attorney general saying here's what we're going to do about that problem. >> chuck rosenberg, frank figliuzzi has led us to the second big headline and that is the roll of the attorney general. we played the sound bite of him five times saying no collusion. as frank pointed out collusion isn't a crime. and spying is something the attorney general has invoked in the last week, not an activity that our law enforcement agencies engaged in. so you have two sort of hum dingers from the sitting attorney general in a week's time. he's actually made three of the president's most sort of central political arguments around hard line immigration policies and an asylum ruling saying asylum seekers can be jailed indefinitely, around the wildest of all trumpian conspiracy theories, around spying, the campaign was spied on, that came out of the attorney general's mouth. and then today, doubling down on the president's refrain uttered by this president so often it's almost a nervous tick, wake and type out a no collusion tweet. i wonder what you make as someone who had given the attorney general the benefit

and frank figliuzzi i saw that you were tweeting about that earlier. i want to touch on it briefly before we talk about phil rucker's reporting in "the washington post." this idea that it's okay to do what's laid out in this report, that if a foreign adversary is digging around db this is essentially the argument that rudy giuliani made that everything robert mueller laid out in the report is -- all's fair in love and war. >> look, rudy giuliani and this administration are essentially redefining the ethical standards and standards of integrity for the presidency and doing it in a downward spiral. the bar is being reset, if it's not indictable it's okay, and that's just wrong. i would have to ask rudy giuliani would he be okay if someone like beto o'rourke were found to get stolen information from the iranians and using it against the republicans. i would assert that rudy would have a major problem taking information from an adversary if the other party were doing it. the standards have been reset, it's disingenuous and it's not making any sense. and wi

still with us, jeremy bash and frank figliuzzi. frank, you got our attention earlier today when you said you had new concerns as of today and tonight about julian assange. explain that. >> so, the most heavily redacted portion of the report, brian, involves wikileaks and julian assange and the -- the part that's not redacted offers us incredible detail about the degree to which the russian intelligence services worked with julian assange and wikileaks to get that hacked material that russia hacked and get it out to the public with incredible timing, to include, by the way, a release of hillary's emails five hours after the president said, "russia, if you have the emails, i hope you release them." so that's mind-boggling, that degree of coordination. but here's what i'm concerned about. as you know, julian assange was dragged out of the ecuadorian embassy in london. i assume we're going to be moving toward extraditing from the uk julian assange, head of wikileaks, but to do that in the diplomatic process, you've got to promise the uk

geoff bennett, white house correspondent for nbc news, frank figliuzzi for counterintelligence, and robert costa, moderator of "washington week" on pbs. good evening and welcome to you all. frank, given your experience, y tell us how easy or hard it is to get a fisa warrant, and could the work done under a fisa warrant be construed as spying in the name of that warrant? >> brian, look, the performance of this attorney general over at the last two days has been t abysmal. what he did today by invoking the spying connotation is he flew what i would call a flash g ban grenade into the room. by that, anyone who has been associated or involved with tactical teams will know that a flash ban grenade is meant to disorient and distract with a flash of light and a loud noise, but it's not made to take out personnel. what he did was throw in the flash band grenade into the room. he is falling in line with this president, and the notion that the fbi was somehow spying on a campaign when what it has proven to have done is lawfully investigate with predication allegations that the russians were involved

and frank figliuzzi joins us. ashley, i'd like to begin with you on the upside of your donald trump you finally have at least an acting chief of staff who's going to allow you be you in this job even though this team is playing with house money and ignoring the rigor of protecting and defending elections. >> that's true, and this is the president's third chief of staff and he's sort of accepted the idea you cannot control this president, and he's going to do what he's going to do. and that's why we're seeing president trump -- what's interesting is that people thought when the mueller report finally came out and it was ultimately an embarrassing result for the president but a positive one in that he wasn't facing any criminal liability. we might see a president who could finally move on after this two year cloud had hung over his presidency, and be a bit more relaxed and kind of unwind and focus on the campaign or focus on governing but letting trump be trump means truly letting this president be this president. a

>> let's ask the former fbi head of counterintelligence, frank figliuzzi, and, frank, again, to quote this line, "the evidence does indicate that a thorough fbi investigation," is there any other kind, "would uncover facts about the campaign and the president personally that the president could have understood to be crimes or that would give rise to personal and political concerns." what does that mean to you, frank? >> well, for one, it goes toward the intent factor in obstruction of justice. if the president is fearful that a thorough investigation would turn up this kind of evidence against him both personally and professionally, you can argue that what we're being told is there's evidence of intent to obstruct because of what the president might have been fearful of and what would have happened. and since we're talking about mindset, intent, i also know that, brian, on your show and on nicolle's show, we've discussed searching within the report when it comes out for the mind of mueller. the mind of mueller. and as i make my way into the appe appe appendix of the report, in c1, to

