hi there, everyone.

it's 4:00 in new york on a monday. an empire built on lies. that is how one veteran prosecutor describes the twice impeached disgraced ex-president's family business. the trump organization. it is the linchpin of the image of a successful businessman that donald trump sold to his voters for years. but those are the words of mark pomerantz. you're going the hear a lot about him in the coming days. he is a former prosecutor for the manhattan district attorney's office, a man who spent a year poring over financial statements from the ex-president's businesses and interviewing potential witnesses about them. he came to one inescapable conclusion, that donald trump committed financial crimes. here is what he said to cbs news about his boss, manhattan d.a. alvin bragg's decision to halt the grand jury probe that was looking into trump's finances, a decision that led pomerantz to resign in protest. >> if you take the exact same conduct and make it not about

donald trump and not about a former president of the united states, would the case have been indicted? it would have been indicted in a flat second. >> you said in your resignation letter that bragg's decision amounted to a grave failure of justice. >> yeah. >> you still believe that? >> i still believe it. >> but don't prosecutors often disagree with decisions made by their bosses? what makes this different? >> given all the evidence that we had and that nobody said hey, the guy's not guilty. >> we've heard that before, right? donald trump's position as the former president of the u.s. is the only thing protecting him from indictment again. this time according to pomerantz on charges based on a consistent pattern, years and years of false statements about the values of his properties, including mar-a-lago and his apartment in trump tower.

statements signed by the ex-president himself, all in order to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in financing. once again, from that cbs news interview. . >> the tactics varied from property to property to property. what they had in common was that they were dishonest. >> so what ties donald trump directly to this? couldn't he say it's my accountant said it's worth this, i signed it? >> there were many bits and pieces of evidence on which we could rely in making that case. >> reporter: one of those pieces pomerantz showed us is part of a deutsche bank loan showing trump personally verified his statements are accurate. >> he warns that the financial statements are true and correct in all material respects. and finally, of course, on the guarantee is his sharpie signature "donald j. trump."

>> for his part, district attorney alvin bragg is pushing back aggressively. he released a statement about mark pomerantz's book. pomerantz's book is called "people versus donald trump." about that, bragg says that the case against trump, quote, wasn't ready for takeoff, end quote. but what pomerantz says he found evidence of is similar to what cohen testified to. and pomerantz insists he assembled the goods. here's what he has to say to his ex-boss. >> this was a righteous case. you should bring it. it's important. and if you made the wrong decision, make a better decision. >> a veteran investigator and prosecutor laying out for the public the criminal case he built against donald trump is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. new york time investigative reporter and msnbc contributor susanne craig is back. we rely on her because she has

reported extensively on the finances and taxes of donald trump since 2016 and understands them going way back farther than that. also joining us, form deputy assistant attorney general, former u.s. attorney harry litman is back. and we will play nice today, harry, you and me. pete strzok is also back. he is a former fbi counter intelligence agent who has investigated donald trump among many others in his career. let me just show our viewers where if this sounds familiar, you've heard it before. here is michael cohen describing the behavior that pomerantz then set out to prove with witness testimony and documents and what not. >> to your knowledge, did the president or his company ever inflate assets or revenues? >> yes. >> and was that done with the president's knowledge or direction? >> everything was done with the knowledge and at the direction of mr. trump.

>> and, of course, inflating assets to win a newspaper poll to boost your ego is not a crime, but to your knowledge, did the president ever provide inflated assets to a bank in order to help him obtain a loan? >> these documents and others were provided to deutsche bank on one occasion where i was with them in our attempt to obtain money so that we can put a bid on the buffalo bills. >> so, susanne, this has been alleged in congress years and years before this book is coming to light for the general public. but pomerantz has the goods. i'm going read from his book in a second how about he closed the loop on that with deutsche in a zoom interview with a risk assessor there. but tell me -- because it feels like there are two things going on here, right. one person who looked at his finances and documents and

interviewed witnesses found evidence of criminality. and allen bragg, who is pushing back in a suspiciously vigorous manner said no he didn't. but what you're talking about last week is allen bragg perhaps bringing these cases after all. tell me what's going on. >> right. in the case that's going forward, they're looking at the hush money payments to stormy daniels, and that sort of seems to be now where the focus. i don't see it. and i kind of keep waiting, but so far we haven't seen them move on the issue of the appraisals, submitting false information to financial institutions in order to get a loan. and that's where mark pomerantz so far, we've heard him go quite strongly. i can't wait to read the book to see what else potentially is in there. that has been an area of focus for him. he felt it was a pretty slam-dunk case, and then the attorney general of new york bringing a civil case with very similar characteristics to the

case that mark pomerantz wanted to bring involving the appraisals. but alvin bragg has decided he is going to go ahead on the hush money end of it, and so far he hasn't moved again on the appraisals. >> susanne, someone we talk about a lot is allen weisselberg, especially with his new address being rikers. let me show you what pomerantz said about -- it involves michael cohen, who we have talked with and about and weisselberg. let me show you what pomerantz said about that. >> and what he told us in a nutshell was that he had been in the room with trump and with allen weisselberg, who was the cfo of the trump organization, and the conversation involved donald trump saying my net worth needs to be x. and so you start with a net worth target. >> so reverse engineering? >> reverse engineering so that you come back and you say okay, boss.

we've done your financial statement, and it shows $5 billion. >> and then you guys go out and figure out how to add up my assets to reach this false number? >> correct. and it was easier to bump up certain assets than other assets. seven springs, mar-a-lago, the triplex, his residences, each of which by the way he claimed to have a value that anybody had ever bought or sold a private residence for in the history of the united states ever. >> so susannne, i think those are some of the numbers you flagged for us when the financial information first became public. it also is a direct echo to something tim o'brien, a journalist said on this program. he was in allen weisselberg's office, and he added up trump's worth. it came to $5 billion.

trump wanted to be worth more. allen said stay here for one moment. i'll go find you the other billion there was a lot of reverse engineering going on in trump world. that has been proven over and over again. what is your sense of whether this interest in trying to put new pressure, more pressure on weisselberg now that he is at rikers. is it possible it relates to these allegations that pomerantz makes? >> very possible. and i have to say, we've talked about this. allen weisselberg is somebody to keep an eye on. he is in rikers now, and you don't know how that's going to affect him day to day in terms of will he decide he is going to cooperate in a part of an investigation in order to get himself out of that situation that he's in. and i think that's just such a personal decision, you know, that he is going to make one day. and there is -- a lot of days may past where it doesn't happen and then he is going to say enough. and that's what alvin bragg is counting on.

but i have to say. i was fascinated to hear and glad to see this issue of the valuations. this coming into the news again, because it is something that this family has been doing for deck raids. we did a story in 2018 on the inherited wealth that donald trump inherited from his father, fred. when we started out, we didn't quite know the crazy road that that story was going to take us down, but it centered around appraisals. and for decades, this family has been using appraisals to their advantage. when they need a charitable contribution for a tax return, they go high. when they need a bank they go high. and when there is something involving land going into an estate, they go low. and over and over and over we've seen it. when we did this story, we learned terms like the friendly appraiser. you don't need to go to an appraiser and say i'd like it low. you need to say we need this valued because it's going to go

into an estate. and that is code for go low. we met and found all of these informational time and time again, just example after example where the trump family had done this. and we laid it out in that story. it was quite remarkable. i didn't know at the beginning that's where it was heading. and now we're symptom talk about it to this day, because it's such habitual behavior by donald trump and this family. >> and harry litman, at least one person thinks it might be incriminating patterns to engage in. at least one person thinks answering truthfully the questions susanne is putting out there might incriminate this person. this person took a fifth amendment when asked in the civil case whether or not they were aware their financial statements were inconsistent and in some instances false or misleading. let me show you donald trump's deposition with new york's attorney general. >> you're aware at the time this is finalized that the statement of financial condition for 2011 contained false and misleading

statements, is that correct? >> same answer. >> in preparing the 2011 statement of financial conditions, allen weisselberg and jeff mcconney worked at your direction and followed your instations and inflated asset valuations on the asset conditions by applying false and misleading conditions. is that correct? >> same answer. >> from at least 2005 through the present, you've had an ongoing agreement with mr. weisselberg and mr. mcconney that they would prepare the financial statement in a manner that depended on false and misleading conditions as a means of reporting inflated values, is that correct? >> same answer. >> so harry, obviously is a different office, a different case, but the same evidence, same body of evidence. and donald trump, when asked if he could answer whether or not he knowingly submitted financial documents that contained false and misleading statements took the 50 for fear of self-incrimination. tell me how fruitful you think this vein is to be tapped or retapped by prosecutors.

