thanks for coming on the show this morning. >> and that does it for us today, stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle. it's wednesday, june 9th. we start with breaking news. just minutes ago president biden took off aboard air force one leaded to the uk on his first big foreign trip and his first chance to shape foreign policy after working on behalf of other presidents when he was in congress and of course, as vice president. just before getting on the plane he laid out his number one goal for this trip. >> an alliance. making clear to putin and to china that europe and the united states are tight and the g7 is going to move. thank you. >> mr. president, do you expect to come out with a --

[ inaudible ] >> i have one, and i'll be announcing it. >> as president biden prepares for a week overseas, he might be glad to get a break from the drama in washington for a few days on tuesday. he broke off infrastructure talks with senate republicans meaning he has to figure out another way to get a deal done. an opposition from republicans and fellow democrats is finally putting the rest of his agenda including voting rights on shaky ground. once he heads across the pond the president has a ton on his plate starting with a meeting with the british prime minister tomorrow and the queen herself on sunday. he's attending three international meetings with the g7, nato and the european union and then wrapping it all up by meeting with russian president vladimir putin and that is where we start this morning. joining us now nbc senior white house reporter, shannon pettypiece and bobby gosch, editor and columnist for

bloomberg opinion and andrew sorkin and an editor who writes "the new york times" deal book. shannon, we should explain that we man to have a reporter overseas, even saying this gives me the chills, but the press plane was grounded because of cicadas, okay? that's next level. given that, can you give us a preview of what the president will see when he gets to europe. >> the cicadas tried to ground me, too, and i persevered, just for you. cicadas aside in washington, the president is setting out on this trip with a repair and re-set tour as a way to re-stabilize america's relationships and alliances with some of its key partners. the president will speak first when he lands to the president in the uk and then he had this meeting with british prime minister boris johnson. johnson and trump had one of the

closer relationships when it came to trump and foreign leaders, but johnson is going to be key to a lot of these goals biden wants to achieve like vaccinating the developing world, climate change, improving trade and relations with china. so a lot of things on biden's agenda, but really at the core of it is to try and repair these relationships to skeptical allies who are concerned that biden is essentially just going to be a blip on the radar before america returns potd earnly to some sort of trump, america first nationalism and this big concern underlying whether or not the u.s. can be a trusted partner on some of these big, international agreements that these allies hope to be able to reach on things like trade and climate. >> let's talk about the president's visit because one white house official says we should prepare for a lot of, quote, foreign policy for the middle class. forgive me, i have no idea what

that means. >> i have no idea what that means. i got back from london and the view from that side of the pond is yes, i think this idea of biden being not trump, that is a big thing. that's already set. people understand that biden wants to reconnect with the western alliance, but i think what the hope is that he will try for something bigger. what -- and it would seem that biden's inclined to do this, which is re-assert the leadership of the united states in the consolation of democracies against a group of autocracies that have written. he keeps refers to xi jinping and others and the g7 and others are institutions that, in a sense, represents the world's democracy. not all of the members are democracies anymore, but they do

represent by and large the world's democracies, and we heard this from biden throughout the campaign when he became president he wanted to rally the democracies around. this is the stage for him to do that. this is his opportunity to -- to issue a rallying cry to the democracies to show that the united states is ready to take that leadership. >> he wants to do that, andrew, by getting the economy back on track globally. he's meeting with the g7 on friday and part of the agenda is to talk about this global, minimum corporate tax. do you think this is actually going to fly on one hand, corporate america is doing phenomenally well and it's about time to get them to pay their fair share, but at the end of the day we have a globally competitive economy. countries aren't going to get on the same page. having a low, corporate tax rate is how many countries attract businesses. >> i think it will be a very

challenging effort. i think it's quite amazing how far this conversation has come in the last several weeks and what janet yellen was able to do. having said that, i think you're absolutely right, stephanie and there are a couple of things and other members of the g7 will effectively call our bluff which is to say this doesn't work and if you look at what's happening in the senate right now, it's hard to believe that the united states unto itself would necessarily even participate in this, and there's the question of whether they'd get a vote in these other countries and you might have a leadership in one country for a period of time that goes along with this and then decides not to and what do you do about the other countries around the world that are outside of the g7. i think it's a very interesting idea. i am absolutely in favor of trying to avoid this race to the bottom. the question is how do you get there and how do you do it? >> bobby, you said it.

