and obviously bringing you the latest from ken dilanian at the courthouse and everyone else. here in las vegas, democrats are in recovery mode now after the political carnage we witnessed on the debate stage last night. michael bloomberg falling flat in his first introduction, his introduction to primary voters, unable to handle a barrage of attacks through the first hour of the debate. the focus on bloomberg giving president trump and front-runner bernie sanders reason to be optimistic about their 2020 chances, at least to become the -- for bernie to become the a she brought a gun to a knife fight, waiting only minutes to go after bloomberg and keeping it up throughout the entire two hours. take a listen. >> let me tell you what i do at my company and my foundation and in city government when i was there, in my foundation, a person that runs it is a woman, 70% of the people there are women. in my company lots and lots of women have big responsibilities -- >> i hope you heard what his defense was. i've been nice to some women. [ applause ] >> that just doesn't cut it. he has

>> let's cross over to ken dilanian. big questions about the mood, the sentiment inside of the intelligence community at large. what are your sources saying about the reaction within? >> my sources are saying that the intelligence officials are reeling from this set of events because their top job, the first priority is to tell truth to power. it's to level with policy majors about the truth of the intelligence and what happened here appears to be that people got fired. joe maguire is out and the deputy is out. and being replaced with people whose main qualifications is loyalty to the president. let me back up and explain a woman named shelby pearson briefed lawmakers last week about the intelligence threats. she explained to them there was new evidence that russia was favoring donald trump. we actually at msnbc news interviewed her a few weeks on the general selection of election threats. i think we have some sound from that. >> we want our country to understand that these threats are real. and that they're coming at us

a lot of angst at the d.o.j. >> kelly o'donnell, ken dilanian, thank you both very much. i want to bring in ken do. jesse liu has officially resigned from the treasury department after president trump withdrew her nomination as a top treasury official. i blelieve she was going to be the undersecretary for terrorism. you had somebody like jesse liu who was a u.s. attorney involved in the investigation of roger stone, at least oversaw that investigation and trial, and is now resigning after her nomination has been withdrawn from the president. >> there is a principle among attorneys and as part of the ethics when an attorney is sworn in called noisy withdrawal. we are witnessing that in realtime now. it's the principle that if you are an attorney, you are an officer of the court. it doesn't seem like that to many, you think the officers of the court are the judge and b l bailiff and so forth. if an attorney has a client involved in wrong doing, that's when you see a notice of withdrawal. typically you see that for a defense attorney, their client is going to continue to enga

ken dilanian, nbc news, washington. >>> still ahead tonight, free money for families.states are helping new families save for their kid's college. >>> plus, are these the new athletes on campus? why schools are taking video gamers very seriously. where's our family from? was he my age? so nana and pops eloped? ...and then what happened, daddy? well, before us, there were your great, great, great grandparents. turn questions you've always had into stories you can't wait to share; with ancestry. ♪ got it figured out ♪ i'm feeling good ♪ doing it my own way ♪ ♪ every single day ♪ ♪ and it feels good to feel good ♪ sunsweet amaz!n prunes and prune juice. the feel good fruit. ♪[ siren ] & doug prunes and prune juice. give me your hand! i can save you... lots of money with liberty mutual! we customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ >>> the amount of student loan debt in this country is staggering, as you know. and as families struggle to save for their kids' education, more states are

about 1,000 still open investigations nationwide into allegations of chinese technology theft ken dilaniannbc news, washington. >>> still ahead, live from new york, it is a hilarious "saturday night live" parody. >> plus, how much players take home for winning the super bowl. . in fact, tremfya® was proven superior to humira® . in providing significantly clearer skin. tremfya® may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms or if you had a vaccine or plan to. serious allergic reactions may occur. tremfya®. uncover clearer skin that can last. janssen can help you explore cost support options. (honk!) i hear you sister. that's why i'm partnering with cigna to remind you to go in for your annual check-up, and be open with your doctor about anything you feel - physically and emotionally. but now cigna has a plan that can help everyone see stress differently. just find a period of time to unwind. a location to de-stress. an activity to enjoy. or the name of someone to talk to. to create a plan that works for you, v

