possibility of peacefully resolving a major threat to regional and international security. without a deal, we risk even more war in the middle east. so let's not mince words. the choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy or some form of war. maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now, but soon. >> that's an absurd argument and it's one they've made from the beginning. it's what the president negotiates or it's war. that's never been the alternative. >> welcome to a.m. joy. i wonder who turned out to be right? one of donald trump's most prominent act was to pull the u.s. out of the iran nuclear deal. according to the british ambassador he did so just to spite the memory of president obama. surprise, surprise. and today we find ourselves on the brink of war with iran after

the trump administration assassinated one of the highest ranking military officials in iran. soleimani, head of that country's military secret service. it did so unilaterally. it did so without informing the leaders of congress and without a congressional declaration of war, authorization of the use of military force or any other military authorization. the trump administration is also recycling in order to justify itself one of the oldest and most tried and true claims that has been used over and over again by presidents attempting to justify dragging the nation into foreign conflicts. he did it to make america safe, he says. >> as president, my highest and most solemn duty is the defense of our nation and its citizens. we took action last night to

stop a war. we did not take action to start a war. >> works every time for administrations seeking war. right? i'm sure that you, that we, particularly in the media will react to what he's done the way george w. bush launched a war in iraq claiming to make america safe after 9/11 which iraq had nothing to do with. i'm sure trump hopes we will get behind him and send his approval rating soaring. don't hold your breath. i want to go to the chief correspondent. richard, i want to start by asking you, is there any evidence presented by the administration or that you've seen on your reporting on the ground that there was some imminent threat that soleimani presented to the united states? >> reporter: there has been no direct evidence presented by the administration and nothing that we've seen. but frankly speaking, the --

that is what soleimani did. we don't know if he was organizing what kind of attack, we don't know if he was organizing something imminent in the future, where, when or how but the fact that he would have been meeting with militia leaders because they were in the same convoy that was killed for him, that's not that unusual and the things that they would meet to do would be to carry out attacks against the u.s. that is something they've done in the past. that is something that is in their interest. they generally both want the united states out of this country. that is what they have been set up to do. but, no, we don't have any specific information but you can draw a logical conclusion that that's the kind of thing they would be talking about. and frankly when you listen to officials at the u.s. state department and they described yesterday in a call to reporters

what this imminent attack was all about, it was quite vague in their explanation. they said that it was going to be attack on u.s. personnel or u.s. bases in iraq or syria or the region or lebanon, a very, very broad picture that doesn't necessarily explain the kind of pinpoint specific attack that would necessarily justify this kind of imminent threat logic. so do i doubt that they were planning some sort of attack? no. how precise and well cooked it was, that i really don't know. >> is there any -- can you explain to us what relationship there is if any between the late soleimani and this attack on the u.s. embassy recently in iraq?

>> reporter: so that is probably more causal, more cause and direct. you have to understand what soleimani does. the islamic revolution in iran, the one that happened in 1979, it was -- it overthrew the government. the u.s. has had a low level war with iran since then and so has israel and there have been numerous attacks, cyber attacks, iranian scientists have been killed. israel has attacked iran and iranian officials in syria numerous times. so this -- this conflict has been going on. the force that soleimani was responsible for is the external wing of the revolutionary guard.

it is designed to protect the islamic revolution, a revolutionary guard overseas by setting up these proxy militias, these forward advanced forces in iraq, in lebanon which is hezbollah, in syria, in afghanistan, it also has smaller, much less effective outer wings even beyond the region. that is what it does. it projects the power of the islamic revolution and the islamic guard to the region. and its main interest in doing that is to push u.s. forces out of this region in order to protect core iran. so getting back to the original point, was he involved in directing an allied militia to attack the u.s. embassy? the u.s. officials say that he

was and there's -- that i have -- i don't question their claim of that. >> okay. thank you very much for that information. really appreciate it. thank you. let's bring in a deputy national security advisor under president obama. thank you both for being here. i'm going to come to you first at the table here, ben. donald trump is now claiming he had intelligence of an imminent threat from iran. it's not clear to me that he even knows anything that he's talking about. here is donald trump back in 2015 describing who soleimani was and the differences between them and another group of people who are related. take a listen. >> are you familiar with general soleimani? >> yes. i -- go ahead. give me a little. go ahead. tell me. >> he runs the forces.

>> go ahead. >> i think the curds by the way have been horribly mistreated. >> no, not the curds. the iranian military forces, the bad guys. do you expect his behavior to zbl -- >> no i thought you said curds. >> so this is a guy who didn't a couple years ago didn't know the difference. does it sound credible to you that there was some threat assessment by the same intelligence community he doesn't trust that led to a logical reason to have this action of assassinating this foreign leader? >> like richard said, the fact that soleimani might be directing militias that want the u.s. out of iraq, that i don't doubt. the specificity of the intelligence is an enormous question. i would think that they would have presented it to congress by now. what is the reason for this delay? and i think there are a couple

of other things that are relevant. they claim that they took the strike to revent an attack on hour personnel, but every analyst knows that taking the strike just raised the threat of attacks on our personnel so the logic of their entire case falls apart. secondly, his own intelligence community had told him that the iran nuclear deal was working and he lied and said that iran wasn't complying and used that to justify pulling out of the iran nuclear deal which started this cycle that we've been on for the last to years so there's a fundamental incoherence in what donald trump's strategy is here, what he thinks he's trying to achieve and whether we can trust whatever he says about the information he puts forward. frankly the rest of the world doesn't put any trust in anything donald trump says so the united states is also completely isolated as we find ourselves now on the brink of a much more serious conflict with iran. >> those of us who oppose the war thought that even having

britain go along with it didn't make it justifiable. but they told us it did. that was a lie. and now you have donald trump we're supposed to believe this guy that suddenly he believes intelligence forces and that he had an authorization. does an authorization to use military force about #/11 and iraq can that be transferred over to an individual that's from iran? >> absolutely not. we engage in this act of war. we assassinate a senior official of another government, a terrible guy responsible for lots of deaths but is this a wide source of action? with no congressional authorization for this, just step back and consider we are using an authorization to go to war in iraq in 2002 under false pretenses to justify killing the official of a different government? almost 20 years later? this is an insane way to conduct american foreign policy and potentially getting us into a

foreign country. >> probably the greatest irony of this is there was no country that benefitted more from us invading iraq for no real reason than iran. we are the ones who made them more powerful in iraq. we're the ones who increased their influence in iraq and now we have this enormous embassy because of an invasion for no reason and now donald trump is trying to use that unjustifiable military action to justify this. from your point of view, what would be the potential cost of this and do you agree with my assessment or am i wrong? >> i think you're quite right and it goes back to a broader issue. is the middle east to important at this point that it justifies this level of military involvement by the united states, military dominance by the united states, perhaps that would be a question that would be answered in the positive 40

years ago. today it is not the case. instead of actually protecting the united states we're getting more bogged down in the middle east, more endless war, nothing to really gain from it and that's trump's talking points on this issue are not incorrect but he is not acting on those talking points because he's now taking us to the precipice of war and we may end up in a war. just 24 hours after this assassination, almost all of the staff of the u.s. embassy has left, am lull of the staff of the embassy of the u.k. has left and almost all of the national are on their way to leaving so how has that made anyone more safe? >> indeed. by the way, this is the iranian foreign minister's response. the u.s. act of international terrorism targeting and assassinating general soleimani, the most effective force fighting isis is extremely dangerous and a foolish

