2017. Donald trump had only been in office five months and just fired fbi director, james comey. The official reason for the firing was comeys handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. Trump couldnt manage to stick to the official line, as you just heard. He told Nbcs Lester Holt the firing was about the russia thing. Now, almost two years later, we know that interview caught the attention of the fbi, according to a bombshell report in the New York Times opened a counterintelligence investigation prompting this sentence in the New York Times report, which i am quite confident has never been uttered about an american president , quote in the days after President Trump fired james comey as the fbi director, Law Enforcement officials became so concerned by the president s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of russia, against american interests. Just let that sink in for a minute. The times cites two instances that led them to open this investigation, the aforementioned interview with lester holt and unsent draft of a letter trump wanted to send to comey about his firing in which he again mentioned the Russian Investigation, a draft special counsel mueller has, according to a 2017 report in the New York Times. Now, mueller took over the counterintelligence investigation into trump. He has it. Its unclear whether its still ongoing. Regardless, lets be clear, this is completely separate from the Russian Investigation opened in 2016, which was about russias interference in our election to help elect trump. This counterintelligence and criminal investigation were opened to scrutinize the conduct of the sitting president of the United States while hes in office. Lets bring in our mega panel to break this down. A former state department advisor, rick wilson, former strategist, author of everything trump touches dies. And author of its even worse than you think. Former assistant general and malcolm williams, author. And benjamin, joining by phone former assistant to Counter Intelligence at the fbi, frank. Thank you for calling in to talk to us this morning. So many things about this are extraordinary. To me, the most extraordinary, we had come to think, over lo these 2 1 2 years, that there were two investigations going on. One of them into what we broadly call russiagate, russias interference in our election. Another obstruction of justice, thought to be firing of comey and the probe. Whats going on, that the two might be the same thing, you have the fbi, reluctant to get involved during the election, now investigating whether a sitting president of the United States was an ongoing russian asset. Just give us your broad thoughts on this new reporting. Sure, joy. Thanks for having me. I think this is particularly sobering even for career counterintelligence professionals who always in the back of their minds think there is an outside possibility someone could rise to high office who might be playing for another team. To see this in writing to hear this report, its accurate to say the bureau actually opened a case on donald j. Trump is really hitting the American People in the gut. It means likely, joy, even though the article is citing the public behavior of the president , as you just noted, in order to get this to pass muster to fbi headquarters across the department of justice to be the title name of an investigation, i am virtually certain that more evidence than just the public behavior of the president is involved in this, and i think that evidence is likely classified evidence. On that point, frank, because of the job you did, you are the former assistant for Counter Intelligence, the type of jobs youve done, although im sure youve never done them to the president of the United States. That is still mindblowing for me. There is another piece of information. I wont take credit for this. I saw somebody else talking about it online that pointed me back to a january 12th, 2017 article, also in the New York Times that talked about the National Security, nsa, does signals intelligence, meaning intercepted phone calls, that kind of thing, they got more latitude to share intercepted communications, something they normally would have had to jump through a lot of hoops to get. The change means far more officials will be searching through raw data, essentially the government is reducing the risk the nsa will fail to recognize a piece of information valuable to another agency and increaseing the risk they will affect privacy of individuals. And what the nsa could share with the fbi, those limits were relaxed. Does that tell you as a former assistant director of Counter Intelligence for the fbi, that the fbi might have intercepted phone communications and signal intelligence about ongoing cooperation between the president of the United States and russia . The short answer is yes. But i dont even think that those relax regulations may play into that or not. They might. But from day one, joy, youve heard the intelligence professionals saying there is much more to this iceberg than the tip. That is what we call the dark side. The signals of dependence, intercepts worldwide. Lets not just say its the american Intelligence Community. We know from reporting throughout this case that allied partners have shared intelligence, whether its australians or brits or others. All of that working together could this is