see. we need to have them report to our folks, who can immediately push it out to the rank and file. there's no active where they're searching. >> i think this is pressing beyond your jurisdiction, but there should be very vigorous discussions with the overall intelligence community, the director of national intelligence to be sure the capitol police are part of their disbursal, their distribution of information. again, the tragedy is to have intelligence, but it doesn't get to the people that need it. that may not be a failure of the capitol police. it may be a failure of some other intelligence agency within the federal government. it's a question of coordination and that we need our intelligence gathering agencies, which are very good, to be sure that that information is being

shared with the appropriate entities, one of which is the capitol police. the best intelligence of the world is no good if the people that need it don't have it. so i appreciate your reporting. thank you very much for your really diligent and excellent work on this. thank you, madam chair. >> thank you very much, senator king. on with us remotely is senator ossoff. >> when we spoke in june during your prior appearance before this committee, i asked you a simple but important question, which is, which individual is ultimately responsible for the security of the united states capitol complex? who is in charge? who has ultimate accountability? and that was not a question that you at that hearing, nor your colleagues who testified before the committee in february were able to answer with specificity.

you acknowledge mr. bolton during that discussion at your last appearance that that was a problem, that the lack of a single individual who's accountable for and has responsibility for the security of the u.s. capitol is a major management problem and a security risk. that's my assessment. is that your assessment? let me ask the question again now, now that there's been time to regroup, consider reforms, consider recommendations from this committee. who is ultimately responsible for the security of the united states capitol? >> again, you ask a difficult question. that is -- if you look at it strictly from an operational side, that would be the chief, the chief of police. but because the chief also has to coordinate and you have the

house and the senate and the architect of the capitol, the capitol police board, that kind of muddies the water in a sense of ultimate responsibility. but if you had to pick the ultimate responsibility, it would fall under the chief of police for security. that still, again, poses an issue, because you still have -- i'm not trying to say that the board doesn't have its roles and responsibilities. certainly they do. that's not the question here. the question is, who do you look for to have that responsibility for capital security? obviously if you have an issue or a question or a member of your staff does, they're going to pick up the phone and probably call one or two people, either the chief or for the senate side you're going to be calling the senate sergeant at arms. so, again, that does pose a potential problem that exists. >> mr. bolton, we've engaged

extensively with you this year and with your colleagues because there was an egregious security failure, which threatened the peaceful transfer of power as required by the constitution between presidential administrations. i don't need to remind you, but i remind all who are tuned in that that failure resulted in the sacking of the united states senate, the invasion of the senate floor, a suspension of constitutionally vital processes. now here we are nearly a year later and the answer to the question who's in charge, which we identify repeatedly as being a crucial driver of both the failure to respond promptly to the contingency on january 6th and also the lack of effective management and sharing of intelligence in the weeks beforehand.

no one is in charge. does that need to change? and how would you change it, if you could simply impose a different set of policies and a different org chart? >> it kind of pushes me outside of my realm as the inspector general for the capitol police. but i think there's certainly an ability -- and this would be something that the committees would have to look long and hard at where you have maybe something similar to, let's say, the fbi where you have a director in charge. it would answer your question, who's ultimately in charge of the fbi? it's the director. who's in charge of the secret service? well, the director of the secret service. that's who you go to to hold accountable for any questions that you may have. that would be something that would have to be thought long and hard, because the uniqueness

of the capitol police and the various elements whether it be the house sergeant at arms or the senate sergeant at arms ohher the -- or the architect of the capitol, there's a lot of moving parts there. >> it's a matter that i think this committee needs to continue to focus on in any management context, security context or command context. as you know, the lack of a single point of authority and accountability is a major vulnerability. we've seen the consequences of that earlier this year. just one further question for you. i want to express my gratitude and respect and appreciation for the men and women to have united states capitol police. i want to express my gratitude and appreciation and understanding of the extraordinary burden they have had to bear.