escalation. can you just explain, you know, what the -- what would the threat be constituted from? so what would be the relationship between the forces and other potential actors that could retaliate against us? is the risk from the iran military forces proper or if associated groups. >> it's frankly both and this is part of the reason why this is a really dangerous situation because as much as of course he was an important figure within the i ran regime he had a following outside of iran as well and he was very disliked and hated in other corners of the region but le had a following that goes outside of the groups that iran has some degree of control over. so even if we end up in a scenario in which the trump administration and the iranians both conclude they want to deescalate that does not mean there will be control over other

entities who may want to take revenge. so the moment this was done we essentially lost control of the situation and i presume that's part of the reason why the united states did not assassinate soleimani at an earlier point. >> just remind you this is what donald trump said about president obama in order to get elected obama will start a war with iran. now that obama's poll numbers are in a tail spin watch for him to strike. remember what i had previously said, bam ha will eventually attack iran. here's now mike pompeo. i want to put that out there. here's mike pompeo on cnn yesterday. >> president trump's decision to remove soleimani from the battlefield saved american lives. there's no doubt about that. he was actively plotting in the region to take big action that would have put dozens if not

hundreds of american lives at risk. this was an intelligence based assessment that drove our decision making process. >> a specific target overseas? >> i'm not going to say anything more about the nature of the attack but know this was not just in iraq. it was throughout the region. >> the pause was doing a lot of work there. is that credible to you? >> it suggests that there's not a specific target to me. i mean, look, the notion that there may have been general aspirations from the iranians to try to again, target the u.s. entities in the region has been on going for over a decade now. at the height of the iraq war we made 160,000 troops you had the height of these attacks on u.s. forces and george bush did not take out soleimani. i do want to go back to something you said, joy. i wrote those words that you played from president obama and used very clear that a

negotiated settlement to the knew chloroissue was and now iran has resumed its nuclear program that had been rolled back under that deal and iran is lashing out and we're on the brink of war. so it's clear here that the predictions that lots of people made, that pulling out of that nuclear deal would bring us exactly where we are today and we're supposed to have confidence that donald trump can handle the management and i'm sitting here today, i would not make that prediction. >> before i lose you, does it disturb you as much as its does me that john bolton is now singing donald trump's praises after maybe pulled away from him on what he did in ukraine. when john bolton is happy that usually means war. >> there's hardly anything else that pleases john bolton and i think it shows without john bolton in the white house this

administration is still -- the president has still surrounded himself with either hawks who have a singular objective in mind which is to drag the united states into a confrontation with iran and doing so regardless whether this is in the interest of the united states, they have no understanding of the global priorities. they only have an obsession with iran and to go to war with that country. >> donald trump had pretended he was against the iraq war which he was not. he's just following right along the line like every other republican president. thank you very much. coming up, wag the dog. trump edition. that's next. edition. that's next. in my line of work, i come face to face with a lot of behinds. so i know there's a big need for gas-x maximum strength. it works fast. relieving pressure, bloating, and discomfort before you know it.

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it's actually fundamentally as american as anything. and it is a threat to the multiracial equal and open democracy that we've been fighting for in this country since people died on the battlefield in the civil war. >> i'll be here while john chancellor companies president nixon on his trip through the middle east. the president is in austria and before it's over he is scheduled to gou there egypt, jordan and israel. mr. nixon was barely off the ground before his lawyer announced the latest position on the executive privilege. president trump nixon restated his determination not to give up more water gate evidence to the house judiciary committee. >> much like donald trump while the walls of impeachment were

caving in on him nux son tried to shift the focus to the middle east. what he tried to do became known as impeachment diplomacy as people were rightly cynical of a president facing an early termination of his term. clinton ordered air strikes against iraq at the height of the monica lewinsky scandal. it was foretold in the iconic film "wag the dog." and the president's top advisors have been called together. >> oh, geez. >> a sexual misconduct occurred inside the oval office with the election only days away. how much will this scandal affect the outcome? >> now the top spin doctor. >> we can distract the press for 11 days. >> we can't afford more.

-- war. >> clinton was impeached by republican partisans and it went all the way to trial in the senate. so news flash to donald trump. in real life military distraction tactics do not alter the reality of impeachment. john, i want to read you a little thing from usa today and it's called the pitt falls of impeachment diplomacy. this is after robert mueller was reported. presidents often turn to foreign policy. nixon made one foreign trip in 1973 but visited ten countries in the month before his resignation. bill clinton visited palestinian territory is that the sort of explanation for what we're seeing here with donald trump? >> well, i'm always reluctant, joy, to draw a direct line between, say, the -- a strike on

soleimani and something like impeachment. i was when bill clinton was president. president trumps have a lot of things going on at the same time and certainly with this president, he is so impulsive that the idea of deliberately choosing distractions or diversions from what's going on has never entirely seemed to make sense to me but there are many reasons to be concerned about the choice we're making even if it's not to distract or change the equation on impeachment which it could. we know that the president is not honest. the majority of the american people have considered him dishonest from the beginning of his presidency and we've seen the extent and scope of the falsities he tells all the time. he is impulsive. he's not somebody who has deeply considered actions. he's pretty ignorant. he doesn't know much about the foreign policy issues he's

dealing with. and we know that the policy process in the white house is completely broken so all of those are reasons to be very concerned about the course the president's taken even if you don't think this is a purposeful attempt to distract from impeachment because remember, we had real issues. we have real conflict with iran. they did hit that base and kill an american contractor. they did after we responded with air strikes storm the embassy. so those are real events that rational presidents would respond to but this is not a president who inspires confidence in his decision making in any way. >> the other one you could have added to your list of reasons to be skeptical of donald trump is his feelings. he says what he thinks all the time very bluntly and he also tends to accuse other people of doing things he does. case in point. >> he is all projection all the time. nancy pelosi has identified

this. many people have said it. the idea that he said that obama is going to start a war to help his re-election that's revealing not of obama because obviously that is not something that barack obama did or would do, but trump imagines that other people think like he thinks, which is that everything is instrumental toward the advancement of donald trump. he's not somebody who has a philosophy of foreign policy, who has principled concern on public policy issues. he's somebody who has pretty much always assumed with himself what is good for his well being, his ego and that's a dangerous thing in a commander in chief. >> let me play you donald trump in 2011 project the way he thinks presidents thinks and acts. as you said he thinks everyone thinks in the same corrupt ways he does. >> our president will start a war with iran because he has

absolutely no ability to negotiate. he's weak and he's ineffective. the only sure way to get re-elected is to start a war with iran. we have a president that doesn't know the first thing about negotiation. we have a real problem in the white house, so i believe that he will attack iran sometime prior to the election because he thinks that's the only way he can get elected. isn't it pathetic? >> you could literally just take him out of it and read that script about donald trump and everyone would pretty much agree with it. let's move on to the other issue. was it donald trump didn't bother to tell the gang of eight who is supposed to be told in advance of these things.

that was speaker pelosi, but here is a guy who did get told. one was partying with donald trump and apparently the way you find out what he's going to do is you party with him in mar-a-lago. here's lindsey graham. >> senator, have you spoken to the president? is this what he's thinking or is this what you're thinking? >> well, this is what i'm thinking. i was briefed about the potential operation when i was down in florida. i appreciate being brought into the orbit. i really appreciate president trump letting the world know you cannot kill an american without impunity. >> what do you make of the party guest getting the information and not the full gang of eight? >> i mentioned before the policy in the white house has broken down and that is reflected in

the fact that somebody who's down in mar-a-lago with the president who would not normally be in that chain of liaison on an event of this kind unlike the gang of eight it shows you how dysfunctional the system is. i would also say that you know, presidents have been taking action in foreign policy without the consent of congress for a long time. presidents of both parties. that is not particularly new, but there are reasons some of which we've already talked about to doubt the specificity and credibility of the threat that mike pompeo invoked. mike pompeo said well, in the words of soleimani himself it was going to be big. the fact that soleimani said something was going to be big, that doesn't constitute specific intelligence and of course we all remember that mike pompeo is the guy who acted as if he didn't understand what had happened on that phone call with zelensky when it turned out he was on the call so his

credibility is not exactly robust either. >> none of these people are credible. that's the problem. thank you very much. and up next, the story donald trump really, really doesn't want us to talk about. m doesn't want us to talk about.