we know donald trump was all about america first and not about the international community. biden has the stage. we have the pandemic and the cyber attacks and what does the international community expect to hear from him most? i mean, he is coming off possibly one of our greatest government successes we have seen in decades and i'm talking about the vaccine rollout here. >> well, it depends on where you are in the international community. a lot of the developing world will want to hear that the united states is going to take the leadership in making sure the vaccine rollout which has been fairly successful with this country now takes place around the world. they'd like to see the g7 countries do that, but biden would have to lead, and other countries that are under threat from the autocracy, around russia and china would want reassurance that america has their back. think of taiwan, for instance, and allies in eastern europe. they want to hear that the

united states has their back. yes, everyone understands the united states has tremendous challenges, but a super power needs to be not able to walk and chew gum at the same time, but walk, chew gum and hum a tune and that was america in its most powerful phase and that is what the world hopes that it can see again whether or not biden hopes he can deliver that is another question. >> garrett, let's talk about what president biden is leaving behind, issues at home. he pulled the plug on talks with republican senators shelley moore capito on infrastructure and other senate republicans, what's the plan now? >> there's a plan b and potentially a plan c in the works and a bipartisan group of senators who were here for several hours last night trying to come up with their own infrastructure plan that were able to cobble together three republican votes. that includes three senators who the president spoke to yesterday by phone.

democratic senators manchin and sinema and cassidy. they came out feeling bullish that they put together a plan that did what they wanted them to do and they weren't close on how to pay for it, this would be the house problem solvers caucus and they rolled out the top line number that would get to over a trillion dollars in total spending on infrastructure and doesn't describe how to pay for it. these bipartisan talks can be helpful in breaking logjams or in coming up with ideas and sometimes it can evolve into a senate book club where members gather and talk and gather and talk and gather and talk and very little coming out of it, but we'll see what happens here. the president seems key to try to find a bipartisan way to do this, if that's possible. this group, the senate group, you know, will keep meeting to try to see if they can do that for him. >> andrew, if congress can't get

an infrastructure bill passed, does that hurt the economy's prospects going forward or do we even need it? the economy is kicking it rid now. when you think about the federal money that's been given out to states, so many that normally sit suffering have huge surpluses. >> i don't know. it's a very good question. i think that the market and the market is very different than the economy. the market has been anticipating or expecting some kind of infrastructure plan and maybe not obviously at 2 trillion, but maybe at a trillion dollars and there is disappointment among the business community if there wasn't. there are so many things that the business community has been talking about in terms of trying to build things that are necessary longer term. having said that, as you just said, there are these other issues. there's excess money around. i just think about how it's ultimately going to get spent. i think we would be hard pressed to not have an infrastructure

plan in place. i think the economy would take a bit of a hit in part because of the expectation that it will happen. a little bit of an expectations, management situation. >> bobby, we always talk about how congress cannot get anything done, but they did something yesterday. something pretty big. the senate passed a $250 billion bill to try to keep the u.s. competitive with china, how big of a deal is that? >> it's a big deal and it's only a start. there's a great deal else that needs to happen and american companies are competitive with china and the american economy as a whole and parts of it are compositetive, part of it and it shows that the united states is serious and i think those in beijing will pay serious attention to it. during the trump era, was there assemblancy of a lot of talk and not much in terms of delivery.

this is the first major sign of actual delivery and so, yeah, i think the chinese may not be worried, but they'll certainly take it seriously. >> all right. bobby, good to have you back stateside. andrew, good to see you. garrett, shannon, thank you all. we'll leave it there. coming up, the colonial pipeline ceo says one single password allowed hackers to take down their whole entire system. time to get a tough are peas word. our cyber expert warns that this is a cyber pearl harbor, and it's here now. and a massive fbi sting operation leads to 800 arrests across 16 countries. the story you have got to hear coming up next. with the 5g coverage you need. broader spectrum for faster 5g speeds. next-generation servers with superior network reliability. because the more you do with 5g, the more your network matters.

