. >> arthel: let's get right to it why is mr. nunes doing this?s it a reasonable request and what are the politics behind it. >> yeah. so he is certainly in his right as the head of the intelligence committee to do this. and it was a redacted version of the memo that he got. he felt that that was sort of inconsequential and inadequate. is he going back and asking for the full thing. i guess the question here is how much of this is politics? a little bit of political theater. devin nunes has criticized the fbi and the investigation. he is very close ally of president trump's. and so how much of this is kind of meant to continue the process of sort of discrediting the fbi investigation. only he knows. there is also politics played out in these things. and maybe we are seeing a bit of that here. >> arthel: do we know what information mr. nunes is actually trying to gain access to, specifically? >> well, i think he wants to see kind of what the motivation was for the investigation. and some of that has kind of come out in conflicts between mr. nunes a

>> if they want to play games and they don't want to release information, mr. nunes knows a lot more than what he is saying, or even what was contained in this 2.5 page memo, he could feature the debate clause. and just start reading things himself. either they play ball and release information that he is constitutionally has has the right to see because of congress is oversight responsibility, or they can start holding forth about what he knows spread this is nothing new, sadly. a couple years back, senator senator grassley had hearings called "all means all." the inspector general of the justice department being told "drop-dead" by the fbi because the ig was not allowed to see fbi records. there's a long history and it's time for people's bluffs to be called. and not be this runaround around congress. >> harris: we hear talk that we are going to a "get smart" gift. the code of silence and no one can hear it but nunes could just read it on the floor. >> this is the worst-kept secret in the world, months and months of this russia hysteria. we know mccabe, even lisa m

after that in late summer, early fall of 2016 and has been clear based on what we learned last time mr. nunest out a memo. i think he was embarrassed by that to find out, in fact, that the fisa warrants were done under the letter of the law through judges and everybody else. >> yeah. okay. i want to go to the comey memos now and the book. i spoke with former u.s. ambassador to russia just this last hour. talk about the prospects of whether the allegations in the dossier could have actually happened. of course, the one item he said he knows that when he was in russia over a two-year period, he was there at the ritz hotel. they undertook extraordinary measures for privacy. he talked about bringing in equipment from the united states to build something so they could speak freely and without being listened to or observed. your sense of the possibility of the whole prostitute matter being true given your experience in moscow. what do you think? >> i don't know if the prostitute matter with mr. trump is truce, but i don't know with 100% certainty that the russians try to set people up. they look at

it had earlier been provided but the republicans on the committee mr. nunesng others said it was too heavily redacted. they couldn't make headses or tails of it. the justice department has given them now something that is very lightly redact and only eliminates the name of a foreign country and a foreign agent because of the cooperation they were getting from another country and so that is blacked out. i guess in its place it simply says foreign country, foreign agent. but otherwise, they pretty much have what they waned. >> nbc news justice correspondent pete williams, thank you very much. >> you bet. >> a lot more to get to on this crazy day of news. my wonderful panel have been sitting here patiently and biting their tongue. i want your reaction to all this. we'll have that right after we get back from this break. >>> welcome back. the all in special day 447, it feels like 4,459.9 days of the trump administration but it's 447. i want to actually before we bring in hans nickles who is our pentagon correspondent and talk about what is happening with the late

representative nunes who has shown his partisanship repeatedly, and others, went so far to threaten mr. rosenstein with contempt of congress if he didn't hand over comey's memos and other documents related to special counsel mueller's investigation. mr. rosenstein gave him that information which, of course, was leaked afterwards out into the press. it is not justice department protocol, nor any other prosecutor's protocol, to share information beyond the investigation. it just welcomes interference. that's true even with the most objective of those who get the information, which i think 95% of america believes congressman nunes is not objective. it is not hard to understand why we don't do this, and yet several house republicans have smeared mr. rosenstein and even threatened his job unless he broke with the longstanding prosecutorial guidelines giving him the ammunition to twist. it is just disgraceful and not consistent with us being a democracy where there's rule of law. more consistent with a bullying attitude that we see in nondemocrat, small d, countries. deputy attorney general

nunes. good evening, mr. chairman.ne of the things in reading the president's tweet, at the end, the president says where are the memos on clinton, lynch and the others? i think that's a good place to start with you because as i understand it, you guys have received something like, i don't know, 3,000 out of 1.2 million memos and documents. when do you think you will get them? >> well, we're still fighting to get them. the good thing is that both the judiciary committee and the oversite committee are now also fully engaged in this and we're running out of time. the thing that i don't like about all of this is it seems like we have to get to the point where we threaten subpoena or threaten contempt or threaten impeachment before we're delivered any documents and that has to stop immediately. if doj can't deliver them, then the executive branch is going to have to step in, or congress is going to have to go to these great lengths to get this. what i'm worried about here and i don't think it's a big secret that they are j