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these developments are a devastating blow to leader mcconnell's push to have a trial without the documents and witnesses we've requested. >> chuck schumer's move for an actual impeachment trial in the senate may have gotten momentum this week. pretty much confirm what we already knew. all roads lead back to donald trump when it came to using military aid as the lever to bully ukraine into helping trump get re-elected. the e-mails between the office of management and budget show they were discussing clear direction from trump himself.

nbc news did ask to be shown the documents and the reporter declined. the trump add money statihas no their security. thank you very much for being here, ryan. let's go into what these e-mails are. who is -- there is a person involved in e-mail chains. who is this person and what were they e-mailing about? >> so she's a very senior powerful member of the department of defense. she's in charge of all the finances and she is basically almost acting as a whistle-blower inside the administration. she's saying to the office of management and budget, what you're doing here is running afoul of the empowerment act. it's illegal. we have to spend the funds that congress has given us to go to ukraine and second, if we don't spend them by a certain date we will not be able to send all the funds to ukraine before the end of the fiscal year. >> right. >> and time again the officer of

management and budget's general counsel's office, appears to consistently misunderstand the process and then issues talking points and she says the talking points giving to the press are just not accurate. so she's pushing back very hard and warning them all along the way about the illegality of the whole and that the money can't go. >> so this is from the e-mails. officials were anxiously awaiting for the president to be convinced that the hole was a bad idea. and senior defense officials were searching for legal guidance worried that they will be blamed should it be lifs lifted too late. so who was pushing back? >> back against -- >> against holding the aid. >> it seems as the pentagon was a whole was pushing back.

the pentagon comes out looking quite good and the omb looking very bad. and what's also remarkable about it is the pentagon is saying to the office of management and budget this is illegal and the responses as you had just read out from duffy at the office of management and budget, clear direction from -- to continue to hold. >> and is there anything in these unredacted e-mails that you all were able to find that says the president wants it held because he's concerned about ukraine being corrupt? is the word corruption in any of these e-mails? >> that's a great question. so we have access to the fully unredacted versions. nothing in the e-mails about that. there's not a process that's going on. it's about what the man in the white house wants and then at the end of the day when they restore the aid at 11:30 p.m., he says they decided to restore

it. >> and so following this story, there's no evidence whatsoever to back up the screamed defense of donald trump by all of his minions in the house and his senate minions that say he was just concerned about corruption and he generally doesn't like foreign aid. there's no evidence of that but there's a whole lot of evidence that's just being the latest that he just wanted this aid held up because he wanted those announcements of investigations. have you in your reporting seen any evidence that donald trump was concerned about corruption and that's why he held up the aid? >> no, to the contrary. when he was given talking points in his phone call with zelensky, the ukranian president suggesting that you do raise the issue of corruption in ukraine given their history of just corruption in that country generally. not related to the bidens per se. he decided not to and this is

something the top ukraine hand on the nsc testified to. he said we gave him talking points saying he should raise this issue back in april during their first phone call and the president chose not to. so if he were truly concerned about corruption in that country you would think that he would raise it with the president at that point. he also did not raise it during his july phone call, the word corruption does not appear in that transcript or the, you know, reconstructed transcript that the white house released. the only thing that is mentioned is joe biden, crowd strike, these conspiracy theories about crew yan and interference so that really doesn't hold any water here and i think we're going to see the republicans if there is a senate trial could probably move a little bit away from that and focus more on well, it was justified for him to ask about ukranian interference because of a few people running around in 2016 trying to get information on paul manafort. i think that's more of the defense that we'll see. but i think that there is, you

know, a lot here that has yet to been covered because the office of management and budget is concealing roughly 20 e-mails between, mb and a top aid to mick mulvaney discussing the aid. not even a redacted version, just completely said no. so this is clearly something that you know, the evidence is going to continue to drip out. we'll see how it comes out during a senate trial. >> so if in fact the defense gets abandoned, that donald trump was just concerned about corruption. so if the new defense is he was trying to defend paul manafort, who if you could pick who democrats ought to call to testify in this regard, should democrats still try to get people related to this set of facts? >> so i think so. i think that's what's remarkable about the e-mails is that the people at the center of these e-mails are on senator schumer's

short list. duffy is on his short list. mulvaney, i think those are critical. >> mulvaney for those of you following the whole jumping of jobs was the head of omb ft he was both for a while but now he's chief of staff only. thank you guys very much and coming up, in the next hour of a.m. joy, are americans about to get duped into another war? join us. d into another war join us.

coming up. if you've been having deja vu this week you are not alone. more a.m. joy after the break. a. more a.m. joy after the break. , it will be a massacre. good luck. i am totally blind. and non-24 can throw my days and nights out of sync, keeping me from the things i love to do. talk to your doctor, and call 844-214-2424.

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this is a man who's put american lives at risk for at awfully long time, and last night was the night where we needed to strike to make sure this imminent attack that he was working actively was disrupted. >> weapons of mass destruction are controlled by a murderous tyrant who has already used chemical weapons to kill thousands of people. facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. >> welcome back to "a.m. joy." remember the early 2000s? yeah, you remember. the american president and his administration insisted that after 9/11, we couldn't afford to wait for the threat of iraq to become more imminent. we had to go to war because of weapons of mass destruction and even nukes, probably. keep in mind, iraq basically had no air force that could even reach us, nearly 7,000 miles away, even if they did have

nukes or wmds, which, of course, they didn't. remember that? well, welcome to your deja vu. donald trump and his administration, without providing any real proof, wants you to believe that they had to take out the top military leader in iran, qasem soleimani, because he posed an imminent threat. and trump knows that because the same intelligence community that he has called liars and accused of plotting a coup against him proved it to him. yeah, okay. did they run that proof by vladimir putin first to make it believable to you, mr. president? meanwhile, unlike the bush team, team trump isn't even bothering to do a misleading, lie-filled u.n. presentation. they just jumped right in with the drones. and over the past 24 hours, as this escalating mess unfolds, various prominent iraq war supporters have stepped forward to bless us with their opinions of the raid. former trump national security adviser john bolton, who, to be clear, has been jonesing for war with iran since the bush era, said, "hope this is the first step to regime change in

tehran." perfect! bolton is echoing a narrative that will sound familiar to those of you old enough to remember 2003, when we were told by our government that we were invading iraq, a sovereign nation, to liberate them from their murderous dictator who was allegedly building a war chest of nuclear weapons and planning to wage a war on us at any minute! and don't forget the lying implication by the bush administration that iraqi dictator saddam hussein had something to do with 9/11, which he didn't. that helped make the war much more marketable. pro tip -- the bush white house alumni might want to sit this one out, because we all remember all of that! there were no weapons of mass destruction in iraq, but once we were done, there were american torture chambers and hundreds of thousands of dead iraqi soldiers and dead iraqis, period, tens of thousands of injured or dead american troops, and it turns out all for nothing, for a lie. and now we're stuck with a giant, enormous iraq embassy, the largest u.s. embassy in the

world that is to be defended by this guy, the bone spurs guy. perfect. joining me now is senator debbie stabenow of michigan, one of only 23 senators who voted against the iraq war in 2002, the right vote. senator, what do you make of the fact that this president, who couldn't be bothered to fight in vietnam because he had bone spurs, apparently, who claims he was against the iraq war, which he called a stupid war, which he was for at the time but he pretends he didn't, has now potentially launched us into a war without informing the gang of eight but only telling his party friend and party guest, lindsey graham? >> well, joy, first of all, it's always great to be with you, and i want to thank you for your really terrific work on an ongoing basis. and let me start by saying that general soleimani was a bad guy, and there's nobody disagreeing with that. the question is why now?