>> yeah, he sure did. but he also took it for 440 some other questions. look, i think it's very clear, as susanne said, this is their mo. this is their pattern of doing business. and you have dozens of examples with ridiculous inflations of value. and somewhat fewer, but still lots of with low-balling it. the issue always, as we've learned over the last couple of years, and this is why i think pomerantz might be somewhat overselling it is tying it to trump the main two ways. by the way, all the evidence and allegations developed on the ag side fed directly in. it's a big part of what pomerantz was doing and what bragg still is doing. but there were two main ways to put it at trump's feet. the first, that signed application which we saw. that's a pretty big deal where his signature unusually appears on it, and it's obviously false.

should they focus on that? and the second big thing is your friend in mind, michael cohen, and there is a lot in the book back and forth about why he was a very tricky person to build a case around. so to cut to the chase on your question, very strong evidence this is what they did again and again. and they were wrestling with could they stick it on trump. and, you know, though pomerantz now says something like a slam-dunk, and though i think bragg did not handle this well a year ago, at the time, there was a fair bit of dispute, and i think he was talking about it like a 70% case, 80% case. so i don't think with the linchpin evidence of intent, we could say he would breeze to a conviction. still, a lot of good reasons to have brought it, for as he said, righteousness. >> could they stick it on me? would they have prosecuted me if i had done these things?

>> oh, yeah, that's another thing he says. i think that's also maybe a little oversold. if the evidence against you was that thin on intent, my -- i think it would be a judgment call. in any event, it really isn't on you, and it's stilly i think to ignore this huge context that it would be the first against the former president. all that said, i think they could have stuck it on trump. it's just -- i want to point out for all the listeners here why they wrestled with it and it wasn't simply a decision to sort of smother it for political reason. bragg was worried about losing. >> go ahead, susanne. the other thing important, we were pointing a lot of the work we have done on valuation, donald trump will argue that he relied on the advice of outside experts. and that's not a bulletproof defense in any way. but it is something that will come into play.

and that's why in the "60 minutes" interview, i listened very carefully when pomerantz was noting areas that donald trump had personally signed. they're trying to tie it directly to him. and then there is another third factor that we heard when we were reporting out some of this, which even if he relied on professional advice and he argues that, one thing prosecutors will bring up, and you can see this playing out in a courtroom is donald trump is a retail guy. he should know the valuations. he should have a sense of the market. and that will i think work against him in a court. but he is definitely going to come in and say i relied on the advice of experts. the fact that they're going to probably play tapes saying he is the biggest -- bragging about how knowledgeable he is about real estate, he knows more than anybody, that is going to cut against him. but that's a whole another layer that's going on here that will be a defense for him if this goes forward, if a case like this goes forward. >> pete, mark pomerantz writes

this in his book about the office he quit in protest. quote, as i saw it, the doubters had not been e-merced in the statement of financial condition fact gathering and they did not know the case well. also, they seemed to be exactly the kind of traditional let's do the things the way we have always done them that kept the district attorney's office from being more successful in white collar cases. cy vance had privately complained many times to me and carey about the gun-shy culture in the office, saying that even he as district attorney had not always been able to crack through it. let me play this too. these are a handful of the people who have investigated donald trump's criminality and come out saying crimes happened. >> if we had had confidence that the president clearly had not committed a crime, we would have

said so. >> if this is not a crime, i don't know what is. if a president can incite an insurrection and not be held accountable, really there is no limit to what a president can do or can't do. >> if the department of justice determines they have the evidence we believe is there and they make a decision not to prosecute, i think that really calls into question whether or not we're a nation of laws. >> if you take the exact same conduct and make it not about donald trump and not about a former president of the united states, would the case have been indicted in it would have been indicted in a flat second. >> pete strzok, the rule of law needs a new press secretary. it is sick in our country. it has been undermined by all the people who have investigated donald trump up close and personal. people have the skill set, much more professional than mine. i'm just a cable host who come out and say crimes have been committed. there is no rule of law in america if he is not held accountable. and now here is another one who looked at his finances. susanne forgets more every night

when she goes to sleep than i'll ever know about his finances, but you have another career prosecutor saying if he was anyone else, he'd be charged. what is happening? >> well, i think, nicolle, that's a source of immense frustration with a lot of the american public, when they hear all these potential alleged crimes and it sure looks like there is a separate system of justice for somebody who is powerful and somebody who is well connected, somebody who is wealthy. i think two things when you get to trump. the first thing is he has for all those people who are saying crimes were committed, he has people like bill barr. he has people in the extremes of the republican party who are defending him, who are throwing sand in the wheels of justice, who are making it very hard to bring a case. he also has the fact that he has an enormously complex financial reality. the trump organization is not one man with a couple of retirement accounts, two bank accounts, and a slush fund that he keeps under his mattress. it's enormously complex. so as an investigator, as a prosecutor, if you're trying to narrow down something that large with that amount of complexity

to one person, and that is kind of what harry was saying, it gets hard when you get to the top of a man who relies on any number of accountants and attorneys for advice to actually pin that knowledge on him. but one thing i'll say for the extraordinary reporting that susanne and her colleagues did in "the new york times." this valuation lends itself to so many crimes. you potential tax fraud. you have potential false figures being used. >> the dog agrees with me. i hear a dog barking. >> you have an ideal way to launch your money. harry i think agrees. there are so many crimes, and again, i think we're talking about the d.a. in new york. i'm also in letitia james last september said i'm referring all of this information to the feds, to sdny, and to the irs. because i think federal crimes have been committed. so we're all looking at alvin bragg. i'm very curious to see what mr. pomerantz has to say.

but i'm also interested to see all this activity implicates federal crimes as well. i'm very interested to see what if anything is going on within the department of justice and particularly the irs. >> pete, you talk about people being frustrated. i actually think people are extraordinarily patient. because i think most people, at least my viewers, they read the stories about michael cohen being charged. a and the main character michael cohen is individual number one. he is described as an unindicted co-conspirator. so new york looked a the hush money already. why do you think sdny didn't do anything? >> that's hard to say. i've seen some reporting that sdny, that at some point in time they sat down and looked am some potential charges and recognized yes, when it came to trump, this sat the end of the trump's administration, that will there were potential charges there, but they seemed almost de minimis. their jump, their idea was if they were to bring these charges, it would be sort of so small that faced with the gravity of charging a former

president of the united states, that in their opinion, they didn't think they should do it. so i think there is a sense of, one, it's hard to do. there is a sense whichever prosecutorial team you talk to understanding that if you're going to be the first person to charge a former president of the united states, you best do it well, and you best do it right. and i think that leads to a little bit more con templaive slowness. i'm glad you're viewers are patient. i have been patient. i think i find myself becoming a little more impatient and wondering with two years to go until the next presidential election, where are we right now? we're in 2023. >> i think that's right. and i think i would associate myself with your comments. and i think as a public, we have a reflex for false equivalencies. and this president obliterates any scales of normal it is. he is the most corrupt, shady,

