Under way on a wednesday night. Well, good evening once again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. Day 811 of the Trump Administration. Ar its a charge we have heard from the president , and from several people on fox news that the Trump Campaign was somehow spied upon by our government in a way that circumvented due process in this country. Today we heard our attorney general william barr make that same charge. It came during a hearing of the Senate Appropriations committee. One of the things i want to do is pull together all the information from the various investigations that have gone on, including on the hill and in the department, and see if there are any remaining questions to e be addressed. We want to make sure that during i think spying on a Political Campaign is a big deal. Im not talking about the fbi, necessarily, but intelligence agencies more broadly. So youre not suggesting, though, that spying occurred . I dont well, i guess you could i think spying did occur, yes. I i think spying did occur. Have you any evidence that there was anything improper in those investigations . 1wa i have no specific evidence that i would cite right now. That statement right there and some of barrs actions have left his critics with the notion that he views the president as his client and not the American People. Barrs comments were unexpected. Spying is a loaded word with legal ramifications, and noting that the attorney general chose to use that word, he was then given an opportunity to clarify his remarks. I want to give you a chance to rephrase something you said, because i think when the attorney general of the United States uses the word spying its rather provocative, and in my view, unnecessarily inflammatory. Unauthorized surveillance. I want to make sure there was no unauthorized surveillance. Is that more appropriate in your mind . Re this is your call. Not entirely clear what barr meant by either spying or unauthorized surveillance. He offered no evidence. But there has been speculation this may have been a reference to the case involving former Trump Campaign adviser carter page. The New York Times reminds us, quote, the fbi obtained a secret surveillance warrant on page after he left the campaign, and reports have suggested it used at least one confidential informer to collect information on campaign associates. And from the wall street journal, quote, the departments Inspector General is examining whether the fbi and federal prosecutors abused their authority in obtaining warrants from the nations secret spy court. The attorney generals testimony came about half an hour after the president took his own shots at the nearly twoyearold russia investigation. His comments seemed to serve as a preview to his attorney general. It was an illegal investigation. This was an attempted coup, this was an attempted takedown on a president. What im most interested in is Getting Started. Hopefully the attorney general, he mentioned it yesterday, hes doing a great job Getting Started on going back to the origins of exactly where this started. Trump added, quote, that he thinks barr is doing a great job. The attorney general has been on the job about eight weeks. Aaron blake of the Washington Post writes this about their relationship signs are increasing that barr is at least saying the kind of things trump wants to hear. They welcomed barrs comments about spying on the Trump Campaign. Congressman mark meadows, republican of north carolina, steadfast trump supporter, wrote, quote, weve seen two years of evidence that Intelligence Community executives did this. Vi the a. G. s willingness to investigate it is massive. Accountability is around the corner. Meanwhile, meadows fellow Party Members in the senate say they l have their own questions about the fellow inquiry. If you really believe Trumps Campaign was being infiltrated by russians, why didnt you telp him so he could do something about it . An and how could clinton get away with all of this and not have anything no charges at all . I want to know, did they have credible evidence . Were they in good faith in investigating secretary clinton and her campaign and in investigating President Trump and his campaign . Meanwhile, and as we mentioned, democrats had a different reaction to the a. G. s choice of words today. Let me just say how very, very dismaying and disappointing that the chief Law Enforcement i officer of our country is going off the rails yesterday and today. Im flabbergasted. When you start linking spying with Law Enforcement or the Intelligence Community, that sets off red flags everywhere. Lets bring in our leadoff panel on a wednesday night. Ff berit berger is back with us with the Eastern District of new york and the Southern District of new york. As tonight were happy to welcome her as an msnbc legal analyst. Geoff bennett, White House Correspondent for nbc news, Frank Figliuzzi for counterintelligence, and robert costa, moderator of Washington Week on pbs. Good evening and welcome to you all. Frank, given your experience, y tell us how easy or hard it is to get a fisa warrant, and could the work done under a fisa warrant be construed as spying in the name of that warrant . Brian, look, the performance of this attorney general over at the last two days has been t abysmal. What he did today by invoking the spying connotation is he flew what i would call a flash g ban grenade into the room. By that, anyone who has been associated or involved with tactical teams will know that a flash ban grenade is meant to disorient and distract with a flash of light and a loud noise, but its not made to take out personnel. What he did