mr. monday nunes. what does this mean for the collusion investigation? senior judicial analyst judge andrew napolitano. what does he mean no intel? >> this is why it's a little troublesome. brian: they weren't blank pages. >> no, they weren't blank pages. congressman nunes as the chair of the house select committee on intelligence enjoys the highest security clearance. same security clearance as the head of the cia or the president or the head of the fbi. gets to see everything. when he looks at top secret raw intelligence data, and selectively pick tssments cherry picks it for a political narrative. i think that's dangerous. that's going to induce his opposite number congressman adam schiff, the ranking mirntsd member of the committee to do the same thing. they are both going to look at the same raw intelligence data. one is going to say there is no there there. the other is going to say ah-ha, there are three or four things there. this is an active criminal investigation. i happen to think the case against the president is bogus. they are still pursuin

we're back with congressman devon nunes chairman of the house intel committee and mr. chairman your thoughts your reaction to this lawsuit. >> well my first thought is that is this some kind of joke. this must be a joke. we know who colluded with russians. they don't want to admit that they colluded with russians, but they hired fusion gps, they hired a law firm that hired fusion gps that hired a british spy that colluded with russians so i don't understand why they didn't just open up a lawsuit against themselves they should name themselves so they can get to the bottom of what do they have on their servers, why didn't they give those servers to the fbi. this is nothing more, nothing less than a continuation of fundraising off of this scandal. this is made to play to the far left in this country, so that the far left will continue to right check because they don't believe that president trump won the election fair and square. because the media, most of the media in this country has continued this narrative there was collusion, there was obstruction that trump was some

mr. davis: look, what happened here was pretty clear. nuneswanted to talk out with talking points for their base so they could defend the president. democrats in their judgment correct the record. i think that's the wrong way you do intelligence oversight. it cheapens the whole thing. i think it pardonizes it. i consider myself an institutionalist. the congress should be an independent party. a third party, if you will. a check and balance on the executive branch. not an appendage of the executive branch. when you act like that, you're been an appendage of them. you're destroying what congress was created to do i think it's unfortunate what has become. senate i think held it together a little better. they still have their difficulties. these are highly charged partisan times. no. i think it's cheapened the whole. let me say on the f.b.i., you take a look at comey and his deputy and everything around it,, i think they put themselves in the middle of the storm. they are part of a bunch puveraging bag. it's too bad because it's a great organizati

mr. mueller's investigation showed. we saw that with regard to the nunes report, republicans tried to put out a one-sided report, and ultimately there was too much pressure to get the whole truth out. so i think that's what's going to happen here, that if mueller issues a report, then the public will demand that it be made public. that's what should happen. >> joyce, it's a high bar, though, in terms of finding whether or not the president had any massive wrong doing. it will be a high bar for robert mueller to convince folks that are in the president's example or independent folks who think the whole thing smells funny to them. that must be a lot of pressure for robert mueller -- [ no audio ] intent and of criminal intent. for mueller and his team, this is very much their breadbred and butter work. they will sift through evidence, whether there's direct statements from the president from which they can ascertain their intent, conversations that they were a part of that other witnesses are telling them about, and although it is incredibly difficult to do,

quote, given the reportered role in helping congress mast nunes turn the investigation into a partisan breeding ground for conspiracy theories, mr. cohen-watnick's new position is troubling. he must not come anywhere near the mueller investigation, and democrats will watch like a hawk to ensure that is the case. so this guy, fired from the white house before for his involvement in what looked like an effort to monkey wrench the russian investigation, we don't know why president trump has ordered him to be hired again by the trump administration and specifically be ordered that he we gipp a job in the office of jeff sessions. we don't know why the president would issue an order to put that particular guy in that particular place. but as of today es ra cohen-watnick reportedly has finished his first week on the job, now at the department of justice. there's been so much turmoil and turnover in the administration, it continues tonight, but it's been happening for long enough that people previously cast out are starting to get recycled into new, even more controversial jobs. heads up on this one. what is it? the next big thing in fo

nunes said on sunday morning futures. >> if there is obstruction of justice we want to know about it, clearly there wasn't and that's what the comey memos prove. for mrcomey when you match up memos with what's in the books with the interviews he's giving, he's got a lot of problems coming in the future as it relates to what the ig is looking at into his behavior. eric: ellison barber has more on the continuing controversy in washington. >> nunes claims he knows that there was not certain intelligence to start the investigation into collusion between the trump campaign and russia because he says he has not found evidence that that intelligence came through normal channels. >> what we found now after the investigators had reviewed it is that, in fact, there was no intelligence, so we have a traditional -- we have a traditional partnership with what's called the five i's agreement, five i's agreement involves friends in australia, united kingdom, new zeland and us. >> in december "the new york times" reported that the russia investigation began not because of the now notorious dossier but because of information provided to the united states by australia