lying, there have been more crimes alleged not by anyone on the left or anyone in the media, by robert mueller, but mark pomerantz, by the entire january 6th select committee made up of two of the most conservative republicans ever to serve in the house of representatives when it was judged on scales of conservative and liberal before it was insane and irrational. and i think i'll give you the last word on this, pete. i think there is a real sense that we're going to dig into the durham investigation in a minute that not only has justice been disserved and disgraced by trump's proactive conduct, by siccing bill barr on a once honorable investigator like mr. durham, turning it what based on "the new york times" reporting sounds like a completely wayward, potentially corrupt investigation that upended the lives of everyone and resulted in zero successful prosecutions. but whoa, whoa, even that guy found criminality on the part of

donald j. trump as tipped off by the italians. i think the public is at this inflection point, and i'm reluctant to even cover people who write about crimes they saw when they looked into trump, because i think the public is really starting to wonder if anyone has the you know whats to do anything about it. what do you think? >> i think if anybody has the you know whats to do it, it is this administration and this attorney general. because i don't think if we go another two, three, four years, whoever that next administration is, that just by the age of the case, by people's memories fading, there is not going to be a better time than now. to the point of like the additional alleged criminal activity, what was it? financial crime relating to donald trump. it all comes back to financial crime relating to donald trump. that's all it is. that was his red line to mueller. you look into my finances, that's offlimits. it's all about the financial crime. and that's why i'm glad susanne and her colleagues continue to dig. hopefully we'll start seeing

some level at trump and what he's been doing. >> by the way, pete's book is called "compromised." tomorrow on this program, mark pomerantz will be here. we've been talking about him. we've wondered a long time what he saw, what happened when he quit. he was the lead attorney in the manhattan d.a.'s office. he'll be our guest in the hour at 4:00. you went a want to miss that my thanks to susanne craig who makes sense of all of this, and harry litman who talks in the kind of tones that don't set me off. thank you very much, harry litman. pete strzok will be back in the next hour when we come back. republicans practically tripped over themselves over the weekend to call out president joe biden for any number of asinine story lines regarding the downed chinese balloon. they're outrage completely predictable, concluding of course that donald trump never would have let this happen. oh, but wait a second. he did. we'll fill new you've in on the very latest othan story. plus, the update on the search and rescue under way in

parts of turkey and syria where a series of earthquakes has killed thousands of people with many more people still missing. and later in the show, new calls from congress to investigate the durham investigation, which we've been talking about. all those stories and more when "deadline: white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere today. you're an owner. that means that your goals are ours too. and vanguard retirement tools and advice can help you get there. that's the value of ownership. a man, his tractor and his family. these are the upshaws. though, he goes by shaw. which stands for skilled hands at work. because whether he's cutting hair, mowing grass, moving earth, or even roasting marshmallows. he's got a firm grasp on what matters most. there's a story in every piece of land. run with us on a john deere tractor

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told the defense department i wanted to shoot it down as soon as was appropriate. they concluded -- they concluded we should not shoot it down over land. it was not a serious threat, and we should wait until it got across the water. >> that was from a couple of minutes ago. president joe biden arriving back at the white house from camp david, answering a question from our colleague, kelly o'donnell. you heard the president say it, it was always the plan to wait for the chinese spy balloon to shoot it down until it was safe to shoot it down. as we speak, a team is working to collect the remnants of the balloon near where it was shot dawn over the atlantic ocean off the coast of south carolina saturday. this is the moment of impact courtesy of a single missile from an f-22 raptor. officials tell nbc news that not only was this the safest way to do it for the balloon to pass over water, but it also improves the likelihood of collecting all of the intact material for the sake of our intelligence gathering. at the same time, the officials

said knowing where the balloon was going helped them adequately protect against potential chinese intelligence gathering. predictably, however, republicans, who spent the better part of the last week thinking they finally had one, demanding the balloon be blown out of the sky to protect americans, prove they'd wouldn't be happy with any outcome, turning the incident into another one of their partisan food fights. watch. >> they can now message to taiwan, our allies and others that on top of afghanistan, america is a declining power, and they can't even stop one of our most basic surveillance tools, a balloon. >> the president taking down over the atlantic is sort of like the quarterback -- sort of like tackling the quarterback after the game is over. >> what began as a spy balloon has become a trial balloon, testing president biden's strength and resolve. and unfortunately, the president failed that test. and that's dangerous for the american people. >> good one, tom.

now in their haste to blame president joe biden to make the whole thing a metaphor for his presidency, not strong enough, not fast enough, republicans suggested that donald trump never would have let this happen, ever. but they too were wrong because those senior administration officials have now confirmed that surveillance balloons flew over the continental united states briefly on at least one, two, three occasions during donald trump's presidency. joining our coverage is former congressman david jolly, new york pentagon correspondent and msnbc contributor helene cooper is here to root us in the facts of this crazy story, and with me at the tame new york editorial mara gaye. take me through this whole debacle. and i feel like because it became so politicized, we actually know more about the chinese spy balloon program than we might have. >> okay, nicolle, you're having way too much fun with this.

i think we do know a lot. the pentagon will tell you that they think they have learned a lot over the past seven days what this started a week ago saturday when the balloon first showed up over the aleutian islands, they've been able to collect information. and now they think they're going to be in a good position. the debris field in the atlantic is not as extensive as they originally thought it might be. they had been talking about seven miles debris field. now it looks like general van herck, the head of north com told reporters this afternoon it's about the size of 15 football fields times five football fields, which pentagon people think is a really small area. they think that's relatively shallow water. they think they'll good able to get a lot of this debris out, and it's going to go to intel

agencies to examine. so they think they'll be able to find a lot of information from this. one of the most interesting things, though, since you're clearly looking for the lighter side of this, in general van herck's press conference was he warned people fa that if anything washes up on the beaches of south carolina, don't touch it. just call the police. >> i'm not looking for the lighter side. i guess, helene, what i think is fascinating is the spy craft piece of this, and understanding whether this is a common tactic. and i'd love for you to take me through that. what i think is so crazy is before anyone had anything other than iphone footage, republicans were on the hunt that i thought they had a political kill shot against joe biden. people didn't even know what was going on other than what they saw when they looked up. take me inside the more serious military and intelligence part of the story. >> it's -- for the pentagon, it became about risk assessment, they said. when they found -- when the balloon showed up over the

aleutian islands, the first thing they thought is this another one of the forays we've had before? but it went away, went into the northwest territories of canada. and then when it reappeared over northern idaho last tuesday and stuck around and started traveling, at that point, one administration official said to me that they were just shocked at the audacity of china when general milley and defense secretary austin briefed the president on tuesday, he asked that military options be drawn up. but what they came back with is they were worried, and this is where it gets to the risk assessment, again, they were worried that shooting it down could kill somebody. and that's -- you'd see a much different type of rhetoric on the political -- on tv screens from critics if they had shot this down over montana and hurt

even -- and ended up killing somebody. so their risk assessment at the time is the debris field was going to be too extensive. they thought that they could feed false information to this balloon. they thought they could protect the american -- sensitive american sites that it was going over. and it was not a question. they weren't worried about the balloon militarily or intelligence wise, to tell the truth. so their assessment was wait until it gets to the atlantic, and then shoot it down. but this was a spectacular sort of slow motion display that took place over days of americans watching a chinese spy balloon, you know, as it drifts in the air across the continental u.s. so i think they knew from the start that they were going to be exposing themselves to a lot of ridicule, but the assessment at the time was the risk was not worth the benefit of shooting it down right away. >> and how did we come to learn,

helene, that briefly three chinese spy balloons fell over the continental u.s. while trump was president? >> this were it gets really weird. the pentagon used to classify this stuff as unidentified aerial phenomenon. it's the same classification that they use for ufos, for their ufo program. and the defense department has long been very, very super secret about this type of stuff. so it's not a question of not telling president trump. it's a question of there is a lot of stuff in these intel briefings, and people don't read all of it, especially when it's classified in a different way. in the last two years, the biden administration has sort of loosened that up, taken away the stigma of the whole ufo program. they've named it now. it's no longer unidentified aerial phenomenon. it's some other uap type thing that i can never remember.

