>> joining me now former fbi special agent and msnbc contributor clint watts. national political reporter for axios, jonathan swan. thank you both for being here with me tonight. really appreciate it. >>> clint, i want to start with you. as we are reading the tea leaves of where this investigation stands with bob mueller, what is your view about the direction where this is going? there's been a lot of speculation that he is fundamentally building an obstruction of justice case. is that how you see it, or is there still a collusion in play in a major way? >> [ inaudible ]. >> sorry, i don't think we can hear clint there. we're going to try to get him up and working. so, i will talk here a little bit. jonathan swan, the president called that new york times report fake news. what do you know about what unfolded in june between the president, his white house counsel, and what the president had to say about bob mueller? >> a source with direct knowledge tells me the report is true, the president was putting pressure on don mcgahn to fire robert mueller. what the sour

. >> and cling clint watts. welcome to you both. clint, what does it mean for the investigation that the house prong of this is getting potentially these three names in short order? >> yeah. what's interesting about it is you get a preview of what they're going to say. and really this all comes down to the mueller investigation. i think of the three, the house investigation is the weakest one. it's become very partisan. a lot of bickering back and forth. but what's interesting about these three characters is you have someone who is on the front end, someone who is on the back end. lewandowski started, bannon finished. but hope hicks is the only constant where you go through the campaign and up to the president right now that's there. so you're really looking at witnesses that can put in context what is really a chaotic administration and a chaotic campaign. very few people stayed there the whole time, so you really have to piece things together. >> jennifer, same question with the exception of this addition. that is that to clint's p

. >> former special watergate prosecutor and clint watts, msnbc national security analyst. let me start with you as somebody who was an agent. having watched the full arc about what happened to mccabe, what's your reaction? >> i'm not surprised he has been pressured out. we kind of heard a few weeks ago he was expected to leaf. some of this could be structural. you generally have to serve 20 years. i don't know when he started. but i think he is probably coming up on his 50th birthday or so. it could be the 20-year mark with liz leave. this is the day he is eligible. but either way it shows political pressure can push him out. the deputy director is usually the person that holds the ground when you have a transition between one director and the other. in this case it's been politicized going all the way back to the campaign. so you can't even rely on this institutional integrity to help us stay on course as an investigative agency. the deputy director is the top fbi agent that's in the organization. they're the ones that sustain the investigations between terms. so while it

including this meeting in the oval office. >> clint watts, let's try to put some of this together. i've been writing down notes. because there's so much going on here. and there's so many things that are outside the norms for a president and his allies, who are now at war with the fbi. you have of course the new news, donald trump goes up to the acting fbi director and says how did you vote? extraordinarily inappropriate. does violence to the constitutional norms. and the rule of law. he asks comey. remember for the loyalty. he then asked comey to drop the investigation of his national security adviser. after he admits that he knows that his national security adviser committed a crime. by lying to the fbi. then of course, he fired comey. and then if you look at what happened yesterday, and i want you to talk about this, this is the most troubling thing, that the republicans now are so desperate, because they see that donald trump is going to have to go and actually tell the truth. try to tell the truth for once, or fall into what his associates call the perjury trap. which means th

analyst and former fbi special agent clint watts.ormer assistant special watergate prosecutor, nick ackerman. ken, you have the home-court advantage. talk about the significance. the house intel committee has never used this power to release documents ever before. >> it's hard to overstate what a big deal this is. this has never been used in the history of our republic, as far as somebody can tell. it seems to be designed to allow congress to blow the whistle on serious wrongdoing in the intelligence committee. when democrats were investigating cia torre cuturto didn't use the rule. >> what about the republican's memo but not seeing the democrat's memo? >> it is a rigged game to fair-minded observers. republicans s insist this memo shows wrongdoing by the fbi and justice department, but the justice department reviewed this and said, we are aware of no wrongdoing in the fisa process. >> clint, the committee member, democratic committee member on the house intelligence committee of california said something striking this morning. let's

for more on this, i'm joined by clint watts, he testified in today's hearing and an expert on the rise of threats on social media. he's a former fbi special agent. a senior fellow and a national security analyst for msnbc. clint, first of all, let's just talk about this. facebook has made some moves and i think twitter discussed today some moves to contact people who they know, because they do know, who engaged in false information who were subject to false information during the election. maybe information that was put on there by frol -- trolls or news that was known to be false. where do we stand with that? >> it seems like they are doing a slow but deliberate rollout of notifications about russia influence through the platform and this is important to really bring to the awareness of the american public. because remember, there are some people in this country, namely our president, that doesn't really believe it even happened. at the same point, this will also probably hurt trust with their platform and really in any of the social media companies, the thing they value the most is k