the tremendous amount of overtime that u.s. capitol police personnel have worked in 2020, officers worked over 700,000 hours of mandatory overtime. as uscp union representatives have noted, this is driven by chronic understaffing. there was, of course, a wave of retirements and resignations after the january 6th attack. congress has an unpredictable schedule. at present, none of this mandatory overtime, 700,000 hours of it in 2020, counts toward the officers' base pay for retirement purposes. my question for you, mr. bolton, is what more can congress do to relieve the extraordinary burden on the u.s. capitol police requiring so much mandatory overtime and to ensure that their compensation and retirement benefits reflect the true measure of their commitment and sacrifice to the security of

the congress? i can't hear you. >> can you hear me now? >> yes, i can. >> i've been here since 2006 with the capitol police inspector general's office. i have yet to see where any committees or congress as a whole or even the board be an impediment to the capitol police in getting the necessary resources and funding required to complete their job. some of this is a result of circumstances beyond even the committee's control or even the capitol police's control, whether it be the events of january 6th or just natural retirements or folks wishing to get out of law enforcement. there are many different factors. certainly i don't want to leave any kind of impression that at

any time the committees and/or the board were an impediment to the capitol police receiving, like i said, a funding and/or resources. basically from my position, it is incumbent upon the capitol police to present to the committees and to the board their needs and to be forward looking into the potential what they will need, whether it be retirements coming up, need additional classes or utilizing different aspects in order to bring folks on quicker, whether it may be rehired annuities of them coming up on retirement as opposed to them going to the marshal service to conduct their court security officers. we keep them here. instead of a uniform, they are wearing a blue blazer.

those are the type of things that it's incumbent upon the department to be looking to those type of things. certainly, like i said, since i've been here, i've never seen any committees and/or board that had inhibited the department from getting those resources. >> next up, senator cruz. thank you. good tuesday morning. we have been watching and listening to testimony from capitol police inspector michael bolton the senate rules committee. he's saying capitol police has not done near enough to improve in the wake of the deadly january 6th insurrection. here's more of that. >> the department still has more work to achieve the goal of making the capitol complex safe and secure. out of the 200 security enhancements the department has provided to the oig, only 61 of those items has supporting dock

documentation. >> it's coming just one day after a former d.c. national guard official accused top army officials of being absolute and unmitigated liars for how they characterized the events of january 6th. i want to jump into that testimony with garrett haake. also with us is nbc national security and intelligence correspondent ken delanian and clint watts. garrett, you were inside the hearing. you heard bolton tell senator blount that out of the 104 recommendations they have made, only 30 have been implemented. what else stood out to you? >> reporter: he described the two biggest challenges as challenges we've been hearing

about since the immediate aftermath of january 6th, training and intelligence. the inspector general said some 200 officers have left the force since january 6th. it's not like you can just go out on the street and replace these people. they take up to a year to be trained, these new capitol police officers. so the force is still depleted. he said he wants to see training be the flagship of the capitol police, that it be run like quantico. he also talked about the importance of developing intelligence capability of the capitol police, not so much that they're going out and gathering intelligence themselves, but that they be able to analyze the intelligence that's coming into them and turn it into usable action for these officers. still big problems to solve. he did say he believes the morale is improving among the officers. part of that comes from a new permanent chief who can put all of these recommendations into an

action plan to continue to improve and grow this department. >> i have to say i was pretty astounded by that number 200 cpd officers having left the department in that time. were you shocked by that? >> i wasn't shocked, but i was definitely saddened. that's a major blow to the workforce. the number of hours of overtime is significant. you're talking about very overworked people and you're also talking about additional training, building out new units, more procedures. it's just an impossible task to make all of those changes when you're so shorthanded.

i've trained thousands of state and local law enforcement. they just don't have the resources for intelligence the way this is being discussed, at least not from my experience. the best we could hope for is like a task force officer who could get that training with the fusion centers at dhs and the fbi. >> something else i found pretty fascinating. we talked about over 100 recommendations, only 30 or so being implemented. senator blount asking bolton if there were any recommendations that had resistance to them. >> there may be resistance. one is with the cert teams, the containment emergency response teams and issues concerning the potential around security clearances. that was one of our recommendations that every sworn and civilian would have either a top secret or at worst a secret clearance. there seems to be some

hesitation towards moving towards that. >> why would there be resistance to cert teams? and can you explain what that is for those who don't know. and why would folks resist that top security clearance? >> i'll start on the latter one. just in terms of security clearances, this has been a problem since 9/11. is the idea that we could get enough state and local law enforcement officers, in this case the capitol police, certified through a secret process. there are tons of problems with that. senator king brought it up during his time. essentially to get everybody through that process, you could eliminate a lot of the workforce or they could be ineligible. this is an additional level of certification. this is a much higher level of introspection into people's careers and backgrounds. you're eliminating people in a workforce that already can't

staff its workforce. you want to talk about cost and burden trying to build out those systems there, it's going to be tough. in terms of the cert teams it's going to come down to what the responsibilities and the optics are and what you're going to be exposed to. the capitol police did not join thinking they were going to be putting up a defensive wall against insurrections. if you look back over the last 20 years and even in the last year, you're talking about people pulling up and threatening blowing up attacks on a routine basis. when you start talking about elevating these standards at a time when you're short 200 officers and your overtime is outstanding. i think it's too much burden to