but they went back and looked at all of these things after the fact and realized that these were actually chinese spy balloons. >> it's so fascinating. and i think, david, it's a good gentle admonition from helene that the lighter side of the story can obscure really serious foreign policy implications if a braise adversary like china is sending a balloon over the country. don't get between 2024 candidates and a camera when the country is in the early phases of a national security question, right? the reflexive attacks on president joe biden's -- not just the president, but on his military were galling, even for this version of the republican maga party. >> republicans would be wise to remember that the adversary in this scenario is china and not their own president, joe biden. and i think that's what we saw on display last week. you used the word reflexive. it was.

it was reflexive partnership. reach for the political argument against the sitting president as opposed to recognizing the gravity of what is really a permanent surveillance between china and the u.s. and other nations as well. so there are legitimate questions of oversight. this is where it all gets obscured by kind of the comic cal behavior of republicans. there are legitimate questions of oversight of the dod in our intel agencies by the house, senate republicans. what is this? now we know it happens on multiple occasions, but the world just finding out. how does it compromise our own assets? what type of intelligence has china been able the get? were we able to get intelligence from monitoring the balloon? and could we have struck its intelligence gathering? all of those are legitimate oversight questions. historically, republicans and democrats would have come together between the hill and the white house. and those answers would have been mad. but once you saw, call it the state of our culture, the state of our politics or the state of

the republican party right now, you just saw this reflexive partisanship. it's easy to laugh at. but when a sitting senator posts pictures of themselves outside with firearms as though they're going to shoot down the with a weapon. they're not serious people. so i think it does have some hard indications for our own national security, certainly for our partisanship. but it's a bad reflection on today's republican party for sure. >> seen around the world. all right. no one is going anywhere. when we come back, i want to continue this conversation about the security and the intelligence and the diplomatic part of the story. but i also want to ask all of you why we as a country are so fascinated in the chinese spy balloon? and we'll leave it to our friends at "snl" to try the figure that one out for us.

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i'm actually surprised you're still floating. experts saying you're the size of three buses. >> okay, ouch. i'm a balloon, so that's my body. how would you like it if someone measured your width in buses. i'm sorry i'm not camera-ready. and who is this? no, no, no, get away, go, go. god, i hate the ocean. i'm really more of an air guy. >> look, i'm sorry, but people were worried they were being spied on.

>> by me? a balloon? everyone is being surveilled constantly, but it's always shoot the balloon and never unplug alexa. >> even as it was happening, balloon watch 2023 at times felt like an "snl" skit unfolding in realtime. it's no surprise that "snl" had it right there on saturday night. what we witnessed last night might go down as one of the sillier chapters maybe in american history. a cultural phenomenon with that secret sauce of getting everyone to talk about a potentially really serious intelligence story, the chinese spy balloon. we're back with david jolly, helene cooper and mara gaye. mara, why do you think the broke through? everyone, everywhere was talking about the balloon. >> i think partially we need a distraction from kind of the more depressing and grimmer day to day subjects that we find ourselves enmeshed in. >> yeah. >> from covid to the economy to a radicalization of the

republican party. >> right. >> and part of it i think was that kind of reaction from the republicans, and something that gave me a chuckle, but after words kind of a groan was just the machismo that we saw in that reaction from the republicans and from really nonserious as david said members of congress who were saying we're just going to shoot it down and posting pictures of themselves and their families with guns. you know, let's be serious for a second. i'm not an expert in spy craft, but, you know, it's really clear that this is not something that presented an immediate threat to the american people. and you've worked in the white house. you know. this was something where china was clearly testing, testing the waters. and so-so little of what's going on behind the scenes, the american public gets to see. obviously, if the biden administration thought that this was a serious threat, they would have dealt with it even faster than they did. >> right. >> so i think part of what

helene is talking about that is so important is just the intelligence gathering that the administration got to do in allowing this to go on a little bit longer. so that's actually a serious response. but i think, really, it's a distraction. >> yeah. >> and the republicans are not taking it seriously. >> david jolly, i wondered what the republicans would have been saying if it was a proud boys balloon. not all threats are even to this republican party. >> well, and this has the opportunity to cast blame and fault on joe biden, which is their ultimate end. i think the reason it captured so many hearts and minds is yes, for some, they were introduced to perhaps the kinder, gentler side of espionage. bury it's this. it's actually a cultural moment i think we had. because what you saw on display was a fair amount of americans overlooking their own ignorance and becoming experts on both surveillance intelligence, the department of defense activities, the geopolitical implications of a balloon,

ignoring their own ignorance and thinking their simple twitter 120-character answers would suffice. and then you had those kind of celebrating their own ignorance and laughing about it. that's what you saw on "saturday night live" and others. anybody in the last week who suggested as a layperson they know how the handle a chinese espionage balloon while it's in the united states is a reflection of the ignorance we live in today. a movie a couple of years ago, "don't look up" was kind of a celebration of how we govern and live within our own ignorance. i think we had four or five days of that. and in some ways, it's pretty telling and pretty damning. >> it is amazing. and then to watch people who have to make decisions about how to get rid of the chinese spy balloon, to see them able to block it all out, which is what, helene, your reporting suggests they were able to do. david jolly thank you for being here. helene cooper, thank you for being here and reporting on this story. mara gaye sticks around a little bit longer. next for us, the tragedy in turkey and syria.

what we know about it is the tradition di is getting worse. when you testify he is going to tell the truth and shouldn't worry, that's so silly, because it's somebody's version of the truth. family is just very important. she's my sister and,

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tell your doctor right away if you have new or worsening symptoms, including breathing problems, cough, chest pain, a change in your heartbeat, dizziness, yellowing of the skin or eyes, dark urine, tiredness, loss of appetite, abdomen pain, bleeding, bruising, fever, chills, or other symptoms of an infection, a severe or worsening rash, are or plan to become pregnant, or breastfeeding. long live hugs and kisses. ask about kisqali. and long live life. more than 3,000 people have died and more than 16,000 people have been left injured after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit syria and turkey early this morning. indescribable scenes of terror and devastation and tragedy are emerging as rescue workers fight to free people who've been trapped in the rubble. officials in turkey are saying there have been 145 aftershocks to that quake, which hampers the

work they're able to do on the ground. here a reporter and a photographer in turkey fleeing from one of the aftershocks while covering the disaster. president erdogan has declared seven days of national mourning. there has been an outpouring of international support as countries around the world pledge personnel and equipment to help with search and rescue efforts. president joe biden in a statement today has promised that the u.s. will provide any and all assistance needed. already two teams of 79 people have been sent to help with rescue efforts inside turkey. let's bring in nbc news foreign correspondent molly hunter live for us in london, covering this story. molly, what's the latest? >> reporter: nicolle, you mentioned the outpouring of international support. according to turkish officials it needs to be so fast. we're talking search and rescue. we're not yet to recovery. we are still looking for survivors. these search and rescue teams. and so far turkey itself has provided more than 3,000 people, boots on the ground spreading out to the affected areas.

