President potentially has tonight caused more questions about his motivation by ending his Resignation Letter with the phase that pays, america first. As the 11th hour gets under way on a monday night. As we start a new week, good evening once again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. Day 830 of the trump administration. This may be a big shiny extraction, but after all things tonight, the attorney general is objecting to being questioned by a lawyer at a house hearing. He wants to be questioned by only members of the house Judiciary Committee. William barr has threatened to cancel his testimony. Then the house thursday. So far the Committee Chairman in the house, jerry nadler, democrat of new york, is not backing down. Its not up to the attorney general to tell the committee how to conduct its business. We will decide what the most effective way of asking questions are and thats what our decision is. Weve told them we expect him to show up on thursday and were going to conduct the inquiry as we said we would. The Justice Department told nbc news tonight, quote, the attorney general agreed to appear before congress, therefore, members of congress should be the ones doing the questioning. Tonight the New York Times reports nadler plans to have the full Judiciary Committee vote wednesday on whether to have counsel question barr. The committees Top Republican says he doubts the democrats motives. I think the democrats are actually wanting this both ways. They want it to be oversight and good investigation. But really what theyre trying to do adding this extra hour is theyre trying to make it like an impeachment hearing. Theres nothing new here. You may recall the senate Judiciary Committee republicans used a similar format to question Christine Blasey ford during the kavanaugh hearings. They brought in an outside lawyer from arizona. Committee lawyers were also famously used during watergate and irancontra hearings. Neal katyal says that precedent could weaken barrs argument. I think he is legally obligated. I think if nadler goes to court, he will undoubtedly win. Meanwhile, Rod Rosenstein is done. Just today he announced may 11th will be his last day at the Justice Department. In his Resignation Letter, rosenstein praised the president who so often criticized him, who once retweeted an image depicting rosenstein and others jailed for treason. The president , who drivesly referred to mr. Rosenstein as mr. Peepers, but all is well according to his farewell letter, and we quote, i am grateful for you for the opportunity to serve, for the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations and for the goals you set in your inaugural address, patriotism, education, and procesperity. He wrote the elections are more secure and our citizens are better informed about covert foreign influence efforts. For good measure, and to keep people guessing about his motives, he ends the letter with the words america first. But about that last point we made. Tonight the Washington Post reports theres a disconnect between an Intelligence Community trying to do their job and prepare for russian interference, which we know is coming in our 2020 elections, and a white house that appears to be downplaying the risk. One of the authorize of the post report will be here to talk about it in just a moment. Tomorrow, trump will be face to face with Democratic Leaders nancy pelosi and Chuck Schumer at a white house meeting on, wait for it, infrastructure. The preside the president spent time today attacking joe biden. The Washington Post reports trumps social media posts have helped him surpass that magic 10,000 mark in the papers count of ongoing false and misleading claims from the president. This afternoon during his first rally as a candidate for his part, joe biden of pennsylvania referred to trumps credibility. Everybody knows who donald trump is. We democrats, we independents who had the same view have to choose hope over fear. Unity over division, and most importantly, truth over lies. Which brings us to our leadoff discussion, three of the best, ashley parker, White House Reporter for the Washington Post, robert costa, and moderate of washingtonweek on parttime job, peter baker, the ageless White House Correspondent for the New York Times. Peter, you get to go first because of a story in your paper tonight that was just handed to us before we came on the air. Broad strokes of it is the president and his eldest children have filed federal lawsuit against Deutsche Bank and capital one to prevent those companies from cooperating with subpoenas and coming forth with his financial records. People may ask we know about bochy bank, why capital one . Capital one is where he has his personal checking account, giving new meaning to whats in your wallet . What do you know about the story that can fill in the blanks . The president has openly said hes going to resist all subpoenas from congress from the House Democrats at the very least, and hes been taking this on on multiple fronts. He doesnt control those institutions. He didnt decide for them whether they should comply with subpoenas by congress and those institutions are reluctant, of course, to get on the bad side of a congressional subpoena. That has legal implications and has other implications as well. So hes trying to force strong arm the institutions hes done business with to stick with him as opposed to congress. Its hard to see how a judge rules on