. >> frank figliuzzi, your response to that. >> i invite any attorney general in the operations, so let's bring him on and see what he finds. he'll be redundant unless he has completely gone over to the trump side. then the truth will come out and the truth will upset him because we already know what it is. we have an attorney general that has 400 pages of evidence that he has yet to release and he has conceded he has no intention of fully releasing. but yet without one scintilla of evidence, he will use the word spy for the ordinance of the special inquiry. to me it sounds like preparing the field for a battle. it sounds like, eventually this will all get out, but i can tell you, i think it's tainted. that's what we saw today. >> let's take a step back. what is fisa? what does it stand for? who gets to be a federal fisa judge? how hard would it be for federal prosecutor bennett berger to get a fisa warrant for someone suspected of a crime. >> you think someone has connections of a foreign power, that they're being used as an agent of a foreign power. you can start an intelligence investi

that the report won't cast any light on those questions, which are both really important. >> frank figliuzzi, we've purported that the president's team is going to try to focus on quote/unquote irregularities in the investigation. now, we know that there were 500 witnesses sw witnesses interviewed, 2,800 subpoenas issued, 13 foreign governments that were contacted and nearly 500 search warrants that were executed in the course of this investigation. and while the president's team has tried to undercut mueller publicly, the reality is his reputation is one of, is sterling and one of great kind of care and deliberation throughout the course of this. what do you think they are talking about when they say quote/unquote irregularities? >> well, i think they are going to focus on the origins or, as the president says, oranges, of the investigation first. i think they are going to look at the spreadcation, what was it that caused the fbi to open a russian counterintelligence case, what was that predicated on. then, did it appropriately turn into a special counsel inquiry. of course, we have already

joining me now is frank figliuzzi, former assistant director for counterintelligence, and now national security analyst for msnbc, and kristin clark, president of the lawyers committee for civil rights under the law. frank, let me go to you first. they have recently downgraded domestic terrorism. when you look at the attacks, three black churches in louisiana, the 11 members of the jewish community, jewish faith, killed in the synagogue, if that's not terrorism, what is? and any number of those statistics released show there's an increase in hate crime. how does this administration justify downgrading domestic terrorism in our intelligence department? >> well, i can tell you it's certainly not adjustable on any data set that we're aware of. we have to look to other motivations on this downgrade. you're right. the fbi has noted a 17% increase in hate crime just in the one year between 2016 and 2017. so the administration's going in the opposite direction of the facts, and even more so, rev, we got to make a comparison here to radical extremists online and compare that to what the presid

. >> back with us tonight, frank figliuzzi, former fbi assistant director for counterintelligence. this was his deal in life for a good long time in that role. in fact, he worked on the wikileaks case in its early stages. frank, first of all, your reaction to this news, these pictures today and a subset question, do you think we'll ever see julian assange in an american courtroom? >> so, my reaction is that in the past few days we've had nothing but bad news regarding justice and our institutions and our attorney general. today was a bright spot for justice. today a bad guy got handcuffed and taken out of the ecuadorian embassy, and i do believe, brian, that he's on his way to the united states, because if this was done correctly through the diplomatic and legal channels that it should have been run through then the skids have been greased and we understand and the uk understands what's going to happen. we've explained the charges to the uk. they're a strong ally. it's likely that in fairly short order, unless there is some complication, we will see julian assange on u.s. soil and h

. >> frank figliuzzi you said in the 4:00 today that you were sure that the mueller team, at the end of investigation, because at the end of any investigation like this summaries are created, that something existed that would have allowed attorney general barr to include more than sentence fragments and at this moment as we gather tonight at 11:09 there is still all that we have seen from the mueller report are sentence fragments. i can imagine how those investigators who kept their mouth shut for 22 months while the investigation was ongoing have simmered over the last week or so. >> imagine this very large team from analysts to forensic accountants, cyberspecialists, prosecutors, fbi agents all remaining silent for two years, not so much as a raised eyebrow implying anything one way or the other. >> while trump attacked them. >> while they were being undermined, attacked personally and professionally and now we see for the first time dismay over how this narrative is being allowed to happen and play out. and it clearly conflicts with what they know. and so what we're being set up f

frank figliuzzi, great reporting, as always. great analysis, as always. and at the top of the hour, ali velshi will speak one on one with democratic presidential candidate, andrew yang. that's at 3:00 p.m. eastern right here on msnbc. >>> next up, new details about -- and we're talking about security clearances and security in general, so why not talking about jared kushner. why he was denied a security clearance. we have more on that, coming up. y clearance. we have more on that, coming up. ran out of ink and i have a big meeting today and 2 boxes of twizzlers... yeah, uh... for the team... the team? gooo team.... order online pickup in an hour. now, save big on a case of paper. at office depot officemax with tough food, your dentures may slip and fall. fixodent ultra-max hold gives you the strongest hold ever to lock your dentures. so now you can eat tough food without worry. fixodent and forget it. so let's promote our spring ftravel deals, on choicehotels.com like this: (sneezes) earn one free night when you stay just twice this spring. allergies. or.