looking for survivors. the devastated areas, though, they're a really wide reach. as you mentioned people felt this all the way down to beirut, all the way down to jerusalem but really the devastation is centered in southern turkey and in northwest syria. so talking about the situation on the turkish side, infrastructure was already fragile. this is an area, nicolle, which hosts 3.6 million syrian refugees, living in very fragile infrastructure, living in makeshift camps. those people who have been displaced multiple times from the war in their home country have nowhere to go. on the other side of the border in syria aid organizations were already very worried about the people living in the northwest of that country. 4 million people internally displaced. they were already worried about the freezing temperatures, the winter conditions and now this. again, these are people living in makeshift tents, makeshift camps. as the international aid, as the international rescue teams arrive and turkey has said they are grateful for absolutely

everyone's help, the real challenge is going to be getting to the most affected areas. for example, when you look at an takia or gaziantep, very close to the epicenter, the road between these two cities is absolutely destroyed. the road between antakia and the syrian border is nearly unpassable according to sources on the ground. in order to get international search and rescue teams, in order to get international engineers over the border into syria, that's going to take a lot of coordination, but really time is of the essence. we know, nicolle, in emergencies like this minutes, seconds are what count when you're looking for survivors. >> i've seen some bipartisan calls to put all of our silliness aside and do anything we can do to help. we do have an incredible amount of expertise to offer and resources, and it's a good sign when that still is our reflex. >> yeah. i mean, that was heartening. and this is obviously horrific. and just to think that northwestern syria had been in such bad shape already. it just feels biblical. and you just -- >> cruel. >> and cruel, honestly. enough is enough.

but it is heartening to see americans and others of course in the international community to know that we're still able to come together to do the right thing. that's a heartening sign. i just hope we can do it quickly. i know one of the challenges is getting those aid workers in to a country that doesn't have good infrastructure. i think it would be very difficult. >> right. and these aftershocks have to make it terrifying work even through the rescue efforts. molly hunter, thank you so much for your reporting on this. mara gay, thank you for spending time with us today. up next for us we will dive into that trump-era durham investigation and look at why congress is now wanting to figure out just what went on inside that probe. much more straight ahead. don't go anywhere. t go anywhere.

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there are sirens blaring all around this investigation from an excessive abuse of power to prosecutorial misconduct to the politicization and public speaking against department practice about an ongoing investigation, even to the point where two prosecutors on the durham investigation resigned in protest. i really hope that if jim jordan and the republicans want to investigate the weaponization of the federal government that we start with the four-year waste of time and waste of resources that was the john durham investigation. >> hi again, everyone. it's 5:00 in new york. recent calls by congressman dan goldman, that was him there, of new york and ted lieu of california mean we now have a formal and official request on

the table to investigate the investigation of the investigation. members of the house oversight and judiciary committees respectively, goldman and lieu are asking doj's inspector general, that would be michael horwitz, to examine possible misconduct by special counsel john durham during his probe into the origins of the russia investigation. goldman and lieu's letter to mr. horowitz was prompted by that blockbuster reporting in the "new york times" which we've covered here. it uncovered through a months-long review this. "the main thrust of the durham inquiry was marked by some of the very same flaws including a strained justification for opening it and its role in fueling partisan conspiracy theories that would never be charged in court but trump allies claim characterized the russia investigation." "new york times" investigation found that bill barr and mr. durham never revealed that their inquiry had expanded to include a criminal probe into possible financial crimes by ex-president donald j. trump. that they used memos that were

suspected of containing disinformation to get access to an individual's e-mails. and that not one but two prosecutors on durham's team quit. they felt compelled to resign over ethical disputes. congressman goldman and lieu say that the allegations in the "times" reporting if true, "show barr and durham misled the american people, abused their prosecutorial powers, and corrupted the department of justice to pursue a false political narrative. they may have violated the law, department of justice regulations, and legal ethics in doing so." they also address how barr and durham responded to the doj inspector general, that's mr. horowitz, his own findings. mr. horowitz released his own report. he did his own investigation on the doj russia investigation in 2019. now, the lawmakers write this. "in support of their cause durham also apparently tried to coerce you, mr. horowitz, to

modify your finding that the fbi had a sufficient basis to open a full investigation into russian interference in the 2016 election. when you refused to alter your report, barr and durham went on the offense to undermine your conclusion and preserve their preferred political narrative." barr told fox news that the investigation began without any basis and durham released an unusual statement about an ongoing investigation in which he disagreed with your conclusions. durham's investigation, which has been going on for four years, is still going on as far as we know, has so far only resulted in two cases being brought. they centered on charges of false statements. both of them ended up in acquittals. scrutiny from congress of special counsel john durham's probe is where we begin today with congressman eric swalwell of california. he served as an impeachment manager for the second trump impeachment. you know a whole lot about the -- not just the body of evidence that was unearthed by

doj's special counsel investigation into the trump campaign's shared mission with russia but also the senate did an incredibly exhaustive investigation. the bulwark against everyone looking at trump and his ties to russia, his campaign's shared mission with vladimir putin's, was always durham. privately and publicly. it was the durham probe. they were going to go get everyone that was actually trying to protect u.s. national security. what do you make of the reporting that suggests that investigation collapsed on its own lack of a legitimate predicate? >> good evening, nicolle. it's clear to me that there remains a putin bloc in the republican party because as you said, it's easy to go down a rabbit hole of the process here. you know, there's an investigation and an investigation into the investigation and more investigations. but at the end of the day we

investigated russia because in 2016 they attacked our democracy. donald trump asked them to do it. once they started doing it, he welcomed it. and when he became president, he drew us closer to russia than any american president ever has and he has not left them since. so durham's quest to undo the russia investigation was a quest to validate what russia did and to hold up vladimir putin. that's what this is about. and to essentially now learn that he found nothing, people quit out of protest and shocker, this thing ended up taking them toward donald trump's financial entanglements with russia, just shows that the republican part y is absolutely determined to side with russia, too many republicans to side with russia over american values and over the real fight that's happening right now, you know, the war in ukraine with democracy being on the line. that's the biggest picture of what's going on here and what it means to everyday folks.

>> and you make a great point. i think it's confusing, what happened at doj. right? so you have regular justice department run by jeff sessions and then mr. barr, and then there was the mueller investigation which was separate because of mr. sessions. the only person that played the referee was the i.g., the inspector general. he looked at all this and he said the russia investigation was a righteous investigation, the predicate was justified. and who attacked him? mr. durham. was that a sign that something was not aboveboard in the durham probe? >> yes, absolutely. it should have raised all of us to be concerned that the durham

probe again was just an effort to erase the history that donald trump had with russia when he was a candidate and ultimately as president. and that's the goal here again. the republicans, they are putin curious. they continue to hold him up as a strong man and they try to own biden and the liberals by suggesting our military should look like russia's. by the way, ted cruz did that. so the durham probe was always just the vehicle to undermine any issues around the last election. and finally, if there was any failure of imagination or failure of the mueller probe, it was really a failure of prior congresses to imagine that a person like donald trump would ask for russia's help, would benefit from it, and would never turn it down or disavow it and we didn't write criminal laws that mueller could have used to say that was bad. we should do that now going forward. adam schiff and myself have written legislation that would

make that illegal. but that was the only failure, was we didn't imagine someone like donald trump would ever choose russia over democracy. >> they're going to regret kicking you guys off your committees. let me ask you about that. pete strzok was just on in the last hour and made this point, that durham didn't just unearth evidence of alleged criminality by donald trump from a trip from the italians. durham unearthed evidence of criminality on the part of donald trump in the specific area of financial crimes. we are always back to where we started, looking for evidence of potential financial criminality was trump's red line with mr. mueller. and here we have one more. this one is a prosecutor who put himself on team barr and team trump, so he didn't know that at the time. but do you think there's still unanswered questions about trump's finances? >> yeah, nicolle, the ceiling of the mueller investigation was a

financial inquiry into donald trump's history dealing with russia. and by the way, his sons had bragged that much of their financing was coming from russia and donald trump had wanted to invest in a trump tower in russia before the 2016 election. and so who the hell knows what's above that ceiling, was on that financial floor that involves donald trump's finances, because mueller wasn't allowed to go there and it looks like durham, as you would imagine, if he looked there would find something and so if there's an ongoing investigation into that i hope that is the case. and i can just promise you this. merrick garland will give this a much more honest inquiry than bill barr or anyone else at the department of justice in the trump years ever did. >> is that merrick garland's obligation? does merrick garland owe the public a seal of approval, that he has examined and the case for

