chuck rosenberg, former u.s. attorney who worked on the staffs of, get this, both robert mueller and james comey at the fbi. we're lucky that he's now an msnbc contributor. and joining us from the "washington post," political reporter robert costa. also moderator of "washington week." let me read a little bit of this story that broke as i sat down here. "washington post" reporting that mueller seeks to question trump about flynn and comey departures. the president's legal team hoping to provide trump's testimony in a hybrid form, answering some questions in a face-to-face interviews. others in a written statement. those discussions come amid signs of stepped up activity by the special counsel. last week, attorney general jeff sessions interviewed for several hours by mueller's investigators according to justice department officials. chuck rosenberg, let me start with you. and ask you, we know that bob mueller is running a tight ship with zero leaks, but we also know today that he wants to talk to, or has already

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with us tonight to talk about all of it, chuck rosenberg worked as counsel to mueller when he was fbi director, senior staff to comey, also a former u.s. attorney himself. former federal prosecutor currently an msnbc contributor. jeremy bash, former chief of staff at the cia and the pentagon who helped draft the original section 702. he's also an msnbc national security analyst. we also welcome to the broadcast tonight deb reit man, national security reporter for the associated press. so, jeremy, because you were present at the creation of this and one of the drafters, explain what a 702 is and make the case for it. >> it's an authority to conduct surveillance against foreigners outside the united states, take, for example, a terrorist in pakistan whose communications happen to traverse the united states. and when the fbi and the department of justice want to read that person's e-mail or understand what they're plotting against the united states, they can essentially conduct the surveillance without going to the judges of the fisa court each time to get an individualized warrant, whic

chuck rosenberg, what are the legal opportunities or perils of a meeting between the president? let's say he says i don't want to do this. they have very little they could compel it i suppose if he becomes a target. then he could, be questioned just as president clinton was. >> there's two different scenarios. if it's just an interview, he could politely decline to do so. there isn't anything the prosecutortive team can do about that. on the other hand, if they really want to speak with him under any circumstance, they can issue a grand jury subpoena and compel his testimony. so negotiations make sense in the first camp. the interview camp. and you can't blame the president's lawyers for asking even if their ask is a long shot and it is. you can't blame them for asking. but if the prosecutor is absolutely positively needs to speak to him, they can issue a grand jury subpoena and do it under their terps and conditions. >> and. terms of an interview, he has the right to just say no, i don't want to do this unless he's actually a target unless it's a grand jury subpoena. what is th

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chuck rosenberg, jeremy bash, thank you both so much. >>> coming up, the winding road of the president seemingly without end. "the 11th hour" back after this. i don't want to lie down. i refuse to lie down. why suffer? stand up to chronic migraine with botox®. botox® is the only treatment for chronic migraine shown to actually prevent headaches and migraines before they even start. botox® is for adults with chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month each lasting 4 hours or more. it's injected by a doctor once every 12 weeks. and is covered by most insurance. effects of botox® may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. alert your doctor right away, as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life -threatening condition. side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. don't take botox® if there's a skin infection. tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the ri

and chuck rosenberg worked under both robert mueller and james comey when they were running fbi. he's also a former u.s. attorney himself and a current msnbc contributor. gentlemen, welcome to you both. frank, you went to law school. how does this possibly add to an obstruction argument? >> yeah, so a key element of an obstruction of justice charge is intent. so tonight in the long string of conduct that we've had the president play out that all point to obstruction, it's this one, this intent to fire someone because you've learned they're looking at you for obstruction, it actually sounds like a bad law school exam question, you know. so you fire someone because they're looking at you for obstruction, is that obstruction? tonight that gives us a glimpse into the president's intent deeper into his head, and it helps shape the way we perceive all the other things he's done. the firing of comey, pressure on sessions to not recuse himself from the russia inquiry, the drafting of the letter that says the trump meeting was all about child adoption. tonight in case you need any more sh