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hackers just a couple of weeks ago. the ceo said he is sorry that the cyber attack happened, but defended his decision to pay. >> it had taken place by the time we got the pipeline started on wednesday. the absolute right decision to make and i'd do it again under the same circumstances. >> pete williams joins us. he has been all over this story. also with us, clint watts our expert on all things cyber. he advised the fbi on counter terrorism. clint, going after the ceo mad that he paid the attackers this ransom, what else was he going to do? >> exactly right, stephanie. what we've learned over the last several years is that if you're a small city, a business, a hospital and it's cheaper and it gets things back online and this was catastrophic from america and our oil pipelines was shut

down in terms of how everything operates and we had runs on gas because people were still in the fearful mindset going back to the covid-19 pandemic lockdowns. so i think in terms of how to handle this, he had no choice, but to do that and he did the right thing by working with the fbi and what i see now they didn't know a few years ago. do i tell the fbi or not because i might want to pay the ransom. now they're working together and the government has realized we have to build a better strategy and maybe that is turning down the cost and the benefit calculation for some of these hackers that they may not get to catch or keep all their bitcoin as what happened in this case with the fbi. >> okay. how about the company getting a better strategy? >> pete, the ceo said a single password brought down the entire pipeline. someone might want to spruce him to two-step identification.

are they redefining changing their strategy. one password? this can happen again. >> the ceo said they didn't realize that program was still in use. it didn't show up in a test of the system. this is the so-called virtual private network that allows you to log in remotely to the system and it does have a simple password and not two-factor identification and they're not using that anymore and there's a lesson learned and one of the reasons they paid the ransom is they didn't know early on, how extensively the hackers were able to intrude into the system and it was a second operational system that controls the pipeline. that's why they shut everything down and that's why he paid the ransom in one day. he paid the ransom the next day and notified the fbi very early on and he thought he had no

alternative and his main goal was to get the pipeline going again knowing how critical it was to the country. supplying half of the refined fuel to the east coast. >> to that point, clint, isn't it a problem that they didn't even know that this was a possibility given how dependent we are on this pipeline? it runs from texas to new jersey. >> it is, stephanie, and this has been a ten-year discussion that's been going on about the weakness of our infrastructure with respect to cybersecurity, and we've done continuing improvements is whether it's infrastructure, manufacturing, health care or the financial space they don't have a large budget for cybersecurity and each year that grows and each system modernized and it keeps the old legacy systems in place. what ends up happening is over time you actually see whole industries and whole networks and companies having a hard time

trying to figure out all of the available end points which in this case sounds like there was a legacy system out there that still had some sort of partition and a lot of international companies and international companies, oftentimes businesses have different systems and lower access points in developing countries versus outside of the united states. all of these standards create a path work which ultimately leads is numerous vulnerabilities that on any given day a sophisticated hacker can target in a lot of different days. >> when do we change things? clint, the government will act when there is a pearl harbor in cyberspace. it's here. this is a pearl harbor in cyberspace. it is impacting our lives directly and how far behind are we, specially when compared to other countries. >> stephanie, 12 years ago, 2009 i was working with a government

in d.c., and the story was look, we have more vulnerabilities more at risk than everybody else and we patch our systems and modernize and the story is one day the internet can go off or we can lose some sort of capability in our industries or oil can get shut down. guess what? these things are happening almost every week due to ransomware. yes, we're better on the investigative side and we're better on the private, public partnerships and sharing and the other thing that we've not done and this is why the meeting with putin and biden is so important next week is we've never gone out and challenged a lot of the criminal syndicates particularly with ransom aware inside russia, but you can attack outside russia and we have to develop should sort of deterrence and that's the government coming together how do we defend and

