hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. we come on the air with breaking news. news that broke this afternoon in the hartford current. it's news that nora den he who served as a top aid to john durham has resigned. john durham is running the bill barr-blessed investigation into the origins of the russia probe. that investigation has targeted many of the career and the most senior national security officials who sought to warn the president, the congress and the public about russian interference last time in the

2016 election. from the hartford current report -- federal prosecutor nora dannehy, a top aid to john h. durham in his russia investigation, has quietly resigned, at least in part, out of concern that the investigative team is being pressed for political reasons to produce a report before its work is done, colleagues said. the current goes on to describe dannehy as a highly regarded prosecutor who has worked for or with durham for decades. durham has been investigating many of the same individuals and fact patterns that have been investigated by the doj ig and multiple probes as well as a prior internal investigation run by a different u.s. attorney. the high-level departure over the politization of the durham probe is not the first red flag about durham's investigation. attorney general barr who has accused u.s. national security officials of spying on the trump

campaign, accompanied durb ham on at least one trip abroad to gather evidence for what has become a criminal probe. joining us now, former assistant director for counterintelligence at the fbi, frank figliuzzi and perform senior fbi official chuck rosenberg. chuck, let me start with you. john durham has always been described to me by people like you as highly regarded, highly respected, having a lot of restraint and discretion and other high level, high pressure cases. this san outlier, it would seem if his top deputy, someone who has worked with him for decades has walked out the door because of political pressure. chuck? >> first of all, you're right. john is highly regarded and highly respected. i know john. i like john. i trust john. but i'm not concerned so much about john. i'm concerned about the attorney general of the united states. by the way, people leave the department of justice all the time for lots of reasons. some retire.

some resign. but you don't tend to leave in the middle of a big project. so when someone does, though we haven't heard from nora directly, but when someone does, that's a red flag. i would like to know directly from her if we could, why she's leaving but you don't leave in the middle of a big trial or project. prosecutors and agents see those things through. and so she's leaving now? there's probably something that troubles her and that thing that probably troubles her seems to be the attorney general of the united states and his impetus to get something out, a report out before the election. and that is troubling. >> chuck rosenberg if she were the kind who would want to go down to a watering hole and commiserate, she would have a lot of company if the hartford current reporting is true that she's left the durham probe because politics entered into it because the men you are talking

about entered into it. bill barr has repelled career prosecutors who worked on the flynn investigation. he has repelled career prosecutors who worked on the stone investigation. he has repelled career prosecutors at every intersection of donald trump's political and legal exposure and justice and the rule of law. >> yes. and i'm one of the ones who got it completely wrong at first. you were calling me saying on your show when i thought he was a principled institutionalist and would be a good steward of the department. he's anything but. he's already said he doesn't think that the department of justice's election policy applies to the durham report because they are not planning to bring charges apparently, thank goodness, against either of the presidential candidates. but i'm not sure that's right. in fact, i wrote an article that was published today in law fair about this very topic. there's both what the policy says and there's what the policy means and those who are career

prosecutors know what the policy means. and you don't do anything that can taint an election. here you have a very, very good career federal prosecutor in nora dannehy, also deeply regarded and deeply respected who saw something or heard something that just bothers her and therefore left in the middle of an investigation, likely because barr was pushing for the release of the report. barr has said he doesn't think the election policy applies. i would love to know why he doesn't think that because it seems pretty clear to observers, an alumni of the department of justice and the fbi that you don't do this thing in the run up to an election. >> bill barr doesn't believe in a lot of the traditions that have safeguarded the rule of law from a lawless president. we know that he ordered and participated in the clearing of peaceful protesters from

lafayette square. we know that he came out and distorted robert mueller's 23-month-long investigation, lied about it in such an egregious way that bob mueller himself who very rarely speaks out spoke out and said so. we know that bill barr more recently is involved in finding a law to match the law breaking of donald trump. so i'm not at all persuaded that anything short of rushing a report out that would again call into question the russian attack on our democracy ahead of what we know to be more russian interest in attacking this election is something bill barr would participate in. frank figliuzzi, am i going to be accused of wearing a tin foil hat? >> -- >> frank, we don't hear you. i thought you were thinking about that tin foil hat

question. we're going to fix your audio. chuck, i'll send that over to you. if you string together the constellation of bill barr's willingness, not just to be political. there have been political attorneys general. you and i both know them. i've worked with a couple of them, but this is really bending the rule of law. and if it's true, what the "hartford courant" is reporting. can you talk about what the bill barr effect is on anyone that touches any piece of the russia investigation? >> sure. and as you recounted, we've seen people walk away from cases because of his interference. and that's a big deal. you have to understand, i was a prosecutor for a long time. not something prosecutors do or take lightly. here's the problem. attorneys generals are political creatures and apolitical

creatures. they're political creatures because they are members of the president's cabinet and certain political things they, do and it's appropriate. like the selection of judges. they participate in it. but there are apolitical things they must do. that includes their stewardship of criminal enforcement and of counterintelligence and counterterrorism -- this attorney general continues to -- and that's what's so troubling to those of us who come from the department of justice. we understand there's a -- >> i can't hear chuck well. >> we're going to send someone over now that we have frank back to fix chuck's audio. this is only two levels above shouting at all of our dear

viewers through tin cans and we apologize for that. let me recap the breaking news that we come on air to tell you about. a top deputy to john durham, he's the individual hand picked to run at least the third, perhaps there are more than that, investigation to the origins of the russia probe. what makes the durham investigation different is, one, it is criminal and, two, he's had a buddy for at least some of the evidence-gathering missions he's been on. bill barr accompanied u.s. attorney john durham to italy to gather evidence about the origins of the russia probe. we know that former cia director john brennan has been interviewed by the durham investigation, as have others in gathering intelligence and evidence that warned about the 2016 attack by russia on the 2016 election. his top deputy, john durham's top deputy, has stepped aside at least in part based on reporting in the "hartford courant"

because of the entering of political pressure in the timing of their report. frank figliuzzi? >> so i am with chuck's earlier statement. this resignation of nora dannehy, a trusted, respected career prosecutor, tells us a whole lot more about attorney general barr than it does about john durham, her boss in the probe and here's why. you have already cited a number of examples, nicolle, where attorney general barr has told us who he is. he got out ahead of the mueller findings with a four-page summary. let's back up. he auditioned for the role of attorney general early on, wanting in for some reason that escapes all of us. he was not happy with the doj ig finding that the russia case was properly predicated and that's why we even have a john durham inquiry which appears to be now a fishing expedition of some sort that's resulted in a low-level fbi attorney pleading guilty to altering an email.

and what i suspect has been happening here is, you had mentioned, boy, it would be great to go to a watering hole with nora dannehy and find out what's going on. i want to listen in on the -- at the watering hole between the conversations that nora dannehy has had to have had with her boss john durham in this probe about why she's going to do this and whether john is going to push back on the ag. john is still a respected prosecutor. so something has gone on between the two of them. a message is being sent. and here's my surprise. i have been on your show saying i think that barr is delaying the findings until the election to mess with the election, and now what does nora dannehy say at least according to the "hartford courant"? they're being pressed to come out earlier than they're ready to. this is breaking news on a couple of levels. >> well, keep going, frank, because i think that, you know,

obviously we didn't plan until 15 minutes ago to start at a different place today. we saw this news and because we've spent so much time talking about how contaminated the intelligence product is by donald trump's inability to hear anything about russia, how perhaps weakened we are. we're going to talk to former senior counterintelligence agent pete strzok in just a singled. he's joining us to talk about his nebook but the news doesn't change very much when it comes to trump and barr. talk about what's happening in the world as a top prosecutor, the top deputy to john durham steps aside from that probe. >> well, and this is on the heals of a whistleblower, a high-ranking whistleblower from the department of homeland security. one of the higher ups in the intelligence unit at dhs, now telling adam schiff and congress, i tried to settle this internally, but i was fired for

wanting to promote intelligence reports that told the truth about two things. white supremacy and russian meddling in our next election. and so here comes a career person from doj working for john durham who now essentially is a kind of whistleblower in silence. meaning, you know, she's quietly resigned because of her perhaps professionalism and not wanting to draw herself into politics. and now we find out, according to the hartford c ourant, it's because they're being pressured. it's a theme throughout the trump administration. whether you are a judge a career prosecutor, whether you are an fbi official, whether you are a dhs, you are experiencing unprecedented pressure to do something other than the right thing. and i think that's going to be the hallmark of the trump administration.