and we know that, because we've been tracking him for years, there have been other opportunities under the obama administration, under president george w. bush, where there were opportunities. he's not hiding -- he wasn't hiding in a cave. he was out and doing things that obviously were bad, that we did not support, beyond the reach of iran, to militias around in the region. and certainly, i am very opposed to what he was doing. but the question really is why now? and so, we're going to go back this week, and i want to hear it. i mean, this president has to make a case that there was an imminent threat, not just say it. i mean, again, i was there with iraq. i sat through every briefing. i was in rumsfeld's conference room looking at video. i was one of those people that -- well, we all did -- took

it very, very seriously, listened to everything, and it just didn't add up to me at the time. i didn't believe what they were saying. and so, now we have a president who has even more problems with the truth, certainly very little credibility when it comes to these issues, and he's got a lot to explain to members of congress, why now? and then equally important, in fact at this point, more important, what do we do next? what do we do next? i mean, he chose to get us out of the nuclear agreement with iran and put us in a situation now where, rather than dealing with the biggest threat at the time, nuclear weapons in iran, and doing it diplomatically with all of our partners, instead of doing that, we now out of that, they are now back in the race, which is still the biggest threat is nuclear weapons.

and instead of having a process where we're dealing with that diplomatically and then could attack what they were doing on terrorism, which they've continued to do, no question about it -- we now are in a situation where i believe this is incredibly dangerous for americans, not only american soldiers, americans in the region, but i think americans wherever we are. and what is the plan? >> yeah. >> there better be a plan that they've got at this point, because they've now put us in -- we're in one of the riskiest situations that we could be in as americans. >> yeah. you talked about having sat through all of the intelligence briefings before the war in iraq. at any of those briefings, were you informed that qasem soleimani had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks? and i ask you that because mike pence, the vice president of the united states, has claimed that the late mr. soleimani, that he

assisted in the clandestine travel to afghanistan of 10 of the 12 terrorists who carried out the september 11th terrorist attacks in the united states. first of all, it was 12 people, not 15, so he doesn't understand that history. he's claiming this man was somehow part of 9/11. is that true? >> joy, that's a new one on me. i have to tell you. i sat through briefing after briefing, read all the documents. that name never came up. and so, it will be interesting to see now how all of this unfolds. we know they're pretty reckless with the truth and with facts, and it will be interesting to see going forward this week how they try to piece together some kind of a case. and i hope republican colleagues will join with us in really looking at this and the serious threat. this is not a war game, you know. this is not a pretend situation. we have now put our country, the

people of our country, our soldiers, our people, civilians around the world, in tremendous jeopardy with a country that does have the capacity, whether it's cyber attacks, whether it's attacking by sea, whether it's attacking on land, they have capacity to actually hurt and kill more americans. >> yeah. >> and so, it's very serious. and i hope everybody will take it as very serious. >> yeah. is the authorization to use military force that was passed after 9/11 and the authorization of military force that was used to allow the u.s. to justify going into iraq, is that applicable not only to iran but to any individual in iran? can that be extended to this action? >> you know, i can't imagine. i mean, my answer is no. now, again, i'll listen this week to see what their case is

for imminent threat and how they would piece that together, but i can't imagine that a credible case can be made for that. congress needs to be involved. we actually are article one. presidency is article two. one comes before two. and the fact is that congress needs to be intimately involved and needs to authorize force, needs to authorize war. and so, i'll listen. i always do. these are very serious things. i take them very seriously and will call them as i see them based on the evidence. but i can't imagine where they can make a case that this falls under the 2002 authorization. >> senator debbie stabenow, thank you so much. really appreciate your time this morning. thank you very much. >> you're welcome. >> thank you. and joining me now is yasmin if sumann and ayman mohyeldin, co-anchors of "first look" on

msnbc. malcolm nance, msnbc contributor and author of "the plot to betray america" and naveed jamali, "newsweek" columnist and author of "how to catch a russian spy." we were talking about this tweet by the vice president. your thoughts on -- it appears, maybe, that he just fired off a tweet that he wasn't thinking much about, or that the preparation is being made to try to link this person to 9/11 as a justification after the fact. >> there is a clear and obvious narrative, it seems, that's being built by the trump administration when you're seeing that tweet from the vice president, you're seeing him connect to the heart of what americans think about, which is 9/11. that's poking at the emotional bear of americans. you think about what you hear from a national security adviser o'brien yesterday, talking about why in which they pulled off this, what they believe was an imminent threat from intelligence that they had. and in fact, we see no evidence of that imminent threat as of yet. and when pressed on it, they basically said, well, we can talk about it, but saying that

they're going to offer up the intelligence to prove that there was an imminent threat is not necessarily clear. you hear from pompeo yesterday saying that there was a clear and imminent threat. you hear from the president himself trying to connect this to aabu bakr al baghdadi, saying it's on the same level as killing baghdadi, who was a stateless individual. we know that qasem soleimani was a government official in iran. so there is a very clear narrative, you feel, that the president and the white house and the trump administration is building for the american public to believe that this is on that same level, because they feel as if that is how they're going to get the american public behind them to believe them without necessarily presenting the evidence and making it clear as to why they had to pull off this killing now. because we know that they were tracking soleimani for many, many years. back in 2007, they were tracking soleimani and stanley mcchrystal wrote an article about it, saying we don't it then because he was too big and we knew the

ramifications of doing it back then, what would happen next. >> let's unpack this because first, it's illogical to suggest that people who have no relation to one another, right, al qaeda and the people who would be connected within iran, with iranian militias, which, they hate each other. there's no -- it is just fundamentally illogical to connect the two, so that's absurd on its face. however, the same people -- i'll come to you on this, ayman, who wanted to go to war with iraq, john boltons of the world, at the time wanted to extend that warrant to go to war in iran. there is an existing set of people who have wanted this for a long time. it alarms me when you start to hear people in this administration try to use 9/11 as a way to drag this country toward what a lot of people associated with trump want anyway. >> i think first of all, it is a low point in american politics when you're exploiting 9/11 to achieve a policy objective that is totally manipulated. and let's be very clear, mike pence's tweet is factually

unintentionally, i can't imagine that the vice president sends out a tweet without five or six people around him debating, hey, is this a smart decision or not, and doing it. first of all, there were 19 hijackers involved, not 12 terrorists. and among that, the actual 9/11 commission report that was put out made it very clear that the reason why those hijackers transited through iran to get to afghanistan was because iran had a policy of not stamping the passports of saudi nationals. that's why they used that. so in the same way that our allies, like the united arab emirates, saudi arabia, were exploited for 9/11 by the hijackers, so, too, was iran. to come around now and try to say iran was somehow complicit in 9/11 is the same as saying that the united arab emirates government or the saudi arabian government are also complicit in 9/11, which this administration has categorically rejected. so, my issue with the pence tweet is that it is a deliberate misleading, misstating of the facts, a possible deliberate lie to lead americans to believe once again that american

military actions in the middle east are justified. it's clearly -- >> without the evidence. >> it's clearly distressing to think that we haven't learned the lessons of 2003. when politicians stand up and lie to the american public about weapons of mass destruction, lie to us about intelligence, come out and carry out an attack in a sovereign nation, turn around, say there's an imminent attack, provide no evidence, no intelligence, and expect us all to believe it. we have a serious problem in this country where we have to start questioning, to what extent are we just going to allow these types of military operations to happen without any kind of accountability? >> right. >> and malcolm, i want to get you in this, because here's the challenge with this sort of story that they're trying to tell us. we know that foreign governments have been implicated in the deaths of people in other countries, right? if that then is the justification for military action against that country, you've had russia, for instance, implicated in the deaths of people that it wanted, you know, taken out in britain, for