put on an organization that really can't get it done right now. >> garrett, i just want you to quickly weigh in on what we heard about september 18th. bolton made this comparison to additional security they had on the ground during a rally september 18th. when i heard that, i thought that wasn't necessarily a fair comparison considering they were completely prepared for september 18th. in fact, it seemed like they had more security than they really needed. in comparing it to the response to january 6th seemed a little bit overblown, in my estimation . >> reporter: i thought the point he was making is this was an opportunity to show that they had an operational plan, that they put changes in place to develop operational plans for when they think there might be big events and they were able to test that out on september 18th.

the police chief told us at the time that they thought that rally would be an opportunity for them to test their new systems. i took that as what the inspector general was saying was useful about september 18th. >> ken, let's get into some of your reporting. colonel earl matthews writing that general charles flynn who was the deputy chief of staff for operations on january 6th and lieutenant general walter pyatt, the director of the army staff, quote, repeatedly misrepresented, understated or misled the house oversight committee and the defense department's inspector general. an army spokesman pushing back saying, general flynn and lieutenant general pyatt has been open, honest and thorough

in their testimony. we vigorously reject any allegations to the contrary. also general charles flynn is in fact the brother of mike flynn. how does colonel matthews' report square with or complicate what we already know here? >> this is really about the finger pointing over why it took so long for the national guard to respond on january 6th. colonel matthews was the top lawyer for the commanding general of the washington, d.c. national guard. they were in negotiations with the pentagon over when they could deploy the guard. they have information that people on various phone calls at the pentagon in the army talked about resisting deploying because they were afraid of the optics of the situation. they didn't want the appearance of armed guards descending on the capitol.

matthews is coming in with his memo and saying that is absolutely false. the reason it's false is these guys lied to both congress and the ig. it's a serious allegation and something that the committee is going to have to sort through. some of the issues here involve phone calls, where it's not clear if they were recorded or there are notes. presumably they have documents from both side, diaries, witness accounts. it will be really interesting when we get to see the pass and in the january 6th report about what the heck happened here and why it took the guard so long to respond. >> thank you guys all for sticking with me through this. president biden's high stakes phone call with vladimir putin. what we know about their conversation and russia's latest threats to ukraine. plus, while we wait to learn more about the omicron variant, the delta strain is still

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in the last hour president biden began his virtual meeting with russian president vladimir putin. we just got this video from russian state media. we're still waiting for details of the call and what, if any, progress leaders made in tamping down the depositions of russia's posture towards ukraine. ahead of the call, the white house said the president planned to warn of putting, quote, very real cost for any military action against ukraine. peter alexander is at the white house. also rick stangle, former under secretary of state for public diplomacy and affairs. also chief white house correspondent for the "new york times." before that he was a moscow bureau chief. he's also an msnbc political analyst. at this point, what have we learned about this call? >> all we know is what was provided through that russian pool video provided by russian television.

no photos, no video, no independent journalists allowed in the situation room where president biden is meeting right now. here just a matter of minutes into this conversation, we heard from the video with president putin saying, greetings, mr. president, president biden responding, good to see you again and noting the g 20 that took place in october. you'll remember at the time that president biden expressed his disappointment about russia's absence. this is perhaps the most consequential call of the biden presidency to this point. the effort, according to the president's aides is to deescalate the situation at the ukrainian border through diplomacy and to communicate

that to his russian counterpart in the way of severe economic sanctions against the russians and really try to isolate them from the international financial system. the conversation ongoing right now with the expectation it would be a long one. the real outstanding question is what's going on along the russian/ukrainian border with tens of thousands of russian troops amassing there. the real question is this is a bluff by russia. president biden said he will not accept russia's red line that the russians will not allow ukraine to join nato. that has been a clear priority that he appears to go ahead with invading as a way to enforce that message. >> rick stangle, let's talk

ukraine. we know russia has invaded ukraine before. do you see this as a bluff? and what is different this time? >> well, let's look at what putin's goal is. i mean, of course, putin has said for decades that ukraine is a part of russia. his goal is to destabilize ukraine, to make it weaker, to make it dependent on moscow. to make it not lean west but lean east. russians have this thing called hybrid warfare active measures. that's where you destabilize a country without physically attacking them. it uses disinformation, which we all know about. it's espionage and a number of other things. i suspect and i hope i'm right, this is what putin is doing in ukraine. he's not actually planning to invade ukraine. he's trying to destabilize ukraine. he has a weak leader in