>> on that note, we're lucky to be joined today by former fbi counterintelligence agent peter strzok, a former member of robert mueller's team. he's here to talk about his new book. we have it. i stayed up late, late, late last night finishing it. the book is called kwm compromised." because you're here and because news has broken and because you write in your book about what you essentially describe as the maligned influence of bill barr on the truth about the mueller findings in that two-week period before the report was ready to be released to the public, but when bill barr had plenty of time to spin it. it would seem that it is possible that today, a career prosecutor, the number two on the durham probe, has stepped down based on the same kind of influence from attorney general barr. your thoughts? >> well, thanks for having me. look, it's deeply concerning. i think there's a pattern when you look at things with the department of justice and all matters related to both what

special counsel mueller did and that we did in the fbi. there are replete list of prosecutors who have left the stone prosecution based on the walking back of the sentencing. the prosecutors on the prosecution of lieutenant general flynn, and all of this comes against the backdrop of these dark whispers from the attorney general about the investigations in the 2016 being unmerited or spying on the campaign are based on a slender read. i was there. i was present for conversations with director comey, director mccabe and saw all the intelligence we had. and the assertions coming out of the attorney general that these were unmerited absolutely are false. so it's deeply concerning when you look at almost 1,000-page senate intelligence report laying out a host of counterintelligence concerns. it's absurd to think that this bipartisan report out of the senate would represent anything other than the strongest evidence possible that the fbi

was absolutely doing the right thing when we open those investigations. >> my question for you, peter, draws on, you know, your ability to profile someone. and i guess it amounts to this. it's a republican-led senate intelligence committee report that is a thousand pages that includes the most extensive look at the kinds of concerns that andy mccabe has written about in his book, that you write about in your book. concerns that the president could be compromised by ties to russia that he didn't disclose. and that he lied about. what on earth would the investigation and criminalization into the russia investigation be looking for that hasn't been turned up by a republican-led committee that looked at it for 3 1/2 years, by john huber who was the first u.s. attorney to look at it, by inspector general horowitz who did three separate reports into

it. what is he looking for? >> he is looking for, i can only assume, something that the attorney general has asked to use as political influence to chill both the past investigations and present those in a partisan negative light, as well as to cast a chill over anybody who might be thinking about doing something now or in the future. look, i interviewed at length for over -- well over 60 or more hours through the inspector general, and what he describes in his report about the circumstances surrounding the opening of these investigations is exactly how it occurred. based in law. accorded with our regulations. they are absolutely appropriate and he turned everything we did inside out and upside down and he concluded the same thing. my only conclusion when i look at how the attorney general has been presenting the -- this dark cloud on the horizon of these investigations is it presents a political tool to try and, a, discredit what was done in 2016

and then, b, provide an easy talking point going into the election here in a couple of months. >> you know, let me come back to you, chuck rosenberg, on this question of predication, which i think to a nonlawyer, nonlaw enforcement person, i come to understand it as cause. was there cause to look at these questions? and you'll correct me if i'm wrong, i hope, chuck. but it would seem that donald trump and bill barr now have only given us more cause to worry about russia, not the origins of the russia investigation. what do you make of this departure of a high-level prosecutor of the mountain of evidence that we now have of donald trump refusing to confront vladimir putin about something as sacred as the lives of u.s. soldiers, bounties that russia paid to the taliban and the refusal in an interview with jonathan swan to say that he'd bring that up with vladimir putin. and now another piece of evidence on the other side of

that, that the investigations into investigating russia are highly political. >> perfect question, nicolle. let me try and answer it this way. close your eyes for a minute, which isn't great for television, i know, and think about the world in which we have predication, as you say, pause or reason to open a case, and we did. and we know the russians have attacked us. we know the russians intend to do it again and we say, instead of what pete did at the fbi, oh, gosh, those crazy russians. i really hope they don't try that again. let's just give them another shot. let's walk away. let's close our eyes. let's ignore what happened. like after the japanese attack on pearl harbor, hoping the japanese don't do something like that again. that cannot be our response. and if it was, imagine, too, there are moderate members of congress in both parties, in both houses who would go crazy if the fbi didn't take a hard look at what had just happened to us.

we were attacked. we had reason to believe we were attacked. we had evidence. we had allegations. and so we have to open an investigation. to your other point, nicolle, those reasons, that predication, the cause for the investigation have only gotten stronger over time as we learn more. >> yeah. >> we knew what we knew at the time and what we knew was more than sufficient to open a counterintelligence investigation that would have been a complete dereliction had we not. >> okay. here's what we're going to do. nobody else gets to talk about a breaking news story in the hartford courant with frank figliuzzi and chuck rosenberg and peter strzok. we're going to focus on peter strzok's new book and talk to him about being targeted by the president with vitriol and smears that forced he and his family out of their home. he's largely maintained his silence until now. we're happy to have him here. chuck and frank will be back as

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the front pages of today's newspapers make abundantly clear that we are still 19 years after 9/11, a country very much at risk from our adversaries. the risks are of a different nature and from different enemies but we remain a nation threatened by foreign actors seeking to weaken and divide us. the new book "compromise" which we've already talked about a little bit in relation to today's bigging news offers a reminder of the indelible imprint 9/11 left on national

security. september 11th, 2001, irreparably changed our country. it wound the nation's collective psyche and individually scarred anyone old enough to remember the sight of the twin towers collapsing, of the pentagon's smashed west face and of the fur rowed earth in shanksville, pennsylvania. the september 11th attacks also dramatically changed how the fbi conducted counterintelligence and how the bureau interact with its sister intelligence agencies. crucially, september 11th also radically altered the digital landscape of counterintelligence and cyberwarfare through a cascading series of events that unspooled over the course of more than a decade. it would, in time, even affect how russia conducted active measures against the main enemy. the harsh reality is that you likely remember peter strzok, not for his decades in service working to combat the threats to the country, most recently russia. he's much better known for scandals, for his private text messages made very public, his

firing from the senior role on mueller's team and the smears, insults and threats from the president and his allies which endure even today. peter strzok writes about all of that in his book "compromised" as well these subject he after his long career knows best, who is coming after america and how do we keep the country safe? peter strzok is still here. and i want to talk to you about that. what is the threat today from russia? >> well, i think it's significant. it's always 9/11 is a difficult day because i think first and foremost for the families who lost someone. i was in boston at the time. it carries this indelible imprint. i can't help but think about 9/11 that we had a republican president who rallied the nation behind our common beliefs to kind of bring the entire might of the united states to bear against those who would attack this. when you think about today, where we're being attacked by