instance. you've had the case where jamal khashoggi, who was an american resident, was killed, right? there are lots of ways that this kind of a doctrine could be misused. you can't then say that then it's justified to take military action against a member of those governments in response, you know. i mean, that is an insane kind of way to look at the world, right? >> it is insane, and i'm going to tell you where one of the sources of this doctrine may have originated. in the intelligence community, we have this sort of funny acronym called tccc. and it's called tom clancy combat concepts. that's when a civilian decision-maker reads something in a tom clancy novel and tries to pass it off as the basis of a political decision. in the book "executive orders" by tom clancy, with a president jack ryan, he forms the ryan doctrine. the ryan doctrine was that world

leaders or their commanders who support terrorism would be assassinated by the united states. spoiler alert, that book ends with the cia executing an ayatollah at the end because of a terrorist attack in the book. now, that's all fanciful, until you start realizing that the fact that many people in the conservative side really take these things seriously and that it's identical to a fantasy novel of tom clancy. it may be coincidental, but for the most part, we are breaking international norms here. i am not supporting iran. qasem soleimani, first time hear came up on my intelligence radar was in 1986 when the irgc was coordinating with hezbollah and their terrorist groups who were kidnapping western citizens, hijacking airplanes. i was practically living in that region of the world. and the irgc was everywhere.

but when he becomes the senior commander of the revolutionary guard corps, a combination of the chairman of joint chiefs of staff, a vice president of the united states, and achieves a status that is so high that killing him would impact our policy to the point where it could injure or kill dozens, if not hundreds of service members, then we don't do that. and the reason for that is you set a precedence that is closer to the israeli-targeted assassinations than the american deliberate intelligence-motivated activities that we do for holding other governments account. all it can do is lead to war. >> yeah. and the problem among so many others is donald trump and his administration, the people close around him, seem to have just done this on their own. there is no authorization to use military force that covers iran or any iranian official. there is the 2001 aumf that was about 9/11.

there is a 2002 authorization that had to do with saddam hussein's iraq regime. there's a war powers resolution that says that the president can only act without congress in a national emergency following an attack. and then there is other authorizations that talk about funding but not war. but there's nothing -- and this is a member of congress, justin amash, who was a republican, pointing out that there actually is no legal authorization. would donald trump have had to get any kind of authorization? would he have had to go to for example the justice department for legal backing for something like this? would there be any paperwork he would have had to have? is there any paper trail as to where he could have gotten the idea that it was legal to assassinate a member of a foreign government? >> this is part of the challenge we've seen not just in the bush administration but the obama administration as well with the extension of war powers and executive authority to be able to call targeted strikes where we have u.s. forces. congress has, unfortunately, ceded that authority for many years to the executive branch, and this is what we saw with

donald trump do this week. that is a direct result of congress not maintaining its authority over war powers and military authorization. i don't think that pence's tweet was an accident. i think he's actually trying to connect and use american ignorance about radical islamic terror and actually trying to connect somehow what was happening in iran with the 9/11 connection, to make it all fit under that original aumf. let's be frank, that original aumf from back in 2003, 2001 and 2003, have been used for all sorts of covert united states actions in parts of africa, throughout the middle east. it's part -- it's the justification for our ever-expanding counterterrorism activity. you're also hearing secretary of state pompeo talk about liberation and how people are rallying in iraq and iran to be liberated. those rallies are actually in favor of soleimani's funeral, and in fact, they're talking about in iraq right now retaliating against the u.s. so we're hearing the same

narratives from decades ago now being used to try to convince an american public that it's highly skeptical of war, but also highly ignorant of actually what happens in the middle east and how things work there. >> right. i mean, you know, naveed, you have people around donald trump who have wanted -- you know, one might call them war mongerers. lindsey graham, "the u.s. should consider attacking iranian oil facilities if they continue their provocations or increase nuclear enrichment." "iran will not stop their misbehavior until the consequences become real," blah, blah, blah. here's ari fleischer of the bush administration, on fox news friday. >> i think it is entirely possible that this is going to be a catalyst inside iran where the people celebrate this killing of soleimani and puts pressure on the iranian government to stop its terrorism, to stop supporting all the various terrorist movements it has around the world. >> i mean, they're all ball, john bolton.

there is a case to be made that john bolton now is finally friendly with donald trump again. he was mad at him and maybe going to testify against him, but you know, surprise! it's always christmas at trump's house. now he's gotten what he's wanted since the early 2000s. i mean, this is insane, no? >> yeah, yeah. and i think there's a missing piece that i want to fill in here. we keep saying military action, and military action would, as you correctly point out, joy, fall under the aumf, to primarily hit isis. there was another level that would allow the president to conduct this action, and that is called covert action. covert action would require that the nsc, which has been gutted, presents a plan for specific policy activity, which is reinforced by the dni, who's only had the job since august. and it could be as simple as saying, look, we believe that there is something here that justifies this course of action. the president can then approve that under covert action. his own requirement is that within 48 hours, he issues a

presidential finding that clearly establishes that this activity was in the furtherance of u.s., identifiable u.s. foreign policy. >> before you go any further, can that -- such an act -- this is not a member of some militia in iran. >> that's right. >> this is a part of their government. that would be equivalent to the head of the cia in the united states. this is not just some militia. this is a head, a part of their government. >> that is exactly right. nonetheless, that covert action is exactly how you could get this done. because again, as you correctly pointed out, aumf, war powers act, that is the military. there is, unfortunately -- and it pains me to say this, it really pains me to say this to someone who's spent 13 years in the isc -- this covert action liefer is something that could have been pulled, and frankly, i think that it was. and it does only require a presidential finding within 48 hours. it can do everything from allow the cia to carry this out and perhaps even participate with foreign powers who may have an interest in moving this forward as well. it is -- and i think that, you

know, when congress reconvenes, i think that they have a duty to find out if, in fact, this was covert action and not under a military action. and i think that's a very important distinction. you know, you have other platforms, besides just the military, that have the physical ability to carry this out. and again, you know, look, that authority to use covert action, we've seen everything from the cia in afghanistan against the soviets to, you know, to bin laden. and that is the mechanism that can be used here. it is the missing piece that i think, you know, we should start focusing on, that this was most likely, in my opinion, was not the department of defense. it was probably done under covert action, which would require essentially the isc, and it's a very -- i don't want to say it's an informal process, but the process to get the president to approve this is incredibly simplified. >> all right, so very quickly, we're talking about the legality internally within the united states. that's very important. let's not also ignore the legality from an international perspective, whether or not the united states legally has the right to carry out a strike against another state actor in a third party violating its

foreign sovereignty under the guise of an imminent attack without providing any evidence. that's important because even the united nations special representure, legal experts say if you are not demonstrating that the actual attack has neutralized the threat, an imminent attack is not met. >> right. >> you can't just say it's an imminent attack. forget the evidence for a second. you have to provide that, but you can't just claim -- you have to demonstrate the imminent attack has been neutralized. you have to demonstrate that the suicide bomber who was about to go onto the subway has been shot dead, so you save lives. you can't just say you decided to kill someone and not provide the evidence in international law. you're violating international security agreements we have with iraq and human rights law. you're violating all kinds of international laws. and that's why the iranians are saying we are now going to try and pursue this in the international forum. mohammed zarif, the foreign minister, said they'll pursue all legal recourse to fish the united states for this. he's expected to come to the united states next week to meet at the united nations, try to build that legal case. obviously, we know the united

states disregards international law in a lot of operations that it carries out, and it's likely it would be held accountable, but that part of the conversation is just as important as the one that everyone else is bringing up about the internal -- >> yeah, and the attacks are not legal -- >> i wanted to quickly respond to ari fleischer, because i think we're missing something with regards to that conversation, in that if the objective here of the administration was to have people in iran pour into the streets and be happy about the killing -- >> overthrow the regime, yeah. >> -- and overthrow the regime and advocate for regime change, that is the exact opposite that has happened. we were closer to regime change on friday than we're closer to regime change today. they are not celebrating, necessarily, the killing of soleimani. they are not -- >> they're unified. they rally behind the flag. they're patriotic people. >> they're nationalisted. >> it's not like the united states has gone in and changed the government of iran and decided who we wanted to rule them. that's never happened before. sorry, malcolm. i cut you off. >> joy, really quick.