zelensky. the cost of invading ukraine, you'd have body bags of russian boys and girls coming back to russia. it's too high a price i would say. he's trying to destabilize it through hybrid warfare. >> for what purpose? >> joining nato has always been a false flag. ukraine is not going to join nato. the americans don't want that. even the ukrainians don't want that because they know how it would provoke russia. he just wants ukraine to be weak and dependent on russia. he's always believed in what political scientists call scare of influence politics. we can do what we want to do in our sphere of influence and ukraine, in putin's mind, is absolutely in putin's sphere of influence. >> he wants ukraine to know who their number one is. talk about the dynamics here between these two men.

we know obviously president biden has a long history when it comes to foreign policy. when it comes to russia, he was seen as the diplomatic closer inside the obama administration. >> president biden does have a lot of experience in this particular part of the world. as vice president under barack obama, it was his portfolio to help ukraine back in 2014 when russia did seize crimea, when they did foment a separatist uprising in eastern ukraine, the dambas region. for president biden, it's a big test that putin is now challenge ing his credibility on this subject. germany, which is right there in the center of all this is going through its own leadership transition at the moment. angela merkel who has been one of the smartest observers and

can contest what putin is leaving his chancellor of germany. it's a moment where putin senses opportunity to make some progress in his part of the world. there are big costs to invading ukraine. he doesn't have to go that far to get what he wants. having said that, it also shows that it's a mistake to completely rule out the idea that when somebody puts an army of 125,000 people on the border that it's not going to lead to something kinetic and dangerous. it really could. once you put an army of that size in the field, there's a certain logic that has a danger of becoming actual. that's a real risk here. while it's probably not likely to lead to open war, for all the reasons rick said, you just

never know for sure. there's so many different cost costs to the united states. there are nato allies on the front lines. they're going to want an increased american presence to make them feel more secure against an aggressive russia. one thing leads to another. this is probably the most important phone call of president biden's presidency to date. >> what is the likelihood that putin will pull those troops back, especially with the threat of sanctions? does moscow actually respond to a threat of or implementation of sanctions? when you look at a country like iran, that could be isolated from sanctions as it has been. you're really closing off at the economy. moscow is different. russia is different. they can't necessarily be squeezed when it comes to sanctions. >> no, but they can cry out.

putin like our former president is a great believer in suggesting strength. so the idea that he would suddenly withdraw these troops after this phone call is the height of unlikeliness. but you can punish him. it's an oligarchy. it's a criminal regime they have over there. to punish putin's closest allies who keep him in power is something that he doesn't want to have happen. but to echo what peter said, having that many troops on the border, i don't think he intends to invade. putin is sort of a checkers player. he could change his mind. the ukrainians could make a mistake. they could launch a missile. it's just very, very dangerous. that word you hear in diplomacy all the time that biden is talking about deescalate is exactly the thing you want to have here. >> would putin appreciate being

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this morning we are up to nearly 20 states that have detected the omicron variant. we're still learning more about that strain and its severity. right now, cases in this country are again surging because of the delta variant. that is leaving some hospitals on the brink once again. miguel has a look at a hospital where a disaster team is stepping in to help. you got a rare look inside the san juan medical center. how is staff managing there with the huge surge of cases?

>> reporter: it was a really eye opening experience. that hospital is suffering. their staff is overwhelmed. in the icu they had three staff members working the icu and eight nurses who had been brought in from the health and human services department with a dispatch team to help out there and they were also expecting people from the navy to arrive over the weekend. that's how bad the situation is. there's about 16 rooms there with fully intubatedpatients. more than half the hospital has patients infected with covid. they tell us they're seeing about 30 new patients every day admitted into that hospital. one of the reasons, experts say, is the vaccination rate in that region is fairly low. it's also the only medical center in the area. >> this is our fifth wave. this is clearly the most

severe wave we've had to endure. >> these are very sad situations. they often times don't have a very good ending. >> reporter: health and human services has been in that hospital for the last several days. they have ten dispatch teams they're sending all around the country. so that hospital is a microcosm of what's happening in so many areas where vaccination rates are low. >> thank you. new hints about what is next in a contempt of congress case against former trump aide steve bannon. what we're learning from a court hearing this morning. plus, the president is about to get the report from his supreme court commission. will we see changes to the court? we're going to take a look at their recommendations. going to their recommendations. to deal w. not just unpredictable relapses. all these other things too. it can all add up. kesimpta is a once-monthly at-home injection...