this, almost 200,000 dead from a pandemic. our elections are under assault and we have another republican president. but this time, doing nothing but pouring gasoline on those divisive issues within our society. let alone not lifting a finger to those threats that face us. but russia absolutely is first and foremost attacking us now. they are doing it in the same way, in better ways than in 2016, and i have every expectation that is only going to increase as we approach november. >> let's stay with your point. how much more can the russians do than what you just described donald trump as having done to the country. you know, taking this open wound that is more than 190,000 americans who have died. admitting on a taped interview with bob woodward that he intentionally lied about the danger it posed, to downplay it. and at every point stoking divisions around race, turning the intelligence -- he called the intelligence agencies nazis

before he was inaugurated. he launches a years long war against the fbi and the doj. you are not in your job but you're in good company. neither is jim comey, andrew mccabe, neither are most of the senior leaders who fought russia covertly or overtly or in any way fought all of our enemies. they're not there anymore. how much more is there on russia's to-do list for us? >> well, plenty. if you compare the domestic situation here in the united states now compared to 2016, we have rioting going on. we have protesters pulling out guns and shooting each other. we had nothing like that in 2016. and when you look at russia's goal, russia isn't trying to -- i mean, the administration, this administration, has said that russia is trying to hurt biden and help trump. at the end of the day russia doesn't care who gets elected in the united states. what they're trying to do is cause us to fight amongst

ourselves to be so consumed with internal conflict that we completely back away from any sort of leadership role around the world. that's their ultimate goal. they are trying to advance their interests and the best way they can do that is stoke these divisions. now when they find in the united states a president who is doing exactly the same thing as part of his campaign strategy, that gives them enormous leverage. coupled with that, i was able to say in the book there are things we knew the russians were planning to do in 2016 that they didn't. i have every expectation that those things are absolutely still relevant and possible and we've spent the last four years honing those techniques to seek to use them again if it will advance their cause. >> you named what those things are. go ahead and name them for us. they gave me a terrible sense of forboding but tell us about those things that they didn't use in '16 but that you fear they could use. because susan rice shares your concern. she said in an interview with

stephen colbert that we need to be worried not only about russian disinformation but also about what efforts it may make again to try to infiltrate our voting systems and corrupt either our voting roles or the vote count itself. you share those worries? >> i do. i need to be careful because the bureau and prepublication process was great about letting me say what i've said right now but the specific details of what that means remain classified. but it's fair to say when you look at what the russians did in 2016, they attacked each and every one of our voting systems, the databases for the electoral roles, for the hardware used in the election systems. i think that sort of broad-based activity is certainly something you would expect to see again. and again, without getting into any specific details, i would agree with former national security adviser ambassador rice. >> so these are the things that, just as a cable host, that i have noticed trump to have done

that seemed to favor vladimir putin. he declined to condemn russia over the poisoning of alexei navalny. hasn't spoken up about the uprising in belarus. didn't condemn russia over the bounties for u.s. soldiers. moved 11,000 american troops out of germany. invites russia to the g7. literally all the time that we know about. froze aid to ukraine obviously and you write about that. proposed a joint cyber unit with russia. these are things the public knows. what is the counterintelligence concern now, if you put that together with what we must not know. "the washington post" has reported that the calls are not staffed. john bolton wrote in his book, he wasn't in the meeting between trump and putin in helsinki. what does the concern look like from someone who knows this stuff? >> absolutely. well, that's a great question. i recruited spies for 20 years. i supervised counterintelligence investigations for that entire time.

i can tell you when you see somebody who is behaving in a manner that isn't consistent with their job, in this case, when you see the president of the united states doing things that make no sense for u.s. national security and a lot of sense for russian strategic goals you have to ask yourself the question why? and then ask why and who is putting those ideas in his head. so when i look at trump as a counterintelligence professional, there are a number of vulnerabilities. setting aside the narcissism and the ability to flatter and get somebody to behave according to how you'd like based on flattery, the thing that jumps out at me are his history of decades of financial entang entanglements which hint at crime or illicit activity, whether that's money laundering for organized crime figures or outright, you know, taking of money from foreign entities. i'm not going to get into specifics of what i know because most of those are classified and appropriately not something we should discuss. but his history is replete with

questionable things that not only raise questions but that he is fighting tooth and nail to avoid anybody getting a hold of. that could be because he doesn't want to get in criminal trouble. but as an intelligence agency, if i'm the russians or the chinese, getting that information gives me enormous leverage to coerce him to do things that are in my interest. in this case in russia's interest. and that's explains a lot of why he's making these, frankly, incomprehensible decisions. >> let me just push you, not on what you know, but are you positive that vladimir putin knows everything you know and more? >> no, i'm not. i think there are probably things i know that he doesn't know and i'm certain there are things vladimir putin knows about donald trump that i don't. let me give you an example and this has been open to the public and is now something that everybody has access to. on the campaign trail in 2016, president trump announces to a

campaign rally that he has no business dealings with russia. thanks to the work of director mueller, we now know at the time he is saying that, not only michael cohen, but others in the trump orbit, are actively seeking out a deal for a trump tower in moscow. now clearly the moment -- trump knows that. and the minute he makes that statement on the campaign trail he's not known the truth and knows it. vladimir putin knows full well what's going on in moscow. vladimir putin knows if that truth came out, that would be damaging for trump because everybody would look at him and say, you just lied. so to maintain that falsehood, vladimir putin has to stay silent. and in order to stay silent, he, therefore, has leverage over president trump. now think about every last aspect of trump's financial enterprise. think about these wildly overpriced real estate sales that russia purchased and michael cohen, i guess recently in his book said he assumed that was a payoff of millions of dollars to putin.

all, each and every one of those things creates a coercive relationship between the president and russia, or anybody else overseas or elsewhere who is engaging in some sort of shady transaction. what concerns me as a counterintelligence professional is not so much the crime, what concerns me is the ability of a foreign power to use that leverage to get him to do things that aren't in america's national interests. >> you know, i want to press you on this because it would seem to me that michael flynn lost his job for the very same reason. not just because he lied to the vice president and to you but he told a lie that vladimir putin knew was a lie. and when sally yates went down to the white house and met with don mcgahn and said, look, your national security adviser is at risk of being blackmailed, that was the crisis. are you not explaining a similar dynamic and risk for donald trump? >> i am. but i would tell you, for general flynn, it was even

greater than that. of course, when he lied, if he lied, he's saying he didn't, which strains creduality based on the fact he's pled guilty to lying to two different judges. when he did that, absolutely that gives the russians leverage over him and furthermore when he goes and tells the vice president that it didn't occur and vice president pence goes on sunday talk show and parrotts that, it creates problems. for general flynn, there's a deeper issue here with that. we were trying to get to the heart of the nauture of the relationship between the incoming and current administration was and the government of russia. and underlying our concern in that was whether or not flynn had not told us the truth about this conversation because somebody else in the white house, up to and including potentially the president, had directed him not to or otherwise given him guidance about what to do. interestingly, special counsel mueller asked the president that question in the list of questions that they finally agreed and submitted. he went into great deal and you can find this at the apendix of the mueller report and asked the

president whether or not he had interaction with michael flynn about those conversations. what did trump do? returned the questions with that unanswered. so, you know, i can't and still to this day, cannot get to the real concern, which is that about those interactions between general flynn and the russians. >> and we don't ever understand through the mueller report or even through your book why flynn lies. he had all the authority in the world to change the direction of u.s. policy vis-a-vis russia. do you have any theorys on why he lied about the conversation with the man who would be his counterpart, ambassador kislyak? >> i don't. when we tawalked into that interview, he knew what we were there to talk about. he knew we had heard all the conversations. he had had, within the prior two weeks, discussions about the very topic with the president because the president told him to kill the story that david ignatius published. he had the conversation with

macfarlane because he told her to get in touch with ignatius and kill the story. he knew why we were talki ingwa there. when we interviewed him, we gave him extra chances. we used there and used the exact same phrases he used with kislyak to reflesh his recollection or give him a fig leaf and time and time again, he never told us the truth. it makes no sense to me or to my partner or to those in the fbi when we went back and talk about this. i can't explain it but again, to this day, the most worrisome explanation to me is that he didn't tell us the truth because he didn't want to reveal a conversation or direction that he had with president trump about those conversations with kislyak. >> it's remarkable. we're only at the beginning. when we come back, and i'd ask you to stay with us through a break, i want to ask you about another flash point in the early days of the trump presidency. the firing of jim comey seen by the fbi, not just as potential

