harry potter. david beckham's right foot. [ laughter ] david beckham's left foot, come to that. >> it's just a thought. aaron soar kin did the same thing for our former president martin sheen, and it worked out for him. we'll keep you updated on the u.k., but here in the u.s. tonight, that's our broadcast on a thursday night. thank you for being here with us. good night from nbc news headquarters here in new york. /s right out gate tonight with some breaking news that has just come in from "the new york times," this is the news that honestly we've been sort of expecting for sometime or thinking that if things got really bad, it might come to this. as of tonight, according to "the new york times," it has come to this. as you can see, this is the headline just posted at "the times." justice department is said to open criminal inquiry into its own russia investigation. i'll quote to you from the

article. again, this just posted tonight. quote, president trump has repeatedly attacked the russia investigation, portraying it as a hoax and illegal. even months after the special counsel closed it. now mr. trump's own justice department has opened a criminal investigation into how it all began. so this is about the review that trump's attorney general william barr has been overseeing and has been very personally involved in for the last few months. he technically assigned the u.s. attorney in connecticut, john durham, to over see this, but william barr himself, the attorney general, has apparently been an investigator in this probe and has been overseeing it and has been personally involved in it. it's involved william barr hopping around the globe searching for evidence to bolster a right wing conspiracy theory that the real scandal of the 2016 campaign was not that russia intervened in our election, that russia attacked our election with the help -- with the goal of helping donald

trump win that campaign. no, according to this conspiracy theory, russia didn't do that. russia didn't intervene. what actually happened is that it was the obama administration that was setting this all up as a frame job. they were colluding with foreign countries to set up russia to make it look like russia was interfering and to set up the trump campaign to make it look like they were getting help from russia. but it was all a frame job. it was all a false flag operation set up by the obama administration to somehow get trump elected and then undermine him once he was in office. it's never been totally clear how it all worked. but that's the conspiracy theory that the attorney general of the united states appears to have been going around the world trying to prove. just yesterday we had this remarkable reporting about the prime minister of italy who was dragged before that country's

parliament, the intelligence committees of his parliament, to answer questions about what he and the italian government and the italian intelligence service had been talking about with attorney general bill barr who has twice visited italy over the past several months. the italian prime minister was summoned to parliament to explain what those conversations were about. he later told reporters that what barr had asked him -- what barr had asked italian authorities to do was, quote, verify the operations of american agents. that is, barr's question was to try to verify what the american intelligence did. in other words, america's top law enforcement official has been traveling around the world going to other countries asking if those other countries can provide him dirt on u.s. intelligence officials. because that will somehow help his boss, the president, undermine his own intelligence agencies, which, of course, are

unanimous in their view that actually it was russia that interfered in the 2016 election. i should mention also, in terms of the italy stuff in particular, which we have the most recent information about that sort of gives us the clearest window into what william barr and john durham have been pursuing here, it appears that what they were doing in italy -- according to reporting from "the new york times" this morning -- is this assertion by president trump and his supporters that when george papadopoulos who was working on the trump campaign was told that russia had thousands of emails, had all of this dirt from the democratic party and the clinton campaign, and that information was given to george papadopoulos weeks before -- months before anybody actually knew that russia was hacking the democratic party, hacking the clinton campaign. trump and his associates have asserted without evidence that the person who told that information to george

papadopoulos was not a professor with links to russia, as special counsel robert mueller's report states. the right wing conspiracy theory that barr has been pursuing in italy is that the guy who gave george papadopoulos that information -- who said, hey, russia has all of this dirt from the democrats and from the clinton campaign. according to trump and his associates, that guy was actually a western intelligence asset working as part of an obama administration plot to spy on the trump campaign. so the origins of the russia investigation were that u.s. intelligence learned that someone in the trump campaign was bragging, hey, you know what, russia's got tons of democratic emails, they have all this dirt, all this hacked stuff. nobody knew that. it turns out to have been true. but why did the trump campaign have advance notice of that? right? so that's the predicate for opening the initial investigation into what russia was doing to interfere with our election and whether the trump

campaign had been given advance notice they had been in on it, been given this advance word. the way that is explained away in this conspiracy theory that's been pursued by the trump white house and now apparently by the attorney general of the united states is that when that information about what russia had done was given to the trump campaign, that was an obama administration operative who was trying to make the trump campaign look bad and also trying to make it look like russia was doing this interference in the election when they really weren't. i mean, that's like -- that was like the fringe of the fringe of the fringe of the fringe in terms of the right wing resisting the russia investigation. it apparently now is the white house's line on this. and it is the grounds on which the attorney general of the united states has been traveling the globe talking to foreign countries, pursuing this theory and trying to get evidence for it. what's so embarrassing about this, even with our ally italy, they find this to be absolutely

ridiculous, right? they know that this is not true. whatever is being put on them as having been part of this obama administration plot, they're telling william barr, this is not true. but nevertheless, here's barr pursuing it. and now according to "the new york times" tonight, that is not only an investigation -- a review by the justice department, it is a criminal inquiry, one, that has the power to bring criminal charges. i mean, when the italian prime minister is talking to reporters about what this visit was like from attorney general william barr, for this bizarre investigation of the trump justice department is pursuing, he's being open with the press in his own country. he told reporters in his own country, quote, our intelligence is completely unrelated to the so-called russia gate, and that has been made clear. like, don't try to drag me into this. that's crazy what you guys are pursuing. but now according to this new school from "the new york times" tonight, which has in the last few minutes been confirmed by

