Country and everyone knows it. Unleashed and unchecked. President trump lashing out during in the oval office this afternoon seeking the impeachment payback. Welcome to wednesday. It is meet the press daily and how the president celebrated day after the New Hampshire primary. Im chuck todd back in washington after being in the Granite State where the divisions were on full display. Well get to delegates. Thats later in the hour. We begin tonight with the man democrats looking to defeat in november, President Trump. In the weeks since being acquitted by the senate of charge that is he abused the power of his Office President trump appears to be using that power with an assist from his Justice Department to exact revenge on some perceived political enemies and try to rescue some perceived political loyal is. The President Trump defended the Justice Departments decision to suddenly intervene in a case of long time confidant stone. He was treated very badly. Nine years recommended by four people that perhaps they were mueller people. I dont know who they were. Prosecutors. And they i dont know what happened. They all hit the road pretty quickly. If you look at the Mueller Investigation, it was a scam, illegal set up. Set up based on false documentation. You look at what happened, how many people hurt, their lives were destroyed and Nothing Happened with the people that did it. Its a scam. The fact is that roger stone was treated horribly and many other people, the lives were destroyed. Obviously the president leaves out that none of the people cooperated with subpoenas, none of the people most of the people essentially tried to lie or obstruct any investigation. All that part left out, of course. Thats a week of impeachment revenge for President Trump. Colonel vindman was ousted from the National Security council. Ambassador sondland recalled. Both impeachment witnesses and the sondland thing done publicly on purpose. A former u. S. Attorney saw her nomination for a highranking treasury post withdrawn. Attorney general bill barr acknowledges that the Justice Department is created something hes called an intake process to vet information Rudy Giuliani has gathered on the bidens that apparently courtesy perhaps from russian intelligence believe it or not that somehow the Justice Departments going to deal with. There could be more to come. According to the New York Times peter baker, theres a key National Council and career officials transferred out may be gone by the end of the week. Senate republicans said they hoped that President Trump learned a lesson of impeachment. Obviously everybody perceives Lessons Learned different ways. He did learn a lesson. Perhaps not the lesson Susan Collins wanted him to learn. What message did you learn from the impeachment . That the democrats are crooked, theyve got a lot of crooked things going, theyre vicious and shouldnt have brought impeachment. With me now, our own Kelly Odonnell at the white house, ken dilanian at the Justice Department for nbc news. Kelly, let me start with you. None of the president s comments are a surprise. I guess the surprise is how comfortable he is while he doesnt directly say it, he implies that, yes indeed, he did intervene in this. Reporter he denies any direct conversation with bill barr, for example, but by virtue of being asked and responding, you could argue that that in and of itself is a form of intervention, he had tweeted about it and makes clear he has strong feelings on this. We saw other president s confronted with an Ongoing Investigation back away and not want to even give the appearance of getting involved. That was not the tone here. An of course, we could see from the president s body language, the words, the potency of what he had to say that there was a lot of simmering anger and frustration there and while others have looked at the outcome of impeachment and the russia matter and that and would assume that the president chastened or changed, he was not reflective about his own conduct as you saw. That was one more opportunity to swing at democrats and accuse them of being responsible. Also no mention of the fact that roger stone faced a jury and a jury found him guilty on seven counts an we have seen in the past at times when president s have commuted a sentence or pardoned someone they considered the fact that a jury went through that process. No mention of that here. He was asked, chuck, again if he had any plans to do any pardoning in this instance. He said he didnt want to discuss that yet leaving that door open. Kelly, i am curious, i know you have probably asked the questions to different advisers. We know he is not getting advice to do this. The advice i assume hes given is do the exact opposite. You won. Dont act like you lost. Reporter its an interesting issue because there were allies who believe that having gotten through the Mueller Investigation, the russia investigation, without any real criminal vulnerability for the president , without having the impeachment remove him from office, that those are things, how difficult they were politically, personally, he describes his family in pan and some of the same brash and bold behavior that was in many ways part of those other instances seems to have been unleashed in