chuck rosenberg, jeremy bash, thank you both so much. >>> coming up, the winding road of the president seemingly without end. "the 11th hour" back after this. successful people have one thing in common. they read more. how do they find the time? with audible. audible has the world's largest selection of audiobooks. for just $14.95 a month, you get a credit-good for any audiobook. and you can roll your credits to the next month if you don't use them. audible members get free, no-hassle exchanges... ...and use the mobile app to listen anytime, anywhere. start a 30-day trial and your first audiobook is free. listening, is the new reading. text "audio 12" to five hundred five hundred to start listening today. replace the full value of your totaled new car. the guy says, "you picked the wrong insurance plan." no, i picked the wrong insurance company. with new car replacement™, we'll replace the full value of your car plus depreciation. liberty mutual insurance. we can now simulate the exact anatomyh care, of a patient's brain before surgery. if we can do that, imagine what we can do for sei

joined by now by chuck rosenberg. welcome to the show. >> thank you. >> so plet -- let me ask you this. what is moral like in the fbi right now. >> well there is two morals in the fbi. one is that these men and women are mission oriented and mission focused. and i mean that sincerely. they care about helping victims of financial fraud or finding missing children. that fbi is fine. there is another fbi that listened every day to the drum beat and that hurts. people join the fbi because they believe in what it stands for, fidelity, bravery and integrity, but to have that sort of undermined by the leadership is a difficult thing to listen to every day, chuck. >> what do you make of the text messages? are you disturbed by any of it? >> look, i know those two folks. they are good people. i think they exhibited bad judgment. good people sometimes exhibit bad judgment. and the problem with the text messages of course is that it lends an appearance of impropriety. when robert mueller found out about that, he removed that spec

chuck rosenberg has been following the investigation closely and knows several of the principals involved. he worked alongside robert mueller and james comey. we also have ambassador michael mcfall with us, u.s. ambassador to russia when barack obama was president. he's now back at stanford university. both i should say are msnbc contributors. chuck, let me start with you and the piece that ran in "the new york times", reported by other outlets including nbc news about the exchange between president trump and the white house counsel, president trump ordering down mcgann, special counsel, to fire the special prosecutor. don mcgann rebuffing that saying it could send a bad message and derail the presidency. chuck, how did you respond that to -- respond to that news first reported in the "times"? >> it's indicative of other things. he fired james comey, put pressure on jeff sessions. he's made noise business how unhappy he is with the investigation. it seems to me, assuming reporting is accurate, that don mcgann did the right thing. he stopped the president from making an enormous blunder. t

. >> here with us for more tonight, chuck rosenberg who worked under both robert miller and james comey when they were running the fbi, also happens to be a former u.s. attorney himself and a current msnbc contributor. dana bash is with us, a former attorney at intel. he also happens to be a security analyst. sessions, comey, these two interviews, why was it such a big story today, why such a big development? >> there were new things we learned today that shed new light on the investigation. first, the fact that bob mueller investigated comey and sessions, that's not surprising. but i think some of the reporting out tonight, for example, that sessions has been meddling in the fbi investigation about those text messages between russia investigators, that's clearly inappropriate. the fact that the president asked andy mccabe who he voted for, that's clearly inappropriate. and more importantly, the fact that the president has been pressuring wray to have a political purge of the fbi, that's clearly inappropriate. there is a lot of activity here that i think should be of concern to investig

joining us now is chuck rosenberg, a former u.s. attorney for the east district of virginia and worked side by side with james comey serving as chief of staff at the fbi. real pleasure to have you with us. i know you joined us on short notice. thank you for being here. >> thank you for having me. >> let me get your top line reaction to the news story from "the new york times." the headline they have put on it is obstruction shows trump's struggle to keep grip on russia investigation. from the details of this story, do you feel this advances our understanding of the status of the investigation involving the president and his potential liability? >> it advances both of those things. we know more about it and the stuff we know now that we didn't know before corroborates, not conclusively but corroborates the notion there was a plot, an attempt to obstruct the russia investigation. >> when mr. comey explained first to reporters that should be said and soon thereafter under oath to a congressional hearing that he took those detailed note

we have chuck rosenberg joining us now. he used to be chief of staff of james comey. chuck, your former colleague interviewed by the special counsel. what was he telling robert mueller? >> well, ken is exactly right. the memos jim wrote after his days with the president are mighty important to bob mueller's team. so the mueller team is going to want to go through them line by line, word by word. what did the president say, was anyone else there, what did you say in response, what did you do, if anything. it's really important for the prosecutors to essentially validate the comey memos, because the memos are at the heart of some of the most important conversations in this case. >> how do they validate the memos? can you do more than he said/he said? you have james comey writing those contemporaneous reports, saying the president said one thing and you have the president of the united states coming out and saying i absolutely never said that, there are tapes, james comey responding obviously oh, lordy, i hope there are tapes. so far we haven't found out that there are an