was throw in the flash band grenade into the room. He is falling in line with this president , and the notion that the fbi was somehow spying on a campaign when what it has proven to have done is lawfully investigate with predication allegations that the russians were involved with this campaign. The Inspector General has looked at this and reviewed it. Sp there has been ad nauseum review of this scenario, and we have an attorney general who seem to be serving as someone for the mob boss. En the last two days have disappointed me and left me with little hope that this attorney general is actually going to represent the play as opposed to represent the president. In all your time as a fed, how often did the word spying come up . Never. Its not how prosecutors talk, its not how agents talk. U nobody i ever worked with in the department of justice referred to what we were doing as spying. We referred to it as investigating. And theres a reason. Because spying sort of connates that you are operating outside of the bounds of the law. It has a negative connotation to it. The amount of Legal Process that it takes to actually intercept communications, to start some sort of a criminal investigation or a counterintelligence investigation its not spying its conducting lawful court authorizedul investigative techniques. Thats what we refer to them as, not spying. Hey, bennett, judging by the sound we heard, the republicansn are taking this back a step. Were back to the time of hillary clinton. The democrats are reacting with anger, and as you heard the speaker of the house, dismayed. Does that about get it right . You got it right. You hear democrats using all sorts of colorful train wreck em metaphors. C you heard nancy pelosi say this country has gone off the rails a given this performance by the attorney general. I think the most charitable interpretation of the attorney generals comments tonight come from people close to him who say he doesnt see much of a difference between the words spying and surveillance. Uc hes not invested so much in the surveillance itself so much as he wanted to make sure the fbi followed proper procedures. He says he has no evidence of improprieties. We know because congress has investigated this, as frank has pointed out. The gang of eight. Six of eight members of the gang of eight said on the record that when they were briefed about the findings of these en investigations, they said on the record that the fbi did nothing wrong. Trey gowdy, the former congressman, said theth fbi there was no improprieties. Two didnt say anything at all. Devin nunes and Mitch Mcconnell didnt say anything at all. So there was nothing to the president s claim that he was improperly spied upon. Re t william barr talks like sean hannity, and we thought what better than to hear what sean hannity has to say about it tonight . Well talk about it on the other side. Hagh President Trump was right ale along, we were right all along. They have no character, no ethics, no integrity. E the media, the democrats, they are so blinded by this hate, this rage, they are incapable of seeing the stone cold truth right before their eyes. S so, robert, i guess the question is the white house musr be happy with their guy. I yes, but the real story here, lets just pause for a moment and think about what were actually talking about. Its not just the political theater of what the attorney general did today on capitol hill. Its about the debate of the origin of the russia investigation. F Congressional Republicans and Congressional Democrats have a totally different view. Thats why sean hannity is saying what hes saying, thats why people on the program tonight have their perspective. It comes down to what how did george pop papadopoulos and carter page interact with different members who are associated with the u. S. Ag government at some level, such as a former cambridge professor stefan hopper . Those reactions are what devin nunez has been scrutinizing for months. The fbi maintains its acted in all proper ways since the origin of the russia investigation going back to george r papadopoulos conversation with the australian ambassador and the talk of the clinton emails. They have said from the beginning these fisa warrants are based on evidence, based on conduct. But carter page and George Papadopoulos talking constantly on television have said they felt almost trapped with how the government handled the investigation. Thats what the attorney generat was referencing today. Thats whats important. If hes seeing that as a legitimate argument, thats what hes pursuing. Thats why it matters. Hase Frank Figliuzzi, your reaction to that. I invite any scrutiny of Intelligence Agency operations. If the attorney general wants to occupy his time with that, lets bring it on and lets see what he finds. Hell be redundant unless he has completely gone over to the trump side. Then were going to get the truth out and the truth is going to upset him because we already know what it is. We have an attorney general that has 400 pages of evidence that he has yet to release and he has conceded he has no intention of fully releasing. But yet without one scintilla of evidence, he will use the word spying and imply that something was wrong with the origins of the special counsel inquiry. To me that sounds a lot like preparing the field for a battle. It sounds like, eventually this will all get out, but i can tel you, i think its tainted. Et thats what we saw today. Lets take roberts advice, take a step back. What is fisa . What does it stand for . Who gets to be a federal fisa judge . S how hard would it be for federal prosecutor berit berger to