nbc news's homeland security correspondent, julia ainsley. jeff bennett, chief washington correspondent for pbs "newshour," and an msnbc contributor. also, glenn kirschner with us, former federal prosecutor and an msnbc legal analyst. ali vitali, we've got confirmation, the former president was, in fact in the dining room. and he was, in fact watching tv. i feel like i'm playing a game of "clue" right about right now, but that's what a lot of americans were doing on january 6th, as the events played out on that now crucial day that we look back upon. what else can we expect to hear tonight? >> yeah, you can add a treat to your list of things that you're learning in these th "clue" game that we're getting from the january 6th committee this morning, because what congressman kinzinger has said as well, that not only was trump in the dining room, watching television, but he was doing so gleefully, to the point that the other lawmaker who is going to be leading this hearing, she called what the former president did on that day a dereliction of du

how they are able to continue to get money from migrants even further into their journeys. >> julia ainsleyk you. breaking another big story out of homeland. thanks again. >>> on call, president biden getting on the phone with the president of china. do they succeed in reducing tensions? >>> we are expecting to hear from the president any minute now. we are waiting for him to show up in the state dining room. you can see the podium is there with the flags. he will speak about the economic numbers, about the gdp numbers in a few moments. we will bring that to you live as soon as he begins. you are watching "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. lit! and i'm taking a detour. and if you don't have the right home insurance coverage, you could be working this out yourself. so get allstate. holding his first call in several months with chinese president xi jinping, the two leaders speaking for 2 hours and 17 minutes, we are told. taiwan at the forefront of u.s.-china relations with a potential trip from speaker nancy pelosi, although that has not been officially announced. china claims it is part of

with us, nbc's julia ainsley who broke the story. tell us about these families. >> three mothers and one father all from guatemala suing the u.s. government in a civil suit in arizona for damages they say they deserve because of the trauma they endured when they were separated from their children unexpectedly at the u.s. southern border in 2018. that was under president trump's zero tolerance policy where he separated over 5,000 families, families that did not expect this punishment when they decided to cross the u.s. border. i interviewed one mother who went by her initials of m.se, she said she was separated from her son and told she would never see him again. she said, i thought i was never going to see my son again. i would ask for information about him and they would ignore me. they would tell me to forget about him. she was even told he would be put up for adoption. she talked about being in a cell when customs and border protection let him outside. hard to imagine this as a mother. she then watched her son be loaded onto a van

let me bring in nbc news investigative correspondent julia ainsley with the latest. you're behind this reporting, along with our colleague pete williams. tell us what you know. >> well, hallie, we are now learning that as of last night the secret service became aware that the investigation into those missing text messages by the dhs inspector general is a criminal probe. when exactly it turned criminal, we're not sure. but the secret service learned about it last night. they received a letter telling them to preserve the communications, of course, and to stop trying to do internal investigations. in other words, they needed to not get in the way of what the dhs ig is calling an ongoing criminal investigation. i have to point out that just because it is a criminal investigation does not necessarily mean that there is, a, evidence of wrongdoing, it could turn out to not result in charges and it also, even if it does result in charges doesn't necessarily mean that there is a nefarious actor here that intentionally deleted text messages. they could simply be in violation

. >> let's bring in nbc news correspondent julia ainsley. covers the department of justice and the department of homeland security. julia, help us out here. we heard many reports that donald trump politicized the secret service agency, moving allies and friends into high positions. over the last couple weeks, we've had testimony from trump insiders inside the white house talking about this incident, about donald trump choking a secret service agent, grabbing the steering wheel. we heard other people saying, yes, that happened. now, d.c. cops are saying that that happened. but the secret service, off the record, denies it. now, we have this, an inspector general says, "hey, give me all your text messages, your electronic communications so we can figure out what happened on january 6th." and the ig says they deleted the texts after the request. what can you tell us? >> that's right, joe. the timeline here, you're spot on, and that's critical. because anyone who has ever had their records requested or subpoenaed knows that it is when you have th