as clint watts testified to congress, the truth can be found if you know the trail to follow. >> follow the trail of dead russians. there's been more dead russians in the past three months that are tied to this investigation who have assets in banks all over the world. >> there's one thing for sure tonight. we need to know what is true and what is not true in this dossier. the president and his allies are wrong. it is not all garbage. as we have reported, as an example, we know that some of the conversations reported in this dossier between non-americans did in fact occur as reported in the dossier. what matters is not to try to politicize this document as republicans have done. what matters is to separate the truth from fiction and find out what really happened. manu rogue begins our coverage "outfront" tonight, and manu, the transcript of the testimony, 312 pages, pokes major holes in the gop talking points calling the dossier garbage. >> yeah, the co-founder of the firm, fusion gps, who hired christopher steele to investigate said they wanted steele to look into candidate trump's pas

clint watts is with me. is jonathan -- i want to check if he's -- go to jonathan a second to help make sense of this, jonathan. still have my panel with knee. with me. i don't really get it. i'll hearing we're close on a deal. they figured out, got rid of a bunch of stuff and focusing on four things calling it kp ing i comprehensive immigration reform. it's not. it's four things they're dealing with. what's going on in nyour opinio here? >> a bunch of different groups working on immigration policies and trying to compete to be the one that gets picked up. the most serious negotiation so far has been through a bipartisan set of senators. anything that's going to pass congress is going to need 60 votes in the senate. have to have democrats and republicans onboard with it. and ultimately, within that group you've got senator lindsey graham of south carolina senator dig durbin of illinois, are very close to striking their own deal. the question, will everybody else accept that kind of a deal? we heard from the p

know what to call it hamilton sixty eight this is sort of some kind of initiative by a guy named clint watts and some of his associates and they sort of come from a cold war and you know conservative think tank the foreign policy research institute which is a neo con you know cold war dinosaur and so they've they're also i think linked to this proper not this sort of blacklist of websites and so basically what they're saying this laughable. somewhat queer notion posited by watts in the mainstream media that any persons who deny russian collusion or who support trump on this issue or who support or sympathetic to any of russia's foreign policy statements or moves is somehow part of an organized network of russian influence and this i think the specific term they used was russian influenced linked accounts so this is like beyond spurious so basically according to this logic that they're calling this active measures by the kremlin so if you share or anything along these lines that sort of skeptical of this kind of official russia gate conspiracy theory or that doesn't you know is questioning th

jennifer rogers, clint watts, thank you very much for returning to our broadcast. >>> another break fors. coming up, an early warning system goes seriously awry. why one of our guests says it's even worse than we think, when our "11th hour" continues. >>> while he is president of all 50 states, president trump took 50 hours to publicly respond after an errant ballistic missile warning went out in the state of hawaii. a state emergency employee sent the false alarm this way. quote, from a drop-down menu on a computer program, he saw two options, test missile alert and missile alert. he was supposed to choose the former. big difference. as much of the world now knows, he chose the latter, an initiation of a real life missile alert. this is what folks in hawaii saw live on their television as the alert went out. >> the u.s. pacific command has detected a missile threat to hawaii. a missile may impact on land or sea within minutes. this is not a drill. if you are indoors, stay indoors. if you are outdoors, seek immediate shelter in a building. remain indoors well away from windows. if you a

>> joining me now justice and security analyst matt miller, and msnbc national security analyst clint watts, former fbi agent. clint, as someone who obviously worked in the fbi, what is it like to watch sort of portion of the american political system, these institutions like trump tv and conservative media and the white house and allies essentially sell the story to people that the fbi is this kind of like liberal fifth column that trying to bring down a president? >> just historically to ever perceive the fbi that way doesn't make any sense. but it is a very conservative organization. you wear only two color shirts, white or blue. everywhere pretty much is buttoned down there. i would guess we never talked about who is a republican or a democrat but i would guess it is strongly conservative and of all the organizations you would tend to think that because it's law enforcement. what's baffling is why you would do this. even in just a political battle like this transactionally, it's no gain or minimal gain. ultimately it hurts our country. if you were going after a federal law enforcement i