. >> we talked with chuck rosenberg, the former chief of staff of the fbi about this earlier this hour and he made an important point. i don't know enough about recusal and just governed by, you know, norms opposed to laws. i don't know if you could potentially obstruction justice trying to influence somebody's decision to recuse themselves from your case and he said essentially it's a gray area and if you did it with the intention, if you took that action, you lobbied for the recusal with the intention of keeping somebody in place who would be loyal to you to protect you from prosecution, then, yeah, this might look like another element of obstruction of justice and the president might personally be liable. the legal niceties to be worked out by people at a higher pay grade than us but this is -- if this is corroborated information now, this is serious stuff for the white house. >> well, the president had the obvious, ongoing intention to tell his attorney general what to do in relation to this investigation. and so, to urge him not to recuse himself is to urge him to remain in place

chuck rosenberg, former federal prosecutor and former chief of staff to james comey, and national security reporter julia ainsley. welcome both. happy new year. first, the president holding back on attacks of mueller for the last week or two, but really going after comey and deep state of justice is sort of a new iteration, isn't it? >> yeah, we've been hearing about the deep state in the last year. i guess i was a member of the deep state for the last 25 years of my life, but i never thought about it that way. >> i think this is the first time the president has used the steve bannon term. >> i imagine so, but this is the first time i've seen men and women try to get it right. maybe they've been there a long time so it's an institutional knowledge, but i see that as a plus, not a minus. >> julia, what do we know about the president's approach now to mueller, the russia probe and comey? he's now today been going after comey and raising all sorts of issues of his past opponent. >> it seems like that anxiety has almost been channelled in a different direction. i think leading up to the holida

. >> all right, chuck rosenberg, always good to see you. thank you very much. thank you, alex. the fight for the balance of congress may be decided in the courts and on "am joy" joy speaks to one of the "wall street journal" reporters who broke that story about the $130 payment from president trump's lawyer to a former porn star. hey, you every talk to anybody about your money? yeah, i got some financial guidance a while ago. how'd that go? he kept spelling my name with an 'i' but it's bryan with a 'y.' yeah, since birth. that drives me crazy. yes. it's on all your email. yes. they should know this? yeah. the guy was my brother-in-law. that's ridiculous. well, i happen to know some people. do they listen? what? they're amazing listeners. nice. guidance from professionals who take their time to get to know you. >>> so the groups in the u.s. voicing outrage other president trump's remarks about people from haiti, south africa. so the naacp president appeared on television to publicly condemn the president's comments. >> we have to be careful not to get so caught up in his words.

. >> chuck rosenberg, appreciate your time tonight, sir.r being here. >> my pleasure. >> we'll be right back. stay with us. shawn evans: it's 6 am. 40 million americans are waking up to a gillette shave. and at our factory in boston, 1,200 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. there's so much goodness it makes us feel alive. it illuminates our world and connects us to each other. with transitions® adaptive lenses® you'll live the good light. they block uv rays. plus they help protect from harmful blue light. both indoors... and out. enjoy life more comfortably. enjoy life more richly. live the good light. find an eyecare professional at transitions.com when you have a cold,

check rosenberg is a former federal prosecutor. chuck, thank you so much for being here. i want to get into this more. why would robert mueller send steve bannon a subpoena instead of just asking him, why would he be the first of the inner circle to get a subpoena? >> two reasons perhaps. one is that they offered him the chance to come in voluntarily and he turned it down so the temperature subpoena is the only way to compel his testimony. and the other is that the prosecutors simply feel that they are better off not granting him a voluntary interview, they would rather put him in front of a grand jury under oath and quote/unquote lock in his testimony. >> in what circumstance would that be the preference? >> well, if i were prosecuting a case and i was worry that had a particular witness might flip, change their story down the road, i can preserve the truth in the grand jury. if that witness later testifies and testifies contrary to what she said in the grand jury, then that grand jury testimony becomes substantive evidence of the truth. that is not true in a voluntary s

