Predictable end led by trumps most ardent defender, u. S. Congressman devin nunes who is best known for his Midnight Ride to the white house last year to coordinate his defense of President Trump, which itself had the appearance of collusion. In fact, House Republicans never even questioned President Trump or any other key witnesses in their investigation. Its no surprise that the report appears tailored to protect the president from the credible investigation now under way by the special Counsel Robert Mueller. Not only do these House Republicans say they have found no evidence of collusion between the Trump Campaign and russia, but most remarkably that. Contest the findings of the u. S. Intelligence Committee Community saying that russia did not show a preference for candidate trump. In other words, theyre saying there was no evidence at all in their socalled these republicans, that there is no evidence that the russians and putin and company wanted trump to win. As for the new reporting, it suggests the president is clearly concerned about the real investigation led by special Counsel Robert Mueller. The New York Times is reporting that President Trump is in discussions right now to hire bill clintons impeachment lawyer, emmitt flood to help the white house deal with the federal probe. Thats according to four people familiar with the matter. As the times wrote, there has been times in recent months that mr. Trump may be looking to shakehis legal team and change his approach to mr. Muellers investigation. As the president weighs a legal shakeup, bloomberg reports the special counsel might delay an action to bring potential obstruction of justice charges. Current and former Officials Say trumps investigation into whether president donald j. Trump obstructed justice is said to be close to completion. But he, thats trump, may set it aside while he finishes other parts of the probe such as possible collusion and the hack of democrats. Joining me is Joaquin Castro of the house intelligence committee. Jennifer rodgers former assistant u. S. Attorney, mieke eoyang and ken delay, an investigative report were msnbc. Let me start with the congressman. Congressman, this is devastating. The republicans on this disreputable majority on your committee who raced out this draft report which basically whitewashes everything. Says the russians werent trying to help trump, did nothing in terms of the election, totally clean as a whistle and whizzed it right past you guys. Yeah. This is a stunning debev trail of the American People and the public trust. This was a case of the majority on the committee basically burying their heads in the sand. It was a believe whatever they tell us investigation. Chris, this was the equivalent of bringing in a suspect, asking them whether they started the fire or not. They said no, i didnt start it. And then you say oh, well, great. Everybody can go home. Thats basically what happened. They didnt even bring in the suspect. Not the main one, no. They were investigating the president. So how can they exonerate the president without evening mentioning that he might be under investigation by them . They never even went that far. No, youre right. And they also didnt follow very critical and important leads that could have led to a case for obstruction of justice of collusion and moneylaundering. There are so many leads and so many paths that this investigation, legitimate leads that werent followed. What do you make of the fact the time the committee majority, the republicans, without the support of my democrat on the house intelligence committee, the president is out there shopping for a Top Parliament expert and bringing in flood, this guy who got clinton off the hook. Fair enough. Thats what you do when youre in trouble. But he thinks he is in trouble with the real investigation by robert mueller. Meanwhile, the chairman of your committee is giving him a whitewash . No, i can only believe that because he is hiring an impeachment lawyer, if the reporting is true, that he knows he is going to have problems with bob muellers investigation. And thank god that youve still got the Senate Investigation and bob muellers investigation. Let me ask you about the difference between the house and the senate. I worked for hill. I know how it works to some extent. Sometimes house committees are more partisan. But look at Richard Berber on the senate silent. Republican and democrat together to try to get to the truth. Why doesnt the house operate like that . It all started off on the wrong foot. You know, devin nunes was part of the president s transition team, and he basically and ive said it before but he basically decided at some point to make his political career a sacrifice fly for the president of the united states. And he determined at some point that he was basically going to be a blocker and tackler for the white house. And the result is what you see today. Sacrifice fly. A great metaphor so the president can walk home. Thank you so much. Thank you, congressman for your time tonight. Thank you. I want to go to our other guests. I want to go right now to Jennifer Rogers and all. The New York Times, by the way, i should have said this before, they stlai a story about a potential shakeup of the legal team, clearly irritating the mountain who responded in a series of pointed tweets on sunday morning. Quote, the failing New York Times purposely wrote a false story statement i am unhappy with my legal team on the russia case and im going add another lawyer to help out. Wrong. I