nbc news, this bizarre world treasure hunt for dirt on our own intelligence services to try to set up russia's interference in our election as a false flag operation planted by the obama administration, this is now a criminal probe by the u.s. department of justice. according to the times tonight, that gives the justice department prosecutor in charge of this investigation the power to, quote, subpoena for witness testimony and documents to impanel a grand jury, and to file criminal charges. among the things that prosecutor john durham has apparently been asking in the course of this investigation that he's been carrying out in conjunction with the attorney general william barr is whether c.i.a. officials might have somehow tricked the fbi into opening the russia investigation. tricked them. as the times notes tonight, quote, the opening of a criminal investigation is likely to raise alarms that mr. trump is using the justice department to go after his perceived enemies. mr. trump is certain to see the criminal investigation as a

vindication of the years that he and his allies have spent trying to discredit the russia investigation. and i mean, we have seen -- we have seen this -- from the very beginning, right, we get sally yates during the transition, during the start of the obama administration was the acting attorney general. she goes to the white house and tells president trump the newly sworn in president, hey, your national security advisor has been having secret conversations with the russian government that he's lying about. that means he's compromised by the russian government. you should maybe take action. president takes no action, but within a couple of weeks sally yates is fired. fbi director at the time is james comey. james comey announces to the world there is both a criminal and counter intelligence investigation into what russia did, but also into the question of whether the trump campaign was in on it. why did they have advance notice, for example, of some of the things that the russians did before anybody else knew those things had happened? james comey, of course, also gets fired by the white house.

fired by the president. and excoriated and called a traitor and everything else thereafter. when james comey is fired, it's the fbi deputy director who steps up, andrew mccabe. in his role of acting director after comey was fired, he expands the counter intelligence investigation so it also includes the president himself. was the president compromised by russia? andrew mccabe then fired, right? excoriated. came very close to being charged by the justice department. we're still not sure if he won't be. a judge who is overseeing the case of andrew mccabe has been charged has demanded the justice department make their position on that since they've been threatening to charge him for months now. the russia counter intelligence agent in the fbi gets drumd ome out, excoriated, dragged through

the mud. the top russia organized crime expert at the u.s. justice department gets excoriated, gets demoted, gets made famous and screamed at by the president. his name becomes an occasion for people gming people screaming at his rallies, right? screaming for blood. we have the c.i.a. director who was the head of central intelligence when the russia investigation began. president trump has not only gone after him as a traitor, tried to strip his security clearance as a punitive action because this is such a terrible person. the guy who was the director of national intelligence when the russia investigation is opened, has been denounced by the president, by the president's supporters. the whole framework of upper echelon intelligence and law enforcement officials, republican and democrat and neither, especially the ones who had direct contact with this investigation or who were experts in russian counter intelligence or russian organized crime. they have all already been

drummed out of the government, and in many cases turned into household name villains by the president and his supporters. now under william barr, this attack on all of those people -- everybody involved in the russia investigation from the very beginning -- apparently has risen to the level that it is a criminal inquiry. the justice department again, headline tonight in "the new york times," has said to open a criminal inquiry into its own a russia investigation raising the prospect that president bush -- excuse me, president trump's justice department under william barr will seek to criminally prosecute members of the justice department who were involved in opening this inquiry in the first place. joining us now by phone is katie benner. justice department reporter for "the new york times" who is the lead on this groundbreaking story tonight. thank you for being with us. >> thanks for having me. >> so, i tried to summarize your reporting as i best understand it. i also added some of my own

understanding of the context here. just want to give you a chance to tell me if i've got any of that wrong or if any of that seems off base. >> you know, i think you added a lot of context and i think you took viewers back in time to the beginning of the trump administration which is very helpful background. so thank you for doing that. i think, two, one of the things we need to understand is that, you know, as a criminal investigation, certainly mr. durham, the u.s. attorney in connecticut, can bring criminal charges. he's also known to be a very careful person. we're not sure how long this will take. it could be awhile. his last big criminal investigation into possible justice -- excuse me, into possible government wrongdoing was a c.i.a. torture review and that took three years. >> obviously mr. durham has a reputation that precedes him both for being careful and having handled sensitive matters like this in the past. one of the things that has been unusual, which you touch on in this reporting tonight, is the direct involvement of the attorney general william barr in this. usually on a sensitive matter like this, the justice

department would take pains to make sure that everybody knew that this was an independent matter, that this was not being steered in any way by the white house or by political appointees close to the white house. but in this case it appears that the attorney general has been doing -- is not only involved, but has been sort of doing the investigating himself in this inquiry. first, i want to ask if my understanding of that comports with how you understand it through your reporting, and what the implications of that might be for this change in the status of the investigation. >> well, first, you're correct bill barr has been hands on in the investigation. he traveled to italy. he spoke with australian officials when they were in washington for a state dinner this fall to talk about this, you know, concern that he had about the opening of the russia investigation. and he reached out to our allies. so he has been incredibly involved every step of the way. that is not wrong at all. also keep in mind that bill barr -- he expressed skepticism of the russia investigation very, very soon after he was