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our folks felt like we had a basis to believe that the president might have engaged in obstruction of justice and the firing of jim comey and that, if so, there might be a national security risk associated with that obstruction. that is, of course, the standard for opening an fbi full investigation. >> it was a full investigation,

not a preliminary one? >> that's right. when we didn't stop the flynn investigation, the president fired director comey. so once that happened, and then the president followed that firing with his own inexplicable comments about thinking about russia when he fired the director, we then had, in our hands, undeniable facts that clearly formed an articulable basis to believe a crime may have been committed and a threat to national security might exist and that is the standard for the -- that the fbi must reach before you open a full investigation. >> peter strzok is back with us. watching that interview, i am haunted anew at what you all must have been thinking when you watched those events. the firing of jim comey, the potential that a crime had been committed and the threat to national security. andy mccabe was your boss at the time. take me inside what those days were like. >> yeah, so that was probably

between the time of director comey's firing and the appointment of special counsel mueller, probably the most pressure-filled week and a half of my career of my life, frankly. this was something none of us -- we had discussed and i talk about early discussions about whether or not to open a case, a counterintelligence case on the president. the fact that we had predication, much earlier, but it was nothing anybody wanted to do. i mean, that was something that we had pushed off and looked at other investigative avenues but this constant barrage of concern and new information that continued to mount, again, against this backdrop of everybody around him who is lying and concealing their contacts specifically with russia as it went from a perjury case and the attorney general sessions to lieutenant general flynn not telling us the truth to campaign advisers lying about their contact with or people in touch with the government of russia. all of these built and built and built and there was always this

sense that director comey is this bulwark. he's going to keep us isolated from improper political influence. we'll be able to do our job and suddenly he gets fired. to everybody's surprise. and the discussion then becomes one of, really, what is coming next? i mean, people truly had visions of the saturday night massacre in our minds. the department of justice is going to come across the street and direct us to close all our investigations to turn over all our investigative materials. could they do it? jim baker, the general counsel said, they could direct us to close the investigations. so what all the right legal, appropriate answers are for us to do in response to that was extraordinary in terms of both its unprecedented nature and the sheer gravity of what we're facing. and so the -- it became apparent that it became a very rapidly seen consensus that particularly with the firing that that was

not just a criminal issue but because it potentially obstructed our counterintelligence, look, and it was also a national security issue. on top of all the other things we had seen relating to the president. and so then acting director mccabe made the decision to open the case and we opened it. and i remember sitting there that night getting a stack of all the memos that director comey had written about his interactions with the president and standing in front of a scanner, you know, in our classified network, which looked out over pennsylvania avenue, across the street to the department of justice, and feeding those into the scanner so that we could get them electronically scanned and secure in our case file system so that nobody could come from the outside and destroy it. but we were literally sitting there taking steps to preserve our evidence from any nefarious outside activity. it was an extraordinary set of days that all of us, i'm sure, will carry with us for the rest of our lives. >> and not everybody responded the same way in those days.

rod rosenstein has a really interesting reaction. you write about it like this. we listened to a recounting of a startling series of comments that the dag had made to mccabe in a meeting earlier that day. as the morning's meeting proceeded and rosenstein had jumped between topics with mccabe, another person in the room at doj said trump was not fit to be president while another confessed, i fear for the republic. we sat in silence, valiantly trying to preserve our poker faces as we heard about rosenstein's offer to wear a wire at the white house to collect evidence on trump's true intentions. at the time, my sense later confirmed by mccabe himself that mccabe took rosenstein completely at his word though he tried to spin the comments as dark humor from the dag, who is not known for his humor. and this is sort of a blunt question. was the leadership of doj not

prepared for what the leadership of the fbi thought was necessary. was that a mismatch? >> i don't see how having watched the administration that the dag, the acting ag at this point in time, would not be aware of the way that the white house would work and seek to use them to achieve their political ends. my take at the time was that the deputy attorney general rosenstein was absolutely serious about wearing a wire. he threw out the discussion of people who might vote for the -- invoking the 25th amendment. my sense was, as it was recounted to me, that was a hypothetical conversation. but to be clear, when he then, you know, expresses remorse and surprise that the letter he wrote expressing concern about the way director comey handled the clinton email investigation and he's surprised that president trump attempts to hang the firing of jim comey on that letter? how on earth can you be

surprised? what do you think is going to happen to that letter when you write it when the president, we later find out again through the mueller report, is telling you, i want you to mention russia in this letter and you refused to do it. what other explanation is there to write that letter? so it strikes me that political naivety, but i don't know how somebody at that level at doj would not understand how this white house was operating. >> we have to sneak in one more break. we're going to ask you one more time. we're going to put you on the spot on live tv. we'll join back into the conversation the two we started with, chuck rosenberg and frank figliuzzi. don't go anywhere. we'll be right back. when the world gets complicated,

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. back with us, former assistant director for counterintelligence at the fbi, frank figliuzzi, former senior fbi official chuck rosenberg joining us and peter strzok is still here. peter's book answers or just affirms some of the enduring mysteries. we still don't know why flynn lied about the conversation with kislyak. we don't understand the nature of donald trump's ties to russia. your thoughts. >> i listened to pete carefully, listened to frank carefully. you made a list earlier, nicole, that is incredibly important. it's the things putin wants and received from president trump.

i know you weren't trying to be exhaustive, but one thing i would add, trump talked about the dissolution of nato, questioned its efficacy and value. let me tie it to today. today is the 19th anniversary of the attacks of 9/11. thousands died, and first responders to this day continue to die from cancers that they contracted in responding to that terror attack. here is what's so interesting to me. nato was formed in 1949 in the aftermath of world war ii to push back on the soviet union, to halt its attempts to control a war-torn europe. the cornerstone of the nato treaty is article five, the collective defense mechanism by which an attack on one ally is an attack an all. that article five has only been invoked one time in its history. that was by us on september 12th, 2001. trump wants to get rid of that

and putin couldn't ask for a better gift from this president. >> frank figliuzzi, you and i have also had many of the conversations covered in peter strzok's book. on these enduring mysteries, is it time to look at them as evidence, not mysteries, evidence that donald trump doesn't want us to know what his true ties to russia are? >> there's a concept in the law, chuck is well aware of, called staleness. that's when your probable cause, your predication is so old that you have to question whether you should have opened the case or not. as we've already addressed on this program, nicolle, it's not only that the predication has not gone stale, it's freshened up to the point where we must answer the seminal question of our time. someone has to answer it. if it hasn't been done by mueller and hasn't been done by the fbi, the question isn't why not. it's when is it going to get done. we've got to answer that

question. it still needs to be answered after any trump administration ever ends because we need to know the extent to which all of us were compromised by a foreign power. >> peter strzok, i'm going to take time and read from the last page of your book. you write our investigations revealed donald trump's willingness to further the maligned interests of one of our most formidable adversaries, apparently for his own personal gain. they also showed his willingness to accept political assistance from an opponent like russia and his willingness to subvert everything america stands for. that's not patriotic. it's the opposite. the whole book is like that, full of things we didn't know before. we didn't get to talk about this, but all sorts of cool details, people like you can have a drink if you're on a plane and not carrying your firearm. it was a pleasure to talk to you. i hope we can continue this conversation to continue.

