ambassador to germany richard grinnell has resigned grinnell held the posed for just over 2 years and is considered a close confidant of u.s. president donald trump you know repeatedly clashed with german politicians during his tenure here in berlin germany companies that wanted to continue trading with iran were openly threatened with consequences most recently said u.s. pressure on germany will not stop in the future was acting director of national intelligence from february until late last month. he has been a controversial figure here in berlin for more let's speak now with political correspondent thomas sparrow good evening to you tomas richard grinnell he's sparked a lot of controversy here in germany why. that's correct branton it has to do mostly with his style with the way he worked right from the very 1st day when he came here to germany he started giving what what some people described as instructions to germany was why people describing was being rather undiplomatic and a way that is not very typical of an ambassador in particular ambassador of the united states to germany

ambassador to germany richard grinnell has resigned repeatedly clashed with german politicians during his tenure in berlin german companies that want to continue trading with iran were openly threatened with consequences most recently grinnell said u.s. pressure on germany will not let up in the future. dealing with widespread damage after a fierce storm swept in from the pacific over the weekend leaving many homeless 18 people were killed and 7 more are still missing the president has declared a state of emergency. central and south america have become the intense zones for a cold $1000.00 transmission according to the world health organization the biggest rise in case loads is now in brazil colombia she lay peru mexico haiti argentina and bolivia but health care workers across the region say they do not have access to adequate personal protective equipment many of them report to save lives they have to risk their own. has more. this is what a medical professional dealing with covert 19 should look like but most health care workers across latin america can only dream about having acc

jillian: grinnell argues that transparency in the investigation should never have been political.ore leaving his post, grinnell declassified dozens of witness testimonies buried in the investigation. todd: the gop set to introduce its police reform bill this week. the party calling for both sides to come together for a bipartisan action plan. >> the question is, is there a path forward that we take a look at the necessity of eliminating bad behavior within our law enforcement community, is there a path forward. i think we'll find that. we're that close on making progress. i hope we don't let partisanship get in the way. todd: todd: how likely that both parties will agree on the best way to reform law enforcement tactics. joining me, democratic strategist, kevin walling and communications officer of black media affairs, paris denard. first question to kevin, we're going to put up the senate gop reform plan as we do that, does this republican draft do enough to appease democrats? >> i hope so. it's important to see where the republicans come down on this issue. they'll be introducin

withdrawal from the iran nuclear deal and there's also been rather loud vocal criticism from grinnell over germany's military rather contributions to military spending and on top of that as well he had lashed out on previous occasions over germany's commitment to the controversial gas pipeline the north stream to gas pipeline with russia so plenty of issues there in a very short amount of time to ensure that he didn't make all that many friends here in the political sphere is so what prompted his departure now that we're not completely sure about so we know that he handed in his resignation on monday evening to donald trump but there is a lot of speculation that he will indeed be joining donald trump on his presidential election campaign throughout the rest of this year sorry down the we've seen the last of him just step all right our political correspondent kate brady thank you. let's check in on some other stories making news around the world now al salvador is dealing with widespread damage after a fierce storm swept in from the pacific over the weekend leaving many people homeless

a year ago not only by president also by his ambassador his former ambassador to germany richard grinnell is considered a trump confident and he says that american taxpayer to simply tired of paying too much germany now should not be surprised that the u.s. is pulling out of part of its troops at the core of this is a spat over nato funding and the german defense budget is still under 2 percent of the g.d.p. in spite of some promises made at an early a nato summit in wales in 2014 now in germany it would be arguing that they are increasing their defense budget but they say simply a very complicated process and it needs more time well trump doesn't have that time because he's nearing the election in november ok all of this so trump is going to reduce the number of troops here how is this move going to go down we've he's republican allies in congress. well that's a tall think jerrod that causes a lot of this appointment in the republican party and therefore 22 lawmakers. have written an open letter to president trump already couple days ago where they write that such steps would significant

and it's only because there's a patriotic american by the name of ambassador grinnell that came intotelligence, and he knew that this was all wrong, and overclassification, because of his good faith effort in believing in transparency and believing in congressional oversight that we got this information or we still wouldn't know all of this stuff. >> you know, it is also why was joe biden asked to unmask do you think president obama had a personal van don't bring him on your team do you think president obama had a personal vendetta against michael flynn? >> personal against him but not something flynn did to obama but because flynn knew what was wrong with the cia, and he was in a position to do something about it. and he knew one of the bodies were buried, and it was obama's way of protecting the cia from embarrassing things and probably some reforms that flynn was going to be able to make or make public. actually flynn couldn't make them public at that point because he was not in a position to do it. but then working for trump he would have been in a position to do it. so it was ge

ambassador to germany richard grinnell has resigned for now repeatedly clashed with german politicians during his tenure in berlin and german companies that wanted to continue trading with iran were openly threatened with consequences most recently for nell said the u.s. pressure on germany will not let up in the future. italy is celebrating republic day which marks the referendum 74 years ago when italians voted for a republic to replace the monarchy a fly past by the italian air force is the highlight of the anniversary despite some lockdown measures still in force celebrations are taking place across the country. russia will spend $72000000000.00 to restore the economy following the coronavirus shutdown russia's economy is reeling from the collapse of oil prices the prime minister briefed president vladimir putin about the program it will run over 2 years and boost employment incomes and economic growth. 6 years of war in eastern ukraine have claimed more than 10000 lives and forced millions to leave their homes as peace talks stalled a ukrainian defense delegation in berlin today s

