman, and his notes of the briefing, fbi officials described the information received from a foreign government that caused the bureau to open the initial investigation and the four individuals the fbi had identified through its initial investigative work, members of the campaign and had ties to russia. he told us, meaning he told the inspector general's office, his impression had raised obvious alarm bells in the fbi and he said the information resonated with him. he also said the information the fbi provided at the briefing

presented the question whether someone in the russian government was working with the campaign to influence the u.s. elections. laufman told us quote we certainly understood the significance of the matter and the need for further investigation, and he said that it would have been a dereliction of duty and responsibility of the highest order not to commit the appropriate resources as urgently as possible to run these facts to the ground, to find out what was going on. david laufman led the counter intelligence and expert control section at the justice department, served first under president obama, and for a year under president trump. his work at the justice department has led to the high profile convictions you have seen lately for unregistered foreign lobbying. he helped to oversee the hillary clinton e-mail investigation and the trump/russia probe. he was there from the beginning. he was there in the room, and he joins us here now. david laufman, former head of the intelligence section of the doj under president obama and

that is one of the sections of the inspector general report that discusses you, and your involvement at the outset of the russia investigation. let me just ask you whether you take any issue with the way that you appear in this report and how you feel about it overall. >> i'm fine with their mention of me. i mean, i think this is a predijous piece of work that reflects on the inspector general and their team. there are a number of serious flaws and irregularities in the fisa process. the fbi as you said is going to embrace those and commit to reforms that the department of justice will support but on the key issues, the grievances by congressional republicans who asked for this investigation that this was a witch hunt, that this was spying on the campaign. this was an effort to, you know, foment a coup, there could not be a more utter and complete

repudiation of those conspiracy theories and the meticulousness with which this investigation was conducted, laid out in hundreds of pages for the american people to see. >> i mean, this is a dense report. it's 470 something pages but also single space, small type at times, it's got so much detail, it doesn't read like a beautiful narrative, but we do actually get a compelling narrative about the initial days of the investigation, the fbi being confronted with investigation that they believed was adequate predicate to start looking at something they knew was very sensitive. when you told the inspector general's office that the initial information that you heard about why the fbi opened that investigation, this information from the australian government that somebody in the trump campaign appeared to have advanced knowledge of what russia had done, four individuals associated with the trump campaign who appeared to have links to russia that were at least worth looking at,

according to the report you said that resonated with you, what did you mean by that? >> what get lost at times, we had been living for weeks and months to subvert the upcoming election. we knew there was an intense state sponsored effort by the russian government to subvert the election. now comes this report that someone associated with the trump campaign said they may come into possession of information derogatory to the rival candidate and it was like a bookend to use your phrase to what we are living with. it came from a credible source. we would have been irresponsible not to take appropriate actions to commit resources to undertake that investigation, andic everything you see in that report bears that out. >> are you troubled by the fact that there isn't, as far as we know, there isn't a parallel justice department or fbi investigation into the president's actions to openly

solicit ukraine and even china to provide derogatory information about his political rivals for 2020. >> i do think it's curious, the department of justice, that normally undertakes the investigations, the public integrity section is not known as wall flowers when it comes to aggressive, investigative, creative theory and here along the side, we have this attorney general fomenting reinvestigations of investigations that were already begun and perhaps closed at the behest of political supporters of the president, but in this current situation involving campaign finance, we're just not even going to start an investigation, i mean, that's really kind of hard to add up. >> i want to ask you to stay with us for just a second because i want to ask you about that. we have statements taking issue with the inspector general's report with the attorney general and also a very unusual statement from a u.s. attorney who's been tasked by the attorney general as looking into other parts of this. can you stick with us.

>> all right. >> david laufman, head of the counter intelligence and justice department until recently. we'll be right back. stay with us. y. we'll be right back. stay with us you can find it in the vitamin aisle in stores everywhere. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. for your worst sore throat pain, try vicks vapocool drops. it's not candy, it's powerful relief. ahhh vaporize sore throat pain with vicks vapocool drops and try new vapocool spray. fine, no one leaves the tablefine, we'll sleep here. ♪ it's the easiest because it's the cheesiest. kraft. for the win win.

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♪ ♪ ahhh, you're finally building that outdoor kitchen. yup - with room for the whole gang. ♪ ♪ see how investing with a j.p. morgan advisor can help you. visit your local chase branch. as we are informed this evening that the congress will be moving forward as early as tomorrow morning with unveiling articles of impeachment against president trump, remarkably because all of these things have to happen all at once, and because there are poets among the news gods, remarkably tonight, we have also got an inspector general report from the department of justice reflecting on the origins of the

russia investigation finding that there was not political bias or other improper considerations that led the justice department and the fbi to open up investigations of russia interfering in our election the joining us once again is david laufman, the former head of the counter intelligence inside the justice department under president trump and the first year under president obama and the first year of president trump's turn which means he was there at the outset of the russia investigation. david, i wanted to ask you about the response to this report today. we just discussed the fact that attorney general william barr put out a statement essentially contesting the findings of his own department of the inspector general but there was also a second statement from john durham, the u.s. attorney for connecticut who has been additionally tasked by attorney general william barr with looking into other elements, a criminal investigation into the russia investigation. . >> if you think barr's statement was unusual, durham's statement is even more bizarre.

here you have a sitting prosecutor conducting a pending criminal investigation making a public statement seeming to denigrate the scope and adequacy of the findings of the ig investigation while pointing out that he appears to be in position of some secret information from some other government agency that the ig had no access to as if to preserve the possibility that these findings will be undermined later by some new revelations. >> i mean, it's worth stressing this is an active u.s. attorney who is involved in an active criminal investigation that is pending, of which we have seen no public facing indictments. even if all he had said was we're positive things had nothing to do with the sort of controversial ground he's tread upon, it's weird for the prosecutor to talk about his investigation while it's ongoing period. >> it's very uncommon, prosecutors speak fropening

statements, examination of witnesses, they don't issue press conferences in the middle of their investigation to comment on someone else's investigation and to talk about how much better their investigation is than the other investigation. i've never heard of such a thing happening. >> is mr. durham breaking a rule at the justice department wi -- by doing this. are there specific regulations? >> they didn't think they needed a rule to govern this. it's unusual. i think it reflects poorly to lend his name prematurely, into this political arena because this has the ba tina of political support for barr's own statement, statements other people on behalf of the president have been making and that reflects incredibly on mr. durham. >> david good to have you here.