congratulations on the book. my chan, to frank and chuck, my favorite wing men on any day, but especially today. the book is called "compromised." the next hour of "deadline white house" starts after a very short break. , boys. what about that? uhh, yep! it can? yeah, even that! i would very much like to see that. me too. introducing tide power pods. one up the toughest stains with 50% more cleaning power than liquid detergent. any further questions? uh uh! nope! one up the power of liquid with tide power pods. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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california, folks, is america fast forward. what we're experiencing right here is coming to communities all across the united states of america unless we get our act together on climate change, unless we disabuse ourselves of all the bs spewed by a very small group of people that have an ideological reason to advance the cause of a 19th century freem work and solution. we're not going back to the 19th century. we're not apologists to that status quo. it's 5:00 in the east. 19 years ago today firefighters rushed into the burning towers of the world trade center in new york without hesitation to save people who were in harm's way

that day. 343 of them never came home. 19 years later as a pandemic ravages the country, thousands of firefighters are out on the front lines again, working to save lives. it's massive and historic wildfires burning across california, oregon and washington. so far the fires have burned more than 4 million acres of land in california and oregon. that's larger than the area of delaware, rhode island and washington, d.c. combined. hundreds of buildings have been burned. towns have been wiped off the map. firefighters are coming from all over the united states and from several other countries to help them fight the flames. in california, a wildfire burning north of sacramento is now the largest in that state's history. it is one of at least 30 fires that are burning across the state of california. at least 20 people, including two firefighters, have been killed. another 16 have missing. the headline on the front page

of the "san francisco chronicle" on thursday was "surreal sky." if you have friends out there, you were getting pictures of your own from them. one day after thick smoke from the wildfires burning in california helped create an orange fog in the sky over the bay area. in oregon, two huge fires could soon become one, prompting officials to tell a half million people, 10% of that state's population to either leave or be ready to leave their homes. at least four people have died including a 12-year-old boy and his grandmother. the governor says dozens of people are missing. today donald trump traveled to shanksville, pennsylvania, to remember more of the brave souls who made the ultimate sacrifice to save lives on that awful september morning 19 years ago. while he has approved disaster declarations for california and oregon, he appears to be ignoring another disaster unfolding on his watch. he offered his familiar response

as flames burned through california. >> you got to clean your floors, you've got to clean your forests. they have many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they're like so flammable. you touch them and it goes up. i've been telling them this now for three years. but they don't want to listen. the environment, the environment. but they have massive fires again in california. maybe we're just going to have to make them pay for it because they don't listen to us. >> donald trump to the west, clean your floors is where we start this hour. some of our favorite reporters and friends. nbc news correspondent jake ward is covering the fires in ashland, oregon for us. also with us, white house reporter for "the los angeles times" eli stoke als plus california democratic congressman eric swalwell. one of the largest fires in the state continues to burn along the southern edge of his congressional district. congressman swalwell, we start with you. what is the picture in your

district and in your state right now. >> thank you, nicolle. i was home earlier this week, it was snowing ash and the air was suffocating. that es still the case in many parts of the state. in the area where you grew up, in the area where i live right now, thousands of people are just anxious about future evacuation warnings that may come their way. thankfully the scu storm, the lightning storm has been 98% contained. it's really now the air having been blown from other fires into the bay area that's affecting us. but the president, nicolle, he says clean your floors. first, what happened to the united states of america that we're all in disasters together? also, 57% of the land where these fires are occurring are federal land. so help us clean them, mr. president, is what people would say. nicolle, these are flashing visual lights of what we must do for climate. when people say, well, this is the hottest year and the

smokeyest year ever, i'm actually afraid it's the opposite, that this may be the least hottest year and least smokeyest year over the next ten, 20, 30 years if we don't get this right. >> getting it right i assume means addressing climate change. how do you start to do that with a president that doesn't acknowledge the suffering as it's happening or the problem of climate change itself. >> globally because we are all in this together. when you pull us out of international accords, we are not able to lead from the front. joe biden will put the united states back in the paris climate agreement. of course locally reducing emissions by investing in carbon capture, carbon sequester, carbon use. it also means, nicolle, our utility companies have to put plastic capping on the transmission lines or put them under ground which can be massive job investment programs we could create because the high winds with the high temperatures

blow the brush into those lines which are causing the fire. there's a lot we can do. actually, there may be job and economic benefits if we do it right. >> congressman, gavin newsom seemed to be really on the verge of outright anger in talking about the 19th century approach to what is a problem getting worse on all of our watch. have you had conversations with him of participating since your district and your home, my hometown -- my mom is in the garden with ash falling on her. my sister in san francisco is sending me pictures of an orange sky above san francisco all day. it would seem that the time to ask whether the climate is changing is over and the time for urgent action is upon us. that doesn't seem to enter into the national debate. why not? >> that's right, nicolle. you talk to our kids, and i spoke to a livermore high school class earlier this week from their classroom, virtually to them, and top of mind for them was, if we were so ill prepared

to handle a pandemic, what will happen to our country when the chickens come home to roost on climate if science is politicized and the solutions are politicized. this is a hands-on governor, though. he came in with the homelessness crisis, covid and now more and more fires. he has been very accessible and has briefed the house delegation as well on covid and other issues. the state emergency operations director is in contact with me and my congressional colleagues about the emergency relief we're seeking. just so you have an idea of this, $60 million lost for cattle men. you don't often hear that in the bay area. we have cattle in my congressional district. they've lost 40,000 acres where grazing and fencing was in place. it's going to hurt the economy. >> carson, this has been a day

of showing our work to our viewers. when we came on an hour ago, there was breaking news about another area in which you are an expert. i want to spend some time on this crisis in theest with. if i can ask you to stand by for a couple minutes, i want to go to eli and jake. jake ward, you're in oregon. evacuation orders are massive, the danger still very much of fires that are not yet under control. talk to me about what that state is confronting and tell me where you are. >> reporter: nicolle, this is just a devastating scene. it's the kind of thing that you and i have seen many times, but hundreds of miles south of where i'm standing -- i'm in ashland, oregon, north of the california border. here is the home of the acpan family, robin and tony, who built this 14 years ago and then built a business beside it growing wheat grass. they had no idea this could ever happen to them because this kind of thing doesn't happen in

ashland, oregon. but fire came over this hillside, and tony had to hurl buckets of water from his hot tub at it as robin gathered the children into their van and got them ready to go. listen to how she describes the scene here. >> we saw the wind changing, so we thought we were going to be okay. we sat down here at the end of the road. tony was here trying to fight the fire. he was determined to make sure that our home wasn't taken and our house that we built and put everything into wasn't taken. we were so scared because he wasn't with us. he was up here. and then when we saw the wave coming, we were right there, and we saw the wave just move -- the wind changed and it just moved this direction. i was calling him and trying to

get him out and he just -- it was so scary. >> reporter: nicolle, you can hear the anguish, the shock in her voice. across the state, at this point we've seen 1 million acres burn, in a state that typically sees 500,000 acres burn in an entire year. let's put aside the abstractions for a second. this family raised four children here, and they planted a tree for each year of the child's birth. this tree behind me was the eldest child, tobias, planted 14 years ago. we talk about a million acres. we talk about thousands of people evacuated, climate change and all these abstractions. this tree represents the change that we're talking about. planted as a sappaling, grew to this size and now it's burned. you heard the governor of oregon talk about climate change. you're hearing gavin newsom talk about climate change. scientists have said when we see it, it will be too late.

