What were learning about trumps fixation on Robert Mueller. This became an obsession with the president. He had to get rid of mueller. When all in starts right now. Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes. As the president s lawyers continue to negotiate the terms of his looming interview with the special counsel, the president s friends and aides are panicking and the republican counteroffensive against the Justice Department is shifting into overdrive. Tonight the white house is denying it had anything to do with the abrupt departure of a top fbi official whom the president has been openly attacking for months. Nbc news broke the story the deputy fbi director Andrew Mccabe left the bureau today Effective Immediately months before his expected retirement. One source said mccabe was exercising his retirement eligibility, characterized his decision as stepping aside. But according to other outlets, the decision may not have been voluntary. Cbs news reporting that mccabe was forced to step down. Fox news reporting that he was removed from the fbi. Now the president s attacks on mccabe go back to 2016 after mccabes wife ran unsuccessfully for the Virginia State senate backed by the state democratic party. The man who was in charge of the investigation of Hillary Clinton accepted essentially from Hillary Clinton 675,000 that went to his wife. It never happened before. Never happened. Not in this countrys history. This is a disgrace. Just to be clear there, mccabe didnt accept that money. His wife who was the candidate did. And it didnt essentially come from Hillary Clinton. She was running for office. It came through channels. Now the fbi concluded mccabe had no conflict of interest in the Clinton Probe which he did not join until after his wifes race in 2015. But after taking office last year, the president of the United States continued to attack mccabe after firing james comey in may, according to brandnew reporting from nbc news we broke today, the president called mccabe, then the acting director of the federal bureau of investigation to vent, according to multiple people familiar with the phone call. Trump demand to know why comey was allowed to fly on an fbi plane back to the east coast after he had been fired, to which mccabe responded he hadnt been asked to authorize comeys flight but if anyone asked he would have approved. He turned on mccabe suggesting he asked his wife how it feels to be a loser. To which mccabe replied, according to our reporting, okay, sir. Then in their First Oval Office meeting shortly thereafter, the president reportedly asked mccabe who he had voted for in the 2016 election. Since then, the president has continued to berate mccabe on twitter, slamming him in a session with the White House Press corps just last week. Mccabe got more than 500,000 from essentially Hillary Clinton. And is he investigating Hillary Clinton . So should he go . Do you remember, did anybody here, many of my speeches where i talked about mccabe, he was the star of my speech. You were having him as your acting fbi director, then . You know what . I keep out of it. Youd find that hard to believe. I keep out of it. Wait a second. I keep out of it. Youd find that hard to believe. I keep out of it. Okay. Today the white house denied the president played any role in mccabes abrupt departure. I can tell you none of this decision was made by that of the white house. And any specifics i would refer you to the fbi who i believe will be making a statement later today. You say the white house was not involved in the decision. But clearly, the president seemed to be involved in a Public Relations campaign against mccabe. Oh, look. The president stands by his previous comments. Can you say definitively that the president did not play a role in Andrew Mccabe stepping down . Yes. I can say that the president was not a part of this decisionmaking process, and we would refer you to the fbi where Christopher Wray serves as the director. Yes, the president simply publicly mused who will rid me of this meddlesome fbi agent. According to the New York Times it was the fbi director Christopher Wray who finally pushed mccabe out. In a recent conversation mccabe rais a source close to the times suggested moving mccabe into another job which would have been a demotion. Instead mccabe chose to leaf the bureau. After the mccabe news broke today, wray and Deputy Attorney general Rod Rosenstein went to the white house 20 meet with chief of staff john kelly. Who knows what they talked about. This news today comes on the heels of a report the president tried to fire special Counsel Robert Mueller last june, backing off only after his white House Counsel threatened to resign. It comes amid an evidently coordinated campaign by the president and his allies on capitol hill specifically in the media as well to discredit muellers investigation of which the president himself appears to be a target. Just this very evening, the House Intelligence Committee voted for at least a classified memo cooked up by a splintered group of republicans which is reportedly aimed at discrediting yet another Justice Department official that would be that Deputy Attorney general Rod Rosenstein. A trump appointee who is overseeing the special counsels investigation. Congresswoman jackie spiers, what do you make of the report today . We dont know. Certainly the inspector generals report may play a part of it. He has been under scrutiny and been hammered for month news. Here is a man who is a professional, who has worked in the department for over 20 years, committed to keeping americans safe. And this is the way this is the way we treat