prosecutorial misconduct he brought, who quit over an ethical disagreement with mr. durham? >> merrick garland's obligation is to follow the facts and apply the law wherever the facts take him. if durham found evidence of financial dealings between donald trump and russia that are against the law, then i hope merrick garland would go there because others weren't allowed to or weren't willing to. but again, i'll wait just as any responsible person of the public should for what merrick garland finds. but there's a crescendo of evidence that's about to drop on donald trump. that's clear. in these grand juries in georgia, new york, federal inquiries that are taking place. and this may be a part of what's to come. >> your colleagues lieu and goldman have asked the doj inspector general horowitz to open an ing. investigation into the durham probe. is that adequate or would you

like to see a special counsel appointed to investigate the special counsel investigated to investigate the special counsel investigating russia? >> we just have to articulate to the american people what this is really about. this is about a country that wants to tear down our democracy, tear us apart as people and overseas in ukraine is brutally attacking innocent people. russia is not our friend. republicans continue to want to side with russia. but this is about recognizing russia as the constant persistent, you know, bully on the world stage in our democracy worldwide. it's time that we start defending our country, and the durham probe was only meant, again, to validate what russia did in 2016, and american people should see their democracy defended, not russia validated. >> we saw you on the eve of the political retaliation that kevin mccarthy either planned for you or had to trade away to win

speakership after 16, 15 votes. tell me about the judiciary committee, you talked about writing legislation with congressman schiff. tell me what has happened in the intervening days since that political retribution has taken place. >> thanks, nicolle. yes, i serve on the judiciary committee as well as the homeland security committee, and i miss the intelligence committee and the professionals in the community. but as i told you before, it made me more -- diapers to be changed at home and more kid dropoffs. but i'm not going away. i'm working with my colleagues on 25 to 30 different congressional districts that we are going to compete in and win to make sure kevin mccarthy and the republicans are the shortest ever republican majority. i'm not going away. mr. schiff's not staying away. the threat environment has

stayed the same for me and my family. but if the goal is to silence me that's not going to happen because this is still america and i still believe in it and again, it will be redeemed and it's just going to take some time. >> congressman eric swalwell, thank you for starting us off on all these stories. i'm so grateful. >> thank you. >> we are now joined once again by former fbi counterintelligence agent pete strzok, who has been quoted prolifically in two hours. and senior columnist for the "boston globe," msnbc political analyst kimberly atkins stohr. the congressman making this a broader question, it does bring you back to the things that were never in dispute, right? russia had a mission that was perfectly aligned with the trump campaign's mission. investigative journalism about the mariupol plan. it was clear there's been a plan to do what russia has now done, through brutal war to take back

mariupol, that was something on paper, that was something that swapped hands between konstantin clemnikoff and paul man fort. and the bulwark was always designed to be answered for at least on the public relations arena which makes the durham probe so remarkable, that he bought into being a tool of right-wing disinformation about legitimate national security probe. it's to me a flashing red that i do not understand. but you made a great point in the last hour that durham didn't just find evidence that trump -- or get a tip from the italians that trump had committed more crimes. he got evidence from the italian government that he committed financial crimes. what do you want to know? >> nicolle, i want to know what happened. clearly trump was not prosecuted. so we know the three options, they found enough to prosecute, they found enough to discredit and shut it down or they never resolved it. so it's clear that the answer is

either they disproved it, which i think we should know in some way, shape or form, or if i had to bet you a bottle of wine it would be that they never got to an answer that somehow, look, when we set up the mueller team we thought we had a team of 40 investigators including a whole pack of really qualified financial forensic accountants who came in and we used to tell them, andrew weissman when he was going after paul manafort and others, that was hard complicated financial work. trump's finances are orders of magnitude more complex than anything paul manafort ever did. john durham's team the most i've seen reported is he had at most eight, ten personnel. certainly without any of the same sort of financial expertise that mueller did. so when it comes to a question about where this investigation led that bill barr decided to leave with john durham, my question is what happened? what's the resolution? because again, i'm willing to bet you the resolution was we couldn't figure this out because it was too hard.

and time and time again like everybody that bumps their head up against the trump financial empire, it is so big, so opaque, so apparently corrupt that is hard as an investigator to get your head around the facts and prove something out. >> can i just push back gently and respectfully without any of the expertise you have? doesn't trump tell us what he does all the time? i don't pay my taxes because i'm smart. i lie because i can. and i have other people do it so i don't get in trouble. doesn't he say out loud everything that six years of investigating him have proven out? >> sure. of course he does. and he does one of two things. he either tells you exactly what he's done or he accuses his opponent of doing it. invariably, if trump is accusing someone of doing something, it's because he himself time and time again is doing it. and that's part of the sort of shameless audacity of all of this. trump and then bill barr and then john durham had all these dark rumblings of corrupt motivations of the deep state

going after some political thing they were seeking to torpedo and go after trump. they found no evidence of that. yet what do they themselves do time and time again? the same sort of things. political agenda, failing to recognize information that might be foreign disinformation. not -- you know, not using enough investigative resources to get to the bottom of some sort of allegation. so every single time just across the board you see both on the one hand flat out admissions of what he's done and on the other hand when you start looking at these allegations of the other side they don't hold water but what is apatient is there's allegations in the case of trump of things he himself has done. he does it time and time again. it's almost like clockwork. >> it is like clockwork. and kim, i think that donald trump and bill barr, i don't know, mr. durham, maybe mr. durham, i think rely on the volume business of smoke to guarantee that we never get to the fire.

and i think bill barr believes i'm sure in his heart of hearts that the january 6th select committee helped launder his reputation, that he said bullshit at times in his taped deposition of donald trump that we forget he corrupted at least the reputation of a once highly regarded career prosecutor in mr. durham. i don't know mr. durham. i don't know if what congressman lieu and congressman goldman want looked at is real, i don't know if they'll find evidence of prosecutorial misconduct or illegality. but i know whatever durham did it was so bad that his lifelong prosecutorial partner left. she high-tailed it back to connecticut, said no thank you. and then once he was bringing these two ill-fated cases that resulted in acquittals, another highly regarded prosecutor left. so durham's record is right up there with barr's record when he was putting his fingers on the scales of justice with the trump crony cases. do you think merrick garland

owes us an explanation? >> i think attorney general garland is looking very carefully at this. it's not so much about owing us an explanation as it is doing right by the rule of law in this case and i think that is what we want to do. as for barr ruining people's reputations, that's what he did to mueller when he got before the american people and lied about what was in the mueller report before it was even released. he has a history of that. we have seen him go to the mat for donald trump time and time again and just in that one instance when it came to the january 6th insurrection, that was his red line. we saw him everywhere else in that case. so i don't really trust him to tell us the truth about this. i'm actually quite worried that when and if this report from

durham ultimately comes out, you know, bill barr might go on other networks besides this one and try to do that same kind of muelleresque spin on it. we don't know. but i just hope that attorney general garland when that report is released speaks to the american people frankly, as frankly as he can, about what it found and what it did not find so that that is on the record. >> that's all we can hope for at this point. no one is going anywhere. when we come back, we've talked a lot on this program about the rise of violence motivated by racial extremists. today we learned of the arrest of a neo-nazi leader and his girlfriend. they have been charged by the justice department with plotting an attack on the baltimore power grid and threatening to lay the city to waste. there's new reporting on the break-up of that plot, next. plus, amid a new story of russian attacks ukraine is now sounding the alarm that russia is ready to launch a major new

offensive in the now nearly one-year-old war there. we'll check in with our good friend igor november on what ukraine needs to fight back and prevail. "deadline: white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. ues after a q. don't go anywhere. before you decide... with the freestyle libre 2 system know your glucose level and where it's headed. no fingersticks needed. manage your diabetes with more confidence. and lower your a1c. the number one doctor prescribed cgm. freestyle libre 2. try it for free at freestylelibre.us hi, i'm john and i'm from dallas, texas. my wife's name is joy. we've been married 45 years. i'm taking a two-year business course. i've been studying a lot. i've been producing and directing for over 50 years. it's a very detailed thing and the pressure's all on me. i noticed i really wasn't quite as sharp as i was. my boss told me about prevagen and i started taking it.