that. We havent seen this kind of thing very often in the past. But the argument that they have made is that this is just political. Well, congress is political, and it seems to me its hard to see a judge saying hes going to step in or shes going to step into a political process and declare something is political, therefore, its ill legitimate i was there for that interview. It was talking about Robert Mueller at the time. Now were talking about congress in effect in the same scenario. What happens if investigators go beyond the russia collusion brief . What happens if they go beyond the immediate mandate that Robert Mueller was given to look at what happened in the 2016 election. He said that would, in fact, cross a red line. But hes declared a much broader red line when it comes to the House Democrats. Hes saying he wont answer questions or allow people to provide documents, even on things that were already testified to with Robert Mueller. Hes saying we give the office if mueller already investigated, why should the House Democrats repeat that effort. Its all political and partisan and he has an audience of supports that are representative to that argument. Ashley parker, you look at tomorrows white house schedule and it looks like a normal white house. Hes having last years nascar champion to the white house as president s often do. Theyre having an event on infrastructure which still become kind of a gag line on broadcasts like this one. Except for that, alex is there any other discernible focus of this administration beyond what we see from the president himself in the story line on social media . Not really. I mean, the president the thing about twitter is twitter is a realtime insight into what this president is thinking at any given moment. And so, yes, the joke is always the infrastructure goes off the rails. Chuck and nancy will be going there to push an infrastructure plan, and it will be interesting to see what the president does. Of course we can look at his twitter feed and see whats top of mind. Theres a wold in which he sets aside the combativeness with House Democrats and senate democrats, frankly, and says this is one of these barnett areas where we can make a deal. And there is an equal world where topics on social media, his preoccupation with joe biden, his frustration over immigration, his frustration and also alleged vindication for the Mueller Probe are what he calls news cameras in and talks to these democrats about. Everything on social media colors what hes thinking. Bob costa, take on any of it. Were we right to question barrs agreement with democrats . He may have had every intention of participating in the hearing . Lets come back to the Deutsche Bank story, a Big Development tonight. You have to step back and think about the chess match thats going on between the white house and House Democrats. House democrats know that secretary Steve Mnuchin over there at the Treasury Department in essence defending the president s tax returns from richie neil, the chairman of the ways and means committee. How do they go after the president s finances knowing that Robert Mueller did not reveal, if anything, much at all in his report about the president s finances. They go to the banks. Theyre trying to pressure Deutsche Bank and others to cooperate. And the banks tonight in their statements dont seem to be backing off working with congress because they want to have that relationship with capitol hill. And so this is the president pushing back trying to protect his own financial information. But congress believes they need to learn more about where the president s finances are around the world, where he has different ownership stakes, and theyre going to continue to paint that picture. Maxine waters and adam schiff came out with a strong statement tonight theyre not going to back down. We all seem to believe that Congress Power in this area is just south of unfettered. Yes. And that is sort of what the president is challenging them on. Since he took office, he is chipping away all these checks and balances we traditionally think of of how government works. So he is sort of in a way calling their bluff and saying you can subpoena us and were going to fight that. Again, im not a lawyer, but maybe very hard to win that in court, but the truth is he can delay and he can postponement and he can make it incredibly difficult and some of these things may end up in the kourtsz and not adjudicated until potentially after the 2020 election. Hes also creating a situation where the democrats are going to say, look, the president is, again, abusing his power, he is again trying to obstruct justice, that then creates a real dilemma for the democrats, some of whom dont have the appetite to call for impeachment, and others whabz wait a minute, it all not politically by the best thing to do, but we have no choice but to act. So hes pushing the democrats into a pretty delicate and difficult situation for them to navigate. Peter, that sets up a question to you on optics. How does it look, that a sitting president and his Adult Children who are kind of halfway running the company while hes otherwise preoccupied are suing to keep papers private because they may speak to something fundamental. If they choose the right or wrong classically trained constitutional lawyer turned federal judge in this thing, that lawyer, him or her, could blow this out the backdoor of the courtroom based on articles of the