really the hard part to get your arms around, literally our allies may have been helping and our Intelligence Community may have been supporting a case and Evidence Development against our own president. We know the George Papadopoulos information was sourced when he was meeting with a professor from another country where that information then winds up back in the hands of the fbi. I want to go i will come to you in a minute, i want to go to malcolm quickly. Weve been at this almost three years, 2 1 2 years, the question was always whether or not donald trump was an asset witting or unwitting of a foreign power of russia. Its pretty hard, clear to many people, russias interference in the election was to help him. Thats the testimony we have from everyone who testified before congress. Whether or not he was also helping them was, i guess, the big question. Here is a picture i want to show you were all familiar with. This is donald trump meeting in the oval office with the Russian Foreign minister and Russian Ambassador respectively. That meeting takes place may 10, 2017, which this is day after jim comey was fired as fbi director. The New York Times reports that trump told the russians at that meeting that he fired comey and eased pressure on himself from the investigation into russian interference. In light of what we now know about the New York Times opening not their original investigation into the election interference but this new thing, about possible ongoing cooperation between the president of the United States and russia, what do you make of that picture now . Well, you might recall that on september 23rd, 2016, i published a book, the plot to hack america, where based on what we knew, russia was carrying out this information to elect donald trump, that he was unwitting unwittingly an asset of russia and after the said about Hillary Clintons, russia, if youre listening, please look into Hillary Clintons emails. And on this very channel, Rachel Maddow on 2016, i said this was a national Counter Intelligence threat. That means the fbi and all u. S. Intelligence would be on what we knew at the time and now what we know was a spy hunt. Thats what counterintelligence means. It means they are looking for u. S. Citizens who are in communications or active activities with a Foreign Intelligence Agency or government. This is nothing new. Were just learning now, the fbi officers after the lavrov meeting in the white house, donald trump realized his behavior and activities, and whether we have collection from our sister intelligence agencies, i worked at nsa, ive done activities like that, it doesnt matter, the collective body of knowledge showed the fbis counterintelligence spy hunters thought donald trump was an asset enough that they started an investigation. Now, believe me, Robert Mueller has a lot more information than they had. I think this will end up that he was dirty. Its extraordinary. Ben, i was reading this morning the law fair post you put up on friday that talked about what i brought up a little bit earlier, the question of collusion and obstruction we talked about as two separate things. What if they were actually the same thing . A bit of expert from your analysis at law fair is the following. In his congressional testimony this fall, schmidt, who is the New York Times reporter and goldman, the other New York Times discovered, james baker, the chief couple of the fbi, made an chief counsel of the fbi, made a comment, russia period full stop. The purpose of the investigation he explained was to assess what the russians were up to with respect to the 2016 election and trying to learn what the russians had done and whether americans had learned anything about the efforts knowingly or unknowingly. Ben, the reason that question came up that the pushback on the investigations was not simply to harass the president of the United States, mr. Baker made it clear in the testimony read to these reporters, that the testimony that was read to them, that he gave in private to the House Intelligence Committee is all about russia. Your thoughts. Yes. It was about russia, it was always about russia full stop. One of the problems weve had as we analyzed this and focused on the question of the president , right . Did the president do x . Did the president do y . You lose sight of the way the fbi understands the investigation. From the fbis point of view, this was an investigation of russian activity with respect to the 2016 election and as a subsidiary matter, the interactions or assistance that anybody had with that activity on this side of the atlantic. That is, anybody who may have provided support to them. From the fbis point of view, the purpose of this investigation was to understood and thwart russian activity, it was not an investigation of the president. All of a sudden, the president of the United States swoops in, starts putting pressure on the fbi with respect to this investigation in the case of flynn, demanding things of it, and then turns around and fires the head of the agency. All of a sudden, the fbi is saying, whoa, is the president s activity in trying to shut down the investigation itself a National Security threat to the extent that the investigation is important to the protection of National Security. I think that is, you know, where that investigation, which has been an investigation of russia, not of the