them, it appears, under the trump white house. I find it all very disgusting and very disheartening. What specifically when you say, what do you find disgusting . The president s words . The actions . You know, chris, this president has done everything in his power for the last year to attack people, anyone that he finds that make him feel good. And he has been clearly focused on this investigation. As soon as director comey said he was also looking into the relationship between the Trump Campaign and the russian intervention, all hell broke loose. And subsequently you had devin nunes and his Midnight Ride to the white house to get the documents that turned out to be really nothing. The unmasking campaign didnt really have much effort as well in terms of moving anyone. So now theyre on to yet another one. It was truly mind spinning in that committee today to see how willing my colleagues were to just follow this path. You know, your colleague adam schiff had some very strong words about that. I want to play you what he had to say and see if you share his reaction. Take a listen. It was disclosed to the minority today for the first time that the majority as evidently opened an investigation of the fbi and an investigation of the department of justice. This is a wholesale broadside against two of our respected institutions. And brings to mind something i brought to the committees attention a week ago when we first took up the majority memo. And that is we need to be concerned with not just with what happens during this presidency, but the lasting damage that may be done to these institutions. And unfortunately, that damage just became all the more greater today. Do you share those concerns . I was with him during that press conference. And, you know, the rules of that committee require that any investigation thats undertaken is done so by the chair in consultation with the ranking member. And the first we heard about it was today. And devin nunes, the chair talked about this Ongoing Investigation of the fbi and the department of justice. You know, chris, this has a lot it looks a lot like watergate. It also has fringes of the salem witch trials. And you throw in the mccarthy hearings, and i think weve got one crisis about to happen here. You talk about mccarthy or you talk about watergate, you use the word crisis. Today felt a little more like we moved towards crisis. It feels that there is a war happening of the government against itself. That there is an investigation happening with the president , and the president sort of in name i guess supervises that investigation, because he is the chief executive of the country. He runs the executive branch. But it is independent of him. And he and his allies on capitol hill essentially teaming up to destroy, discredit, disrupt, and subvert that investigation. Are there boundaries for what you think they would not do at this point . I dont think there are any boundaries. I mean, when you a committee of members who have not seen the underlying document to determine whether or not what this memo, which is a political spin memo, whether there is accuracies or inaccuracies, you actually have the fbi saying that it is reckless to release that. And yet they move forward with it. They are willing to walk the plank for president. And i think that we have an obligation to protect the American People and defend the constitution. And i think some of my colleagues are failing in that regard. I think there is a real open question about who is on the plank right now. Right. Congresswoman jackie speier, thanks for your time tonight. I appreciate it. Thank you. Former special watergate prosecutor and clint watts, Msnbc National Security analyst. Let me start with you as somebody who was an agent. Having watched the full arc about what happened to mccabe, whats your reaction . Im not surprised he has been pressured out. We kind of heard a few weeks ago he was expected to leaf. Some of this could be structural. You generally have to serve 20 years. I dont know when he started. But i think he is probably coming up on his 50th birthday or so. It could be the 20year mark with liz leave. This is the day he is eligible. But either way it shows political pressure can push him out. The Deputy Director is usually the person that holds the ground when you have a transition between one director and the other. In this case its been politicized going all the way back to the campaign. So you cant even rely on this institutional integrity to help us stay on course as an investigative agency. The Deputy Director is the top fbi agent thats in the organization. Theyre the ones that sustain the investigations between terms. So while its knotts unusual that they might, you know, that new director wray might bring in his own team later, usually one to two years in, theyre keeping the existing crew so there is no gap in terms of coverage in investigations. Having lived through watergate and having investigated that and the congresswoman just mentioned that as a precedent here, what do you make of whats happening right now . I think its just pure evil. Youve got a president of the United States who recognizes he cannot politically fire mueller. So what does he do . He goes after the people that are working on his investigation. The people that have put this investigation together for him in the first place. And then he goes after Rod Rosenstein who is his supervisor. What trump has now done has taken what i would consider to be a completely evil strategy that is to go with the people, the person above him, the people below him, and try and isolate mueller. Thats what he thinks is going to get him