get a fisa warrant to surveil someone suspected of a crime. You think someone has connections of a foreign power,k that theyre being used as an on agent of a foreign power. You can start an intelligence investigation. There are special fisa courts. St there are judges assigned to sit on those courts and they rotate. For example, with respect to carter page, you have a fisa application. It isnt just signed by some prosecutor, it has to go to the up the chain in the department of justice. Rod rosenstein signed out of an at least one of the iterations of the fisa warrant that went before the court. Then you have to take it to the fisa court and have them sign off on this. E there are some circumstances where you can get an emergency fisa warrant without getting yo some of that process, but here t we know they did go through that process. Its not just something you can wake up and decide you start to surveil somebody. Su there are a lot of checks and balances, so thats why this e concept of calling it spying iso a volatile term, and its inaccurate. Vo thats not what it is. Its a valid, courtauthorized investigative technique that Law Enforcement and our intelligence communities do every day. There is nothing suspicious about it, and yes, obviously, if its used improperly, it should be scrutinized, but this is a regular technique thats used commonly, and if the procedures are followed, there is nothing wrong with it. An let me just take a second and remind our viewers what the ju president has had to say on this very topic in past months. A lot of people are saying they had spies in my campaign. If they had spies in my campaign, that would be a disgrace to this country. When i said there could be somebody spying on my campaign, a lot of things happened. It was like it went wild out there. They spied on me. They spied on our campaign. Who would think thats possible . Well, robert costa, here we are. The s word has now been uttered by the head Law Enforcement officer in our land who will next be heard from when he releases his redactions of the Mueller Report as americans hope he will be a steady hand and an honest broker. Like almost everyone involved in this discussion, from President Trump to the attorneyi general, this is, of course, loaded language to use language like spying, and thats why Congressional Democrats today came back to him and questioned him about that use of language. His role now constitutionally is to be an impartial broker of information when it comes to the Mueller Report. But the attorney general clearly is not someone who is just a republican, who served with george h. W. Bush in the early 90s, this is someone who has. W skepticism of prosecutors. Remember his history, his biography. He did not come out of the prosecutorial ranks. He was a chinese analyst. He was an intelligence analyst. He came into this job even as a former ag, as someone who is not immediately siding with the media who come from Law Enforcement with the prosecutors. En this has alarmed people in the Law Enforcement community because theyre not sure, what is he up to . Is he working in President Trumps interests, theyre wondering . Is he working whats his agenda . Thats created this whole situation now where everybodys on edge. I keep hearing the report is coming out next week. I look at the calendar and co congress is out of town next week. They are, in fact, they take a twoweek break starting next r week, and some of those members will not just be on recess, theyll be out of the country. We have democratic leadership who are blanking to go on kodels, governmentpaid for foreign trips. Republicans who are invested about learning more about the origins of this fbi probe, yes, they believe they have it right on the merits, but it also allows them politically to counterprogram against the democrats, against the democrats who are pushing to get the full unredacted report, against the democrats who are pushing to learn more about how white house handled security clearances, this tells them there was something that was not on the level in the Trump Campaign. If there are land mines in the redacted report this also allows the president to weaponize the findings and say that the fbi had it in for him all along. This being a consequential night, we have asked all of oure guests to stay with us a bit. Theyve all agreed. Coming up for us, what the attorney general had to say today about when the public wiln see this report and who may have already seen it. And later, a look back in time when the papers called the russians the soviets or perhaps the reds back when something they did scared a lot of folks in this country and spurred the u. S. To action. The 11th hour on this ti consequential wednesday night continues. The latest innovation from xfinity isnt just a store. Its a save more with a new kind of Wireless Network store. Its a look what your wifi can do now store. A get your questions answered by awesome experts store. Its a now theres one store that connects your life like never before store. The xfinity store is here. And its simple, easy, awesome. I look forward to seeing the report. Have a right to see the Mueller Report . I dont mind, frankly i told the house if you want let them see it. Ill leave it to the attorney general, but it wouldnt bother me at all. Today the attorney general told senators the Mueller Report would be released within a week. A slight change from yesterday when he said the report would be released within a week. At the end of the day, though, we just dont know when. Lawmakers also asked barr who else might know whats in that report. Who, if anyone, outside the Justice Department has s