unfortunately, i'm the only person on this panel who has ever been in combat with iran and their proxies. 1983, iran and lebanon. in 1988, direct naval combat with the iranian navy. in 2004, proxy shia militias in iraq. these people have capability. we are fooling ourselves if we think that we can just do things and not understand the consequences of what a unified country of 85 million people who now have thousands of antiship missiles, hundreds of ballistic missiles, who can muster up a commando force between 300,000 and a million men in a matter of weeks, and could savage every oil field and attack every facility we have in iraq, in the eastern arabian sea or the persian gulf. if we ignore this and you start listening to the lindsey grahams and the john boltons, you're going to get more than war, because we're capable of handling a war, but we are not capable of losing ships. we are not capable of having

that embassy turned into a fish bowl for thousands of rockets, which could pour down on it by the hundreds per hour. this is dangerous. and until we understand what we just did has the ability to kill way more american citizens than they claim to have protected, we are standing into danger. >> unlike in iraq, where the bush administration was able to bamboozle other countries to go along with the idea, this is just the u.s. have you seen any indication that there is any other country in the world that is supportive of this action, or at least is willing to go forward and support it? >> no, and in fact, the united states is actually alone in many things in dealing with iran in particular. pulling out of the iran deal. the rest of the european partners are still engaged with iran diplomatically and economically, and we're hoping that to maintain that kind of coordination to keep iran as part of the international community. so the united states is out here on a limb alone, without any evidence that it's presented to

its own public or to others outside. and frankly, regurgitating the same type of rhetoric we heard back in 2001 for leading into the iraq war, that literally just switching a letter from "q" to "n." >> you're saying -- very quickly. >> very telling that the only country that's come out blankedly in supporting him, israel -- >> the other country where the leader says he can't be prosecut prosecuted. >> and also is under corruption indictment. >> under corruption indictment, yeah. sorry. >> quickly, if this was covert action, that very well may mean this was not just the united states acting in this. and i want to make that clear -- >> we don't have any evidence of that. >> we don't have any evidence. but i'm saying theoretically, under the function of covert action, that would give the lever for someone else to come in and help. >> we will see. hopefully congress will follow up on that, but that's very interesting, because we're almost alone. not completely. ayman mohyeldin, yasmin vossoughian, malcolm, thank you very much. coming up, who saw the real cost of the neo con pipe dreams in the middle east. in the middle east

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go beyond the expected. to do the extraordinary. take your business beyond. one level below that, kind of the most consequential military assassination you could imagine in the world is to kill the head of the quds force from iran. and i don't know how long they had this planned and i don't know how much they have prepared for what the response is going to be, but we are about to see it. >> the repercussions of this

week's assassination are yet to be seen, but in its immediate aftermath, the state department urged all u.s. citizens to leave iraq, and the pentagon said it would send 3,000 more soldiers to the middle east. there are already more than 5,000 u.s. troops in iraq, mostly there to train iraqi forces. the ramifications of donald trump's recklessness far surpass washington because the biggest impact of a potential war with iran will be felt by the people on ground. joining me is the founder of women for women international and paul rykoff, iraq war vet ran and founder of righteous media. thanks for being here. i donald trump can sort of play big man by taking out a member of the government of iran, their leading security guy, but he isn't going to pay the price, just like he's never paid the price in any war. it's people that are going to pay the price. >> absolutely. it's people in iraq, mostly, which i'm worried about as an iraqi-american, actually. let me tell you what is happening in iraq.

in the last three months, because it's a messy ground right now and a lot of people are disputing with each other and there's a lot of fear going on. there are three voices emerging out of iraq. but most importantly, the last three months witnessed the most amazing revolution in iraq that has been led by youth that are saying we want a country outside of sunni shias, outside of christians and muslims, and they're calling out all the corruption of religious leaders who are backed by iran, militias backed by iran and the government, so much so that the prime minister of iraq has actually formally resigned on november 30th. iraq doesn't have a formal prime minister right now. >> wow. >> they are trying to -- there is a major switch in here saying we want the civilian government, a secular rule, and we do not want all these militias going on, right? these people have been dominating the square in the last three months. not one news outlet talks about them. the militias, iraqi militias backed by iran have been attacking them, right? and what's happened in the last 24 hours -- and this is in the news from iraq -- one is the

militias are saying you guys are going to take the price for that. so, there's already killing among the iraqis. a lot of the youth civilian activists have been killed, assassinated the last 24 hours. b, the militias are saying we're going to attack iran. so now they've created a division in iraq, those angry militias, who are very strong, helped liberate us from isis and they are anti-american. and they have weapons. and the good guys, civilians, saying we are so worried we do the not want this proxy war on our land. we're already exhausted from three decades of wars. we are hungry, we are starving. we are tired! we just want electricity and jobs, for god sake, right? and then there are the people who are happy at his killing, at qasem's killing, who are saying he is the reason iran is interfering in iraq and might

save us from the -- >> can we remind people, the reason iran has so much influence in iraq is us. we invaded this country that had a sunni dictatorship over large numbers of shia, and they had disputes. once we got rid of saddam hussein, we empowered the other big shia country in the region, iran. we did that. >> we did that, and without having a policy, a long-term policy and strategy of how do you deal with iraq. it's like a whac-a-mole game. >> yes. >> we always do the last thing and create damage. and the only language america has used with iraq is military language. >> 100%. and just to remind people, 184,000, estimated, number of iraqis who were killed as a result of our invasion of that country for, again, no reason -- lies -- and american troops, 4,419 u.s. service members died in "operation iraqi freedom." 2,301 u.s. service members killed in afghanistan. and that's not even putting up the, what, almost 30,000 injured u.s. troops, people who have

lost limbs, people who have had their whole lives changed because of what we did. >> here's my message, most of all, right now, joy. everybody in america needs to take a deep breath. we need to be thoughtful. we need to be measured. we need to read. this is not a time for partisan attacks. it's not a time for snapping at trolls on twitter, right? whether you're a member of congress or you're somebody with 100 twitter followers, now is the time to be cautious and thoughtful and responsible. that's what i learned in combat -- when the bullets are flying or when the rockets are flying, we all need to be thoughtful, calm and responsible and try to look for the right voices who are informed. because right now it's kind of like a hurricane's about to hit america and everybody's prognosticating and predicting but nobody knows what the hell's going to happen. we're all watching the signs and we need to look to the right signs for what's going to happen and be thoughtful and measured. because this is just getting started. >> right. >> this is very dangerous, very high stakes. soleimani was a bad dude and taking him out, whether you do it now or later, may have been the right thing, but there are definitely massive repercussions.