president , becomes suddenly, as a subsidiary matter, an investigation of the president s own conduct. That, i think, is the crux, right . We had an ongoingn chairman has been pulled into it. Questions about what his attorney did and questions about what his son and soninlaw may have done at that Infamous Trump tower meeting. Its all been people close to the president , about russias efforts to assist donald trump in becoming president. This is about the president and his own activities and also his own assertions that made him a target of the investigation, his own determination and insistence in including russia in his purported case for firing jim comey, when his administration said it was about the Hillary Clinton investigation, he said, no, its about russia. He said it to lester holt. He said it in a letter he wanted to write to jim comey and apparently he said it to the russians. Donald trump is now the target. Am i right about that, barbara . Yes. I think ben does a wonderful job framing this for the public. One thing towns is how counterintelligence investigations work. Think of them as the umbrella and to detect threats, thats the goal. We were always told criminal investigation is the only way to achieve that overall goal. It may be to sit and listen for a while and watch and learn. It may be to do a double cross and get them to come to your side or feed them false information to send them in a wrong direction or it may be criminal prosecution. When you find americans doing things like lying, making false statements, obstruction of justice, those are the kinds of crimes that can immennate from the goal of the Russian Investigation. Thats what robert myourm uelle looking at and trumps being the target of the investigation and bens framing of it has clarified that point for the american public. I want to go to elliott quickly on the response, your take on it as an attorney, because the original response in the white house was sort of all over the place, lashing out at president obama and all sorts of other stuff that didnt get to the substance and didnt address the substance, went on rants about Andrew Mcquade and other sorts of things. Then Rudy Guiliani, a former prosecutor and mayor, somebody who knows something about the law, this is his response. If it was a Counter Intelligence investigation and it obtained any evidence it would have resulted in some action being taken or are they imperilling our National Security. This shows how out of control they are. I want your response to that and then franks response to it and bens. I cant count the number of times over the course of this investigation Rudy Guiliani has fundamentally misstated the law in an attempt to throw people off the scent of the president s wrongdoing. Hes doing it again. He did it going back to whether the doj could keep investigating during the election season. Hes undermining the very integrity of the investigation by misstating the law. Theres a difference as some folks, as frank said before, theres a difference between Counter Intelligence investigations and criminal investigations and there may not have been charges that would have flown from a Counter Intelligence investigation. What they are seeking to do is ascertain the extent of russians or foreign actors incursion into this matter. I just get flustered talking about it because its so crazy. This is a former u. S. Attorney, former associate attorney general of the United States misstating facts and misstating law. Nowhere in there is a denial of the allegations. Frankly, what i find to be the most interesting line in the article, ill read it to you, no evidence has emerged publicly that mr. Trump was secretly in contact with or took direction from russian officials. Ironically, i think thats the most incriminating line, that they use the word publicly, because theres so much more evidence were not aware about, that speaks to the level of russian incursion here. Once again, its the same stuff, different day, from the former u. S. Attorney for the Southern District of new york. Its quite disappointing. At this point we shouldnt be surprised by it at all. Really quickly, frank, on guilianis response to the report. He says if its a counterintelligence investigation and obtained any evidence it would have resulted in some action or they are emperilling our National Security. There typically are two different lanes, the Counter Intelligence investigation lane and criminal investigation lane. Am i right in saying Counter Intelligence investigations dont necessarily result in someone being arrested, theyre Counter Intelligence because theyre trying to ascertain information . Yeah. Both barbara and malcolm have properly characterized the nature and purpose of the Counter Intelligence case, which is to identify, penetrate and neutralize. That could take years. You may recall the sleeper cell of 10 russian illegals. That fbi case ran for 10 years before the fbi concluded they had wrapped up the entire cell, identified all the Covert Communications and funding mechanisms and then and only then did they decide to take it down for a number of reasons. Arrest or overreaction is not the goal at all. Counter action is the goal of the Counter Intelligence case to identify and mess with and make life hard for your adversary. As ruddy comes out and says this kind of thing, hes fulfilling his mission for