off the hook. Youve got the president fires comey. He doesnt like comey and then he fires comey. He complains about mccabe. Mccabe is now out. He complains about mueller and attempts to fire mueller and was sort of beaten back by don mcgahn. We now hear a lot of reporting about rosenstein. How seriously do you take that . I take it very seriously. I think he is going to try and do everything he can to somehow fire Rod Rosenstein. This memo, this socalled fivepage memo that is supposed to be summarizing probably a couple hundred page affidavit and paper submitted to the fisa court which was taken out of context, it all relates to the fusion gps investigation. Right. By christopher steele, all of which is becoming more and more corroborated as were getting along, including the salacious part about the women which stormy fields, she bribed him. Why cant the russians bribe him . There is really not much difference. And on top of all that, if you look at carter page, even he came on this show, lied about who he met with and who he talked to in russia. And then went before the committee and sort of gave sort of half truths about who he really met with. If you really get down to the bottom line here, that particular affidavit is probably corroborated all the way up. Right. And the argument again, we havent seen all this. Were sort of fighting these ghosts, right . But the argument is that its all fruit of a rotten tree, that basically they never should have had the feiss is warrant to begin with. And youre sort of pushing back at the facts underneath that let me ask you this. The chief of staff john kelly appears to be running point on a lot of this. A lot of interaction was him at doj. A lot of interactions with wray. And i thought this was interesting, this from a bloomberg report. Kelly held separate meetings or phone calls with senior Justice Department officials last tuesday, wednesday to convey his displeasure and lecture about the white houses expectations. Kelly has taken to ending such conversations with the disclaim theyre the white house isnt expecting officials to do anything illegal or unethical. Is that a standard disclaimer to append to those kinds of conversations . Its not standard to make any of these calls. Its pretty crazy all the way around. The real bellwether just to be clear, its not normal for the chief of staff to be calling over to the doj, communicating the president s feelings on this . No. Its far more normal for the doj or the fbi director to be calling about an emergency to the white house. I mean, this is the direction that the channel usually works. Usually the white house doesnt have to be calling down to the doj three days in a row to express how the president feels about the department of justice. Theyre a very busy organization, enforcing the nations laws. The real bellwether, the signal we should look for in this is rosenstein. He was brought on as part of session team in the Trump Administration. He was used essentially for the comey firing. So if he is pushed out or really pushed away, it really signals an aggressive push from the white house. A tweet today from a historian on twitter, someone should remind the Trump Administration and their enablers that deep throat was basically a pissed off senior official at the fbi. Well, i think there are a lot of pissed off senior officials in the white house and all throughout the government. I mean thats why its going to be so easy for mueller to bring witnesses into this case. Youre not going to have a lot of people like gordon liddy who called the committee to reelect the president and said im going to be standing at the corner of 18th and k and you can send a hit squad to knock me off and put a bullet through my chest. Thats how seriously he took his oath of loyalty. He seriously did that. But there is nobody that loyal to the president. I hope no one is calling any hits. Nick akerman and clint watts, great to have you both. Next, republicans in the House Intelligence Committees we were just talking about voted to release the memo, and then not release another memo . How an attempt to discredit Rod Rosenstein stop Robert Mueller and what carter page has to do with it, in two minutes. You know whats awesome . Gigspeed internet. You know whats not awesome . When only certain people can get it. Lets fix that. Lets give this guy gig really . And these kids, and these guys, him, ah. Oh hello. That lady, these houses yes, yes and yes. And dont forget about them. Uh huh, sure. Still yes xfinity delivers gig speed to more homes than anyone. Now you can get it, too. Welcome to the party. We have votes today to politicize the intelligence process, to prohibit the fbi and the department of justice from expressing their concerns to our committee, and to the house and to selectively release to the public only the majoritys distorted memo without the full facts. House Intelligence Committee voted along party lines to release a republican memo on surveillance, but not, but not a democratic rebuttal. And the Committee Also voted against allowing the fbi and doj to brief the house about the underlying facts before any public release. The memo is yet another attempt to discredit the russia investigation. And one target of that effort, Deputy Attorney general Rod Rosenstein. That might sound surprising given that rosenstein is in fact a trump appointee. But rosenstein is also the person who appointed the special Counsel Robert Mueller whose investigation is now closing in on donald trump and his inner circle. Perhaps more importantly at the moment, rosenstein is also the person with the power to fire mueller. And now we know thanks to the