thank you, carol lee, chris lu. up next, breaking news on the russian probe. we're learning tonight steve bannon spent 20 hours being grilled by robert mueller. today he was back on capitol hill, dodging questions on the house intel committee. that committee's not worth meeting with. this is "hardball." stick with us. we'll be back. our factory in b more than a thousand workers are starting their day building on over a hundred years of heritage, craftsmanship and innovation. today we're bringing you america's number one shave at lower prices every day. putting money back in the pockets of millions of americans. as one of those workers, i'm proud to bring you gillette quality for less, because nobody can beat the men and women of gillette. gillette - the best a man can get. fthere's flonase sensimist.f up around pets. it relieves all your worst symptoms including nasal congestion, which most pills don't. and all from a gentle mist you can barely feel. flonase sensimist. what can a president [ do in thirty seconds? he can fire an fbi director who won't pledge hi

nbc news national political reporter carol lee and cnbc's rick santelli. welcome to sunday. it's "meet the press." >> announcer: from nbc news in washington the longest-running show in television history. this is "meet the press" with chuck todd. >> good sunday morning. if you can remember as far back as tuesday the week's news cycle began with the chiefs testifying that russia is continuing to interfere with our election systems here in 2018 and president trump hasn't asked them to do anything about it. well the weakened with attorney general rod rosenstein announcing 12 russians and an ol gashing close to putin -- oligarch close to putin and support the candidacy of donald trump using social media. in between was the horror of another school shooting. 17 students and teachers dead in a high school in parkland, florida. this weeks, because there are so many, prompted this facebook post of a depressingly familiar cycle. mass shooting, followed by calls for thoughts and prayers. facebook debates, everyone forget, congress does nothing, crickets chirping, then another mass sho

. >> now joining me, michael allen and carol lee, nbc national political reporter. thanks to all of you for being here. seth, i want to start with you and get your reaction. how significant is this guilty plea? we are making too much of this, or are there real potential implications for manafort and the president? >> i think this is incredibly significant. bob mueller's focus is to work his way up through the operatives in the campaign. he's moved one step closer, a significant step closer to that goal. and when you look at it, you see trump jr., kushner and manafort being the ones inside that trump tower meeting. the one that had the closest contacts with the russians by all accounts. and now we have a person that knows paul manafort intimately, knows his history for ten years, can tell bob mueller where the bodies are buried in that underlying case against paul manafort putting incredible pressure on paul manafort to then flip and then walk bob mueller right into that meeting at trump tower. >> he wants to get inside that meeting, mueller. >> absolutely he does. i

and nbc's carol lee who helped break this story. carol, this is pretty significant because this is showing the special counsel is not just investigating obstruction. they are investigating whether or not the president of the united states himself coordinated in some way about these e-mails during the election while he was still a candidate. >> right, which we tend to forget but is the heart of this investigation, was there any collusion between the trump campaign and russia, and how far up would that go should it exist? this is the first instance where we have questions when it comes to the president, specifically involving the campaign and how the president's own public words, whether it's on twitter or his press conference that you were at in 2016 are being scrutinized, what did me mean by that and his spokesperson said he was joking. the connection between the president and roger stone, there's a lot of questions that are being asked as you know about how often they communicated, the circumstances around his firing, or departure

correspondent hallie jackson, democratic pollster cornell belcher, nbc news national political reporter carol lee, and cnbc's rick santelli. welcome to sunday. it's "meet the press." >> announcer: from nbc news in washington, the longest running show in television history. this is "meet the press" with chuck todd. >> good sunday morning. if you can remember as far back as tuesday, the week's news cycle began with the nation's intelligence chiefs testifying that russia's continuing to interfere with our elections systems here in 2018 and that president trump hasn't asked them to do anything about it. well, the week ended with deputy attorney general rod rosenstein announcing the indictment of 13 russians, including an oligarch close to putin, and three companies for engineering an elaborate campaign to subvert the 2016 election and support the candidacy of donald trump using social media. but in between was the horror of another school shooting. 17 students and teachers dead at a high school in parkland, florida. this week's school shooting, and we have to say this week's, because there are so man