how do we deter and how do we turn the costs up on our opposition here that's setting inside russia and a few other countries. >> and a reminder to put this into context, our own fbi director christopher wray, comparing all of this to 9/11. clint watts, pete williams. coming up next, a new report reveals that you, you likely paid more federal income taxes than many billionaires including elon musk and jeff bezos. how did they do it? legally, and how do we fix it? the government. they just need to do something about it. that's next.

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this morning we're digging into a new report that revealed the 25 richest americans paid little or zero in federal income taxes certain years. reporters at the non-profit news organization pro publica examined records for all of these guys, but they did not say how they obtained them. nbc news has not independently verified the information and keep in mind, the story does not allege that they did anything illegal. joining me now to discuss dan nathan, he's the principal for risk reversal advisers and we have josh brown and former stockton, california, mayor michael tubbs. here's the thing, we can be furious about it, elon musk,

jeff bezos not paying anything or almost anything in federal taxes, but they didn't do anything illegal. is this about the tax system and how we need to change it. >> it takes you back to 2017. one of the things the trump administration was focused on was tax reform and we know in hindsight there was nothing that resembled reform. really what it was was corporate tax cut and a tax cut for people like the ones that we're talking about right here. they borrowed a trillion and a half dollars from the future and basically handed it to corporations and when you think about how our tax system is structured, it benefits as the holders. so if corporates and these people are the ceos of some of the biggest companies in america, right, have lower taxes and higher margins and they're making more money and not being taxed on it, so it really is about the system, steph. >> josh, this is a system clearly defined for the rich and it's why the tax lawyers are

among the highest paid out there. if you want to make it equitable, what's the first thing to change? >> if you have a problem with the level of wealth creation that we've seen for these top 25 billionaires you're not going to ever be able to address it through income tax because that is not the source of their waeths. they don't make money from wages the way almost everyone else in the country makes money. they make money based on the growth of their assets and rather than selling those assets and realizing the taxable gain, they just borrow money against them so they're never taxed on the growth of their wealth. say it's stock prices or real estate holdings, but they can pay their living expenses because they securitizing those assets and getting cash from banks and private equity firms and whoever wants to lend to them. if you would want to do something about it, you would have to introduce a wealth tax where it wouldn't have any effect and here's the problem with that. how do you tax somebody on an

unrealized gain. so you tax somebody on the growth of their shares up 20% last year, right? say their shares fall 50% the next year, do you owe them the money back so how do you do that? you probably can't. the other thing is wealth tax is unpopular among most americans and even people who are solidly middle class don't like the idea of success being punished and that's why it hasn't happened yet and that's the issue that we're really facing and i don't think it gets solved any time soon. >> michael, i want to switch gears a bit because we got the results of the $1400 stimulus checks and it's food shortages, mental health issues and it's how well stimulus payments worked. you try guaranteed income and universal basic income in stockton, does this make the argument that we need ubi, that

stimulus payments worked on a national level? >> yeah, it makes no sense to me why do we want to have food shortages or poverty and why do we want people stressed and anxious particularly when a report just came out today how those were, quote, unquote the most successful and paid little to nothing in the income tackes that gives us roads and that gives us roads and schools and libraries and police officers and firemen. to the point raised by the previous question, as well, the issue is systemic. we have an economy that works for one group of people extremely well where even during the global pandemic and these people got richer and richer and works terribly for the millions and millions of many who create the labor and the unrealized gains that these folks have combi. it sounds to me like some sort of wealth tax to figure out the details is the way to go to help ask the million dollar questions in terms of how do we pay for