this is what we're seeing in front of us, nicole. >> jake, what are people doing who are evacuated and very concerned still about the pandemic? i live near the oakland hills. i've evacuated for fires. it's terrifying, throwing things in your car not knowing if you'll see them again. if you add to that a layer of fear about where you go, where did that family go? where are people going? >> reporter: in this case they are literally -- they say that are taking it 24 hours at a time. they've been given a couple days to stay at a friend's house, but they're not sure what they'll do after that. tony's mother he brought over from nigeria, lost all her family heirlooms in this and had to go. you add, as you say, the layer of the pandemic on top of that. then you also land on this question of inexperience. oregon, again, doesn't get these kinds of wildfires. this is new. we've seen over and over again a lack of infrastructure. this is not blaming anybody.

this is just saying they don't know how to handle the aftermath of something like this because this doesn't happen here. they don't know how to tell people whether their house is still standing, where to look for missing people, before to send somebody to look for a missing pet, all the kinds of things that other states have begun to grapple with. we're seeing a playbook being improvised here. we're all improvising, because, as you were talking about, it's a little late to be thinking about this. >> jake ward, thank you so much for your reporting there from, as you said, such an unprecedented spot to be dealing with the scope of wildfires. we appreciate you. eli, i want to come back to you on the topic of donald trump and on the topic of all this suffering and on the topic of oregon specifically. donald trump was deeply, deeply concerned about the goings-on outside a federal building in one part of oregon, but we haven't heard anything from him about a fire burning hundreds of acres in much bigger parts of

oregon. why not do you think? >> that's a great thing to point out. we all know how much he was focused on the protests in portland. with half a million oregonians being forced to evacuate, there's not a peep from him. yesterday the president at the podium admitted to watching eight hours of fox news at the same time oregon's governor was telling reporters she had been unable to reach the president when she called the white house seeking help, wanting to talk through federal aid. it's just absolutely staggering, and it brings us back to a truth that has just become evident time and again throughout this presidency which is that donald trump is motivated primarily and maybe exclusively by self-interest. if he can leverage something to his own benefit, he cares about it. if he can't, he'd rather talk about something else and he will talk about something else. that's what we're seeing with the fires. that's what we've seen over the last couple years every time

that fires have raged in california. he has come up with the same line, blaming california just like he blamed democratic governors for the coronavirus caseload. this is a president who doesn't want to accept responsibility and doesn't want to face a lot of the very complex and dire challenges facing the nation unless they are things that he can turn to his own political advantage. >> eli stokols, it's haunting that his inability to empathize -- this is almost the western 20, 30% of the country he leads. he's said nothing about california, oregon or washington. he said nothing about the firefighters running into harm's way. he said nothing about the crisis of a family having to leave their home with all their belongings, losing everything, but also maybe risking exposure for a vulnerable older relative or young child to coronavirus.

it's 9/11. it's a day to remember the most painful days this country has been through. anyone at the white house thinking about shifting that posture of saying nothing to the western chunk of the country being in crisis? >> i'm not sure if aides are trying to bring this to his attention. you will think at some point he will need to comment on this. he will be asked about it. >> he watches nine hours of television a day. >> i know. >> do we think he doesn't know about it? >> that has always been the case. well, there's so much going on right now, nicolle, until today or yesterday, these images, we've seen them but haven't seen them wall to wall on television because there's so much else going on. it's been something that the president, especially if he's only watching a diet of fox news, probably has been able to ignore. at some point he will have to comment on this. you're right.

this is incredibly unsettling, thinking back 19 years to 9/11 and a moment that scared the country and everybody was shocked by what felt like death on a scale that we just hadn't really dealt with for a long time. now you think about the memorials today and the context about them taking place in a moment where the suffering is on an altogether different and greater scale now. it's not all at once. nearly 200,000 dead from covid. that's been stretched out over six months, but we have crisis compounding crisis. your point is really important about people being forced to flee their homes. they're doing this in a pandemic when for months their home has been really their only safe harbor for most people, people who have homes. the disconnect -- the president this morning talked about, after 9/11, how the country came together. it's remarkable that we have not

seen the collective mourning during the pandemic and that we don't seem to be seeing it now. we're certainly not seeing it from the white house at this point, nicolle. >> congressman swalwell, let me bring you back in on that point of collective mourning. it strikes me that while this day belongs to the families who lost loved ones who went to work and never came back, boarded planes to never return, we as a country were welcomed in to grieve for them and with them. as we near the 200,000 mark, there has been no national day of mourning, there's been no day of prayer at the national cathedral, no multifaith sir moan held via zoom by this president and this white house. the very things we did after 9/11 to protect ourselves, taking off our shoes, as annoying as it is. dumping out our $5.00 bottled water when that became one of

the threats, i don't remember 40% of the country denying those things were necessary, refusing to do them or turning them into a culture war. what do you make of how divided we are as we face not just the fires but the pandemic? >> it's sad to see in a country this great, nicole. today is the day for the first responders. we think about them now as they're fighting those fires in california. i think about myself, 20 years old, interning here on capitol hill that day. i was working for a democrat. but i didn't really know at the time what my political affiliation it was. i saw a republican president seek to unite the country, lay out for us what the threat was and try and use unity as an antidote to the threats we faced. he got it right in many ways. it wasn't perfect, obviously, but he did bring the country together. today we're safer from terrorism because he led the country at that time. you think about young people today as we go through covid, through racial justice challenges and you have no

leader in the white house who has an instinct to want to unite at a time of crisis. instead you have a president who at every turn seems to divide us and exploit division as a way to politically benefit from it. >> let me ask you about another place where unfortunately politics have entered in a way that a career prosecutor could not tolerate. john durham who is running the third, maybe the fourth independent investigation into the origins of the russian attack on the 2016 election, his top deputy, nora dennehy is a connecticut prosecutor. the hartford currant says she has stepped aside because of the pressure felt to wrap up their investigation on a politically expedient schedule. your reaction. >> nicolle, donald trump seeks to corrupt everything that he

believes threatens him. he can only do that if he has a leader at the department of justice in bill barr that allows that and an underlying principle of any criminal investigation is it shouldn't influence politics. when bill barr was asked by the house judiciary committee if he would prom 34is that the durham investigation would not be concluded before the election arbitrarily, he would not make that pledge. i'm heartened to see that ms. dennehy has stepped aside. i also welcome more and more whistle-blowers. she would come to the judiciary comet tea, we're seeking the house intelligence committee, a whistle-blower from the department of homeland security. again, contrast post september 11, we stand up the department of homeland security to address the threats to our country and today we have a whistle-blower alleging that, rather than protecting us from attacks like what russia did in 2016, on the inside they are enabling attacks by downplaying what russia is doing and upplaying in a bogus fashion, amplifies the threat of

terrorism on our southern border. it's been so perverted from what it was supposed to do. whistle-blowers coming forward is the only way we can hold the president accountable. >> congressman eric swalwell, eli stoke ols from "the new york times," thank you for covering so much ground for us. >> thank you. >> when we come back, the human cost of donald trump's coronavirus lies. now that he's admitted to downplaying the pandemic, christine kizza says her only mistake was trusting the president. she'll join us next. donald trump's latest and perhaps most frightening attempt to act just like the dictators he likes, he's talking about what he'll do if protesters take to the streets on election night. "deadline white house" will be right back.

