joining us now is "washington post" national security reporter shane harris. shane, thanks for getting to a studio for us on short notice. i really appreciate it. >> no problem, rachel. >> so you heard me explain sort of my understanding about how the story has developed and the context here. i just want to ask you if anything that i said struck a sour note or seemed wrong or if there's anything that i should correct there. >> no, i think that narrative is right. it's important to piece these things together. we sometimes forget how they do line up in retrospect, don't they. >> for me, it's not so much connecting the dots, it's remembering what all the dots are. >> right. >> because they seem to connect in different ways with each new news story. you and your colleagues are reporting that the complaint centers on ukraine, but you don't in tonight's story offer any further detail on what about ukraine or whether, in fact, it was a conversation with the president of ukraine that was the nature of this. can you expand at all in terms of what you know about the ukr

laa: shane harris, thanks much for joining us. shane: you bet. laura: now to yemen, where the united nations says human rights violations are taking place during what they call thworst humanitarian crisiin the world. civil war has been raging there for more than four years between the government backed by a sau -led coalition supported by the u.s. and the u.k. and houthi rebels backed by iran. the port cit of hodeidah is crucial to the supply of aid and medicine. from there, a bbc arabic special correspondent sent this report. reporter: he is yet anotr father in mourning. in a city that has suffered the worst of yemen's brutal war, he leis here to survey what i of his family home. just a few days ago, as they all slept, an artillery shell la ed here. he tells me it was impossible to help everyone. reporter: his daughter's toys remain, but she is no longer here to ay with them. that night, he lost his six-year-old daughter, his wife, his mother, and his sister. in the hospital, the rest of the family that survived.ug his other er, a one-year-old,

we've got shane harris joining us, michael schmidt joining us. a member of the intelligence committee who was able to view the whistle-blower's complaint in a special secure facility today who's going to be joining us. we've got senator chris murphy who's going to be joining us who's just back from a trip to ukraine where he talked to the ukrainian government about all of this. lots to get to. we'll be right back. lots to get to we'll be right back. when rade? i want free access to research. yep, td ameritrade's got that. free access to every platform. yeah, that too. i don't want any trade minimums. yeah, i totally agree, they don't have any of those. i want to know what i'm paying upfront. yes, absolutely. do you just say yes to everything? hm. well i say no to kale. mm. yeah, they say if you blanch it it's better, but that seems like a lot of work. no hidden fees. no platform fees. no trade minimums. and yes, it's all at one low price. td ameritrade. ♪ liberty mutual customizes your car insurance, hmm. exactly. so you only pay for what you nee

we've got shane harris joining us, michael schmidt joining us. a member of the intelligence committee who was able to view the whistle-blower's complaint in a special secure facility today who's going to be joining us. we've got senator chris murphy who's going to be joining us, who's just back from a trip to ukraine where he talked to the ukrainian government about all of this. lots to get to. we'll be right back. so when my windshield broke... >> woman: what?! >> vo: ...i searched for someone who really knew my car. i found the experts at safelite autoglass. >> woman: hi! >> vo: with their exclusive technology, they fixed my windshield... then recalibrated the camera attached to my glass so my safety systems still work. who knew that was a thing?! >> woman: safelite has service i can trust. >> singers: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace. ♪ why accept it frompt an incompyour allergy pills?e else. flonase sensimist. nothing stronger. nothing gentler. nothing lasts longer. flonase sensimist. 24 hour non-drowsy allergy relief my body is truly powe

involves something done outside the intelligence agencies' jurisdiction joining me is ned price and shane harris agency, you know joe maguire from the counterterrorism center, he's in an acting role, being appointed to stand in after dan coats left what is your take on this? because this is legalistic but it is a showdown between house intelligence and the dni >> that's right, andrea. i'm sure this is not where joe maguire wanted to find himself here the allegation, we should say, we don't know what the allegation is. it appears to be bsomething significant enough, however, that when the inspector general for the dni received this, he called it an urgent matter under the law, thought it was credible as well. what we've deduced is it seems to have been made by someone who works in the intelligence community, so at one of the spy agencies, but who was detailed at one point in time to the national security council and the white house. this has set up this interesting jurisdictional question where the dni said, well, this appears to be a complaint outside of our purview, so they then went to the jus

. >>> with us on the phone is shane harris, a national intelligence and security correspondent from the "washington post." shane, thanks for being with us. >> good morning. >> let's start here with the content, and then we'll get to how they tried to restrict access to it. theed the administration if not the president himself have tried really hard to convince the american people that keeping russia from interfering in a 2020 election was a priority of this administration, a priority of this president. but your reporting would suggest that as far back as far as may of 2017 the president really didn't even care. >> that's right. that's essentially what he told these two senior russian officials in the oval office from what at the time you'll recall was kind of an extraordinary meeting, giving all of the attention on trump and the russian investigations and the fbi investigation that was going on. i said to these two men essentially and it was conflating what russia did in 2016 with what the president perceives to be efforts by the u.s. government around the world to influence their count