special envoy richard grinnell tweeted the president of cost of all has just informed us that he has canceled his trip to washington d.c. following the announcement made by the special prosecutor's office i respect his decision not to attend the discussions until the legal issues of those allegations are settled we. look forward to saturday's discussions which will be led by president bush and prime minister hold that meeting never happened instead. ended up in separate meetings in brussels under the watchful eye of europe the proposed white house meeting was met with a frosty reaction from the european union who many believe is trying to keep serbia and kosovo under its thumb there is no alternative to the e.u. facilities dialogue to address the normalization of relations between kosovo and serbia the resistance to the d.c. meeting has many questioning the timing of these indictment a perfect opportunity to deal real the u.s. talks which would have been the 1st official meeting between serbia and kosovo in 1000 months while bigger powers try to stick a claim in the balkan dispute bo

grinnell released a lot of information. why did they run all the stop signs? question is did the case agent and intel agent refuse to tell the system about exculpatory information? does the fault lie with two or three people? or was it a system out-of-control. here's what i think. every time there was a stop sign for carter page or flynn, the system moved forward because the people at the top did not want to stop. when general flynn -- january 4th, the fbi wanted to clear general flynn, because there was no there, there, regarding him working with the russians. that's when the january 5th meeting occurred. it was the seventh floor that wanted to continue to look at general flynn, not the actual agents in the field. >> maria: yep. well, we all want accountability and we are certainly grateful, the audience is grateful to you, senator, for starting up those hearings last week. we appreciate you joining us this morning. thank you, sir. >>.senator lindsey graham there. meanwhile, coming up next, his new york times op ed on sending in troops to handle violence and

. >> maria: rick grinnell calls the transition period key.n you tell us about the transition period that we need to understand better? >> well, it depends on what the motivations were and why they were looking at it but it is -- i would say it's unusual for an outgoing administration, high level officials to be unmasking very much in the days they're preparing to leave office. makes you wonder what they were doing. >> maria: how do these senate testimonies help the doj? >> well, they're not -- the doj and congress have separate roles to play. doj, we are looking at whether or not there's been any criminal activity and investigating and i think congress is interested in sort of finding out what happened and disclosing it to the public. so there are different functions that are being performed. i don't think that those are conducted to help the doj. we do our own investigations. >> maria: coming up, ag barr reacts to john bolton, the national -- the former national security advisor and the release of his member mother. that's come -- member oth

grinnell from her library of congress interview from what she remembered. host: traci parker on what she remembered. guest: she is right. i think there is for some protesters there was this notion this would happen and there would be immediate change. but in reality, there had to be some sort of consistent pressure on local governments to ensure -- and on merchants, to ensure that they held their word. so while sit ins may have ended meant, places, what that however was that african-american groups, core, whether it was sclc, the southern christian leadership conference the naacp, sncc, the student nonviolent coordinating committee, these students are doing constant check ins with businesses to ensure that they are following the new rules, to ensure a democracy of equality is being actually practiced in these places. and the difficulty of a sit in movement is you could target one store and that one store could integrate. that doesn't mean that the store next door will integrate. butnext door will integrate. lots of times however businesses would say woolwor

richard goodenow grinnell. [cheering] what a guy, where is matt, say hello. you are fantastic.king andy had lots of gold and those didn't he. i'll tell you, we caught him, let's see what happens, we caught him. and a friend of mine that did a great job at nasa cfo, you can see we totally rebuilt, were sending up rockets for the first time -- [cheering] just to win. [cheering] everyone in this room is bound together by a shared set of moral principles and enduring truth. we believe the united states of america is the greatest and most righteous nation that has ever existed. we will keep it that way. we believe that every citizen has the fundamental right to think, speak, live, pray according to their own conscience. we believe that the beloved heroes of american history should not be torn down by mobs but held up as an example to the world. now they are after george washington. i said what did he do wrong, george washington. thomas jefferson, we stopped him, he was heading towards the jefferson memorial. they could not care less. i think half of them don't know who thomas jeffer

i asked valerie jarrett about it yesterday, to get her reaction to rick grinnell accusing the obama administrationblowing the trump watch her reaction to that. ron johnson is investigating that transition. the 125 leaks during the the obama and trump administrations what isigations going on right into the origins of the russia probe? >> i can say to you this completely clearly maria that i am so proud of how we handled who were in nvestigating their work. what they did was consistent with past practices both parties throughout our history. maria: congressman she went on to say that congress has a lot to deal with right now including 100,000 deaths from coronavirus and that you should be focused on that. fb as her i would want to be focused as well. you may put that interview in the archive and save it because it's not going to age well. it's not aging well right now. we know the problems and the leaks that nobody was held accountable foave jim comey saying we have an opportunity to go in and do something we would never have dreamed of doing under other presidents. we think we can force something h