carol lee? >> i have two questions for you., what's your expectation for the democratic memo in the house? and the other is, when you're looking at what's happening in the white house with the security clearances issue, do you have confidence in chief of staff, john kelly? >> it's striking that someone as senior, the person who literally was deciding what was going in front of president of the united states, had a temporary security clearance and as fbi director wray testified, one that clearly was operating under a cloud where there were questions that had been resolved and presented. i think we have a white house that continues to really struggle with its relationship with the intelligence community, with its handling of classified material, the way the president has acted in terms of refusing to release the democratic memo is another unanswered question of what's the goal and what's the objective here. i thought devin nunes memo was a partisan slap of the fbi when you read it and look into the details there's not much there

national political reporter for nbc news carol lee. political writer for the new york times nick confessore. former justice department spokesperson and now an nbc justice and security analyst matt miller and get it ready, nbc news capitol hill correspondent host of kasie d.c. on msnbc. >> we reviewed some material from the game last night and saw nothing worth actually showing, so my first question to you has to do with the markets. >> does anybody have nick foles -- >> seemed to be suggesting a slightly lower opening on wall street. what say you? >> i would like to talk about nick foles, joe. do you have a minute for that? >> kasie hunt, eagles fan. that was from start to finish that was probably one of the greatest super bowls ever. and nick foles' story is a story that will be talked about for as long as they talk about super bowls. take it, kasie. >> whoa. >> look, he stepped up in just so many ways. coming in wentz hurt in december. nobody expected this guy to be carrying the team. the defense, they hung in there. he's really -- h

nbc's carol lee and "the new york times" michael schmidt join us with their latest reporting.ing joe" is back in a moment. that five stars, two thumbs up, 12-out-of-10, would recommend thing. because if you only want the best thing, you get the #1 thing. directv is rated #1 in customer satisfaction over cable. switch now and get a $200 reward card. more for your thing. that's our thing. call 1.800.directv i'm all about my bed. this mattress is dangerously comfortable. when i get in i literally say, ahh. america loves the leesa mattress. we have more five star customer reviews than any other mattress of its kind. this bed hugs my body. today is going to be great! order now, and get $125 off, plus a free pillow worth $75 and free shipping too. go to buyleesa.com today. and sometimes, i don't eat the way i should. so, i drink boost. boost high protein nutritional drink has 15 grams of protein to help maintain muscle and 26 essential vitamins and minerals, including calcium and vitamin d. boost high protein be up for it >>> special counsel robert mueller's probe has obtained a gui

coming up on "morning joe," nbc news national political reporter carol lee will have more on her newthe overhauls by kelly. >> let's go back to burlington, vermont. daniel, the good to see you once again. trump's national security adviser, h.r. mcmaster, said there is incorespondent veteranble evidence but president trump tweeted saturday night, general mcmaster forgot to say that the result of the 2016 election were not impacted or changed by the russians and the other collusion it was between russia, crooked h., the dnc, the dems. remember the dirty dossier, uranium and the podesta company. considering all this, do you think there is a divide between trump and the rest of the white house officials? >> i think president trump is pretty alone in his view that the russians were meddling and the real story was podesta and the dossier and it's pretty unprecedented that a u.s. president will criticize his own national security adviser on twitter. you know, it almost is like the head of msnbc saying, you know, why didn't you guys read the script differently? i don't like this segment. you

we've spent -- my colleagues carol lee, kristen welker, rich garnell sifting through raw information in this documents. as somebody who's covered the white house yourself, you're well aware of the different distinctions both in terms of the different divisions of the white house and also the different tiers of classification. the big headline was that number, 130 out of more than 500 officials within the constellation of offices and agencies within the office, the executive office of the president, are operating as of last november with some sort of interim clearance. and that's significant on its own because even our own reporting up until today indicated the number was much lower, perhaps 30 to 40. in the white house in explaining why the number would have been even that high has sought to say, basically, that any time you have a new administration with the sheer number of new officials coming in, you're going to have a backlog and that might lead to delays. we did talk wither on officials in other white houses in previous administrations. they said that's true that even at the end

nbc news exclusively reports from me and carol lee, the special counsel is asking witnesses pointed questionshether donald trump himself was aware that democratic e-mails had been stolen before the public knew about it and whether he was involved in their strategic public

carol lee reporting about lack of officials with permanent security clearances. saying more than 130 political appointees working did not have security clearance as of november last year, including the president's daughter and son-in-law. those working with the interim security clearances, 47 of them were in positions that report directly to president trump. about quarter are working with some form of interim security clearance. you'll find that story nbc this morning. if you go to the washington times this morning. comparative story taking a look back at previous administrations. saying a backlog insecurity clearances for sensitive white house jobs is not new. just ask the clinton administration. more than a year into bill clinton first year, nearly 100 had no security clearance at all according to press reports in '94. scandal wrote to then cia director james woolsey in march of 1994, what specific steps have you taken to ensure information classified to protect intelligence sources has not been made available to individuals on the white house staff who do not