joining me is shane harris who broke the story for the "post." cnn's evan perez with us as well. shane, your reporting says the whistle-blower complaint involves ukraine. what can you tell us? >> right now what we know is building on our reporting from yesterday, that there is an allegation of some kind of promise that the president made to a foreign leader. it would appear that does involve the country of ukraine. we don't know precisely the allegation that the whistle-blower is making in terms of what it was that he saw with regards to the president's contacts or interactions with people in that country that led him to file this complaint with the inspector general. but we do know some interesting things about the timing. this complaint was filed about 2 1/2 weeks, so not very long after the president had a phone call with the president of ukraine. and there was a lot of activity going on in that period as well that eventually came to light about the administration's efforts to slow roll funding to ukraine as part of a military aid package then the issue around the biden invest

and if the reporting of shane harris and "the wall street journal" is accurate and it seems to be it clearly moves toward a grievance abuse of power by the president of the united states. i keep getting asked are there echoes of watergate in this? and there are in the following ways, watergate was an attempt by richard nixon to undermine the electoral process in the united states our basis of democracy by trying through political espionage and sabotage to nominate through political dirty tricks its weakest candidate instead of its strongest candidate who nixon didn't want to run against. and something in the same thing seems to be happening here, where biden who trump and his people said they fear the most in terms of being an opponent has been an object of these perhaps dirty tricks and abuses of power. one thing nixon never did was engage a foreign power to investigate a candidate running for office in the united states. it is a big offense if this is what happened and it seems to be. >> how do you recommend they figure out what's going on? this is a very complicated story. i think

i want to bring in shane harris from "the washington post." he's the reporter on this story. s is extraordinary. can you just explain exactly what you are reporting tonight? >> sure. we're reporting that in 2017, when president trump met in the oval office with the russian foreign minister and the ambassador to the united states, he told them that he was not concerned about moscow's interference in our recent election because the united states does the same things in other countries. this alarmed senior white house officials, who believed first of all that the president was sort of falsely equating what had happened in 2016, but also that he might be giving some kind of a green light or a kind of acquiescence to the russians to try this again in other countries. and the memo of that conversation was then highly restricted so only very few people were allowed to see it, which was also very unusual at the time. >> i haven't seen the actual writing. is that an actual quote, or is that a paraphrase of what the president said? >> right. exactly what we're reporting is that he said

can say right now that it was just routine to put these memos into that very secret system. >> shane harris, national security reporter at "the washington post" joining us on very short notice and near something that's backing up, which i realize is dangerous. you take care, shane. thank you for joining us. >> thanks, rachel, bye-bye. >> thank you. remarkable reporting from "the washington post." this breaking news. president trump in that oval office meeting with two senior russian officials the day after he fired james comey according to "the washington post" tonight in addition to telling them that firing james comey took off a lot of pressure from him in terms of the russia stuff, "the washington post" newly reporting tonight that one of the other things the president said in that meeting was that he was unconcerned about russia having interfered in our election because, no big deal, the u.s. does the same in other countries. had done the same in other countries. it's remarkable to get something new about that conversation now two-plus years after the fact. it's being reported in the co

we will get much more on this story, when one of the reporters behind the "washington post," shane harris joins "morning joe" at the top of the next hour. >>> john bolton criticized president trump during a private luncheon in new york city yesterday. a person who attended the event telling nbc news that bolton slammed with the president's willingness to meet with the taliban and the handling of iran and north korea. according to that person, bolton never mentioned trump by name but it was clear he was quote making references to the president and to his policies. at the luncheon, bolton said the president's plan to meet with the taliban at camp david sent a quote terrible signal and was disrespectful to the victims of the september 11th attacks. bolton also argued that the administration's failure to respond militarily to iran striking an unmanned u.s. drone earlier this year set the stage for iran alleged role in the attack on a saudi arabian oil site over the weekend. the person who attended the luncheon says bolton belittled the president's willingness to meet with the presidents of no

ken delanian, and shane harris, part of the team that first broke the story for the washington post. shane, let's start with you. we don't know who the whistle-blower is. we don't know what the president said, and we do not know who he was talking to. what we know right there is that it is important to emphasize how extraordinary this really is. i'm not air ware of an intelligence community official filing a whistle-blower complai complaint. it is something they do row t n routinely, of course. it is our understanding that this individual worked for a period of time at the national security council. intelligence officers get those jobs generally an they know the ropes and they are certainly familiar now with this president, his exsentricities. they may have felt it was significant and it fell out of the unusual behavior that we have seen already which includes disclosing classified information. >> ken, i want to read part of a letter sent on tuesday from the dni general council to adam schiff explaining why they have not turned the complaint over. it concerned conduct by someone outsi

. >> joining us now is shane harris. ter for "the washington post." he co-wrote this article. shane, thanks for joining us to share your reporting. what do you know about this phone call and the promise that was made? >> what we know essentially is what we broke in the paper last night. this communication happens between the president and a foreign leader. we don't know when and we don't know the leader nor how this individual found out about it. there are things we can deduce. we know this person is an intelligence official who worked on the national security council staff for some period of time. people like that are often in a position to get read outs or summaries of conversations that the president has had with foreign leaders. but whatever it was so alarmed this individual that he or she decided to go through the legal route for reporting it and that's how we've arrived at that point where we are now with the inspector general's investigation. >> okay. so to your point, this person was so concerned that he or she we