made attorney general this winter. you know, he said he wanted to scrutinize how it all started. he used a very charged term, spying, before congress. he said spying on the trump administration -- excuse mel, the trump campaign. he said he was very careful to only say that he wanted to determine whether investigators had lawfully made the decision to survey all the trump campaign. he did not actually accuse any single person of wrongdoing and he has not yet done so. but his working premise is when they decided to spy -- his word -- on the trump campaign, did they do it lawfully? was everything done by the book? and is that's sort of what we're going on. that was the initial reason for the review. and in order to change this into a criminal investigation, john durham would have had to find something because in the u.s. attorney manual it has there has to be a factual basis for an

investigation. we still don't know what it was durham has found. he can bring to bill barr to make this change. >> the reporting we have seen from people who have been questioned in this inquiry, people who are familiar with what kind of questions have been asked, have suggested that the line of questioning here, the sort of theory of the case that durham and barr have been pursuing does hue fairly closely to the way this has been discussed in very partisan conservative media. you touch on that a little bit tonight in your reporting when you described what mr. barr may have been doing in italy. the way you say in your reporting tonight, i'll quote you. mr. barr is closely managing the durham investigation, even traveling to italy to seek help from officials there to run down an unfounded conspiracy that's at the heart of conservatives' attack on the russia investigation. that the italian government helped set up -- meaning, helped frame the trump campaign advisor who was told in 2016 that the russians had damaging information that could hurt

clinton's campaign. i feel like from a distance i have been watching that conspiracy theory and other related conspiracy theories spin out in conservative media for a very long time. is there any indication that those things have been developed factually at all, other than in conservative partisan media? >> so, there's no indication that things have been developed factually. there is no indication facts have been found to support the theories to your point which have never been proven. however, there are two ways to look at this. one is that they are done at the behest of the president. we see that a lot, that allegation all the time. also keep in mind, in order for john durham to come up with any result to say that this is his finding, if he has not run down some of those conspiracy theories, you can see that this investigation will, again, hold zero weight with the right. they'll say, you did not look at everything. so, again, i would like to reserve judgment about john durham and about what he would

find, but i do recognize that certainly they are pursuing, to your point, things that conservative media have been sort of obsessed with for the last two years. >> katie, let me just also ask you about one specific line in your piece that i highlight a moment ago, that i'm not sure i understand the implications much. you write that mr. durham, the prosecutor, has also asked whether c.i.a. or fishlz migoff might have tricked the c.i.a. into opening an investigation. i know what they mean in the colloquial sense. i'm not sure i understand president implication. can you expand on that a bit? >> sure, of course. one of the outstanding reasons why durham and his team have been talking to our allies who provided information that helped bolster the decision to surveil the president's campaign is -- he wants to know, was any of this information -- did it come in biased, was it wrong, was it something that was taken out of

context? how was this determined? and then was it used to bolster something that the fbi may have already believed without enough evidence to actually open up an investigation? that's sort of one theory amongst people who have been interviewed by durham's investigators that that's how he's looking at what happened with intelligence from the c.i.a. was it somehow manipulated? was it exaggerated? did people withhold information about the intelligence they knew would sort of tarnish it? perhaps in the eyes of the fbi when they received it, if the fbi was already moving in one direction, were they goading the fbi. this is from, of course, interviews with people who have been interviewed by mr. durham's team. we do not actually know exactly what mr. durham's working theory is right now. we're piecing it together. >> last question for you, katie. and again, thank you for joining us on short notice just as you're breaking this story. i just wanted to ask about whether we should be looking here for agency conflict between

the justice department and the c.i.a., between the law enforcement and intelligence. obviously there's some interesting personnel matters here. i mean gina haspel who is head of the c.i.a. was, i believe, senior c.i.a. officer in -- senior c.i.a. official in london at the time the russia investigation was starting. that would have put her actually in a key role in terms of that initial intelligence that led to the opening of the russia investigation. there was a provocative, sort of permission slip that was given by the president to william barr at the outset of this investigation giving him full and complete authority to declassify matters and to access intelligence information he might not be otherwise able to get without negotiating things with the c.i.a. as far as we understand it, senior c.i.a. officials haven't been interviewed here as part of

this probe. is it your sense that there's a clash here that this is the justice department sort of going after the c.i.a. or that the c.i.a. might perceive that this way? >> well, i mean, i think that the c.i.a. would feel under the gun because, to your point, when the president gave william barr the declassification authority in this matter, he really holds all the cards, right. so nobody from the c.i.a. is going to push back too hard when he makes his request because he could declassify things that they want kept secret. that is one of the very most important powers the c.i.a. has, is to keep things secret. so the fact bill barr can say, you know what, i'm going to usurp that power, is going to sort of force their hand. they're going to be more cooperative. so, you know, putting that aside, yes, they're going to be more cooperative certainly. i don't -- i don't know that there will be a lot of conflict yet. one, because they are sort of -- because they're at this point now essentially forced to do what bill barr asks them to.