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i'm kristen urguiza, my dad, mark ant hony urguiza should be here today and he isn't. he trusted donald trump and for that he paid with his life. >> that was almost a month ago, and it's just as much of a gut punch today as it was when i first saw it. that's kristin talking about her dad. as we sit here today there are more than 6.4 million cases of

coronavirus in the u.s. and 193,000 americans like kristin's day have died from the virus. it's more than 800 deaths a day since our country's first confirmed case. yet, across this country states are opening up. florida, for instance, bars will reopen monday at 50% capacity. particularly risky move given what the cdc announced yesterday. the nbc news report on that, quote, those who tested positive were approximately twice as likely to report dining at a restaurant than those with negative test results the study authors wrote. those diagnosed without any known exposure to the virus were more likely to report having visited a bar or coffee shop in the previous two weeks. >> let's bring into our conversation kristen urguiza. i want your convention speech.

there was not a dry eye on our socially distanced set. i'm so sorry for your loss. >> thanks, nicolle. it's been hard. you said powerfully and directly your dad's only pre-existing condition was donald trump. how do you feel now that you know he knew and intentionally downplayed the threat? >> i feel a lot. and i know i'm not alone. the 200,000 families were punched in the gut and stabbed in the back whenever they heard those tapes two days ago. people have been reaching out to me sharing their anger, their rage, their frustration that the president intentionally lied, and those lies are undeniable and inexcusable. >> kristin, your dad loved donald trump. my dad loves donald trump, so

it's something to navigate. it resonates with me. tell us something about your dad, though, that you haven't had a chance to share yet. >> well, my dad was also the life of the party. he was a guy who would always bring people together to celebrate because he loved life so much. that's part of what is just so tragic about these people that are passing, is that they matter. their lives mattered and they are being cut short. nearly 200,000 people have passed, yet we have no recognition of that and the white house continues to down play this virus. how many more will need to pass before we do something about it? >> kristin, i want to add into the conversation you and i are having, msnbc medical contributor, former obama white house policy director, dr.

kavita patel. dr. patel, kristin's story she told in the convention video is something that someone as social as her dad was would be dealing with, which is the desire, once they're told by public officials it's safe, to go back out to a karaoke bar or restaurant. the newest reporting that nbc news have is that half of the people that are infected have reported being in a restaurant or bar or coffee shop. it seems like there's an exponential risk of exposure if you start doing that. >> that's absolutely right, nicolle. kristin, i want to add, especially on this day, on 9/11, when we see a president who is comfortable lying and a congress that is cowardice in helping americans, that you really represent the bravery that i know we have in this country. i think, nicolle, to your point about bars and restaurants, we

have overwhelming proof it's in places like bars, restaurants, coffee shops, basically anything where you're going to be close together and potentially have indoor kind of poor air circulation, that those are higher risks. another way to think about this is there's just more opportunities for contact with other people and other common air being breathed and common touching. i think that, especially going into a fall season where it might be too cold. we've seen snow fall in parts of the country. sitting outside is not going to be easy. there's going to be a greater temptation to go indoors. i think people have to just be responsible and i want the small business owners who are trying to keep their businesses open to think about how can they do that safely so that they don't face closures or become a hot spot to spread the virus themselves. >> dr. patel, kristin cuts through the lies and the bs -- did you want to say something,

kristin? >> no, i didn't have anything to say, but i appreciate saying that i cut through the lies and the bs because this is a crisis that we're in the middle of. >> it's a crisis -- i guess my point about kristin's story is, she's brave enough to tell it and she cuts through the lies, but it's the most horrible sort of story to have to tell. everyone stops and listens because the worst thing happened. my question for you, dr. patel, is how do we sort of setup the interventions before the worst thing happens, before someone trusts a president who is saying everything is fine and even almost sort of laughing or talking about it glibly with a reporter. where are the spaces now for an intervention? america is still doing among the worst in the rld would, 1,136 americans died yesterday. in france 30 died, in italy 14 dies, in spain 34 died.

we are still the worst in the world. >> we are. and not only that, i think a troubling statistic over the last several weeks, we've actually decreased in our rates of testing. so while we're talking about thousands of cases of covid each day and deaths, and kristin, your father and the loss of so many lives, we're decreasing our rates of testing. so we can do this, we can turn it around. americans are going to have to think about how to exercise their constitutional right to vote. they can do that safely. they can do that -- think about all the things we've talked about, nicolle, wearing a mask, et cetera. let's be honest, we have done nothing to support businesses, schools, employers. we need to be very practical, mayors, states, all of us collectively. let science lead, but let us lead into recovery, not into some sort of chaos. i really do feel -- i say it a lot, but i do think that's the path forward and emphasize, as

you have, that the lies need to just be called out and we need to move on. the three of us are very practical. i believe women have led this as mothers and families. we have three practical women on this screen. get out of our way so we can actually do the jobs we need to do. we need to tell the truth, deliver care and honestly, kristin, like your story, people who are listening to this, go out and educate people. we can do it. i have faith. we've just got to put the lies aside, and that means putting the president's word aside. >> kristin urquiza, thank you for telling your story. dr. kavita patel, thank you for being part of the conversation with us. grateful for all of you. we'll have an open air forum for solving the world's problems. when we come back, "deadline

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he used teargas and riot controlled tactics and unmarked federal agents. in july he deployed dhs officials to portland to respond to protests there. now he's threatening to use it on election night in case democrats take to the streets to protest a trump victory. here he was talking about it in a sit-down on fox news. >> what are you going to do -- let's say there are threats. they say they're going to threaten riots if they lose on election night, assuming we get a winner on election night. what are you going to do? >> we'll put them down very quickly. we have the right to do that, the power to do that if we want. look, it's called insurrection and we do it very easy. it's raegter not do that because there's no reason for it. >> we'll put them down quickly. joining the conversation in the

kni nick of time donna edwards and my friend steve schmitt. donna, let me start with you. no normal president talks about invoking the insurrection act to put down he or she who might protest except this one it would appear. >> i mean, this president of the united states again, when we think he knows no bounds. he knows no bounds. here rather than trying to stem chaos and to display confidence in our elections and our ability to conduct elections, the president, unlike with the pandemic where he said that he was going to -- he didn't want people to panic, here he wants to create panic and chaos around the elections. he seems to have forgotten the first amendment which of course guarantees our right to peaceably assemble and to

protest him or any other elected leader. we know he has demonstrated in the past, as you just showed, his willingness to use that kind of brute force against peaceful protests. i think we have every reason to believe that he will attempt to do it again. but i think, you know, sort of right thinking americans really need to stand up right now in the time leading up to the election to say that we've conducted elections over a period of a couple hundred years without a president having to invoke the insurrection act following an election. and we will be able to do it this time, but it's going to require patriots to put this president down when he says that he is going to turn against the american people because they've chosen to protest. >> steve schmitt, because it's trump, there's always a tweet or

sound bite on the other side. here is pro riot trump in 2016. >> if we're 20 votes short or if we're a hundred short and we're at 1100 and somebody else is at 400 or 500, because we're way ahead of everybody, i don't think you can say that we don't get it automatically. i think it would be -- i think you'd have riots. you'd have riots. i'm representing a tremendous, many millions of people. i think bad things would happen. i really do. i wouldn't lead it, but i think bad things would happen. >> so there he was threatening riots four years ago, now threatening to use the insurrection act as president. your thoughts. >> well, nicolle, it's world class demagoguery. that's what you witnessed there, the interview between judge janine and president trump. notice they're saying "they are