am very happy with my lawyers. They are doing a great job and have shown conclusively that there was no collusion with russia. Then the president went further and attacked the reporter by name saying the writer of this story, Maggie Haberman, a hillary flunkie knows nothing about me and was not given access. However, President Trump has given Maggie Haberman lots of access over the years. Shes had six exclusive introduce with him since she was elected. Let me go to Jennifer Rogers for this. What do you make of the whitewash deciding in a Summary Judgment that the russians werent trying to help him, period. Well, its preposterous. They clearly didnt do a full investigation here. We dont know publicly whether there was collusion or there wasnt collusion at this point. But what we do know is this committee didnt go nearly as far as they would need to go to figure out the answer to that question. I mean, if you look at the list of witnesses who refused to testify or didnt testify fully, they were not subpoenaed. They left thousands of documents unrer unreviewed. They didnt wait for mueller to finish his investigation. We can expect at least two more substantive indictments about russian interference in the election, and none of that was looked into or they didnt wait for any of that. I think that we can say for sure that they just stopped midstream. They didnt really intend to get to the bottom of this. And we havent seen their report yet. But if it has the value of the socalled nunes memo about the carter page fisa applications, i think we can all just toss it in the recycling. You know, ken, ive discovered about this guy nunes, the chairman of this committee, a lot. He look likes a toadie. He looks like as Somebody Just said by the congressman, that he look likes a guy that is going to hit up a nice sacrifice fly way out there in center field so the runner can come in from third. Without teaching baseball to everybody, its a simple matter. The guy seems to be working for trump. Yeah, but what that doesnt explain is why the rest of the republicans went along, chris. Because 90 of republicans out there back this president. Thats right. Theyre scared to death of their own constituents back home. And theyre living in a climate where they have a rightwing news channel and Media Establishment that also backs this president and has been discrediting this entire investigation. Look, you cant find what youre not looking for. They didnt even subpoena, for example, the records of twitter to find out whether what don jr. Was exchanging in direct messages with twitter. If youre looking for collusion, you need the documents. You need George Papadopoulos who is cooperating with the Mueller Investigation. You need the testimony of Paul Manafort who may have been the key to all. This how do you an investigation you clear the president . Has to face an impeachment next year, has to face a serious vote in the house by both parties maybe led by the democrats by then if they win this november. A senate trial perhaps with his presidency hanging on it. And all this follows an exoneration by the house intelligence committee. How do these people in that committee look good . I dont think that they can. I dont think that what theyre doing here stands up to the scrutiny comparing it to other reports, which is really a shame. Because in the history of the committee, theyve actually done a better job in the past. I worked on this committee. People take the job of intelligence oversight very seriously. 17 intelligence agencies say the russians tried to screw with our elections and these guys wouldnt even say that. Thats right. And when you the Oversight Committee just dismiss out of hand the view of all these intelligence professionals, you lose a lot of credibility. That has the advantage of actually reading the mueller dimts, which apparently they didnt even do, then you have people coming up with very different conclusions than what youre seeing today. Whoa do you think theyre going after Maggie Haberman, who is a straight reporter. I knew her father. She has been a serious journalist in that family for many years. No one has ever questioned her partisanship or thought there was any partisanship. The president has given her lots of interviews because she is a solid voice to reach the people. She gets to the people with her column. She is clearly getting to them, right . Doesnt like whats said about him, that he is shopping for an impeachment lawyer. He has given her a lot of access and not been rewarded for it because she is a good journalist and she is writing the truth and he doesnt like it. Let me go back to jennifer. This idea, he is looking for a guy, a reporter a lawyer, im talking about so many journalists here. He is talking about a lawyer who is apparently a pretty conservative person but did represent bill clinton in that impeachment dang her i faced. What do you think about looking for a particular lawyer at that particular expertise at this point by the president . I dont think it necessarily thinks he means he will be facing impeachment. But it could mean one of two things. It means he either is acknowledging that this is going on for a lot longer, that this is not wrapping up, that he in fact is going to be facing this Mueller Probe for some time. And it could also mean that he thinks he is in trouble, and he wants to get more aggressive. Famously, his lawyer ty cobb has been cooperative with the Mueller Investigation. He may think its time to switch gears. He may think that they want