interestingly, though, if you're in any investigation, one way to think about it is you want to gather as much information from the perimeter before you go in and interview a key witness because you need to know exactly what questions to ask. so it does kind of make sense that bill barr and john durham would be going for our allies who collected some of the intelligence for us and speaking to them first, speaking to others, speaking to people at the fbi before going in and speaking to former c.i.a. officials. it helps them hone their questions and it helps them kind of determine how they're going to approach those very important witnesses. >> katie benner, "the new york times" justice reporter. congratulations on the breaking news. thank you for joining us on such short notice to help us understand it. appreciate it. >> thank you. >> i will say that if you just step back from this for a second, the reason i think this is such a big deal is because we have seen the president and his supporters absolutely go after, you know, guns blazing every

senior law enforcement and intelligence official who they have been able to identify as having played any kind of key role in opening up the russia investigation, right. but now that this has turned into a criminal investigation of the origins of the russia investigation, that means they are considering bringing criminal charges against people who had the temerity to investigate russia and whether or not the trump campaign was involved in it. you would assume that maybe you'd get to that development in a non-banana republic if the idea that russia had interfered in our election had been disproven, or shown to be a hoax, or if the potential involvement of the trump campaign of having known about or having been in cahoots with this attack on the election to benefit them had been shown to be something that didn't happen and there was nothing to it, or it was made up or fabricated, there is no evidence of that at

all. russia did, in fact, attack our election. if you don't believe the special counsel's investigation, perhaps you would believe the republican-led senate intelligence committee which just within the past two weeks produced a bipartisan report affirming wholeheartedly without reservation the intelligence community's conclusion that russia attacked our election in 2016, and actually doubling dowdown coming down more emphatically than the intelligence community did on the specific fact that russia was intervening in our election to help in the trump campaign. that is undisputed as a matter of fact. nevertheless, this attorney general under this president is now seeking to turn it into a criminal act that somebody investigated that. and it's one thing for them to say they're reviewing it. it's another thing for them to be planning to bring criminal charges against law enforcement and intelligence officials who did their job of recognizing that russia was interfering in

our election to help a specific candidate and checking out whether or not that candidate's campaign was in on it. this is the justice department investigating itself potentially bringing criminal charges against its own officials. that itself would be -- that would get you a page in the history books under any circumstances. under these particular circumstances, this is stunning. joining us now is chuck rosenberg, who is a former senior official in the justice department and an msnbc contributor. chuck, thank you very much for making time to be with us tonight. i know you jumped up from what you were otherwise doing and rushed to the studio when this broke. thank you. >> i'm glad to do it, rachel. >> you may also know me well enough to know that by the time this story broke, i had a whole other show written, which i have now thrown away and will come back to at some later date. that means i have just been talking off the top of my head for these past 25 minutes absorbing this myself and trying to make sense of it. i, therefore, have to ask you if i have described this in any way or tried to put this in relevant

context in a way that strikes you wrong or you think that i might be misfiring here at all. >> no, there's a lot of discord ant notes here. your introduction i think was spot on. we see again and again and again the president and his minions targeting senior law enforcement and intelligence officials. deeply disturbing. on the other hand, rachel, i know -- i like and i admire john durham, i trust him. so that's why to me this is very discordant and i'm trying to make sense of it. i can tell you this. when you look at the mueller report, they tell you, they explain in their preface that they put dozens of witnesses in the grand jury. initially i think it was 2800 subpoenas. those tools are not available to john durham if he's just doing a review. so if you really want a thorough examination of what happened, and we should -- particularly if nothing bad happened, we want it to be thoroughly determined.

you do need a grand jury to help you through that. people don't have to comply if you ask them for an interview. if it's only on a voluntary basis. but a grand jury can compel their testimony. so on one hand, everything you outlined is right and true and accurate and is deeply disturbing. on the other hand, if we want john durham to get to the bottom of this thing, whatever this thing is, a grand jury is going to help him do that. >> the question of what "the thing" is seems central here. i think where i'm stuck is that i'm trying to imagine another circumstance. and with your experience both as a u.s. attorney and in the justice department, i think maybe if this example exists, you'll know it. i'm trying to think of another example where a crime was committed. it was understood to be a crime by, let's say, intelligence or directly by law enforcement. they investigated. they found it to be a crime. they brought charges related to

that crime. people were convicted and, in fact, served prison terms related to those crimes. and then thereafter, it was decided it was a crime itself for that crime to have been investigated. that the law enforcement officials or the intelligence officials who first started looking at that were themselves criminals for having identified and looked into that crime. i can't -- i just don't -- i don't know of any other example like that. i can't even conjure a hypothetical. >> nor can i. the way you describe it would almost require a kabal, a conspiracy, a whole bunch of people getting together and acting in bad faith to bring charges against another group of bad actors. i haven't seen anything like that. i haven't seen it in the movies, rachel. this is very hard to imagine. of course, john needs some factual basis in order to open up a grand jury. let's presume he has it. it doesn't mean in the end that criminal charges are going to be brought.

john durham has been asked to do things like this before and as katie benner has just mentioned, has closed those investigations after several years without bringing charges. so opening a grand jury doesn't necessarily mean that someone is going to jail. but it does mean that it has certainly become more serious. and i imagine there's a lot of people very unhappy tonight to know that even if they didn't want to talk to john and to his team and they didn't do it voluntarily, now they can be compelled. >> let me ask you a sort of peevish question about this, and this may be obvious. you do need, as you said, a reasonable indication that a crime has occurred. you need some sort of factual basis on which to open a criminal case. it can't be a hunch. we do know that from people who have either been questioned or people who are familiar with the questioning in this inquiry thus far, people who have been sort of following what william barr has been traveling around the world asking people about this, that the lines of questioning reportedly follow pretty closely

the wildest conspiracy theories from the conservative media about how this was a gigantic obama conspiracy to falsely blame russia for something they didn't do, and really it was ukraine and there's a secret server. i mean, that's the line of questioning they have been pursuing. what that makes me wonder is who john durham has to get approval from to open a criminal investigation. obviously there has to be a factual basis. but who is the arbiter who says, yeah, that's a fact? >> in the normal case -- and i know we may not be dealing with the normal case, rachel -- a united states attorn united stat united states attorney would have that authority on his own. john is a u.s. attorney. in this casey would imagine the leadership of the department of justice, at least the deputy attorney general, in this case it seems very likely the attorney general would be involved. but in terms of permission and the normal case, a u.s.