ken dilanian, appreciate your reporting as well. and advisers want president trump to weight until after the election if these going to pardon roger stone. >> i'm not going to do anything in terms of the great powers bestowed upon a president of the united states. i want the process to play out. i think that's the best thing to do because i'd love to see roger exxonerated and i'd love to see it happen because i personally think he was treated very unfairly. >> joining me now, paul butler, a former federal prosecutor and now an msnbc legal analyst and georgetown law professor. the president doesn't believe the law has been fair to his friend. bottom line after a series of pardons and commutations for friends and friends of friends, the president is not ruling out a pardon for roger stone. >> the president is on his impeachment payback tour. he doesn't seem all that concerned about the politics. he does what he wants to do. and why that's concerning with regard to roger stone is based on the felonies that he was convicted of. roger st

it feels as if you heard our reporting from ken dilanian.alk of a protest and fear to self identify. you'd get a scarlet letter of some sort. it is insane that i'm asking the question but how -- we're here. what do you do if you're at justice? >> one way to do it is just keep your head down and do your job. if you're seeing things really wrong, you can do what whistle-blowers did at epa and we got rid of him based on whistle-blower information in our committee. i think you will see over under pompeo at the state department a lot of brewing resentiment and rebellion so that the political work is done by secretary pompeo and here at the justice department which should never be this way, we are seeing the firewalls that protect prosecutions from political influence from being completely overridden by this administration. and when it gets to the point where you're through the protections about -- going to career staff turning in the badges because they're so offended, that's a really loud alarm bell that america should attend to. >> are we at th

according to sources speaking with ken dilanian, andrea mitchell and i, it was a warning about speakingbout undermining the election. we've confirmed the president was furious that the security czar told lawmakers that russians had exhibited a preference for donald trump and was trying to help him in 2020. but one current official tell us that peerson overstated the intelligence and when pressed by bipartisan lawmakers to show the evidence, she could not. regardless, the result was that the president got so angry he fired his acting dni and replaced him with a loyalist, somebody who intelligence officials worry will not be a good faith interpreter or messenger of the intelligence the american government gathers. joining me now to break down this big story, nbc news intelligence and national security correspondent ken dilanian, and ned price. ken, first to you. the underlying or the bottom line here is two things. one, donald trump replaced somebody who people trusted with a loyalist who people do not trust. and two, that russian is still trying to interfere, still trying to undercut ame

let me bring in ken dilanian.d it is amazing, sort of piecing all of this together, joseph mcguire is suddenly out, we see the rick ggrenell news. something about an intel briefing? now we hear what it was. and it was a briefing that russia is interfering again on behalf of president trump. pretty alarms headline. >> it is the worst nightmare of many of my source in the intelligence world. bad enough to learn that there is classified intelligence that russia is interfering again and trying to elect donald trump. we should be careful about that because it is not clear what it means. does it mean disinformation on social media, does it mean sxwer septembers that suggest people in the kremlin are discussing the campaign? that is bad enough, but then the notion that because a briefing of that information was delivered to a bipartisan group of lawmakers, that cost joe mcguire the job? that is a bombshell. i mean, we want our intelligence officials to speak truth to power. and donald trump wants to cover up -- we know h

. >> we're joined by nbc news correspondent ken dilanian who covers national security. what do you make of this story? >> john brennan was making an important point. let me unpack it for the viewers. donald trump we all know has no interest in this issue of foreign election interference has never talked about it. is not leading the government on it. but so far he has not prevented his own government from doing some things, from taking action to try to protect is 2020 election. and the fbi, the department of homeland security, the intelligence community has been stepping up their efforts. one of the things they did is appointed an election security czar. shelby paers season the person who briefed lawmakers on election threats last week. now that briefing infuriated trump so much he's essentially pushing out his director of national intelligence. so this suggests that trump has gone from ignoring the intelligence and the efforts as john brennan was saying to actively subverting it. this is pernicious. it their job is to brief to power. >> even if you take russia out of it