it's like taking out a mob boss. it might be the right thing to do, but when you do it, how you do it, who you do it with is an important issue and there will be a response and we need to prepare for that appropriately. >> but here's the other thing, is that with the bush administration, there was not enough skepticism. i think the other thing in terms of being thoughtful is also to be skeptical. >> sure. >> because governments will lie in order to get what they want or what small groups of people influential over them want, right? >> yeah, sure. >> you had this kind of neo con group of mill psychiatrists who really want multitheater war. they wrote memos about it. john bolton was one of them. they wanted this anyway. the dick cheneys who are going to benefit financially from war. so now we have some of those same people in donald trump's ear at a time when he is vulnerable because he's impeached. >> right. >> there is a vulnerable president with people whispering in his ear, the lindsey grahams of the world, the john boltons of the world have more influence now than they ever have. don't we also have to be extremely skeptical of anything coming out of this administration? >> yeah, of course and coming out of the media and most of the voices on television. we should be skeptical about all of it. now is the time most of all to

be vigilant. we keep saying this is a defining moment for trump. this is idefining moment for america. we can talk about whether or not he broke international law, but what are we going to do about it? is there any common ground for america? if we start to get hit here tomorrow, like -- >> no! >> right. and that's my point. >> you're not going to be getting hit here -- >> the point is we have to find it. we're going to have to find it -- >> not with this president in office. >> we'll have to find it because our military will have to fight back, we're going to have to take people to hospitals. we're going to have to find ways to do that. >> the military can, i'm not sure -- >> if you're in the middle east, if you're in lebanon, if you're in syria, if you're in iraq, if you're in turkey, you are scared shitless right now. excuse my language, but you are scared because -- >> of course. >> because it just defable staiblized the whole region. so, it is a time to panic if you are in that region -- >> i don't think it's a time to panic. >> in my opinion. >> it's a time to be concerned, a time to be -- >> not if you're in iran. not if you're hungry. >> but to panic is not going to help the situation. we've got a president who is going to totally unpredictable,

and for us as an american people to panic and for of the iranians to panic is exactly how it gets worse much faster. >> here's the question -- >> not to panic, but to actually be angry at what is happening. >> sure. >> because he really did mess up the situation. there is another constructive way. use diplomacy, as iraqis -- this is what iraqis are saying, either use diplomacy with us and have a constructive policy or use a military intervention, fine, but have it like full fledged. do not do this small here and small there and all of these things. >> now is not the time for us to be like donald trump. now is a time for us to different from him and to rise above him and do as best we can to be thoughtful and responsible and to build unity and force congress to ensure that they are even briefed on what's happening. right now most of the people who you have on your show have no idea what the hell happened, right, and that's a really important point. >> it's true. here's the problem, at this moment, the u.s. government is a lot more like turkey's government than like an american government. you have donald trump essentially saying that he is not to be controlled, even investigated by congress. he does not recognize their

authority -- >> i'm not saying that. >> he thinks he can appropriate money that they have appropriated for purpose "a" to purpose "b." he believes he can supersede them, ignore their subpoenas. so we have a government that isn't functioning the way that it was constitutionally constructed. >> so the question is what do we do about it? what do we do about it? >> you can't get american members of congress, let's say, get briefed and do the normal things because he doesn't recognize any authority -- >> so the question is now what? >> that's a great question. >> what do we do now, right? who are the leaders that we can look to to hold him accountable, to drive this forward, to defend our shores and our assets around the world? that's why i encourage calm and restraint. >> he is unrestrainable. >> but we as individuals are not. whether it's your twitter account or tv show, now is the time to exercise constraint -- jurks. >> but the genie is out of the bottle. >> and it can go further out. malcolm nance is right, most people don't understand who soleimani is, can't find iraq on a map and now is a time for people to read, get educated,

understand the right voices and make thoughtful decisions, not reactionary, panic moves. >> we've talked about this before, and we're running out of time. there's a thing telling me to stop, but i have to ask one question, because i feel like americans have to react to this not as america traditionally has been, but sort of more like the congo or more like countries that are not democracies behave, right? so, because we're not starting to behave like what we were. we're a different kind of country now. >> it is so true. there are no more checks and balances as far as the decision-making. i don't know what's the logic of how that decision was making. i just don't understand it, because there is another way -- >> to which -- >> to have constructively actually helped iraq and iran and stabilized the region. right now, america just put a bomb in the region basically. that's how it is. >> we've been at war in the region for decades. that's part of the understanding. we've been at war with iran by proxy for decades. >> yes, but when millions of

refugees come out of that country -- >> they won't because there's a muslim ban. >> they're saying we want the country, we want civilian countries. we are not sunnis or shias. >> in many of us, we're in heated agreement, but we're not turkey or the congo yet. and people like us on t and people around the country can change that if we add light and not more heat. >> i love talking with you guys. maybe we'll emake a podcast of us. thank you very much. we could go on all day. coming up, let it loose! a judge ruled giuliani's pal ken starr singing like a bird! that's next. pal ken starr singing like a bird! that's next. ♪ work so hard ♪ give it everything you got

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this week, it was revealed that senator and democratic presidential candidate amy klobuchar received a $1,000 donation last year from linda fairstein, who prosecuted the central park five, now known as the exonerated five. they are the brown and black teenagers, of course, who were wrong withfully accused and imprisoned for the beating and rape of a woman in the park. it received scrutiny after the release of "when they see us." klobuchar, a former prosecutor, said she would return the donation after the report was published. probably a good idea. coming up, the latest on the story donald trump really, really doesn't want you to pay attention to. lly, really doesn't want you ptoay attention to

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when leader mcconnell suggests we have both sides present their arguments and then deal with witnesses, he's essentially proposing to conduct the whole trial, and then once the trial is basically over, consider the question of evidence. that makes no sense. that's "alice in wonderland" logic. the trial must be informed by the evidence, not the other way

around. the house manager should be allowed to present all of the evidence to make their case, not make their case and then afterward ask for evidence we know is out there. >> yes, indeed, senator schumer, an impeachment trial in wonderland sounds like exactly what donald trump is demanding from mitch mcconnell. now mcconnell, who's already admitted that he plans to not be an impartial juror, may just delay calling witnesses and may not call any at all. but how long can that hold one new evidence dropping almost every day? in court ruling after court ruling going against team trump. this week, a federal judge in manhattan ruled that rudy giuliani associate lev parnas, one part of the lev and egor team, can provide evidence for his criminal case to impeachment investigators, expected to include physical documents as well as the entire contents of his cell phone. joining me now, former federal prosecutor glenn kirschner and former federal prosecutor cynthia alksne, both msnbc legal

analysts and part of what fears donald trump the most, prosecutors. if the democrats were to construct a wish list of people to testify, rudy giuliani would seem to be number one on the list, right? he was very much involved in the scheme to withhold military aid and strong-arm ukraine in exchange for these fake investigations. here, a "washington post" piece says that giuliani has said that he sought one of the other sort of interest character's, lev parnas' help in investigating joe biden. he is not named in the indictment charging parnas and fruman, but people familiar with the matter say he's under investigation in new york. would you go with the supreme court to get giuliani and parnas before the senate? >> parnas, yes, because right now he has got a hammer hanging over his head, and i think that will inspire him to want to tell the truth. giuliani, that's an open question. as a prosecutor, i can actually only call a witness which i

believe will present truthful testimony. so, do you think giuliani's going to present truthful testimony? >> no. >> think about corey lewandowski. he had a lot of blockbuster information that could prove, according to the mueller report, that trump committed all kinds of felony obstruction of justice offenses. so they're like, we've got to get him on the stand. when he was on the stand, because there was no grand jury testimony that he had given to go back to when he started lying and playing the fool, it turned into a clown show. the same thing will happen with giuliani. it will be a clown show. and because there's no sworn testimony to sort of trump his lies, it makes it a real challenge. >> well, and he can also be pardoned. he could go up there and lie and then trump could pardon him. cynthia, let's talk about parnas. so, parnas' lawyer has written that there may ultimately be redacted or privileged information that they may apply some redactions or privilege questions to his testimony. "at present, we do not know whether we plan to produce the