it? >> dan, people in the business world often scoff at the idea of universal basic income, why should we give people money for nothing? but you said it before, the government gives businesses tons and tons of free money. could the success of stimulus pages start to change people's minds about ubi? those stimulus payments impact our economy in a good way. >> yeah, it should, steph. you think back to the global financial crisis, right? the government socialized losses of some of the big of the businesses in this country and what did we do? we kept easy monetary policies in place for years and years and years, and actually, you can say that where interest rates are rid now is actually a byproduct of what we did in the financial crisis. so here we are. we're constantly socializing losses. i think at some point from the cares act it made the case for mayor tubbs and the experiment that he ran in his city why

there should be some, i think, continuance of those policies that helped some of the most needy people in our country. >> josh, the vaccine rollout has been extraordinarily successful. it's been a long 14 months, but we are snapping back in a big way. every day we hear about job openings and we talk to businesses that say we can't find workers. we know there is pressure states toen the enhanced unemployment benefit. half of our states are already doing it. should the government use the money elsewhere since we have snapped back so quickly? >> i think the point will be moot in two months, so i wouldn't worry too much about that. by september we'll see these extraordinary benefits start to wind down and there will be a luxury to not have to find a job to go out and look for one. the good news is we saw job openings rise by a million job openings month over month in

data that we got yesterday. so there is plenty of room for people to come back to the workforce when these things run down. i don't think it's worth debating at this time. what i do think is important to go back to the last point i want to make very quickly is just this idea that you're never going to have being in equality and what you will have is eshg equality of opportunity. i don't know if we need to do ubi, but i do think, for example, we should absolutely have preschool be a universal, like a basic good that everyone should have access to. why should some kids start a hundred yards behind the starting line at 5 years old. it's the dumbest thing on earth. if we're serious about this country being competitive in the future then we should at least be doing that for young children who can't decide what family they're going to be born into. that shouldn't determine the entire course of their life. i also don't have a problem for paying for college although college itself should not be the thing that decides whether or not you can have a middle-class

existence. so i do believe we should be working on that. i don't like the idea of just randomly mailing checks to everyone. i don't think it's as effective as some of the types of programs that i'm talking about can be, but clearly, we learned a lot in this recession which is people don't have to be tortured every time the economy turns down. we have a lot of wherewithal to help the people who need it. >> the economy is coming back, dan, every day we hear from small businesses who say they can't find workers. we keep hearing it every time you go out to eat, a restaurant worker says i can't get anyone. why can't restaurants get the money? they got two rounds and they got $28 billion from the government in the american rescue plan. why can't restaurants use that money to pay workers more? you worry that people are getting paid so much money at home? offer them more money to make

them work. these restaurants have the money. >> it's purely anecdotal, from what i see in new york city and talking to people in the business, they're doing exactly that, steph, but there's a whole host of disconnects that still exist about the ability for people to travel to jobs or what they're willing to do, and the restaurants and i'll give them a pass and i think there are other big businesses that have probably focused more who receive a lot of that aid who actually had the wherewithal to keep people employed and really try to get people back to work. i am fully in support to continue a lot of these programs. i know even as this unemployment, and these expanded unemployment checks will run out. and i think it will fix itself over the next couple of months. >> michael, can businesses fix this issue and just pay more? we keep hearing people complain about individuals getting too much support and we're ignoring

all of the support businesses got. they got the money to pay. >> we can blame it on some individuals getting support. the 25 richest people have a lot of support and some people feel they can't be tax on those underlying gains. >> it's too complicated to tax them. >> what if i taxed you on how much your house went up in value. >> i'm sorry, sir, i'm fin irk the question stephanie asked. >> when you're getting $60, studies show they had no impact on the labor market and we're in the midst of a pandemic and it will take people time to get back to work and for the first time, workers have agency. people can choose whether they want to go to jobs that aren't safe where they're treated rudely and not often tipped well and they don't have regular schedules to plan out their lives and it's completely ridiculous in this country, we don't value everyone the same,