attorney's office opens grand jury investigations every day. happens all the time. and so this one seems a little bit different, to put it mildly. and i imagine that whatever john is doing is being run up the flag pole. >> do you think that this news tonight and the prospect of criminal charges being brought against intelligence and law enforcement officials who are involved in the opening of this inquiry, what sort of impact do you think that will have, both on the people who are potential targets of this criminal investigation, potential targets of criminal charges if it gets that far, but also other people who are working right now in those kinds of jobs, in the intelligence community and in law enforcement who are working on sensitive investigations, who are working on foreign influence operations, who are working on the kinds of things that might be politically unpopular some day? >> right. and i always worry about that chilling effect. the political siization of the

criminal justice -- if someone broke the law, they ought to be held accountable for it. i don't think anyone would disagree with that. but political differences historically have never been settled through the administration of justice. and if it turns out that this is just that, this is just the president again and his minions targeting people because they don't like what they did and what they said, it not only hurts the people who were asked to do these hard jobs, but it hurts everybody around them because they see it, they hear it, they smell it and they know that you can be punished, at least under this administration, for doing difficult things. you have to be so careful in the justice department not to chill difficult, but lawful conduct. rachel, that's also what the inspector general is for. and his report is due out soon. and we may get a read from the inspector general of the justice department about what is going on, what some of the predicate facts are. i trust john, but i feel a little bit like charlie brown

every time i talk about the justice department. i expect lucy to hold the football and she never does, and it concerns me. i don't know exactly what's going on here, but it concerns me. >> chuck rosenberg, former senior official in the justice department, former u.s. attorney. thank you again for your time on short notice. i appreciate you getting to the studio for us. >> glad to do is it, rachel. >> we are following this news from "the new york times." they have just broken the story the justice department is said to open a criminal inquiry into its own russia investigation. what this means in non-lawyer shorthand, is that the president and his loyalist attorney general bill barr appear to have moved on to the next phase. so they are no longer just vilifying all of the law enforcement and counter and intelligence officials who were involved in opening the initial inquiry into russia interfering in our election and the question of whether or not the trump campaign was somehow complicit in that. they are no longer just vilifying those folks, firing them, calling them traitors,

stripping their security clearances, getting angry crowds to yell their names as angry villains, they have moved on to the next phase. this is a criminal inquiry into the lawence foertsment professionals with the threat of charges against them. this is the sort of thing that you don't imagine the justice department doing when it comes to their own officials. but that's where we are as of tonight. breaking news. we'll be back with a member of the house intelligence committee right after this. stay with us. is stay with us ♪

♪ oh no,... ...a cougher. welcome to flu season, karen. is a regular flu shot strong enough... ...to help prevent flu in someone your age? there are standard-dose flu shots. and then there's the superior flu protection... ...of fluzone high-dose. it's the only 65 plus flu shot... ...with 4 times the standard dose. and it's free with medicare part b. fluzone high-dose is not for those who've had a severe allergic reaction... ...to any vaccine component, including... ...eggs, egg products,... or after a previous dose of flu vaccine. tell your healthcare professional if you've ever experienced severe muscle weakness... ...after receiving a flu shot. if you notice ...other problems or symptoms following vaccination,... ...contact your healthcare professional immediately. side effects include pain, swelling... ...and redness where the shot was given. other side effects may occur. vaccination may not protect everyone.

if you're 65 plus, don't settle for a standard-dose flu shot. influenza...going down. move up to fluzone high-dose. see your doctor or pharmacist and ask for it by name. still fresh... ♪ unstopables in-wash scent booster ♪ downy unstopables why fingerstick when you can scan? with the freestyle libre 14 day system just scan the sensor with your reader, iphone or android and manage your diabetes. with the freestyle libre 14 day system, a continuous glucose monitor, you can check your glucose levels any time, without fingersticks. ask your doctor to write a prescription for the freestyle libre 14 day system. you can do it without fingersticks. learn more at freestylelibre.us you can do it without fingersticks. it's been reported that there's a cyberattack on business every 39 seconds.

ouch. i don't even want to think about it. comcast business has a solution. we go beyond fast with a cloud-based security system that automatically updates, so you always have the latest protection. phishing. malware. risky sites. it can help block all of that. get fast internet and add comcast business securityedge for just $29.95 a month. it's one less thing for us to worry about. comcast business. beyond fast.

