u.s. person unless the original surveillance had borne fruit. by way of trying to denigrate this process, what they ve told us is the justice department was able to convince a federal judge there was probable cause to believe that carter page was an agent of a foreign power. i reached out to carter page today and he has long denied he s an agent of russia. he simply didn t comment wittingly or unwittingly. it s all a big misunderstanding. my point is this all could be this is the middle of a criminal investigation that s supposed to be secret. the republicans are digging into it and releasing some selective aspects of it with a clear intent it seems to many people to undermine the investigation. ken, i want to get jill and matt who has a new story out in the conversation. i want to drill down on one thing you just said which is what this is about. this is about a warrant. this is about a warrant that was reauthorized or re-sort of permitted at the highest levels of the fbi by
well as msnbc analyst. and reporter from the boston globe. ken and paul are still with us. let me read something to you, elise, from the washington post. paul ryan and kevin mccarthy, we just saw, are complicit in the counterattack on the fbi and the special prosecutor. they set the tone for the nonstop assault on mueller and the justice department setting their caucus loose to create a fog of confusion. they see their roles as the defense team for trump, not the leaders of a co-equal branch of government to check the excesses of the executive. they in all likelihood will not insulate the special prosecutor nor prevent nunes, doing lasting damage to the fbi. jennifer rubin, pulling no punches, but this seeming to be more than just what you and i talk about on and off the air sort of the shock and awe of the loss of the gop s soul. but real damage to the country s national security. i think that this is an institutional failure, a failure of a branch of government that
in a social way like george bernard shah said you can t show a gun in the first act of the play and not have it go off in the third act. people have to see it now. now, the other thing is these customs that we all abide by are not recognized by the trump government. you know, the preet bharara christy todd whitman, they are norms and traditions we have obeyed for decades and generation that s this white house is just ignoring. these things have to become codified into law. so, even this idea that there s a classified memo that goes between two branches, it has to be reviewed by the fbi or the justice department. you can t just release it. something like that should be codified into law. it s not even, ken delanieian going between the brarch much. they have refused to share this memo even if it does satisfy what rick is talking about, sort of a public interest in knowing some of these facts. it s so either sketchy, shady, or political that they haven t shared it with richard burr, the
bannon gets carried away, he gets kind of low kwash us. that s a dream witness for mueller. ken delaney, i think it is important to point out something, you guys are all well steeped in this. just for our viewers, the new york times in reporting bannon had been subpoenaed did clarify that the subpoena is a sign that mr. bannon is not personally the focus of the inquiry. justice department rules allow prosecutors to subpoena the targets of investigations only in rare circumstances. ken, that suggested to me what he had to say would be important, maybe in investigating someone else who was more in the cross hairs. and a couple theories posited by folks in the trump orbit were that look at where all of the primary public fires were between bannon and who he pushed against. that some of those people may have the most to worry about, just in terms of the things that bannon will talk about, the fights that he had that we know about were over the advice the president got to fire jim comey
reporters and guests, ken delanieian, washington post ashley park erk ear associate press white house reporter jonathan la mere, also barbara mcwade, u.s. attorney. i spoke to a justice department official. i was with him, i showed him my phone and said, have you ever seen this before? he said, no, never. have you ever seen anything like this before, such a public and a public relations battle between the fbi and a sitting president and a republican chairman of the committee who is known to have gotten himself into some shenanigans with fisa material? no, it s absolutely unprecedented. and what concerns me the most is i worry about the long-term damage this does to the fbi. you know, whatever comes out of this particular skirmish, meanwhile there are agents all over the country who are interviewing ordinary citizens in kidnapping cases, in bank