Trump intercepts. Susan rice for the first time here on msnbc. Im Andrea Mitchell in washington where the former National Security advisor, susan rice, is being accused of unmasking aids the basic charge, political spying. She joins me for her first Public Comments on these news stories. Hi, good to be with you. Hello, this is a fire storm involved with the whole question of the Russian Investigation and the response by President Trump, anow the accusatio ain you. How do you respond . This is not anything political that has been alleged. The allegationed is the Obama Administration i was the National Security advisor. My job is to protect the American People and the security of our country. Thats the same as the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the cia director, and every morning to enable us to do that, we receive, from the Intelligence Community, a compilation of Intelligence Reports that the Intelligence Community veselected for us on daily basis to give us the best inf
Sanctions. And inside the chaos, disinformation and firm french handshake that spurred the president s decision to leave the paris accord. A lot of its a hoax. Its a hoax. When all in starts right now. Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes. In six days, james comey is set to give public testimony before congress in which he is widely expected to reveal attempts by the president to interfere with and possibly to obstruct the fbi investigation of his campaigns ties to russia. Tonight, the Trump White House is weighing whether to take the extraordinary step of trying to block comey from speaking. A former fbi director who was fired last month in t midst of the russia investigation is due before an open session of the Senate Intelligence committee at 10 00 a. M. Next thursday, june 8th. But now according to bloomberg reporter jennifer jacobs, the white house confirms theyre reviewing whether to invoke executive privilege to prevent comey from testifying before Congress Next week. Aske
Complete but its over because it has blown up. In facty the whole House Intelligence Committee seems to have ceased to function entirely even beyond doing that investigation. Theyre apparently no longer meeting as a committee to do business other than the trumprussia investigation. They apparently stopped all together. It appears like the investigation itself is done. Now, i will tell you, congressman schiff disagrees th that assessme he disagrees with that common wisdom. He is, as i mentioned, the top democrat on that committee. He is in a position to know what theyre doing. But honestly, it is starting to feel like the Trump White House has effectively shut down that part of the investigation into what happened between them, the Trump Campaign and russia last year, while russia was mounting its attack on the United States. Its obviously a big political risk. Potentially even a big legal risk for the white house to sabotage or undermine an official congressional investigation into the
A public hearing. But any investigation of this kind will start with private interviews to determine the value of what a witness has to provide for the committee. One thing were really conscious of, we werent given a free pass to do a witch hunt. We were asked to do a real investigation and well see highprofile people and well see analysts from the Intelligence Community. Or we may see a 28yearold that happened to answer the phone at the white house on the wrong day when an ambassador called him and when they went around and said, who talked to the ambassador, they raised their hand. Mark and i dont want that person to have a get a lawyer to be interviewed. We would like to bring him up and understand what role he played, if any, without any liability that extends to him. So were really trying to assess each individual person of what the need is, but dont rule anything out for anybody relative to how public the information might be. Im not going to tell you one way or another. Yes, maa
In fact, the whole House Intelligence Committee seems to have ceased to function entirely even beyond doing that investigation. Theyre apparently no longer meeting as a committee to do business other than the trumprussia investigation. They apparently stopped all together. It appears like the investigation itself is done. Now, i will tell you, congressman schiff disagrees with that assessment. He disagrees with that common wisdom. He is, as i mentioned, the top democrat on that committee. He is in a position to know what theyre doing. But honestly, it is starting to feel like the Trump White House has effectively shut down that part of the investigation into what happened between them, the Trump Campaign and russia last year, while russia was mounting its attack on the United States. Its obviously a big political risk. Potentially even a big legal risk for the white house to sabotage or undermine an official congressional investigation into the white house. The fact they were willing a