saying." who is saying? who are those groups? who are those people? it's totally made up out of whole cloth. it's a tactic used by fox news and the white house. they're complicit with each other, to create in the fevered dreams and imagination of the 30, 35% of the trump base this idea that american cities are burning, that they are in chaos, that the country is teetering on the edge of the abyss, and the only person with the strength to reassert control over america's burning cities and the civil war that's about to break out is, in fact, a strong leader, donald trump. now, all of this is a smoke screen from the reality that donald trump has failed and has failed at a level that is beyond imagination. it is the greatest act of incompetence, malfeasance and ineptitude in the entire history

of the country. the fact that he knew, that he knew how deadly covid was and we see the carnival of stupidity that characterized the federal government's response to it all. as a result, we have 200,000 dead americans with some estimates as high as 350,000 by the end of the year. we have a shattered economy and a million broken dreams. we have the education of every kid in school disrupted, and we really have seen the end of the american way of life at least for now. you can't hold your parents' hand when they're dying. you can't be there for the birth of a sister's kid. you can't be there for first communions and bar mitzvahs and weddings and other celebrations, not tore tail gates, not for football games. it's all gone. it's all over because of the fool that sits behind the resolute desk in the oval

office. if you look at the proposition that was put forward in the republican convention, the idea that to be a republican now requires only obedience and loyalty to trump, number one, but the breathtaking lying, the seizure of the images and the symbols of the state, of the republic, donald trump perverting them into partisan totems and expressing those symbols as symbols of his augt thorn, the utter lawlessness, donald trump has said over and over again in essence, i am the truth, i am the law, i am the state. he's talking about loosening the power of the state on american citizens, the ubiquitous they as judge janine described it, meeting people as they are talking who are in dissent against this administration or who have voted against him.

if he does win and people protest, it is their right in this country. we should make no mistake about donald trump's ill liberalism, his hostility to our core democratic ideas and ideals. he is an autocratic personality. that disposition is dangerous in a democracy. we don't want to see this country turn into a quasi democracy like or ban's hungry or erdogan's turkey or poland today. all over the world we see this trend and it is shocking to see it being played out with an american president. >> steve is just getting started. after a very short break, i'm going to ask steve and donna to wrap up what we've learned this week from donald trump and donald trump's own words in his own voice on those woodward tapes. don't go anywhere.

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donna and steve are back with us. donna, i want to get your thoughts on the week that was. donald trump has benefited for the last four years from the volume business of crises that he does, but it would seem the revelations on those woodward tapes are worthy of hitting pause and just ruminating a little bit. we now know that donald trump was briefed and comprehended the

deadly nature of the airborne virus that was coronavirus and he knowingly downplayed the risk, that he did that on purpose, that he lied to the country, not for days or weeks but for months, including scheduling rallies where thousands of his own supporters would be indoors, not socially not wearing masks, at a point in time where he knew the virus was lethal and airborne. >> it has been really an extraordinary week, nicole. and i think that for those of us who assume that somehow donald trump was like avoiding his briefings and not paying attention, it turns out that as revealed in these woodward tapes, that he was indeed paying attention. he paid attention to the fact that a pandemic was coming, that many people would get sick and would die. many more, much more deadly than the flu. that children could get it. that it was airborne. and he chose intentionally not

just to down play it. i think that that minimizes what he did. he chose not to tell the truth to the american people. as a result, nearly 200,000 people are dead and millions more have contracted the virus. and i think that we have to take a moment to really process what it means when a president of the united states chooses to put in danger the lies, the health, the safety of the american people. and not just for a pandemic but when you consider what he said on those tapes, you think back to the week before with the comments that were attributed to him about military officers, and do you know what? you begin to then say, well, that must have been true, true. the words on the pandemic came out of his mouth and it made those statements even more believable. this has been a really

extraordinary week, and then you end it in a week in which the president is threatens to call out federal law enforcement, federal officials against americans as they exercise their first amendment rights. i don't know how much more we can survive in the next 53 days. >> steve schmidt, in steve schmidt terms, this will be a short answer for you. we only have two minutes until we move on on lives well lived. it was a week ago today i spent two hours on the atlantic revelations that donald trump believes that our men and women in uniform, that they are suckers and losers. i didn't think anything could shock that. the shock of finding out that he's known all along that coronavirus was lethal and he's lied about it. take me what this week in trump's presidency means in terms of the presidential campaign. >> it means and affirms that he

is profoundly unfit to be the president of the united states. he's mentally unfit, intellectually unfit and he's morally unfit. this is the greatest moral failure of leadership in american history. and so let's look at what happened to america 19 years ago today. the planes flew into the towers and hundreds of cops and firemen, off duty and on duty, they ran toward those buildings. not waiting for orders. they ran into the fire and they died saving the lives of others. those are the people, the types of people that trump thinks are suckers and losers. let's think about what that in the air in pennsylvania. the first group of americans who knew the intention of one of the hijacked planes. they fought the hijackers to the death, crash that had plane and saved the united states capitol. the type of people who donald trump says suckers and losers.

ask, what is in it for them? he's profoundly unfit. at every conceivable level that you can possibly think. and we know now that none of this had to happen. this is one of the greatest tragedies in american history and it is one of the most preventible tragedies in our history as well. he has decimated the american way of life. and he has killed 200,000 americans thus far because of his stupidity and incompetence. >> steve schmidt, donna edwards, you are two of my favorite people to talk to, two national treasures. thank you so much for spending some time with us on this day. finally today, as we do every day, remembering lives well lived. newcomers to staten island, the kind older gentleman who walked around town with rosary beads

offering prayers for strangers. according to the "new york times," he nurtured a vegetable garden and often game away his harvest. on the evening of september 9th, 2001, his family gathered for their weekly sunday meal. that night it was meatballs and there was excitement in the air. albert's youngest son would be turning 29 that thursday so sometime around 7:30 or 8:00, as the story goes, the family said their good nights and went their separate ways. as albert described to npr, wasn't good night. it was in fact goodbye. that following tuesday morning mark told his wife he had a meeting upstairs, which was to say, he had work to do on the 92nd floor of the world trade center number one. when the towers came down, albert, a vietnam veteran and a recently retired firefighter and his other son albert jr., a lieutenant with fdny, answered

the call of the they ran into the chaos. into lower manhattan. they wanted to find mark. hours passed, days passed, mark's birthday came and went. and on the day of his memorial service, police officers came to their home with news they'd found mark's remains. the family described it as small comfort. we're telling you this story because albert died of the coronavirus back in april. on this day particularly, we are thinking of his wife ginger and his son albert jr. we hope they find some comfort in knowing that albert and mark are together, at peace, once again. we'll be right back. we'll be ri. introducing the future of fitness. it's every class you can imagine, live. welcome back to the mirror. you've got this john. and on demand. it's boxing... cardio... yoga... and more. it's an interactive, goal crushing...whole family...whole

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thank you for letting us into your homes during these extraordinary times. i'm rooting for them to not be this extraordinary forever but while you are, thank you for spending them with us. "the beat" with ar ari melber starts right now. >> we're interested to have mary trump. on i always wonder in our jobs, how much do you think it matters that people like the president really think and feel versus the rest of their actions. she has insights on the former. >> well, it's so interesting. i mean, i think you know how much donald trump thinks his family matters to his political fate because they spoke all over his convention. multiple family members every night. we know he thinks voters care about what his family thinks of him. i think that makes mary