constitution, constitutional argument. Im not a lawyer either, just to be clear, although i have heard today, for instance, from a conservative lawyer who explained his argument for why this is an abuse of power by the House Democrats. The idea is that congress should have a more legitimate purpose in looking after these kinds of records since they have not actually declared explicitly theyre having an impeachment inquiry, they cant have one sub rosa and act as if they were. Im not a lawyer, but i think youre right in terms of optics. We have this dual reality. People who are suspicious of donald trump are going to look at a move like this and say what is he hiding . Hes stone walling a legitimate request by congress. People on his side will be representative to the argument that hes making that these people wont let go. They had two years of mueller, mueller didnt find anything according to the way the president is portraying it, and, therefore, its just partisan attempts to bring him down. So i think people are locked into these positions right now and it will be interest to see what might shake people out of them. But for the moment it would be good to look through that lens. How do i put this gently, peter and i are old enough to remember a guy named Fred Thompson who really became a figure in washington as republican counsel during watergate for his questioning on behalf of his half of the committee during those televised hearings. It led to a prosperous career in the senate a run or two for the presidency and toward the end of his life, reverse mortgage commercialsme commercials. But this is done all the time. The a. G. Cant argue with a straight face that staff dont participate it or in some cases lead questioning on hill hearings. Your memory is spot on. History has shown, brian, that staff and Committee Lawyers often ask questions. This is part of on administration, including the attorney general who who when you talk to top House Democrats, they say they dont feel theres any sort of cooperation coming from the department of justice, from the trump side, from the political appointies, and theyre very frustrated. But the attorney general has taken a hard line so far in his dealings with congress. Everything is done on attorney general barrs time line. Whenever Congress Makes a demand, whether its chairman nadler or chairman schiff, it appears to be pushed back by the attorney general. You can bet when you talk to the democrats on capitol hill, theyre very appalled by this behavior by the attorney general. Yet they havent come up with a solution, brian, on how to actually make sure their lawyers, their own prosecutors of sorts politically are going to be on those front lines because the attorney general continues to threaten to not show up. Ashley parker, lets channel our mutual friend Chris Matthews and play a little hardball politics here. And thats joe biden. It was kind of clear today watching the biden event, two guys who share a generation, joe biden went right at donald trump in two ways. He said in effect the road to the white house goes right through here. He mentioned western pennsylvania and included the whole state wisely, and then he also took a poll of the crowd, how many of you benefited from the tax bill . I didnt think so. No one did because as he pointed out, it was for the top 1 . Were starting to see even though were eight months from the first primary, were starting to see why trump seems completely preoccupied on social media about just one democrat. We sure are. Were seeing bidens strategy which is to leapfrog over his democratic competitors by pretending they dont exist and go into a general election fight with the president. And were seeing a president who is kind of happily taking the bait. I was talking to Campaign Adviser the other day who is it makes sense, the president views the campaign and biden as the biggest threat, and also the president as we know is a Large Consumer of cable news. Biden is leading the news cycles and the president cares about polls. Trump cease that and he wants to take biden down and kbaengage h. This goes against the Campaign Strategy which is not to name the candidates and paint them with this broad socialist brush. You have the president who is eagerly spoiling for a fight with joe biden. Three of the biggest names from the bilines that weve been closely covering these past few years, ashley parker, robert costa, peter baker, our thanks for starting off our broadcast. Coming up for us tonight, the controversial word that was related to by the dutiful attorney general before we even saw the Mueller Report come out. What the special counsel himself had to say about that word inside his document. Later, since the russians are already here, how prepared are we for their next attack into our next president ial election, especially knowing our president called their last mission a hoax . The 11th hour is just Getting Started on a monday night. Theyre americas biopharmaceutical researchers. Pursuing lifechanging cures in a country that fosters innovation here, they find breakthroughs. Like a way to fight cancer by arming a patients own tcells. Because its not just about the next breakthrough. Its all the ones after that. This simple banana peel represents a bold idea a way to create energy from household trash. It not only saves about 80 in carbon emissions. It helps reduce landfill waste. 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