unbelievable plot, one personally directed by vladimir putin, in which donald trump would play a role to disrupt the functioning of the u.s. election in 2016. and he was so alarmed about it, he told a friend i feel like i m sitting on a nuclear weapon. as you mentioned a moment ago, republicans are seizing on the fact he was working for opposition research and working for the dnc at the time he was compiling this information. senator chuck grassley is also seizing on a criminal referral for steele. he says steele is a liar, that when he was talking to the fbi he was not telling the fbi that he was also talking to the news, talking to the media, talking to papers like the washington post. yes. one of the significant developments here, we talked about the nunez memo, the schiff memo, and then there s the letter written by senator grassley and senator lindsey graham to the justice department a former criminal referral
rod rosenstein and the fbi director ray don t want you to release the memo. will you guys? the memo, four pages, came over the day before yesterday. right. did you see it? i did. what d you think? it ll be released pretty quick, and the whole world can see it. it ll be released pretty quick, before the president can read it. here s what he said tonight about releasing the democratic memo. are you leaning towards releasing it? i would say this is different memo than the first one. it s length yier. so it will be done in a responsible way. but, again, the first one was very clean, relative to sources and methods. my initial cut is this one is a lot less clean. and then john kelly said something truly extraordinary.
resources toward. at least in the past. they re trying to change that right now and they re showing off tonight. they really are. thank, rachel. well, tonight white house chief of staff john kelly told reporters that rod rosenstein came to the white house to discuss the possible release of the memo written by the democratic staff that disagrees with the memo released last week written by the republican staff. john kelly completely ignored when they faced the decision of releasing the republican memo last week. john kelly said the memo would be released before the republican memo, you remember last week. he said it would be released even before the president had read it. kelly was fully confident it would be released. and the president himself last week said that the republican memo would be released before the president even pretended to read it.
not to protect access but redactions to remove information they think is unfavorable to the president. that could be a real problem and our main concern at this point. it seems like something to be worried. really the nunes memo really spoke for itself in the sense it showed what a farce the trump argument, that somehow the investigation was wrongly begun, that it rested on this dossier. you know, all these claims that trump has made from time and time again, you know, the nunes memo who was supposed to back it up chaeactually blew it all up. the schiff memo, and get the other side out, we know enough now to know what s going on here. what s going on here is that the republicans in congress as max alluded to are really going all in to protect the president. and no matter what we do or don t see of the second memo,
he made it sound as if the president would decide to release this memo based on the recommendation of deputy attorney general rod rosenstein is fbi director christopher ray, both of whom the president overruled in order to release the first republican memo. but at the end of it all it ll be guys like rod rosenstein, chris ray from the fbi, certainly the national security attorneys at the white house giving the president s recommendation on it. joining us now the chief council of the senate judiciary committee, and also a law professor at the university of michigan and nbc news and msnbc news contributor. ron, very surprising to hear that apparently it s all up to