ambassador to russia, jeremy bash, and ken dilanian whose done all this reporting. en, there's some confusion about exactly how precise that analysis was, was it the russians interfering, was it to help donald trump, was it possibly to help donald trump. but the bottom line is, it infuriated the president and the analysts in charge was doing her job, which is to tell the house and senate committees in secret what their best thinking is based on what they're reading on russia's intentions. >> that's the key point, andrea. this official shelby pearson is the czar of the intelligence community and she went over to brief congress last week to update them on the latest election threats and foreign interference threats and as we do further reporting on this, we're hearing differing accounts of what was said in that briefing. one official is pushing back and saying perhaps the intelligence wasn't clear on the notion that russia clearly preferred donald trump but shelby pearson told lawmakers, we have that confirmed, that russia had developed a performance for donald trump a

attorney barbara mcquaid and nbc correspondent ken dilanian. latest reporting is "barr takes control of legal matters of interest to trump including the stone sentencing." we will get to ken in a second. barbara, am i being melodramatic because i hate being melodramatic at 6:33 in the morning but has this happened in my lifetime? even back when i was playing t ball during watergate has this ever happened before? >> no, not that i'm aware of. two things people should be aware of, number one, the original sentence that the prosecutors asked for of seven to nine years is the sentencing glooin sentence, that's not a high number. >> i'm sorry, those are guidelines. >> those are guidelines. >> the prosecutors weren't going out of their way to get roger stone, those were the doj's own guidelines. >> not even doj, joe, the u.s. sentencing commission guidelines. they gather data from all over the country about cases, they putting a vagt factors which are not mentioned in the second memo that was filed by timothy shay and john crab. aggravating factors th

. >> that is ken dilanian with the latest from washington on the roger stone sentencing. o. we'll be right back here on msnbc. give me your hand! i can save you... lots of money with liberty mutual! we customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ with tender crisp technology. the best of pressure cooking and air frying are now in one pot. and only the ninja foodi has tender crisp technology, so you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. you may never need another appliance ever again. the ninja foodi pressure cooker. the pressure cooker that crisps. >>> craig melvin here at msnbc headquarters in new york city. right now we are keeping an eye on that d.c. courthouse behind me. that's where roger stone is being sentenced as we speak. there's a lot riding on the decision. it comes after bill barr's interference in the case, president trump's attacks against the judge. we'll take you there for the latest in just a few moments. also, vicious in vase -- vegas. w

ken dilanian remains outside the kou courthouse. and also with me is harry littman. n, bring us up to speed here. what else has been going on inside that courtroom? >> reporter: craig, this has been a hearing jam packed with fascinating developments. first of all, a lot of focus on those duelling sentencing recommendations from the justice department. the first one you'll recall called for seven to nine years and argued for enhancements to the federal guidelines, things they said stone did that was worse than what he was convicted of, including threatening violence and obstructing the proceeding. he posted on social media a picture of the judge with what looked like the cross hairs. they argued he deserved more prison time for at that. then william barr intervenes and the justice department pulled back. but the prosecution is arguing with those -- for those again and the judge is agreeing with them. the judge is also grilling this prosecutor about why the original prosecutors in the case aren't here to argue, why they didn't file the second memo. he has declined to an

joining us no tow tell us is nbc news ken dilanian. what is going on?set and it's widely assumed that judge jackson will plan on grilling the justice department and perhaps the u.s. attorney in washington, tim shea, about this dramatic change of position where they filed the document one day, urging a seven to nine year sentence and then the next day it's a different document. that was because the attorney general of the united states intervened and it's coming against a back drop of president trump tweeting again this morning about the case, criticizing the mueller investigation, criticizing alleged bias on the part of the jury foreperson. these are exactly the kind of tweets that the attorney general said last week made it impossible to do his job. i contacted the justice department and they have no comment. >> we know that amy berman jackson has a job to do, but explain this emergency meeting of federal judges. what is that all about? >> well, people who have looked at this have not found any precedent for this group of federal judges convening in em

for more on that, we turn to correspondent ken dilanian. from when you first reported this decision by bill barr to get involved this a couple of days ago until now, things are starting to come apart. this is very serious, did degree of tensions between the attorney general and some other justice department leaders who might actually take action against the prosecutors who speak up on this issue. >> yeah. this is a really serious matter, ali. some ways as serious as the ukraine scandal. you can argue because federal prosecutors wield enormous influence over people's lives. they have the power to imprison people. so the idea that there is any kind of political intervention, influence over criminal investigations is a huge scandal and, you know, bill barr's now under fire even from allies. i was just reading an opinion piece by a former bush administration lawyer of jack goldsmith now at harvard supporting bill barr as a trump critic saying that barr has created the appearance that the justice department has been politicized because donald tr