nunes. thank you for joining me. there's a lot to tackle, but first to captain's report from the inspector general, mr. mr. mccabe. we know a little bit more about the nature of the leaks, what did you learn from this report tonight? >> i have to congratulate michael horowitz for finally finding one of the leakers. we've known for a long time that too much information has been getting out from the fbi and the department of justice, so i congratulate the doj on the fbi michael horowitz tonight because finally one of the leakers were found and it happens to be somebody who was right at the top. there are many more leakers to find. >> martha: when you go through this report and you read a number of the subject lines are reports in "the wall street journal" and then it breaks down exactly what was leaked to "the wall street journal" and what the inspector general found. it says according to a person familiar with the probes, on august 12, a senior justice department official called mr. mccabe to voice his displeasure at finding that new york fbi agents were still openly pursuing the clinton foundation probe during the

devin nunes, the committee chairman said they joined mr.ransparency in indianapolis, democrats line, good morning. caller: a comment on the iran deal, which the president will print much walk away from for on next couple of weeks chinese and russian, and democrats on the sideline to for the country, for it is better to walk away and do the same thing again. it is not a good day for the world. host: mike pence at arty agreed to appear at the annual meeting of the gun rights group. routine for the u.s. secret service to ban weapons and the band has been mocked, calling it hypocritical. dallasearms in the morning news. if you are responding at the dinner, -- host: conrad in new jersey, democrats line. caller: in 1979 when the american hostages were taken into iran, $150 million of their money in the united states were frozen. suspend --d to nothing of the kind of he returned. emphasis on that word. money,llion of their they decide to -- nuclear testing. this says the deal, how does he just listen to -- listen to the president speak. here is th

mr. sessions, rosenstein, have to do a much better job in giving us the information we deserve. the good news this week, when chairman devin nunest launched the entire investigation into president trump and the whole russia issue, that is at least a small step in the right direction. they got to do much better than that and in a dramatic way. >> shannon: let's talk about the things they have done. the u.s. attorney john huber, the doj says he will be looking at all kinds of things that you all are concerned about, including potential fisa abuses. the fbi director, christopher wray, saying doubling the number of agents to help with these document requests. the referenced u.s. attorney lausch, and the fact that congressman nunes and trey gowdy were able to see that fbi document, so do you feel like they are meeting you halfway? >> look, it's great you have more people looking at the documents, a point person. i don't know what they are going to do, he looks like a nice guy. if we get the same redacted documents, for example, they redacted the documents we originally had, had redacted the conversation between lisa page and peter st

nunes. she says, quote, the information concerning overture to trump campaign foreign policy adviser george papadopoulos which resulted in the initiation of the investigation has proven to be well-founded. as mr. papadopoulos' plea makes clear, the majority seems to believe if they can discredit the investigation by attacking the fbi, justice department and state department, it can get the public to ignore the growing body of evidence of illicit contacts between the trump campaign and the russians. this approach is as disingenuous as it is destructive to your understand teution. institution. that is coming from congressman schiff. something we've seen a lot when it comes to the russia investigation, disagreement from the left and the right. eric: schiff firing back on those claims. arthel: we're going to bring in a senior legal fellow at the heritage foundation. and a former doj official. more than a dozen u.s. intelligence agencies confirmed that russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election. what was the entry point into the investigation about whether anyone from the trump campaign worked in concert with russian ooperatives . >> well, look. i have to disagree with that assessment. so

nunes or schiff. where do you go from here? >> at the end of the day can be the truth comes out. you can't ignore the truth. you can continue, as mrhiff has done, but the american people aren't stupid. they can look at that and say, where is this evidence? if you are claiming this, you've got to show them. another important observation, you alluded to it, one of the most discouraging things about this episode is department of justice and fbi have no business becoming political animals. when they do, this is what we are going to see. we see them attack each other, now they are calling each other liars, they are defending themselves. if they didn't get involved in n the political process and intervene where they shouldn't have, they wouldn't be in that situation. >> shannon: to that point, do you think the inspector general is looking into whether james comey violated any handling of classified information with his memos? we've seen them partially redacted, where do we go from here? >> probable cause the james comey committed a criminal espionage. it does not require the information to be classified, it requires that government prop

mr. chairman, if you want to remain as chairman, stop. >> well, what we saw instead is that paul ryan sided with devin nunes in a lot of these fights betweenth him? >> why. >> that's kind of to be expected because paul ryan is always going to be on the side of the committee, he's always going to be on the side of the house in these fights with doj and fbi in favor of more -- >> but that's my point. the speaker of the house has to protect the institutions of the house at some point. >> this is crazy. >> one of my favorite stories, david, that mika has had to hear a thousand times had to do with tip o'neill tunnel and ronald reagan's friend chip after the tragedy in beirut in 19282/83. >> i was there that day. i was in the embassy that day. >> wow. >> well, when the news that day hit washington, d.c., richard reid writes about it in his reagan book. tip o'neill tunnel called all the democrats to hc-5 and they all sat there and they were sure that this tough liberal speaker was going to be giving them talking points on how to attack the republican policy that obviously turned into this abject failure and cost the lives of 240-plus americans.