the russia investigation and the mueller investigation. and you know, he he wants to get out information that will that will cast the investigation somehow in a negative light. so i agree with you. he will release it. look, it has serious consequences across a number of axis. first, the concern is about what the specific information is in this document that may have national security consequences. information about the fisa process is classified for an extremely good reason. both civil liberties reasons and national security reasons. but secondly, there is another issue here, which is that the entire intelligence oversight system with respect to congress is built on trust between the intelligence community and the overseers and what devin nunes
then we well first of all we have to deal with whatever is in the memo. and then we deal with the fallout. i m almost without words to try to describe the amazing moment that we re in. i covered the justice department once upon a time when top aides to attorney general attorney journal mooes was under investigation and top aides resigned in protest of some of his acs. and yet a tax on the legitimacy of that investigation, dealing with classified information, this absolute overt war with the fbi, there was nothing like that. in watergate, president nixon tried used the fbi and its acting director to try to help himself. but the system sort of rebelled against that. the i ve been on a kick of trying to argue that the system
wants he is projecting what the president wants to have happen. we saw the president as he was leaving the chamber last night get door stopped by a republican senator who asked him about the memo and the president s answer is 100% it will be released. sarah sanders tried to walk that back a little bit. suggesting that there is still a number of steps in the process to go and they won t do anything rashly and so forth and then a few hours after that, john kelly said, yep, good to go. michael, i don t understand, before the last year, devin nunes reputation was not one of somebody that went off the deep end like this. and would just sort of flout all of these that was not his rep. you tell me dana roll backer is doing this, okay. why is do you think he s willing to essentially destroy the enteg rit the integrity
is doing here is shattering that trust and it is going to do amazing long-term damage to the willingness of the intelligence community to cooperate with what we have all come to expect in the way of congressional over site. i. i want to show you another excerpt, the transcript of the closed door meeting about whether to release this memo. democratic congress mike quigley addressed nun he is and asked him, was any of this done referring to the memo, after or during conversations or consultations with anyone in the white house. did they have any idea you were doing this? did they talk about doing this with you. did they suggest it? did you tugt it to them. did you consult in deciding how to go forward with this, before and during and after this point right now. and his answer is, i would just answer as far as i know, no. i sort of wish mike quigley would have separated out those questions and asked them one at a time. because it isn t clear here.
similar documents, many people in government called him a traitor and he is on the run from the u.s. government ever since. that is how highly sensitive many people believe the sources and methods are to this memo that was used to make this memo. joining me is ben whitis, editor of la fair and an msnbc legal analyst. ben, i know you ve been following this as closely as anybody. and frankly the last half hour we ve been reading excerpts of what is a just released transcript of the house intel committee essentially debating amongst themselves this memo questioning devin nun he es and of the revelations is that he claims he s been investigating the d.o.j. and fbi for months. how news-y is that. we knew that nunes was concerned about the so-called unmasking issue months and months ago. and that is what led to his