and we know from chuck rosenberg, who is a former chief of staff of jim comey's and also worked as a u.s. prosecutor, he talked to us, spoke just about an hour ago, saying a grand jury could subpoena the president to talk. so, if he was -- wanted to compel him to speak, he could do that through the court system. of course, the lawyers for the president want to keep his communication as minimal as possible. they know he can't plead the fifth because it's very hard politically for him to just say nothing. but they want to be able to control what he says. they're looking at trying to be able to do written responses. at least in the phase of the investigation that robert mueller is conducting before it would go forward to the grand jury. they're trying to minimize that and control the message here. >> we're going to get a lot more on this coming up in a minute. hallie, i want to come back to you because i'm getting my inbox flooded with people -- immigration activists very upset about the administration's decision not to renew -- not to renew this -- >> reporter: temporary protective sta

. >> chuck rosenberg was a chief of staff to that fbi director jim comey and ex-federal prosecutor. you're known for being concise, which works for the law and in these interviews, do you join in the view that bluntly that was the only thing that he could have done given the story in the "new york times"? >> it's pretty clear to me what the president asked mcgahn to do assuming the times report is correct, would have been in furtherance of an obstruction, so the answer is no, i'm not going to do it. >> and then you look at these congressional hearings which at times can be dry, but ultimately provide the public record under oath, which is incredibly important in a democracy with the rule of law. take a look as we probe into june, look at rod rosenstein, we're going to play some sound of him talking about everything we know that was sort of aimed at him, this scud missile that mcgahn was willing to resign over. >> if you receive an order from president trump to fire the special counsel robert mueller, will you do that? >> it doesn't matter who gives me an order, what that order is, i

why that may or may not matter in terms of why the allegations leveled at trump's children is chuck rosenberg who worked on the staffs of robert mueller and james comey at the fbi. he's an msnbc contributor. we're grateful to have you every day, but especially today. i'm going to do something. i'm going to read you two passages. one was written by the founders of fusion gps on the topic of money laundering. one is in the book "fire and fury," a quote from steve bannon on the topic of money laundering. we told congress that from manhattan to sunny isles beach, florida, and from toronto to panama we found widesprd evidence that trump and his organization had worked with dubious russians in raemtss that often raised questions about money laundering. likewise, those deals don't seem to interest congress. and here's the other one. you realize where this is going? this is all about money laundering. mueller chose senior prosecutor andrew weissmann first, and he's a money laundering guy. their path to bleeping trump goes right through paul manafort, jared kushner. it goes through deutsche bank and a

from chuck rosenberg and other experts we know that mueller will want this to be face to face, not submitted questions. you're ta your take on this? >> andrea, the president keeps saying there is nothing there, so i would think he would want to sit down with mr. mueller. i don't know the state of those negotiations. i do know that last february, then-president trump said he or his organization and campaign had no contacts with russians. we know that wasn't true. we know that national security adviser had to get fired because of his extensive contacts with russians. we know that his campaign ad, a, mr. papadopoulos, pled guilty because of his lying to the fbi about contacts with russians. we know that his campaign manager, his son-in-law and his son, met with russians about getting dirt on hillary clinton. so clearly there was enormous amount of contact between the russians and trump organizations. we know the intelligence community said the russians weighed in favoring mr. trump over clinton. and so if there's things that mr. trump can add to clear up some of these discrepancies, i would thi

joining me now is chuck ro rosenberg. he worked side by side with james comey serving as his chief of staff. chuck, thank you so much for joining us. since you know this better than anybody, can we consider what we have in front of us right now obstruction of justice? >> well, it's another straw on the camel's back. whether or not or not it breaks the camel's back time will tell. it could be that the president asked the white house counsel to talk to sessions and ask him to stay in the case because president trusted him and valued his advice. if that were the scenario, that's not obstruction. or it could be that he wanted sessions to stay on the case because sessions had his back. because sessions would make sure that anything that was going to hurt the president would get killed at the department. that could be obstruction of justice. so it depends on which of those two scenarios plays out, katie. >> whether you hear the word protect, he wanted his attorney general to protect him, is that enough of an intent to say he was