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steve bannon is back in federal court. this morning's hearing could give us an idea of how bannon's case is laid out. he is charged with two counts of contempt of congress connected with his refusal to answer questions from the house committee investigating the january 6th riot. bannon has plead not guilty. what are we expecting to learn from this hearing, happening as we speak? >> i think you're right. we're getting a look at how bannon intends to defend his case. his lawyer right now is talking to the judge and saying pretty clearly that just as the committee wants to investigate steve bannon, steve bannon wants to investigate the committee. his lawyer says it will be important to subpoena witnesses, that there's a whole question about the propriety of the january 6th committee being led by someone, benny thompson,

who has already sued trump civilly, that they're entitled to know why the us attorney's office decided to go ahead with criminal charges against bannon, even though somebody who has raised the executive privilege defense in the past has ever been prosecuted. bannon's lawyers say things shouldn't be moving too fast because it's unusual. the government want the trial to start april 15th. bannon's lawyer says the trial is going to last at least ten days and shouldn't begin until mid october. one other point here. a big decision will be whether bannon can present this defense, saying he can't be convicted because he relied on the advice of his lawyer. some courts have held that is a defense, because to be convicted

of a crime, there has to be evidence that somebody acted with guilty intent. if a lawyer advises somebody to do something and that advice is followed in good faith, then there's no criminal intent, so goes the argument. the judge is going to have to decide that. if the defense is allowed, then bannon's lawyer will probably be an important witness at the trial. the justice department has once again ended an investigation into the murder of emmett till. investigators were looking into claim that is the white woman who accused till of whisting at her was actually lying. till was gruesomely beating after karen bryant dunham claimed he had advances towards her. a book claimed to have evidence that she lied and the case was reopened. despite that book, dunham told investigators she never lied.

a senior law enforcement official tells nbc news the doj failed to find proof that she lied. should there be more justices on the supreme court? do they need term limits? and do the rules on confirmation need to change? this afternoon, president biden's commission on the court will vote on their final report. what they're recommending coming up next. at they're recommendingg up next. everything felt like a 'no'. everything. but then ray went from no to know. with freestyle libre 2, now he knows his glucose levels when he needs to. and... when he wants to. so ray... can be ray. take the mystery out of your glucose levels, and lower your a1c. now you know. try it for free. visit freestylelibre.us

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virtual wallet® is so much more than a checking account. its low cash mode℠ feature gives you at least 24 hours of extra time to help you avoid an overdraft fee. you see that? virtual wallet® with low cash mode℠ from pnc bank. one way we're making a difference. . okay, here is the question. is nine the right number of supreme court justices. in just a couple hours, the supreme court commission will vote on whether or not to release the final report on that exact question. back in april, the plan was to study expanding the highest court in the land. they don't plan to make a recommendation at all. mike, it is great to see you. if they're not making a recommendation what can we expect in this report? >> yeah, just to step back for a

long time republican based voters have been motivated by the issue of the make up of the federal judiciary. especially since merrick garland, amy comey-barrett rushed through, democratic voters have been very animated about some of the key questions around the supreme court. so candidate biden proposed a presidential commission he named more than two dozen experts to study some of the question questions. also discussing term limits. what they did do is put an awful lot of research and some perspective on what would need to be done if political leadership in washington would decide to take one course or

another. on the question of term limits they don't recommend if there should be term limits, but if they go for an 18 year term, what if there was a vacacy before that. so there is a lot of process and historically oriented questions. if they have limits, this is ultimately up to you. they put in a lot of work to guide those discussions. >> back to the politics of it all, it seems. mike memoli, great to see you. thanks for reporting on this. "texas will prevail." that is the response from ken paxton this morning. the justice department announced it is suing the state over it's new redistricting plans. merrick garland announcing the

press conference on monday. they also said the maps drawn after 2020 census deny the right of latinos to vote. it's the fourth lawsuit in texas since president biden took office. you can catch me on weekends from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. eastern. also a programming note, "paper and glue" from brian glaser and ron howard. it follows j.r. watch the world television premier of "paper and glue" friday at 10:00 p.m. eastern. first, "andrea mitchell reports" starts next. next.

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ukraine's independence. the u.s. and nato members threatening severe repercussions. plus, democrats are working to get the debt limit approved. the president is hoping to get his social spending bill passed. i will be talking to senator chris van holland and we'll hear what they have to say about the beijing olympics this winter. what scientists now learn about the omicron variant. and we'll get a look at