and i agree with the point you raised earlier about equality of opportunity and we know that poverty and economic insecurity robs people of the opportunity to plan, to have agency, to eat, to be healthy, to not -- preschool and universal healthcare because if we can afford for billionaires to become multibillionaires in the pandemic, we can have an income floor for the fallen americans. >> josh, i know you want to get in there, but we're out of time. we can discuss real estate. >> all good. >> specifically 1031 exchanges because 1031 exchanges have nothing to do with your or my house. they're a complete real estate scam. >> fair. fair. >> grit to see you all. >> coming up,a i new covid variant out of india has reached the u.s. and the new warning from doctors about the threat it poses to younger americans,

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now to the latest on the coronavirus pandemic, it is not over. pfizer says it's expanding its vaccine testing trials on kids under the age of 12. depending on the results, pfizer is expected to request federal authorization in september or october for kids ages 5 to 11 and later in the fall for younger children. while a highly transmissible variant of the virus called the delta variant that has ravaged india now accounts for 6% of covid cases that are happening here in the u.s. and as we inch closer to the president's july 4th goal of having 70% of the country vaccinated, some states say there's no way they'll be able to accomplish that. states like alabama who trends second to last in the nation for vaccinations. our team of reporters is

covering all angles of this late-breaking story. i want to go to stephanie gosk and what can you tell us about the delta variant for kids that aren't old enough for the vaccine. >> it's concerning for the world at this point and it started as you said, in india and all of these variants spread quickly, it is to date the most infectious variant of the virus that is out there and it is more linked to more severe cases of the virus, as well. the country outside of india being hit the hardest right now is the uk and 60% of cases are the delta variant and while the uk has relatively low numbers and they've had a high vaccine rate they have seen their cases double in recent days. they are alarmed there and it has brought attention in this country, as well and you have the white house covid briefing yesterday. dr. fauci said, look, we, right now have more than 6% of our cases is this delta variant and

we have the best defense possible and that's the vaccine. the vaccines continue to hold up well against the variants that are out there of the virus. steph? >> the good news is the vaccine is working. the bad news is states like alabama where you are, allison barber, aren't getting vaccinated. why? >> in this state less than 30% of alabamaans are vaccinated and they're the second least vaccinated in the country. this country, russell country, they were the least vaccinated country in the entire state. only 14% of people here have been fully vaccinated. vaccines are readily available to anyone who wants it. the issue is misinformation. people who have chosen not to get vaccinated, they gave various reasons for why they made that decision, from just skepticism to outright conspiracy theories.

listen here. >> i haven't taken the vaccine and the reason is i don't trust it. i'm sorry, but i just don't. >> i'm a conspiracy theorist. i be thinking about stuff like that. >> we've lost a lot of lives, so i don't think it's worth losing a family member or your own life over the risk of getting a vaccination, you know? i think it's more political. it has a lot to do with political. >> dr. karen landers with alabama's department of health told us that there is absolutely no way this state hits biden's goal of 70% of adults vaccinated with at least one dose by july 4th. he told us that that may never happen in this state, period, but for now she's not giving up hope. stephanie? >> my goodness. dr. anthony fauci will be leading us on msnbc this afternoon and our colleague chuck todd will be speaking to

him about this new rollout and this new variant right here on "meet the press daily." we have to talk about this. this gives me chills to read about it. this cicada invasion is no joke. the growing storm of insects is now blamed and i mentioned it at the top of the show on grounding a white house charter plane last night and also a car crash in ohio and that's just the beginning. morgan radford joins us with the crazy details. cicadas are known as a harmless nuisance and obviously not this year. >> you nailed it, stephanie. they're creating quite the buzz and quite the stir because as you mentioned, not only have they managed to ground the white house press corps, they've also been responsible for a car crash and the president swiping one away. take a look. this morning, brood x is breaking news, cicadas grounding the white house press corps