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take a wild guess mr. castor, how many times has president trump met with vladimir putin or talked to him? >> i don't know the number. >> it's 16. >> okay. >> how many times has president trump met at the white house with president zelensky? >> it's 0. and who is president trump meeting with at the white house tomorrow, do you know? >> i'm not. >> it's russian foreign minister lavrov. >> and what makes me angry is that this president, president trump thinks he can get away with it, but he got caught. and he tried to cover it up. but we won't let him do that. >> scenes from today's apparently potentially climactic public impeachment hearing at the judiciary committee, joining us now is congresswoman valu

demming, a long time police chief, thank you for being here tonight. i know it's been a heck of a long day. >> good to be with you, rachel. >> multiple news outlets, are reporting that the house is going to introduce articles of impeachment first thing tomorrow basically unveiling articles of impeachment against the president at a press conference with key democratic chairman. i am guessing that you can not get out in front of that news, but i'm hoping that you can share what you might know about what seems like a fast moving series of events, culminating that announcement tomorrow. >> well, rachel, as you know, the speaker made an announcement last week e speaker made an annot last wee , of course we take this process very very seriously. we were at work all day saturday and all day sunday. a meeting t we'll be back meeting first thing in the morning. so in terms of what the articles will look like, that is not my announcement i do expect an announcement will

be made tomorrow in conjunction with the committee chairs who have jurisdiction over those committees. >> in terms of putting together the case against president trump, you're obviously -- all those closed door depositions with 17 witnesses, that remarkable series of public hearings in front of the intelligence committee and now these two long public hearings in front of the judiciary committee talking about not just the factual record but the constitutional basis for impeachment. do you, yourself, in terms of thinking about making up your own mind about how you are going to vote and also what you want to be in those articles, do you feel like you know what you need to know or do you feel like there are holes in the record that may materially affect your base level decision here? >> well, you know, it's been amazing how much evidence that we have been able to accumulate in about 75 days. but the bottom line is this, the best witness, the most effective witness, the most compelling

witness in this experiment quire has been the president of the united states. we don't have to guess or figure out or surmise on what the president said on the call record from july 25th. the president was clear when he spoke to president zelensky that he wanted him to get involved in a political investigations in other words, the president put his own personal political interests above that of the nations, and also really jeopardize our national security. so while it appears to have been a short period of time, the evidence that we have in this case is pretty overwhelming, the testimony has been very compelling. and i do believe that we have everything we need right now to proceed.

congresswoman val demings, thank you for making time for us. we're following breaking news, nbc news has now confirmed what the "washington post" was reporting earlier this hour. which is that the house is expected to draft two articles of impeachment against president trump. those may be unveiled as soon as tomorrow morning. stay with us. led as soon as tomorrow morning stay with us does your house still smell stuffy? that's because your home is filled with soft surfaces that trap odors and release them back into the room. so, try febreze fabric refresher febreze finds odors trapped in fabrics (bubbles popping) and cleans them away as it dries. use febreze every time you tidy up to keep your whole house smelling fresh air clean. fabric refresher even works for clothes you want to wear another day. make febreze part of your clean routine for whole home freshness. ♪la la la la la. skip to the good part with alka-seltzer plus. now with 25% more concentrated power. nothing works faster for powerful cold relief.

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i mentioned at the top of the show we got hold of a new correspondent filing from the defense attorneys for this man,

rick gates, president trump's deputy campaign chair. he's awaiting sentencing in federal court after pleading guilty on felony charges. rick gates' lawyers are asking for no prison time for mr. gates. quote, we respectfully ask, your honor, to suppose a sentence consisting of probation with minimum supervision. his lawyers say their client's extensive cooperation with the reason he should get no jail time. he spent over 500 hours working with the special counsel's office and other federal prosecutors. they note that he testified, and they say he is, quote, committed to testify nchld other trials if requested. prosecutors told the court tonight they want to file a sealed statement tomorrow about rick gates' cooperation in ongoing criminal proceedings. that is something they describe as too sensitive to be shown to the public. they want it to be filed sealed.

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sign and drive off in a new lincoln with zero down, zero due at signing, and a complimentary first month's payment. the calendar is starting to look weird, all the stuff we have to put at the same time, "u" to do a weird mix of colored pencils and crayons and stuff. stuff just doesn't fit together. for example, the iowa caucuses are eight weeks from tonight. also nbc news is reporting impeachment articles are expected to be unveiled against president trump tomorrow morning. also tomorrow night, mayor pete buttigieg is going to be joining me here live at 9:00 p.m. here in studio. how do i make these things coexist in my calendar in a way that keeps he sane? that does it for us tonight. see you tomorrow. it's time for "the last word" with lawrence o'donnell. >> we're going to get to the impeachment news. we have david cicilline, we'll ask what he knows about articles of impeachment that will be announced tomorrow