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internet customers. so boost your bottom line by switching today. comcast business. powering possibilities. to those extremists looking to disrupt society and cause chaos in our communities, we will not allow nor will we tolerate this. we work every day to mitigate these threats, including those to our critical infrastructure, and identify those criminals seeking to inflict harm. >> some really scary news today. we learned about from fbi officials like that one, who say

they thwarted what they believe to be a, quote, real threat from a nationally known neo-nazi leader allegedly planning to attack several baltimore-area power stations and wipe out the city's power grid, take it down. federal prosecutors say two people described as, quote, racially and ethnically motivated extremists were arrested last week and now face federal charges for conspiring to destroy an energy facility. plans for a shooting attack that they hoped would, quote, permanently, completely lay this city to waste, end quote. according to the complaint, 27-year-old brandon russell of florida "admitted to subscribing to national socialist, or nazi beliefs and that he had started his own nationalist socialist group. while his girlfriend, 34-year-old sarah clendyal, left a statement with references to hitler and the unabomber that says this. "i would sacrifice everything for my people to just have a

chance for our cause to succeed. it comes after a warning from dhs in november about critical infrastructure being among the targets of political violence and just weeks after a string of attacks at electrical substations across the country left thousands in the dark." we're back with pete strzok and kimberly atkins stohr. pete, what do you make of today's announcement? >> i think, nicolle, it's enormously concerning. on the one hand it points to the vulnerability of our electrical grid and how easy it would have been for just two people had they had access to high-powered rifles to potentially do a lot of damage. witness what we've already seen in north carolina and in oregon and other places around the u.s. is the other thing i think it highlights is the enormous sxrienls dangerous of the atomwaffen, and not just that group but others like it. they're very small but very violent. we have two deaths attributed to a group member in 2017. another two deaths of parents by a minor who was affiliated with the atomwaffen. and then a year after that the

murders affiliated with some atomwaffen folks of a gay jewish student. this is a group not only that is motivated by a nazi sort of racial identity but is doing it in a very organized violent way, and it's time that we need to wake up to the fact that there is a real motivated group of individuals who are willing to engage in violence. keep in mind the individual charged, mr. russell, just got out of jail and is the founder of this group and turned around within months and was planning on engaging in this further violent activity which had it been successful would have led to any number of deaths. so it's a real threat and it's something we really need to be aware of. >> kim, for the last five days you couldn't get between a republican and a camera because they were so upset about the chinese spy balloon. i hope that in the next five days the same fervor will exist

for every one of those republicans, that you will not be able to get between a republican and a camera to warn about the dangers of neo-nazis in america to our critical infrastructure. if you're a betting woman, do you think that will happen? >> no. i know that it won't. because we even saw with the wonderful work of the january 6th committee, we saw that reporting at the very end that there was concern even by vice chair cheney about focusing too much on these groups for fear that it -- that it would look like republicans are being called white supremacists. we have been told time and time again by the fbi, by dhs, that the number one threat, domestic terror threat in america, is from extremist groups, right-wing and white nationalist supremist groups. we also know they have gone from national to local just like you said that plaintiff did. the oath keepers, the proud boys, all of these groups, they disbanded their national group.

they have gone with local. and so there are these dispersed, harder to track localized approach to this. and this is exactly what we're seeing. whether it's attacks like this, plans to attack a power grid, whether it's attacks on local officials, on their lives, targeting them that we've seen in recent weeks. this is what it's going to look like. this is what the coup has become. and people need to be very aware of that. and we need our officials, all of them, to give all of their attention to it. but my fear is these will just be dismissed as individuals engaged in individual acts when this is exactly what the biggest national threat to us all is. i hope that i'm wrong, but i don't think that i am. >> pete strzok, tell me what's happening inside the fbi to get ahead of these plots before any of them are realized. >> one area i hope is if you read the indictment it makes reference to a number of conversations that took place between the two individuals that

were charged and an fbi informant. so clearly the fbi had developed a person or people in and around these folks who have been charged who was getting and providing information about these crimes in advance of it being committed. so that is good news. it tells me that the fbi is taking it seriously. certainly the warnings have gone back from several years if you look at the testimony of director wray and other senior fbi officials about this group in particular, but i think it is hard. i absolutely agree when you get decentralized groups, when you have -- one of the tenets of this radical right-wing ideology is the idea of leaderless resistance, that you don't need an organized structure, that you don't need a large national chain of command, that it's sufficient just to take up arms on your own, to come up with your own plan, and that makes it extraordinarily difficult if you're trying to investigate it, certainly at a national level. tip of the hat to the fbi for catching this before it occurred, but i just worry you only need to miss one. and the nature of this threat is that it is so diffuse i think

it's an extraordinary challenge. >> that was the sort of frame around terrorism after 9/11, they only have to be right once and counterterror people have to be right every time. it is amazing that this was foiled. pete strzok, kimberly atkins stohr, thank you so much for being part of our coverage. shifting gears for us here to the war in ukraine, ukraine is warning that russia is about to launch a major new offensive one year after the start of that war. our dear friend igor novikov will join us to tell us what he and other ukrainians are doing to prepare for that. and admiral james stavridis will be here with a look at what the united states and our allies can do to bolster the ukrainian effort in the coming weeks. that's next after a quick break. don't go anywhere. that's next after a quick break. don't go anywhere.

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be a pivotal moment in the war for both ukraine and the west. friedman writes this, "for the first year of this war america and its allies have had it relatively easy. we could send arms, aid and intelligence as well as impose sanctions on moscow and the ukrainians would do the rest, ravaging putin's army and pushing his forces back into eastern ukraine. putin, it is now clear, has decided to double down, mobilizing in recent months possibly as many as 500,000 fresh soldiers for a new push on the war's first anniversary. mass matters in war, even if that mass contains a large number of mercenaries, convicts and untrained conscripts. this is going to get scary." joining our conversation is admiral james stavridis, former supreme allied commander of nato, currently an msnbc chief international analyst. also joining us, our friend igor novikov. he's a former adviser to ukraine's president zelenskyy. doing his part every day to keep

his family and his country together. igor, i can't read this news ever without thinking about you. i usually send it to you. but just tell me what you're girding for and what your family's preparing for. >> well, it's all about preparation at the moment, nicolle. many people focus on when this offensive is going to happen and some people say it's going to happen within a week or two weeks from now. some say after the anniversary. but i think it's important to focus on what's going to happen. now, we are more or less certain that we're going to see major offensives both in the east and probably in the south, excluding the kherson area. but on top of that we're not excluding small distracting attacks from the north and also the terror campaign's going to pick up. at least all the moment all the mark rerz are pointing toward that. so i for the first time since the war began decided to move my family out of ukraine for a month. they're leaving next week. >> oh, wow.

i feel like so much of the story of the war that you've shared with us is how you've parented through the sirens and the raids. but you've moved them out. are you -- should you go too, igor, or are you afraid to stay? >> first of all, i am a man and it's dishonorable to leave a country at a time like this. secondly, the reason the family is leaving is not even to do with the danger as much as it is to do with masha growing up, the 3-year-old. one thing happened during the last missile attack. we usually would tell her that it's thunder or fireworks. and my wife basically told her these explosions are thunder. and masha just looked at her in the eye and said, yeah, right. and that was the point we knew that maybe she could do with a change of scenery. >> admiral stavridis, to tom friedman's point, we have been armchair allies. and i don't think that's unfair.