jennifer rogers, clint watts, thank you very much for returning to our broadcast. >>> another break foroming up, an early warning system goes seriously awry. why one of our guests says it's even worse than we think, when our "11th hour" continues. system against the cancer. i'm back to working hard. i've honestly have never felt this great. the evolution of cancer care is here. learn more at cancercenter.com appointments available now. let your inner light loose with one a day women's. ♪ a complete multivitamin specially formulated with key nutrients plus vitamin d for bone health support. your one a day is showing. we can now repair complex at saortic aneurysmsare, without invasive surgery. if we can do that, imagine what we can do for varicose veins. and if we can precisely treat eye cancer with minimal damage to the rest of the eye, imagine what we can do for glaucoma, even cataracts. if we can use dna to diagnose the rarest of diseases, imagine what we can do for the conditions that affect us all. imagine what we can do for you. >>> while he is president of all 50 states, president

carol lee will have you reporting in minutes and joined by ari melber, clint watts and former chief ofines weighing in and former mexican president fox talks about how why he says president trump is going about negotiating border security the wrong way. [ keyboard clacking ] [ click, keyboard clacking ] ♪ good questions lead to good answers. our advisors can help you find both. talk to one today and see why we're bullish on the future. yours. talk to one today and see why we're bullish on the future. change. most of the time it most of the time.y. sail with the #1 cruise line in alaska, princess cruises, come back new. nahelps protect eyes fromue damaging blue light, filtering it out to help you continue enjoying your screens. or... you could just put your phones down and talk to each other. [laughing] nature's bounty lutein blue. because you're better off healthy. we all want restful sleep. that's why nature's bounty melatonin is made to help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer. so you'll be ready for whatever tomorrow brings. because mom's love is unconditional. even at 6am

you've got -- actually, clint watts, recognizable face, one of our analysts here. you have what they think, what they believe will be solutions for mark zuckerberg. i'll play a little more from that. listen. >> reporter: what's the solution? >> we need to be incredibly transparent. much, much more so than they have been thus far. we need them to accept liability and accountability for the social aal har a soci socialharm going on. >> why should we let them do this, when other companies are responsible for the outcomes of what they do. why do they get a free pass? >> you see the talk about solutions. you see the social media companies on the hill. is congressional overnight where this is headed next? >> most people will say in government, we don't want to regulate social media or put a crimp in the first amendment. increasingly, i hear from my sources that is exactly what is necessary. whether it is facebook spreading make news from russian-connected actors in the last election here, or whether it's brexit or catalonia. this is not just an american problem. it is a

former fbi special agent and msnbc contributor, clint watts and jim vandehyde and pulitzer prize winning historian john meechum is here. >> we frame the story by looking at the fact they voted to release this memo. what are your thoughts? >> it's unbelievable. donald trump never just allows himself to have a straight shot at anything. here we have the state of the union coming up tonight. that should be the focus. but instead, you look at what happened last night in the house. and you had nunes' memo, which twists the truth and plays these crude political games with highly secret intelligence. that mika, most of the republicans who voted to release this controversial memo, that the justice department said would be extraordinarily reckless, had never even read the memo. and many who did read nunes' memo say it falsely summarized a reality and filled with all of these falsehoods and these, these misleading conclusions, all in an attempt to slur law enforcement officers, that donald trump -- i don't know how i should say this, he's targeted them for a political purge. so this is a cynical g

former fbi special agent and msnbc contributor clint watts. former aide to the george w. bush white house and state departments, elise jordan and donnie deutsche is here, how are you feeling, all right, buddy? >> a couple of white nationalists and i got into a little tussle in a bar. >> bar fight. >> mika will be back with us on monday. >> a source with firsthand knowledge confirms to nbc news that president trump ordered special counsel robert mueller be fired last june. "the new york times" was first to report the news and that the president backed down after white house counsel don mcgann threatened to resign according to four people told of the matter. the "washington post" adds that mcgann did not deliver his resignation threat directly to trump, but was serious about his threat to leave. according to a person familiar. last night, the white house put out a statement from one of the president's lawyers declining to comment, quote out of respect for the off the of the special counsel and its process, that from ty cobb. this morning, president trump responded to the re