some ways. You could argue that the president feels that he is beyond the reach of these investigations or that he has convinced himself and his supporters that the roots of those investigations were flawed. Thats what hes saying time and time again and now feels he has the ability to try to take out anyone who was a part of that. That seems to be at least some explanation for why there is what some are calling a purge. Ken, there is just like its state department and the Justice Department, you have a real sort of robust nonpolitical group of people, the career folks, and then you have the political folks. I got to think the tension between career and political at justice is probably worse than it is at state right now. I think youre right. I was even told by a source of talk of a protest today at the Justice Department of a walkout but my source said they urged people not to do that because it was essentially placing a target on their back and identifying themselves as somebody for the trump people to be concerned. President trump and william barr both saying they didnt confer about this decision to pull back on the sentencing recommendation but my reporting is they didnt have to because barr had installed a loyalist as u. S. Attorney. As you said, he pushed out the existing attorney. He was supervising this case. They put in timothy shea and im told raised questions about the sentencing guideline. The line prosecutors rebelled and filed the document but barr and his minions at the Justice Department werent having it and they dont have to tell tim shea to make the changes. He knows where the president is on this and the president by criticizing this roger stone conviction, what he is saying there is any of these convictions and that flowed from the mueller case are invalid. The question is does william barr the attorney general of the United States believe that . He s he acting on that to essentially lessen the damage to the defendants . Jerry nadler claims that bill barr will testify at the end of march. Barr is duck congressional testimony, hasnt he . 100 . Look, if he does testify thats incredible fireworks because he will be asked about any number of these things. You know, i mean, putting him under oath to talk about the just the mueller letter, for example, his letter mischaracterizing the mueller report, so many actions hes taken appearing to benefit the president and compromise the Justice Department. You know . Supposed to show up to the Committee Hearings. Call me a bit skeptical if it does happen. You should be. Kelly, ken, thank you both. With me is senator sheldon whi whitehouse. Senator whitehouse, given what has happened over the last two weeks and given, frankly, whatever we want to say, the legislative branch is lessened in the eyes of the president , what can you do . Well, i think that the American Public is still out there and the house still has oversight power and subpoena authority. I think on our side in the senate it is unlikely the chairman wants to cross President Trump or put any of trumps cabinet into the line of fire or under oath in a Committee Hearing where theyd have to testify truthfully so i think the senates not a place for much action here but the house still has a job to do and the tools to do its job so it ability over for these guys after the stunts they have pulled. Look. If a career Justice Department official came to you and said, what do i do . Im seeing this. But i got to protect my job. Im worried about going to the Inspector General. It feels as if you heard our reporting from ken dilanian. Talk of a protest and fear to self identify. Youd get a Scarlet Letter of some sort. It is insane that im asking the question but how were here. What do you do if youre at justice . One way to do it is just keep your head down and do your job. If youre seeing things really wrong, you can do what whistleblowers did at epa and we got rid of him based on whistleblower information in our committee. I think you will see over under pompeo at the state department a lot of brewing resentiment and rebellion so that the political work is done by secretary pompeo and here at the Justice Department which should never be this way, we are seeing the firewalls that protect prosecutions from political influence from being completely overridden by this administration. And when it gets to the point where youre through the protections about going to career staff turning in the badges because theyre so offended, thats a really loud alarm bell that america should attend to. Are we at the point where we cannot trust a political appointee to be in charge of justice . Do you think we have to change the way we do this . Create a cia, fbi, Federal Reserve approach to appointments for attorney general . Figure out some distance from the executive branch of some sort . Well, so far you have the Inspector General and they have done a pretty good job. You have got the office of professional responsibility which has not accomplished much but still there and in theory mostly independent. You have the career staff who are in a position to blow the whistle on things that they think are wrong so id want to let it play out further before i start suggesting other changes. You have to remember the department of