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i'm joined now by shane harris and david corn. i'm going to go with shane first.is staggering because for months now, almost three years now trump has been in a battle with the agencies saying they make up all this like he does with the media. but it turns out they had a source very close to vladimir putin to find out the role he was playing directing the whole interference operation in 2016. >> yeah, that's right. and that's a source worth gold in the intelligence business to have somebody that close that can give you the intentions and decision making processes of a senior leader and someone who the agency, the cia was running for more than ten years. so this long predates donald trump's position in the white house. this is somebody who the cia would have guarded very closely and who we should remember would have had to have proven a track record of credibility for the agency to give him as much weight as they apparently did when it came time to pin the 2016 election interference directly on vladimir putin as having directed it. >> the fact that this guy is a ch

evidence the president and the children, adult children, have profited off the presidency and as shane harris of "the washington post" tweeted why is it okay for the president's children to have international business dealings but not the former vice president's son? once again, what we are seeing is the president's i'm rubber and you're glue strategy. remember, 2016, when he raised alarms about the clinton foundation and asked russia to dig uphill hill's e-mails. investigate me for corruption? look at her for corruption. today's big question is, is president trump trying to paint joe biden with the same corruption brush he used against hillary clinton in 2016? joining me, deputy campaign manager and communications director for the biden campaign, kate bedingfield. great to see you. first off, what's the campaign's response? >> thank you for having me. well look. i think what you have here is the president of the united states trying to pressure a foreign country to make up stories about the political opponent at home he fears the most which is joe biden. we need to be crystal clear. there's

shane harris covers intelligence and national security for the "washington post."column fist for "the washington examiner." david nakamura covers the white house, also for the "washington post," and sahil kapur is a political reporter for bloomberg news. shane, sahil, welcome to the br th storm the trump administration hurricane maria. is this all-hands-on-deck focus a response to that? >> it seems to be all hands on deck. you had a good interview with kevin mcaleenan at d.h.s. as headquarters. we don't know, though, if the president of the united states is as focused as he claims he is. he canceled a trip to poland to monitor the storm. he sent mass pike -- miami -- he adnt mike pence instead. the president is playing golf at a local club. he has tweeted about the hurricane. the president has politicized hurricane recovery, very pointedly about puerto rico we know. and so the question of how much he is focused on this remains an open question. re brennan: puerto rico seems to not be in the direct line of this particular storm, but two years after hurricane maria,

i'm joined by shane harris, national security correspondent for "the washington post," and frank figliuzziesident of the united states is apparently going to release everything. he's now releasing the conversation he had with the president of ukraine, he's releasing the complaint that lays out this guy or woman he thinks is really awful and urmg want that we know about. >> the pressure is building on him. it's incredible how this is has happened in just a week's time. it was just a week ago we found out what this complaint was about. obviously the impeachment pressure is building on him. we're hearing he may release this information to congress by tomorrow if not the end of the week. of course she's announced impeachment proceedings have begun. so it seems like the white house wants to get this to congress, maybe kind of rip the band-aid off here clearly believing that the information itself is not sufficient to inflict any major damage on the president. they think it's actually going to turn out to be nothing. >> how do you know they're going to find out -- >> we're hearing the president

. >> yeah, greg miller, shane harris, i should mention, the lead reporters on this., you contributed to this. i want to -- first of all, i should ask you if i sort of hit the high points there. it seems to me that this information that it was a communication by the president, it was a communication by the president with a foreign leader, it was a troubling promise that he made, in that it was a conversation by phone. it does seem like if those are all clues that "the post" has been able to ferret out, that should be able to narrow it down in terms of the time frame and the potential things that could be within the realm of factual four corners that this could be. >> yes. i mean, it does mean -- keep in mind, rachel, the president speaks to a lot of foreign leaders every day. and some which are not obvious to us or recorded for posterity, meaning, you know, there have been a lot of stories about the president having conversations that are not -- there are no note-takers. so, we don't know for certain exactly whom he was speaking to, but the sources are saying that the

according to the post, greg miller and ellen nakashima and shane harris reporting the complaint triggeringhowdown between the u.s. intelligence community and congress involves the president's communication with a foreign leader. this included a promise regarded as so troubling it prompted an official in the u.s. intelligence community to file a former whistleblower complaint with the inspector general. it was not immediately clear who the foreign leader was or what trump pledged to deliver. it has not been previously disclosed. it raises questions about the president's handling of sensitive info and further strained the relationship with u.s. agencies. kyle cheney on capitol hill reporter, tweeted, the first lawmaker to exit the briefing on, the whistleblower complaints is mike turner, republican of ohio who said, no comment. according to the post, the intelligence community inspector general, michael acids and -- michael atkinson said the complaint was troubling enough to be considered an urgent concern. the dispute is expected to escalate today when atkinson is scheduled to appear, which