joining us is intelligence and national security correspondent ken dilanian and charlie salve sanlg, a contributor, a first reporter to break the news on the flynn investigation. he's the author of "power wars." charlie, on the michael flynn news, we heard some days ago that he wanted to withdraw this plea and now we hear that there is -- that barr has gone to an outside lawyer to look at this case again. what are we talking about here? >> so what happened is two weeks ago when a new interim u.s. attorney was installed by barr to lead this office which has the politically fraught investigations with trump's allies and trump's adversaries, he -- one of the things that happened that we didn't know about until this morning is that attorney general barr sent a team of outside prosecutors, some from st. louis, some from the deputy attorney general's office to come in as a kind of second layer of review and supervision over all the political cases. is most prominent of which is the michael flynn case, at least of those public that we know about. and so, they are looking at this, looking at

we are talking about a piece from ken dilanian that they're worried that it's being distorted by both york times" who said that the house intel committee was briefed by the top official who said that russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get president trump re-elected but officials are uno telling our team that's a bit of an overstatement with some blaming democrats for misinterpreting what was said. it comes as the new acting director asked her to stay in her post. let me bring in the democratic congressman mike quigley of illinois. great to have you back on the show. thanks for being with us. >> thank you, good morning. >> good morning. i know you're limited on what you can say, but i would like to ask if you can pond to the claim that there was a misinterpretation here? >> here's what's clear. i was first briefed that the russians were attacking almost four years ago and the first state they hacked into was my own state of illinois. january 2017 we were briefed that -- by the unanimous intelligence community that the russians did this and they did it to help one can

i don't know if we have ken dilanian. i think we have cynthia oxny. >> yeah. >> this is kind of remarkable. i mean, this is -- this goes to a whole new level. not just the president potentially influencing his attorney general to influence a court decision. that would be problematic in and of itself. it may be that bill barr did this of his own accord. that would be problematic. but the president next to the president of ecuador in the oval office is actually lying about the outcome of a court decision, prosecuted by the government. >> right. he lies about everything but now we are adding the department of justice and the criminal justice system, and the problem is that when you turn the criminal justice system, when you turn the department of justice into a political weapon as our friend joyce vance labeled it, whether the doj is a political weapon to be used by the president none of us are safe and he can not only protect the friends but go after the enemies and listen to what he said. he is pushing the new u.s. attorne

let's bring in nbc news correspondent covering national security and intelligence, ken dilanian.d morning. just walk us through a little bit of how the president came up with this particular list of people and why now. >> good morning, willie. well, i think you guys made the salient points here. you're absolutely point, it's the friends and family plan. just so people understand, the president has the absolute right to do this, obviously, it's part of his constitutional powers, but there is a process that's been in place for a long time within the justice department, there are pardons attorneys who review pardons applications and generally it's a really hard thing to get a recommendation on from a doj attorney, you have to have shown remorse, there is a number of factors that go into it. all of that, of course, was thrown out td window here. there's very little evidence that any of these cases went through the pardons attorney. in the case of junk bond king michael milken he had already applied for and been turned down for pardons on at least two occasions the reporting shows. th

and roger stone but let's start with nbc news intelligence and national security correspondent ken dilanian outside the -- he's in the bureau in washington. the sentencing of roger stone came after ten days of drama within the department of justice. what did the judge say about this 40-month sentence lower than the initial recommendation? >> good to see you, as well, ali. the judge made a tonight of saying that all this noise had no bearing on her sentence and it really underscored that barr did not need to do what he did because seven to nine years was really never going to happen in this case. it was well outside what any similarly situated defendant did get and would consider the enhancements, though, the thing that is aggravated the sentence, the threat to the witness of roger stone and considered mitigating factors like 6 years old, a first offender and that this wasn't a violent offense and arrived at what many legal observers said is a standard sentence in a case like this. but what she also did was try to send a message to the many critics of this prosecution including the president