justice has been there for decades and since attorney general mitchell and the Nixon Administration has by and large done a pretty good job. When karl rove and w. Bush started to mesh with it all ble their face and led to attorney general gonzalez being fired basically. Forced to resign. So i think its too early in the game to say that the department of justice cant heal thyself but certainly the administration of attorney general barr is a serious problem for the ethics an the integrity for the department of justice. Will you believe any criminal charges that are brought against james comey and Andrew Mccabe . Youd need to take a very, very close look because theyre clearly in the realm of political targeting. And so much time has gone by. All right. I know thats what you think and thats what maybe a lot of the public would think. But what if whats there to by defendants in the criminal proceedings that could reveal a lot of documents that show that these were ginned up criminal prosecutions, cooked up in the White House Councils office or imaginations of donald trump. And then ultimately, a judge who has Supervisory Authority over the judges that proceeded before them and it would not surprise me if some of the cases if the worst began to come true, attract the attention of federal judges watching things being done wrong in the courtrooms. If you had one on one time with bill barr and he gave you some rational explanation for his behavior, could you give him the benefit of the doubt . Not any longer. I think he should go. I dont think he can credibly lead the department of justice after episode after episode after episode. The flynn reinnocencing debacle going on right now. This episode with roger stone causing career people to abandon ship. The phony antitrust investigation they launched against the Car Companies that they have since had to withdraw. Over and over you see political errands run by the department of justice and the guise of enforcement. Thats just wrong. Nothing he can do or say now badly wrong. Nothing he can do or say now in your eyes that shouldnt lead to resignation at this point . Saul had an epiphany on the road to damascus so maybe its possible but he has a record thats at this point pretty impossible to defend in terms of him as a standard bearer for the ethics and integrity of the department of justice. Senator whitehouse, you always have an intriguing sense of humor. I hope the viewers appreciate it as much as i do. Thank you very much. Thank you. Up ahead, a closer look at the fallout of the Justice Department. We have a couple of legal experts who have served under both democratic and republican president s. Thats next. Later, fresh off a New Hampshire win. Does that really make Bernie Sanders the frontrunner . Well debate that later in the show. Give me your hand i can save you. Lots of money with Liberty Mutual we customize your Car Insurance so you only pay for what you need only pay for what you need. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. 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Roger stone s convicted of one count ofic obstructing, five counts of making false statements to congress and one count of witness tampering. A jury convicted him there. John, especially on the issue of witness tampering, you prosecutors dont like that. Right . That is another level of whoa, whoa, whoa. One thing you lied but another thing to get somebody else to lie to us, too, right . T to be clear, i spent four yearsur in the Justice Departme in the Criminal Division and coordinated our cases, i wasnt so much doing i the prosecution but absolutely right. We dont like witness tampering. The real concern here, though, is the president then trying to interfere with the ultimate charges. Barbara mcquaide, would you have asked for seven to nine . Yes. You know, in the Eastern District of michigan where i practiced, the presumptionive sentence is sentencing guidelines. There is a manualen to calculat thean guidelines. There was enhancements for threatening physical harm of a witnessys and causing interferee in the investigation. As a result of roger stones false testimony and lies and tampering, he kept documents and witnesses away from the Congressional Committee so under thosel guidelines, the calculation is sevengu to nine years and see no factors. In addition, as he awaited trial roger stoneri did all kinds of judges gag order including hosting an gun. So, ben, why do you think that barr, has gone this far . Because in some ways barr actuallyys i feel like until no haske actually tried to trie to walk a t line here. On this one he is not walking the line. He is diving right in. So he did what he knew the president wanted. Whether he did that because he saw a tweet or whether he did it because he intuited before it, the first question you have to ask is, why is the attorney general of the quite weighing in on what should be in a sentencing memo from the u. S. Attorneys office . Right . This is the kind of thing that doesnt how low level . Not supposed to get to him . Think how many of those memos get filed every year. Barb, how many of your sentencing memos were personally reviewed by the attorney general . Yeah, probably, you know, in a given year, zero to one. Yeah. Zero to o