. >> so this is reporting by me and carol lee also of nbc news. what is significant about it, chuck, is that this shows that the mueller team isn't just investigating obstruction, what happened after donald trump took office, what happened after he fired james comey, why he did that. they are still focused on the original question which is was donald trump involved in any sort of coordination between russia and his campaign at the time of his campaign. and they are focusing on that totally bizarre press conference that is one of the focuses, because that line, russia, are you listening if you are listening, seemed to come out of nowhere. during this time the dnc had been hacked, the e-mails were just starting to flood out. but donald trump took it a step further. he said i want to find hillary clinton's e-mails and now investigators are asking some witnesses if he potentially knew that john podesta was ultimately hacked before the rest of us knew, before the public knew, ultimately the e-mails came out in october and they are looking to find out i

>> chris, thanks for having me on with my colleagues carol lee and kristen welker and chris gardellla, yesterday we came in posession of documents detailing over 504 employees in the executive office of the president including a range of agencies housed, these are all officials who report to the president or report to officials in those agencies. and we began running the numbers. our initial headline was more than 130. it's actually 135 officials have been operating at an least as of last november with some form of interim clearance. there might will be a number of reasons why is an official would be operating on an interim clearance while investigation continues. even our own reporting up till yesterday was that number was much lower. perhaps only 30 and 40. and the white house in explaining even that number said this is possibly an issue of a backlog. it's true. we spoke with officials from other administrations who said in the first year, we had perhaps dozens of officials waiting for this clearance revow to happen. what was most surprising to me, when you talk about the upper eche

carol lee and katy tur out with the bombshell. mueller asking what trump knew about hacked e-mails before release. it is a rare peek inside the special investigation. it is the clearest indication yet that the three former trump campaign officials who have all pleaded guilty to crimes, who are all working for mueller may be helping him fill in the campaign's contacts with russia in a much more detail than we've understood until today's report. from that nbc account, mueller's investigators have asked witnesses whether trump was aware of plans for wikileaks to publish the e-mails. they have asked why trump took positions favorable to russia. the line of questioning suggests the special counsel is looking into possible coordination between wikileaks and trump associates in disseminating the e-mails which u.s. intelligence officials say were stolen by russia. trump's involvement may be hiding in plain sight. >> russia, if you're listening, i hope you're able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. i think you will probably be re

carol lee. and jon meacham who is criminal chully obligated to work on president's day and wear his rugged boots. >> jon meacham, they're duck boots. they're not rugged boots. >> he doesn't really need to wear them. >> it's a fashion statement i like to say. >> exactly. >> it is. it is. so, jon meacham, my favorite president's day story is bill clinton gathering foreign contributors in the white house and announcing to them, this is the day in america that we call president's day. i thought that was sort of a laugh because, of course, he's getting money from people that did not know what president's day was. but you put some pretty interesting quotes out this weekend about the importance that past president's say in electing the right type of president. i thought it was very timely. >> yeah. john adams said -- and this is obviously in the very beginning -- that it's absolutely crucial who the people send to the presidency. and that sort of blows up this myth that in the early days that the presi

joining me here on set is kara lee, one of our political and investigative reporters. carol, this is a remarkable document. what it alleges is there were grassroots operations, there were people staging operations, not just working through social media from someplace overseas. >> you're absolutely right. it's essentially a russian infiltration of the american tradition of political activism. you can't read this any other way. you have a number of americans unwittingly according to the indictment who were in contact with russians to basically organize political rallies, to support one candidate over the other. they did it in a way that was designed to mirror how an individual would already be thinking or leaning towards acting in a political campaign. and that is what is really startling about this because we knew before this came down that there was an effort to this online. but the fact that this was something that americans were engaging in unknowingly with russian people is really startling. it makes you wonder sort of how deep it all went. you have not only that piece, b

joining me here on set is kara lee, one of our political and investigative reporters. carol, this is a remarkable document. what it alleges