as ken dilanian and andrea mitchell report, trump is punishing intelligence officials for providing accurate intelligence to members of congress who are cleared to receive it. we should note that maguire's testimony in september when he told lawmakers that the whistleblower quote did the right thing and followed the law every step of the way, by reporting his concerns or her concerns over the president's phone call with ukraine's president. trump sent shock waves through the intelligence community when he announced wednesday that one of his most partisan allies, the u.s. ambassador to germany, richard grenell would replace maguire's acting dni despite having no intelligence experience. last night the president tweeted his intense to nominate someone else for the job quote soon. >>> a former aide to devin nunes, four sources a telling politico this. this move comes after president trump's nomination of grenell who hasn't served in any u.s. intelligence agency as we have been saying this to be the new acting director of national intelligence, a position that oversees all 17 u.s. spy agencies.

broke this story and joined by our own road warrior shaq brewster and intelligence correspondent ken dilanianmichael, is this essentially the same briefing that house intelligence officials -- committee got and that the president got the next day and exploded? >> so this information has been briefed both to that capitol hill house intelligence briefing, briefed to the president and it's separately been briefed to senator sanders so it is the same set of information that all three groups of people have been told about. >> do we have a sense of how they're doing it? and what it is that they're trying to do? impersonation of supporters, the same sort of playbook from before? is there any -- is there something a bit more sophisticated this time? >> we don't have the details of the content of this help is. gotcha. all right. we are -- we obviously have a little bit of a connection issue there. let's go to shaq brewster here. shaq, it was interesting, do we know when the sanders campaign was briefed? sanders himself during our debate implied that it's possible some of the most egregious things that

>> ken dilanian with a little more on what is -- what frankly feels like something that perhaps some ken, thanks very much. let's turn back to polls in new hampshire. candidates are still out there, as an important sort of -- people are driving home from work, commuting from boston, trying to win over and find out any of those undeclared voters in the state that haven't voted. let's get the latest on the ground. katy tur is in nashua. katie, first of all, what kind of turnout does it feel like? has it been constantly busy? what areny telling you? >> it's starting to get busier now that people are getting off work. i was talking to one of the poll watchers a moment ago, and said that turnout is slightly higher at this time than it was in 2016. they are comparing it to 2012. they're going to try to compare it to 2012. that was the last time an incumbent was in the race. 2016, if was an open field, so they did get higher turnout. the democrats hope that more voters show up, they don't get a repeat of iowa, they want to see enthusiasm. they want to see voters come out and pass ballots. th

let's get right back to ken dilani dilanian. what can we expect in this case and moving forward? >> ayman, it was extremely unusual for the judge to call for this telephonic meeting over the weekend and she is asking the doj to testify under oath with the reversal. last monday they said we recommend seven to nine years and then the next day they pull it back and that was because of the intervention of william barr and this comes from the back drop of a lot of noise, the presidential tweets. they're not surprising but they directly contradict the exhortation of the attorney general last week, where he said these kind of tweets make it impossible for me to do my job, mr. president, please stop tweeting about the justice system. well, this morning he's calling for a new trial for roger stone, denouncing the judge, denouncing the jury foreperson in this case. a lot of drama here. as you said the federal -- the organization of federal judges are calling this unprecedented meeting and we'll see if they make a public statement asking the attorney general and the president to cut it out.

as our colleagues, ken dilanian and andrea mitchell report, the episode has raised a specter that trumpals for providing accurate intelligence to members of congress cleared to receive it. we should also note, maguire's testimony back in september, when he told lawmakers the whistleblower, quote, did the right thing and followed the law every step of the way by reporting concerns over the president's phone call with ukraine's president. trump sent shock waves through the intelligence community when he announced on wednesday that one of his partisan allies, the u.s. ambassador to germany, richard grenell, would replace maguire as acting dni despite having not just some or little but no intelligence experience. last night, the president tweeted his intention to nominate someone else for the job. quote, soon. >> the story broke in the "new york times." put it into perspective for us, if you will. >> here we are, heading into an election with the russians meddling. our domestic affairs and a president who sees it through a partisan lens that we're no longer united and how to respond to an o