entirety of the materials or a subset filtered for either privilege or relevancy." is there a chance that the democrats get lev parnas to show up but then he just cries privilege? >> yeah, that's a possibility. the other thing is that parnas' value to me is what's in his phone, it's the documents, it's what emails he has, what phone numbers he's called, it's his travel records. what comes out of his mouth, not so much. i mean, after all, the u.s. attorney's office has already decided that the guy's a liar. they've tried to revoke his bail. he conveniently forgot the million dollars that the russians gave his wife to kind of do an end-around so they didn't have to report it to pretrial services. so, what comes out of his mouth is of less value, but boy, those documents that he might have, which can't be -- i mean, you can't cross-examine. either you call "x" number or you didn't. either you got this email or you didn't. so that kind of documentary evidence is going to be very helpful. if i had to pick a witness in

addition to lev parnas, i'd pick this woman from omb. not omb, i'm sorry, the pentagon, mccuster. she would be outstanding. and we have some underlying evidence that she has -- the emails that she has written, i think she could be a bombshell. >> and she's on the short list, glenn, for the democrats, of the people they would like. this is mccuksker, who the emails that have been thrown out there because of a foia request. on that point, the white house has written a letter to "the new york times" trying to stop even more documents coming out, again, from omb. all 20 documents are being withheld pursuant to a foia examination. they claim they have exemptions. mick mulvaney used to run the omb. the pentagon was like, release the money. omb was like, no, keep the money. dues mick mulvaney make the list because he was omb and now is chief of staff, very involved? >> i think he would be a worthy

witness as would bolton and pompeo. i love when you talk about omb not willing to turn over the emails? this is the statement they put out as their reason to decline to turn over the emails. they said among other things, "disclosure of this material would inhibit the frank and candid exchange of views necessary for effective --" why don't they just say, oh, heck, it's got a whole rack of crime in there so we're not turning them over? you know, they're digging their own grave. >> yeah. >> and i don't care what anybody says, the walls are going to come tumbling down with the parnases and these emails that ultimately are going to see the light of day and they're going to continue to show this is a corrupt administration. >> and it goes farther than the administration. let's play devin nunes, because devin nunes keeps finding himself more deeply involved in this every day. at first he just seems like a crank that's on the house dais. then all of a sudden you hear, oh, no, he actually has even more information and more connections to the central players, including lev parnas. here he is on "hannity" last

month. >> did you ever talk to this guy, les parnas or whatever his name is? >> it's possible, but i haven't gone through all my phone records. i don't really recall that name. i remember the name now because he's been indicted. but why would cnn rely on somebody like this, you know? and i'll go back and check on my records, but it seems very unlikely that i would be taking calls from random people. >> thin that, if you were the prosecutors in the lev parnas case, how quickly do you call that guy, devin nunes? sewer of cows and member of congress. >> well, you would certainly love to get him under oath to find out what actually is truly going on. you know, the deliberative process privilege and the way they're conveniently hiding things -- first of all, let's take for granted that people hide things that are bad for them, right? the deliberative process privilege is really something that requires good faith on some level, right? and we don't have any here with the department of justice.

they conveniently covered things up that just security has uncovered, which have to do with trump being the person who decided this hold had to go, with the pentagon telling omb constantly, no, you can't do this, this is illegal, with the pentagon saying, oh, no, no, no, you can't send those talking points out, they're inaccurate, and with omb trying to shift the blame. everything that hurts trump they conveniently redacted. now they've got these 20 emails over three months that go from omb to the white house that are probably really bad for them. and that's -- what i'm hoping happens very soon is that the federal judge who's overviewing the foia litigation has a chance to look at those emails, because we can't trust the justice department anymore to make a good-faith deliberative process privilege decision making. and fortunately, it's with a good judge and we can make get some clarity soon. >> yeah, you could have left that at we can't trust the justice department anymore and left it at that. that's just my opinion. i won't throw that on you.

the other person that seems to be a prime person for the witness list would be don mcgahn, and he has resisted testifying. there's been a court battle over it. and here's just a little piece of this political article. it's how the courts rule in the democrats bid for more testimony and documents connected back to the mueller probe could still yield additional impeachment articles against trump, saying that it is on the table that pelosi could try to still subpoena him. should they? >> yes. here's the problem. i sat in the courtroom yesterday for four hours, in the d.c. circuit court of appeals, a court where i used to argue cases as a federal prosecutor. and my heart broke, because i watched not one but two doj lawyers, one in the mcgahn litigation and one in the unredacted mueller report and grand jury litigation, and they both argued for positions that were designed to continue to cover up trump's crimes. these are department of justice lawyers. when i went in there to argue,

everything i said and did was with a view toward law and order and representing the interests of the american people. that's my job as a prosecutor. that's their job. and yet, in the mcgahn litigation, they argued, no, no, no, congress should never hear from don mcgahn. why? because don mcgahn can prove obstruction of justice by the president when he said, "fire the special counsel." oh, you won't? create a false document saying i never told you to fire special counsel. they also opposed the unredacted mueller report and supporting grand jury materials which will show further obstruction of justice by the president and our department of justice lawyers are arguing in favor of a continued cover-up. >> yep. >> that breaks my heart. it makes me angry. >> it's their new job. and cynthia, i'll ask both of you the same question. were you were still a federal prosecutor and you were considering cases against some of the people involved in this, because again, there is a law on the books that they had to release the money. potential crimes were committed

here. would you argue for holding on to any case until the results of the election? because if donald trump is gone, you then would have a real justice department again. >> well, first off, if you're the department of justice prosecutor and you have a duty to justice and to the american people, and if the barr justice department wants you to make an argument that violates your own oath, you need to learn to say, no, i'm not going to do it. i mean, we need more of them. we've got that at the state department and need that at the department of justice. so, i would -- and i'm for moving forward as quickly as possible on just about everything, but also upholding their oath. >> same question to you, glenn. would you hold any prosecutions until there's a new justice department? >> yes, because let's move forward with prosecutions when they are pardon-proof, so they'll stick. >> there you go. thank you both very much. more "a.m. joy" after the break. thank you both very much more "a.m. joy" after the break. too early... or too late.

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get customized security with 24/7 monitoring from xfinity home. awarded the best professionally installed system by cnet. simple. easy. awesome. call, click or visit a store today. that is tour show for today. "a.m. joy" will be back tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. eastern. up next, alex witt has latest. hello, my friend! >> can i just say, if there was any proof we were sisters from another mother, we have the same nicknames for our studio crew, independent of one another. >> i had no idea that the stage manager nickname you gave him is the same i've given him as well. >> should we say? marky mark. >> without the funky bunch. >> it is all good. we have a lot to get to, as you

well know. good morning to all of you from msnbc headquarters in new york. high noon in the east, almost 9:00 in the west. welcome to "weekends with alex witt." we begin with breaking news following the killing of iran's top general, qasem soleimani. they're on the way, hundreds of more american troops from the army's 82nd airborne have left ft. bragg just a few hours ago, headed right for the middle east. it's, of course, part of the u.s. response to the heightened tensions with iran and iran's threats of harsh retaliation for the killing. in iraq, large crowds accompanying coffins have arrived in the holy city of najaf, where services will be held for an iraqi commander also killed in the air strike. then in tehran, diplomatic initiatives to ease tensions with a visit from the foreign minister from qatar, foreign ministers from europe and china. they also want to avoid any further escalation, but talks with u.s. allies have not gone the way secretary pompeo would like. >> frankly, the europeans haven't been as helpful as i

wish