so we are following this breaking news from the "the new york times" tonight. that the justice department review of the russia investigation has now become a criminal matter. this is the investigation that attorney general william barr announced as a review several months ago. he has since spent several months traveling around the world, reportedly trying to enlist other countries' leadership and intelligence agencies into an effort to disprove the fact that russia interfered in the u.s. election in 2016. the fact that russia interfered in the u.s. election in 2016 to benefit donald trump is something that has been unanimously affirmed by u.s. intelligence agencies. just two weeks ago it was unanimously affirmed by the

bipartisan republican-led senate intelligence committee. that russia did it. but the position of the trump administration, of course, is that russia didn't do it, and now the attorney general's inquiry, which is apparently designed to prove that, now that is a criminal investigation with, quote, the power to subpoena for witness testimony and documents, to impanel a grand jury, and to file criminal charges. that means that the law enforcement and intelligence officials who were involved in investigating russia's attack on our election are now potentially the subjects of criminal charges. this, of course, is happening against the backdrop of impeachment proceedings in the house. i am sure that is totally unrelated. joining us is congressman shan maloney, the lead committee on the impeachment matter. thank you for being here. >> great to be with you. >> i had a whole bunch of different things to talk to you about, but then this news broke. i have to get your reaction to it. >> it's alarming because we know trump is itching to politicize

the justice department. they have been super shady on the mueller report and ukraine where he killed the whistle-blower report for a while and also is a subject of that complaint. and still hasn't recused himself. having said that, i have a little different take on this. you know, by all accounts, this prosecutor john durham is a credible prosecutor. i think every prosecutor wants a grand jury to be able to put witnesses in without lawyers to get testimony, to have that capacity. i have a feeling this is going nowhere. and for the reasons you said, that the consensus of the intelligence community in january 2017, reinforced by several hundred pages of findings by bob mueller, dozens of indictments by russian individuals named by mull irma and the republican-led senate report have established beyond per adventure russia did this. where is this investigation going? it makes no sense. so bring it. bring it, attorney general barr.

i don't see what you got. but i'd love to understand what the basis of it is. i'd love to understand what the pretext for it is because they've been silent on that. >> i'm interested in exactly along those lines. the basis of it has to be a factual basis. the justice department doesn't open criminal investigations on the basis of hunches, as it says in their manual. but if william barr is the person who says, yeah, i consider that to be an adequate factual predicate, and if william barr is sort of -- lives in hannityville and believes this was all a conspiracy organized by the deep state and russia didn't do it and it was really ukraine and barack obama and erik holder did it or something? whatever their line is that they've been pursuing on this, if attorney general william barr is the one who's decided that factual predicate is enough for him, i mean, i don't have any reason to question prosecutor durham either, but it really does seem like this is the attorney general's investigation as much as it is that prosecutor's. >> and that part is alarming, i give you that. again, by the way, is the theory

that the obama administration decided to dump all that embarrassing material from john podesta's email account and from the dnc server to help hillary clinton? is that the theory? >> to make it look like russia was attacking hillary clinton when they really weren't. and then -- >> they could have helped trump, but that's just what you'd be expecting. instead -- right. so i don't understand -- i don't understand the theory. and like all conspiracy theories, it makes your brain hurt. and that is why i do believe at the end of the day, they're going to have to show something. i mean, look what's been happening in the intelligence committee led by chairman schiff. we have had an extremely productive few weeks where we have credible witnesses providing important information -- because they have direct knowledge or information to provide. the substance has been overwhelming in just that short period of time. the mueller report is an extraordinary piece of work. whatever you think of the ultimate conclusions, but just the work that went into it and documenting what happened, what

is this report going to have that's comparable to that? i guess my point is i'm not afraid of the facts. i'm okay with the facts. in they've got facts, let's have them. we do. and there's facts this that mueller report and there sure are a lot of facts in the ukraine investigation and that's what needs to be our guide. >> in terms of the way the impeachment proceedings are moving forward, obviously two days ago it did feel like the world changed a little bit when ambassador bill taylor came forward and said, yes, that he could attest as the senior u.s. diplomat in ukraine who sa these things happen with his own eyes, he could attest that u.s. meetings, white house meetings and calls were withheld from the ukrainians to try to pressure them into a ninsing these investigations, that military aid was delayed and threatened specifically to try to get these investigations out of them. and that the president was personally involved in insisting on those things. it did feel like once bill taylor said that, once it became clear he had the kind of documentation to back it up, i think we've seen things go a

little bit hey wire since then in terms of people who are defending the president. i wanted to ask you, though, we felt watching from outside -- the other side of that closed door -- that taylor must have documentation to bolster these assertions that we read in his opening statement. was he able to provide documentation to the intelligence committee? does the state department have that and you have to fight the state department to get it? were you able to get corroborating information from him? >> yeah, that's a great point. in fact, so, it turns out -- it turns out that he's not just a 50-year veteran of both the military and the foreign service. he's not just a former infantry officer who is with 101st airborne division in vietnam, who served in a bunch of hot spots over the world for decades. turns out this guy is a copious note taker. and it turns out that he, responding to a lawful subpoena, came and testified. put a lot of things in quotes. and has turned over his documents to his employer, the state department. they need to release those. if they aren't afraid of the

facts, let them release the notes that ambassador taylor took. let them release the other documents that have been called for. because they're on the one hand saying they want to participate in this process, on the other hand they're stonewalling it. two things happened this week. one was ambassador taylor gave that heart breaking testimony that made clear that an american president engaged in this kind of conduct. and that doesn't make me feel good. it makes me feel terrible that any american president would put his shabby political interests above the security of ukraine, our national security. another thing happened, which is that this circus came to town in a space usually reserved for serious work. you know, those of us who have the honor of serving on the intelligence committee work alongside republicans who are adults, too, who take the work seriously. when we're talking about china or we're talking about counterterrorism operations, there's very little disagreement in that room. there's no shouting, there's no yelling, there's no carrying on. they're professionals and they deserve credit for that. that's not what happened this