nbc's julia ainsley, thank you so much for your reporting.ssist from your mom today. >> yeah, definitely. >> yes, this is my last day at my parents' house. i'll be back in d.c. it's been lovely. >> looks lovely. thank you so much for being with us. greatly appreciate it. you know, marc, again, i've looked at january 6th and the events surrounding it. often remind people of how the system did hold. it was close, but the system held. there are things, though, that these hearings have brought out. there are things that the investigations brought out, though, that are deeply disturbing still and things that need to be fixed. thank god, it look like the senate is moving forward, as the "wall street journal" wrote today in theirmoving forward wi legislation that will make a january 6th less likely in the future. the bill needs to be toughened up even more. so there's some things that give us reason to hope, but the secret service scandal that's erupted over the past week, the fact that you have a law enforcement agency destroying evidence of a coup

julia ainsley has new reporting. this is key to the time line. to know what happened when to help us answer that question, what's the new information? >> we want to know whether or not the secret service agents involved on january 6 knew to keep their records. as we learned, they were, in fact, reminded to hold on to all records. they got an email in december of 2020, another one in january of 2021 reminding them that as part of this new process where they were going to be restoring the factory settings on their phone, as government employees they needed to hold on to all of the records, including text messages. but this is critical. none of the email reminders were specific to january 5 and 6. secret service has maintained they didn't get that request from the inspector general until late february. they could not have been specific in requesting those records to be preserved from the key date. we can report that at least these agents were told to preserve this, take screen shots and include them in this system before everything is wiped from you

, joyce advance and -- joyce vance and former chairman michael steele and we are trying to get julia ainsley up on the reporting from dhs. let me begin with ali vitali. we're learning more about what's going to happen tonight, learning more about the secret service text messages and what might have happened to them and the intense behind losing those. walk us through, give us a primer for what we're going to see in just a few hours. >> reporter: just a few hours from now, it's going to be the 187 minutes, a sharp contrast between the chaos and violence happening on the hill and the inaction from former president donald trump. they're going to use people who were inside the white house who were appearing there in person, those witnesses, but also people in their taped testimony who are going to be able to talk about how the former president was being urged to do more and instead he sat there and watched television to the point where congresswoman laura, one of the people leadings these hearings told me they're probably going to be using footage from fox news, the network we know is a favorite

. >> let's bring in the reporter who broke the story, julia ainsley. new development brought to us by you, julia. if you could add any more reporting to this or context? and am i off to think, you're a member of the secret service, on a day like january 6th, you'd think, instinctively, i need to preserve everything, and not need to be told? >> yeah. i mean, you're absolutely right, mika. i have to say, i'm down here at grandma's house with the kids this week. when i got sources, i had to call in grandma for backup because i knew this would take everybody by surprise. i started talking to sources. you have the timeline exactly right. at first, there was an email sent december 9th, telling them we're going to do this data migration. you need to preserve all of your records. anything you would think is material. if it is a text you're sending about a starbucks order, you don't need to preserve that. otherwise, according to the national records act, you need to start preserving this. and as a federal employee, you're trained on what is important to keep. th

>> it's very significant when we think about the reporting that our great colleague, julia ainsley hasng. this went from being something like, maybe this was an oversight, maybe this was a sort of mishap to maybe this could be nefarious. so obviously, it's a big question, a key question now, sort of what happened with these text messages, but when you pull back, andrea, isn't it remarkable? i know you've been covering national security issues for so long, isn't it remarkable that the secret service can't find these text messages, on what really is one of the days when security and safety was at the forefront of our nation's mind, because the u.s. capitol had been broken into and people were very, very worried and scared for their lives. people died at the capitol. it's incredible we don't know exactly what was going on with the secret service, especially now that we know just how scared the secret service agents were, that were with mike pence. we saw yesterday that new evidence that said that service agents were scared for their lives, having good-bye calls with their families. it's c