we have skin in the game because ukraine is our ally and our friend and a democracy and a bulwark against russia but russia is our adversary. what should we be doing that we're not ahead of this offensive? >> i think three key things occur to me. one is a system called atacms which is a longer-range version of the very successful himars. thus far we've been a little reticent about providing that because it's a very long-range system. 200 miles. it can go after logistics. it can go in the back office and go after targets in a way that would make it very, very difficult to move that mass of troops forward. it can go after the fuel. it can go after the logistics, the food, all of that. so atacms, it's an acronym but it's a new surface to surface long-distance missile. number two, nicolle, and we're

moving rapidly on this, but the faster we can get the armor, the tanks and the armored personnel carriers, those are big heavy systems and they can chew up massive numbers of troops if in fact putin makes this move of a massive number of troops coming forward. and then third and finally, and this is going to take some time, but we have got to get fighter aircraft in the hands of the ukrainians. and by the way, you could do that immediately with the mig 29s that poland flies. ukraine is perfectly capable of flying those tonight. why can't we get them into country? we can backfit the poles with f-16s. and a longer game plan would be to get ukrainians flying the f-16s. it's like world war ii in the early days. we're working hard to get the tools in the hands of our

partners. and finally, nicolle, it also sends an ongoing powerful signal to vladimir putin that we are not going to step away from ukraine. and i firmly believe we will not. >> admiral stavridis, what is the military strategy against an adversary who doesn't value human life? i understand that the death toll, the russian death toll is massive, exceeds the ukrainian death toll and that the strategy is to simply send these young conscripts into the line of fire and that i guess i wonder what your assessment is of how that changes a military strategy when your country very much values life. >> we've seen this for decades. this is the russian way of war. and by the way, it was no coincidence, nicolle, that vladimir putin's most recent highly profiled speech was given in the city that was once called stalingrad. today it's volgograd. but at stalingrad well over a

million russians died in a year in that battle. and nearly as many germans, by the way. so russia as a tool of war is very capable of simply massing troops and throwing them at the forces of the ukrainians. so what do we do about it from the military capability? we bring technology to bear. the three systems i mentioned, air to ground, tanks, armored personnel carriers, and long-range surface to surface fires, those can be how you break up those formations. and lastly, and this is an area in which the ukrainians will excel, is you mobilize your spirit, your fighting spirit. and as igor said, when you look across the firing line and

you're a ukrainian and you look behind you, what do you see? you see your family. you see your parents, your elders. you see your civilization, your language. that has a very powerful effect in combat. the russians, when they look behind themselves, they see a rotten regime and a dictator and bad leadership. so technology will matter. being steady here will matter for the west. but in the end a great deal of this will come down to the fighting spirit of the ukrainians. i wouldn't bet against them. >> i have to take a break. i want you to stick around because i want to ask both of you to analyze that x factor. it seems like our country maybe underestimated how powerful that what you're calling fighting spirit but how powerful the desire to fight and protect something you love, your own country, your homeland, your democracy, is. and i want to understand from both of you how you think that

figures in to all of russia's defeats on the battlefield. admiral stavridis and igor novikov are sticking around. fit in a quick break. we'll be right back. don't go anywhere. ere. chevy silverado factory-lifted trucks. where will they take you? with the capability of a 2-inch lift. ♪♪ the versatility of the available multi-flex tailgate. ♪♪ and the connection of a 13.4” diagonal touchscreen. chevy silverado.

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to become a guardian of liberty. the virus that causes shingles is sleeping... in 99% of people over 50. it's lying dormant, waiting... and could reactivate. shingles strikes as a painful, blistering rash that can last for weeks. and it could wake at any time. think you're not at risk for shingles? it's time to wake up. because shingles could wake up in you. if you're over 50, talk to your doctor or pharmacist about shingles prevention. we are back with admiral stavridis and igor novikov. igor, i want to talk about this piece. i watched a little git of the grammys last night and i remember president zelenskyy's speech there. it inspired our collaboration. i remember all the moments when

people were so surprised that president zell ensky stayed in kyiv and he was walking the streets. and since then he's been on the front lines. and i think about what's going on in this country where we are willing to weaken our own democracy while you, our friends and allies, are willing to die to protect yours. and i wonder what your thoughts are on this piece that outsiders underestimated about you and your country. >> well, to be fair, first of all i have to say it takes a situation like this to get away from the theory and focus on the practice because we're all heroes in our dreams but then, you know, when faced with reality that's the real test. and actually, i can give you a story from today that perfectly highlights this ukrainian spirit. i was told today by a soldier friend of mine there was this old man in bakhmut and his house got destroyed. so the volunteers approached him to evacuate him to a safer

place. and the guy said, can you take me to the soldiers first? so they took him to this regiment that's stationed by him. he said give me the gun. and this man literally spent an entire day firing at the russians to avenge the house that he had lost. and we're talking about a very old man. and like that's the country they're fighting. so i think on the morale front there's no victory for russia. although i do have to say we're at peak psy-ops, which is psychological operations at the moment. every bit of this information has been thrown into ukrainian society as we speak. >> what does that look like? >> well, anything, from the casualty tolls to the fake numbers to the fake corruption scandals to shifting the blame from the to the innocent one, basically scare -- trying to scare the population with the imminent attack on kyiv and kyiv falling in three days. we've seen it all before, and, look, even elon musk's tweet about ukrainian casualties comes

into play here. >> yeah. what can we do to fight that? >> well, you need to help us. i mean, as my colleague rightfully said it is of utmost importance because that is being thrown at us in places like bakhmut and elsewhere. depends on supply and logistics lines so if we can disrupt them at a greater distance that will undermine the russian war effort, planes, tanks, we have the spirit but we can't fight with our bare hands given that there's 500,000 men potentially facing us and humanitarian aid. from my standpoint to all the charity standpoints we need to keep the funds coming in, you know, those donations coming in because it gets more difficult by the day but we're here and we're not going anywhere. >> i only have a minute left but tell me if you think -- you understand and see things from the pentagon and the white house

that i don't see. do you see the kind of effort that you described as being what's needed to help ukraine win? >> absolutely. and i'm going to reach into our shared greek american past to make a point about heart and how it matters. >> please. >> go back 2,500 years ago to the battle and the ancient greeks were outnumbered five, eight, ten to one to the persians but the greeks rowing in those great ships of war knew that they had to row for their children. they had to row for their parents. they had to row for their city. they had to row for freedom, and they destroyed that persian fleet even though they were jut how maied 10-1. i think if we can get the tools in the hands of the ukrainians exactly as iger says, they will row for freedom.

>> one of the two of you always makes me cry. thank you so much for being with us today. a quick break for us. we'll be item back. there's a chance to let the light shine through. and light tomorrow, with the hope from today. this is a chance to let in the lyte. caplyta is a once-daily pill that is proven to deliver significant relief across bipolar depression. unlike some medicines that only treat bipolar i, caplyta treats both bipolar i and bipolar ii depression. and in clinical trials, movement disorders and weight gain were not common. call your doctor about sudden mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts. antidepressants may increase these risks in young adults. elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. report fever, confusion, stiff or uncontrollable muscle movements which may be life threatening or permanent. these aren't all the serious side effects. in the darkness of bipolar i and ii depression, caplyta can help you let in the lyte. ask your doctor about caplyta today.

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including at last year's state of the union. the president will address the joint session of congress tomorrow night. i will have the chance then to join my friends and colleagues, rachel maddow, joy reid and the rest of the msnbc primetime gang for live coverage of the state of the union address that starts at 8:00 p.m. eastern. one more break for us. we'll be right back. people remember ads with a catchy song. so to help you remember that liberty mutual customizes your home insurance, here's a little number you'll never forget. ♪ customize and save. ♪ only pay for what you need.

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thank you so much for letting us into your homes during these truly extraordinary times. we are grateful. "the beat with ari melber" starts right now. >> hi, nicolle. i'm ari melber and this is the eve of the state of the union. there is this historic job