week. they let the yahoo!s in. i mean steve king, who they kicked off every other committee because he's a racist -- remember that? he was in the room. so is it their position that now they want steve king involved? that it's not enough that 45 of their members have every right to be there for every deposition, that their lawyers get equal time, that their members get equal time, and, of course, the funny part is very few of them have taken advantage of that because apparently they don't want to dot actual work. >> republicans haven't been sitting in on the depositions when they're allowed to? >> those who have are the president's most ardent defenders. they're there. and they're free to ask all the questions they want. and one more point, if i may. ask yourself why no facts favorable to the president have leaked from the republican side. it's not because they don't leak. it's because there aren't any. it's because a guy like bill taylor is ultimately unassailable because he knows

what he's talking about. he took good notes and he remembers it. he's been doing this for 50 years. >> and the information we have from the different witnesses seems to be mutually corroborative, they're all telling the same story. >> of course, it's an odd case where maybe the strongest evidence came out first. the president's own words, the call memorandum. the whistle-blower complaint which by the way is an extraordinary document in retrospect because it seems to be right in every respect that i know of. has been corroborated by every piece of evidence we've seen come out since. and so yes, that is reinforcing a central substantive conclusion. so what do they do? they engage in cheap character assassination of a really good man and a good chairman, adam schiff, and they engage in this silliness around process because they have nothing else to say. >> and now the justice department has opened a criminal investigation into the people who opioid the russia investigation in the first place and they will try to make that the story instead of this impeachment. congressman sean patrick maloney, appreciate you coming in. >> my pleasure. >> i want to bring into the

conversation now senator amy klobuchar from minnesota. she's a member of the senate judiciary committee and she joins us tonight on short notice, as almost all of our guests have as we are reacting to this breaking news. senator, thank you so much for making time. i appreciate t. >> thanks so much, rachel. and thanks for getting on this right away. >> sure. i'll rehe iteraiterate for our the breaking news from "the new york times". the justice department is said to open a criminal inquiry into its own investigation. this is the investigation that bill barr has been traveling around the world trying to enlist other countries in this theory that russia didn't really attack our election in 2016, and the real criminals are those who investigated it within our own government. senator, what's your top line reaction to this news story, if the times is reporting theirs out? >> we have an incredibly important investigation going on right now, and the facts are there. the whole country can look at the partial transcript where the president looked for dirt on a

political opponent from a foreign leader. and, in fact, now you have multiple witnesses that have come forward, including ambassador taylor with his 50 years of experience, come forward and corroborated this and even added more context to it. that's going on. and so i am supposed to believe at the same time that this is just a fluke that the justice department would decide to bring this case and bring at least this investigation, which as you point out under the standard, it has to have a factual basis. it can't be a hunch. it specifically says that's insufficient. and to me, the president has repeatedly called for going after his opponents. so many arrows here point toward this being politically motivated and some kind of abuse of power. >> the justice department being used in this way is a different type of crisis for the country. as the times notes in this report tonight, quote, the

opening of a criminal investigation is likely to raise alarms that mr. trump is using the justice department to go after his perceived enemies. mr. trump fired james comey, the fbi director, under whose watch agents opened the russia inquiry and has long a sailed other top former law enforcement and intelligence officials involved in this investigation. i know you as a former prosecutor yourself, as somebody who takes her role on the judiciary committee very seriously, you think about these things in very stark terms. >> i do. >> in sober terms. i feel -- i feel worried about the prospect of the justice department being used as a tool of this president or any to accomplish political goals. and this feels like a really bad signal of that. >> it really does. i mean, i always looked at my job when i was a prosecutor, you convict the guilty. you protect the innocent. you are ministers of justice. you simply can't let politics get involved. you have defendants all the time that may know people, that may

have contacts, that are republicans or democrats, victims, you just can't let that steer your decision. and that is the prosecutor's creed. what really bothers me about this, if you look at the professionals who have been appointed by donald trump, many of whom are now gone -- like dan coats, the former intelligence director who clearly said russia did this, and now they're getting bolder. christopher wray, the current fbi director under oath, said russia did this. every single intelligence officer has backed up that this happened. they tried to hack into 50 states' voter systems and they got as close to the voter information in illinois, their a bei actual addresses and information. they put out endless propaganda and ads that were completely false to try to influence the election. and we just had richard burkes who is not exactly a liberal. a conservative republican

senator put out with senator warren their intelligence report summarizing all of this. so there is just ample evidence of conservatives and intelligence professionals backing this up. and every single time the president tries to undermine it and that is what's so damaging for our laws, for our country, our constitution. >> senator, you're in the running to become the next president of the united states. i should congratulate you today. you qualified for the next debate. so we'll be seeing you in georgia when that rolls around. i just want to close by asking one last question. because of that high office that you are seeking, i'm thinking tonight about the members of the intelligence community and law enforcement who were involved in recognizing that russia was attacking our last election, who were involved in the revelation that the trump campaign appeared to have advance knowledge of some of what russia was doing before anybody else did. who set about investigating that. as a criminal matter, as a counter intelligence matter and

are now themselves the subject of a criminal inquiry and potentially subject to being prosecuted by this country, by the u.s. justice department for having the temerity to engage in that investigation. obviously a chilling effect is something you think about in terms of stuff moving forward. i'm thinking about them feeling their country turning against them for having done that patriotic work. i just wonder what you'd say to those folks tonight. >> i would say that there are so many of us that have their backs. they were just doing their jobs. they were looking for a foreign -- at a foreign power that was trying to invade our elections. and this time, yes, it greatly hurt one candidate, the democratic candidate. the next time it could be on the other side. and they were doing their jobs. and you have to stand up for them. that's what i would do as president. and i am just appalled by what keeps going on with barr, with the president. the truth doesn't matter.