to push back a bit. Thats also going to leonarngth the amount of time it takes to finish this investigation, but that may be reason for a shakeup. Former Trump Campaign sam nunberg on the ari melber show a few moments ago revealed new details about his voluntary interview with the special Counsel Robert Mueller last month. Lets watch what he has to say this. May explain why trump might be getting a little worried. Did muellers folks ask anything that related to these issues around payments to people or women . Well, look, they asked if i had ever heard anything about that. And my answer is i never have. I dont know anything about it, and i wouldnt have known anything about it. In your fbi interview with muellers team, they were asking about payments to women . They were asking if i knew anything about it. They were asking if you knew anything about payments to women. But i think its pretty obvious theyre looking into this. Well, here we go. Here we go. Ken, back to square one, watergate. And lets get back to whitewater and clinton. What the special counsels do is they watch all the traffic going by, and they say there, paula jones, that might lead to monica lewinsky. Lets go after that case for a while. Now theyre looking at stormy whatever her name circumstances daniels. Stormy daniels. And here is why prosecutors could be asking about it that could amount to an Illegal Campaign contribution. If hush money was paid to help President Trumps campaign a hush payment would inferred to be helping him especially a week before an election. That was the case against Democrat John edwards. It didnt stick. It was a hung jury. Exactly. But also, in the russia investigation, if trump has something to hide about these campaign payments and the payment to hush up an affair, thats leverage if the russians know about it that they could be using over him. We all know about it. Do they know about it . This is one of the allegations that trump when he was in russia for the Miss Universe competition may have spent some time with the ladies. We know he has a pattern of spending time with attractive women. The russians if they know that have leverage over him to get him to do what they want. Bloomberg is reporting now that mueller might delay any potential charges in the obstruction case. Also appears to be a strategic decision to ensure that his probe continues unimpeded. Mueller may calculate if he tries to bring charges in the obstruction part of the case, the case that may hit closest to trump witnesses may become uncooperative. In other parts of the probe or the president may move to shut it down all together. According to bloomberg, the obstruction case is close to completion and is featured on the firing of james comey, which happened, the president s role in drafting a misleading statement to explain a 2016 Campaign Meeting with the russians in trump tower. That was in june of that year, and the president s attempt to fire the special counsel himself last june. Jennifer, your thoughts about why they might go after collusion before obstruction. Well, i think that the reporting is sounds right to me that that obstruction investigation is largely wrapped up, except for talking to the president and the president s son. So they can kind of naught on the back burner. Those things are going to be delayed by negotiations anyway. I think if youre mueller, you want to continue to build credibility for your investigation because of the way the republican surrogates, devin nunes in particular have been attacking it. So if you can come out with the rest of your collusion investigation, if you can issue another indictment charging more russians and potentially americans with interfering with the state electoral processes, and if you can charge another group of people with hacking the democratic emails and disseminating those illegally, youre continuing to build the credibility of the investigation and showing the American People that this is real and its not going away. And that tells the house when the obstruction investigation and all of, that the report finally comes out, you better do something about this. I think were going get more into this later in the show. I got to tell you, i think people want to see the underlying crime before they focus on obstruction. Was there a crime being covered up . Thank you, Jennifer Rogers for your expertise. Mieke eoyang and ken dilanian. Trump gave a wild performance at a rick sacon rally. From tho this is so trumpian and so awful. Low iq. Thats what he said about a congresswoman. Its clear trump would rather keep the conversation on anything other than the russia probe or Stormy Daniels. Plus, just hours to go before tomorrows special election in pennsylvanias 18th district. The latest poll looks good for the democrat conor lastminute. His victory could be a big one in a district trump carried by 20 points just a year ago. Trump is showing, well, he is backing off. Now he is the one caving in to the nra by backing off a proposal to raise the minimum wage for purchasing an Assault Rifle from 18 to 21. He doesnt look strong. Finally, let me finish tonight with something truly wonderful that happened in american politics exactly 15 years ago today. And that is hardball today, where the action is. 50 years. You know what goes here. And your approval rating. Goes here. Test drive the ztrak z540r at your john deere dealer and learn why its not how fast you mow, its how well you mow fast. Nothing runs like a deere. 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