frank figliuzzi has another contribution having read on ahead of us. frank? >> yeah, i want to keep pulling on two threads, brian, that we've already surfaced. one is this notion that a question of whether or not the attorney general is accurately portraying the level of cooperation by the president and those around him. and then the other is this question of whether because something is not criminal it means that we can't have it go to congress or that it's acceptable conduct by our president. so i'm on page 153. this all pertains to cohen. and we read, "there is evidence described below that the president knew cohen provided false testimony to congress about the trump tower moscow project." so that's not a cooperative president. that's a president saying, i have knowledge that someone's provided false testimony, my attorney has provided false testimony to congress and i'm not doing anything about it. we have to ask ourselves whether that's acceptable and whether that's cooperation. next page, the president's personal counsel declined to provide us with his

. >> so frank figliuzzi, same to you. let me ask about barr's conclusion about whether the white house has seen the report. on top of that, this kind of standoff position by mueller. no back and forth between those two guys on the barr summary. >> yeah, let me try to decipher the code that the attorney general seems to be using here. first with regard to his response on whether mueller agreed with him or not. the answer seems to be i don't care if mueller agrees with me or not, and that to me, brian, is symbolic of some dysfunction. i'm really sensing some dysfunction either in the principles and beliefs about what a special counsel is and what the attorney general is supposed to do with the results, or there's even a deeper tension between the two of them perhaps developing. and then the second issue as to whether the white house has seen this or not, his response again is kind of coded responses. non-response to me means probably he's given a briefing, someone has given a briefing to the white house. otherwise the answe

. >> i want to bring in frank figliuzzi in, former assistant director for counterintelligence at the fbi and msnbc national security analyst. frank, let's say this thing passes, if we go into the two-week congressional break. i'm just thinking more news, more tweets, more distractions. that's exactly what this white house wants. >> the question is if that's a deliberate strategy or not and more important if the attorney general of the united states is part of a white house strategy which takes his neutrality out. every day that goes by we don't get a full report, the a.g. looks even more politicized inial of thin all of this. >> but can't he say, i don't care how it looks, i have the law on my side. can he take this subpoena and blow his nose with it? >> he can throw it in the trash. but there's an oversight rule congress needs to play and even more importantly, the american people have spoken. we are seeing the polling results. they want to see the result in its entirety and the nation needs to see that if they're getting closure at all >> is the attorney general focused on polling?

for good measure, frank figliuzzi is back with us. gentlemen, welcome. shane, have at this any angle you wish. let's start with how prepared or unprepared is our government? we just heard the fbi director call it the big event, talking about the next election. how prepared or unprepared are we speaking to the citizens now about the russians who are already in our system, their ability to hack our next election? >> i think the good news is that if you look at the intelligence community, the fbi, the homeland security department, there is a lot of progress being made. they're very aware of the threat and they're leaning into it and doing what they can, what they're obligated to do under the law. importantly, communicating with social media companies. we saw so much pervasive manipulation of social media companies. what we don't have at this point is a president who is engaged at this as a policy issue of utmost importance, which many of his advisers believe it is. he is publicly downplaying it, recoiling it as you have pointed out in private meetings as we

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go to msnbc contributor barbara mcquade, former fbi assistant director for counterintelligence frank figliuzziyst david corn, also the author of the book "russian roulette," and former assistant to president obama chris lu. it's been two days, barbara, you've probably read it, knowing your aptitude, four times. some of the data that we at a very high level are looking at, 14 open cases is what we learned, 30 contacts previously unreported, this coming from "the new york times" as we look at the report by the numbers. what is standing out to you on this saturday? >> well, i think, you know, if you look at the biggest picture of all, the real question is, what was the relationship between president trump and russia. and although the report and the investigation was unable to establish a conspiracy, there is an awful lot of poor behavior going on, i guess i'll characterize it as that, that is conduct unbecoming a president. if you think of it as a pyramid and only the tip of the pyramid would constitute a criminal conduct, the elements of a statute being satisfied so someone can be charged with a

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