the facts don't matter. if this stands up before a grand jury, i hope the american citizens will stand up, the people who serve on this grand jury and look at this in the way they should, in an unbiased way. we should not be allowing politics to interfere in the justice system. the truth matters. >> senator amy klobuchar, democratic presidential candidate, former prosecutor, thank you for your time tonight. >> thank you. >> i'm going to bring in somebody else into this conversation who's got a very unique perspective on this, somebody who himself was there for the beginning of the russia investigation at the justice department in a very key roll. his name is david laughman under president obama, but also for a year under president trump, which means he was there heading the counter intelligence section when the investigation into what russia did and whether they had american help as those investigations both took shape

and forward. dav david laughman, thank you for joining us. >> thank you, rachel. >> what's your reaction that this has become a criminal investigation? >> well, like my colleague, i have high regard for john durham and the other former prosecutors and fbi agents. he has surrounded himself with to carry out this investigation. i have high regard for him. he's a distinguished prosecutor. but this investigation, if not born in sin, was born in political taint, and there's just no mistaking its origins, this is something the president wanted to see happen to vindicate political grievances about the 2016 election. and so it's just hard to rationalize those two things, those two discord ant elements chuck was referring to. >> we have learned from people who have either been questioned by or familiar with the line of questioning that's been pursued by attorney general barr as he's been apparently conducting some

of this review himself. yes, prosecutor john durham who you have discussed and praised tonight is not only in charge of this, the attorney general is involved, too. the people familiar with the kinds of questions he's been asking suggests he's been pursuing a sort of theory that russia didn't really intervene in our election, that they didn't really attack us, that it was a conspiracy by the obama administration and by the intelligence agencies in this country, and by law enforcement in this country to make it look like russia did that when they didn't. and really, it was all about framing russia and trying to make the trump campaign look bad because of their so, with it. i just have to ask if you -- if there is anything that we should be taking seriously at all about that -- about that line. if you've ever seen anything that would indicate that this is something that wasn't conjured after the fact to try to make this go away. >> no, that whole line of qu

inquiry is preposterous and nonsensical. i have vivid origins of this investigation. it was factually predicated. everybody i knew to be involved with it was seized with the same alarm and concern, that there appeared to be the possibility that a foreign influence operation being carried out by one of our greatest foreign adversaries was engaged in an effort to, you know, improperly influence a presidential campaign and possibly the next administration were that candidate successful for office. we would have been derelict if we had not pursued that line of investigation at that time. all these other things are just efforts to discredit an investigation that relied on a consensus bed rock conclusion by the intelligence community, by the fbi, by the department of justice. >> if the justice department under attorney general barr is going to be turned to target the people who you just described, it is going to be turned to make

them into the criminals here for having pursued those investigations. it's going to bring them into a criminal investigation in which they are the subjects and potential targets of that investigation. what does that say to you about the justice department as an institution? what does that say to you about the things that are supposed to stop the justice department from being used as a tool to punish the president's enemies? >> well, ordinarily you have the whole codery of regulators on the possibility that an investigation could be initiated or carried out in any manner other than a professional manner consistent with the department of justice policies and procedures. again, it's hard for me to imagine john durham would associate himself with the frivolous initiation of a criminal investigation. but at the same time, it's hard to look away from the origins of an investigation, from the -- probably unprecedented nature of the attorney general's personal

involvement in spearheading fact gathering with foreign government officials pursuing lines of inquiry that come right out of, you know, fantasy world of the right wing extremist land. so it's really hard to tell what's going on here. i have every confidence that john durham will withstand any pressures that may buffet him to go down a road he thinks is not supported by facts and law. but the mere fact this is taking place, i think, will aggravate the chilling effect on department of justice lawyers, on the fbi, on men and women in the intelligence community who are already plenty concerned about the inception of this investigation in the first place. >> david laughman in the justice department, sir, thank you for joining us tonight particularly on short notice. i appreciate you getting to a camera. >> thank you, rachel. good to be with you. >> again, breaking news we've been following this hour, the justice department has, according to "the new york times," this has been confirmed

bip n by nbc news, has opened a criminal investigation. the law enforcement officials who opened that investigation, carried out the investigation into what russia are now being targeted by the justice department for potential prosecution. the justice department has a history that is as varied as any part of the u.s. government. there have been attorneys general who have been sent to prison in this country for misusing the justice department to go after the enemies of the president. in this case, it being used on that investigation at this time, when the president is on the verge of being impeached feels like a very signal moment. this a fraught development. leave it at that. leave it there way. leave it at that. that does it for us tonight. now it's time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." >> we'll have former federal