actually, not adding witnesses, although it will be good to hear from volker. and evelyn, on volker and these other witnesses, it would be uncharacteristic for pompeo and the trump administration to not try to block their depositions, and so this will give us an early read on what the procedural resistance will be to this investigation. i think you re absolutely right, lawrence. this will be very interesting. but again, i think i worked for almost a decade in the legislative branch. this feels different. the resolve is there and the republicans are very quiet. so i think that you will get a lot more cooperation. we will see less stonewalling. they all know regardless what they say, they re going to be coming before the congress, many of them, and there will be a vote this year. jonathan, one of the issues for all these people in the
more questions here about what he said to the russians. julian barnes, thank you very much for joining us with your important reporting for the new york times tonight. really appreciate it. thank you. and we re joined now by rick wilson, republican strategist, also is a senior adviser to president obama and hillary clinton. president and ceo for the center of american progress. and evelyn is back with us. i want to get your reaction to this round of reporting tonight of the special treatment of the presidential phone call records. yeah. i think we should be really clear about what s happening here, which is, just remember about this information about the russia call the washington post is now breaking, the russian meeting. remember, when you look at that photo that you showed on msnbc just a second ago, it says russian foreign ministry at the top of that. why? because because it was the russians that showed the picture. why is that important? because trump didn t want to te
people say horrible things about him privately on the republican side. i think you re going to see more people breaking free from his hold. that s what former senator jeff flake said today. evelyn and jonathan, thank you for joining us tonight. when we come back, why donald trump should be very worried about mitch mcconnell tonight because every minute that mitch mcconnell does not say anything about impeachment, mitch mcconnell is saying something. that s next. what s up with your. partner? not again. limu that s your reflection. only pay for what you need. liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty (baby crying) (blender whirring)
about moscow s interference in the u.s. election because the united states did the same in other countries, an assertion that alarmed white house officials to limit access to the remarks to an unusually small number of people, according to three former officials with knowledge of the matter. leading off our discussion tonight, evelyn vargas. she s an msnbc national security analyst. both evelyn and tess were part of a letter today signed by more than 300 former officials voicing national security concerns about president trump. also joining us, jonathan alter from the daily beast and an msnbc political analyst who will now be reporting on the third impeachment process he has witnessed. that s true. in his adulthood. tess, let me start with you. you are an expert on the internal white house process for these records and/or transcripts
second, obviously, if they were involved in directing that this be put into a different system for the purpose of hiding information that is politically damaging to the president, not because it s national security sensitive information, that represents an abuse of that system and potentially an attempt to actually cover up wrongdoing or criminality. so it s not at all unusual that the lawyers would be involved in providing advice to national security council staff, for example, or coordinating legal views among the inner agency. that s their job. but directing a level of classification or the storage of that information in this special system, particularly if the intent was to hide information that s damaging to the president, that s highly unusual and deeply concerning. evelyn, according to tonight s washington post reporting, what we re seeing in president trump is a flawless consistency here about these kinds of conversations. at the beginning of his presidency, he was treating