flight as they attempted to fly to europe for president biden's first foreign trip. the pesky insects apparently to blame for mechanical problems. a minor inconvenience for some, a major headache for others. this car accident in cincinnati caused by a cicada that flew straight through an open window and into the driver's face. also in ohio, the usual quiet of golf disrupted by a noisy cicada symphony at this year's memorial tournament and it comes as golf is set to kick off in maryland, a major cicada center. >> the cicadas so bad in some places, the national weather service's radar is spotting giant swarms. >> i've never seen a map in all your years like this. >> we've been talking about the cicadas coming out, right? >> yes. the washington, d.c., radar,

there were so many cicadas in the air that the cicadas were picked up on radar. >> whoa! >> that's crazy stuff. >> their sounds, inescapable. >> the cicadas are making that sound because it's all about romance. this is the male cicada trying to convince that special someone that she should be the mother of his nymphs. he's putting on his very best performance. >> pet owners protecting their pets. like max who can't go without a muzzle. >> frustrated drivers finding ways to keep their cars clear and clean. >> 695, they fly through and get a lot of splat or them and it don't come off. >> but it you can manage to avoid cicada mayhem, perhaps you can appreciate mother nature's unique beauty. >> to me, they're fantastic. they only come out once every 17

years for a spectacle unparalleled anywhere else on the planet. they are just unique, special creatures. >> yeah. i don't know about you, steph, but i'm of a different mind. they kind of give me the crawlies. roughly by the end of the month they will be gone, and they will be back in 17 years, so you have a little time to wait. >> you need special creatures to be in someone else's backyard. >> coming up, 800 arrested and 30 tons of drugs seized. the shocking story and how it all played out, next. you're going to want to see this, next. you're going to want this, next try boost® high protein with 20 grams of protein for muscle health. versus 16 grams in ensure high protein. boost® high protein also has key nutrients for immune support. boost® high protein.

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and enough space for a pecan-based nutrition bar empire. it could happen. this is where dreams become brick and mortar. find yours, on loopnet. nbc news learned that president biden quietly starting to make moves to close guantanamo bay 20 years after the 9/11 attacks. >> hey, steph, we have been told that president biden, look, it's no surprise. as candidate biden he said he wanted to close the detention facility at guantanamo bay, but we have not heard a lot about it since then. what we found from reporting over several weeks now is that the biden administration is still actively working to try to

close the facility, but they're trying to do it very quietly under the radar. they're not really working with congress yet. their plan right now is to try to make as many of the detainees eligible for transfer to other countries as possible. quietly move some out and then begin working with congress. another thing we learn second degree that you may remember from the obama administration there was a special envoy position both for the state department and the pentagon. well, that was something that the biden administration during the transition time before he came into office, they had talked about appointing some sort of a special envoy but as of now after reaching out to several people and making some sort of quiet jes churs to see if anyone would be interested in the job, which were rebuffed, now it looks like they will drive to move forward without that special envoy position for now and once they get these

detainees moved out they will try to recongratulate someone. this is all hopefully to be done, some sort of a plan to be in place before the 9/11 anniversary. >> courtney, thank you. developing at this hour a massive worldwide sting operation. hundreds of suspected criminals behind bars this morning after they broke into the app they were using together. aaron mclaughlin has the details. >> a global crack town. more than 30 tons of drugs and nearly 50 million worth of currency. the operation made possible thanks to encrypted devices they thought they could trust, but they were developed and controlled by the fbi with the help of the australian federal

police. >> in reality the criminals were not underneath the radar, they were on it. the system is called anom. they made 12,000 available on the black market advertising them as secure encrypted devices. they use the devices to message each other. then sending carbon copies to the fbi. everything about drugs, weapons, and contract killings. >> we were able to see photographs of hundreds of tons of cocaine that were concealed in shipments of fruit. >> law enforcement's message to criminals around the world? be warned. you could fall into the next trap. nbc news. >> incredible story. that wraps up this hour, hallie jackson picks up breaking news coverage next. she will be speaking with sandra

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