i also have if our something i've been working on with our team here. it's a special report tonight on how donald trump's own employees, including some of his self-declared fixers, are now key in his impeachment probe and why democrats say it's that evidence from these people that has donald trump on the run like never before. it's a big deep dive that we've been working on. we have that tonight. and as if that wasn't enough, i have something even bigger. my colleague, rachel maddow, is here. she's live. she's talking all about the news, reactions to what we're learning today, and of course reporting from her new book, which also touches on ukraine. so all of that's in the show. but we begin with the action on the impeachment probe against donald trump. hearing from key witnesses another new person says they will testify and what looks like a stone wall cracking as that ukraine scandal engulfs donald trump's presidency. a fourth giuliani associate arrested this morning, taken into federal custody at jfk airport by the fbi. the man you see is linked to the other ukrainian businessmen who have those ties to giuliani indicted. all four due in court tomorrow. now, cnn is reporting the criminal probe of giuliani also now includes, according to cnn's reporting, what they call counterintelligence concerns. now, that's a big deal. because it could mean there are national security implications to all of this. and it also means potential charges. donald trump seemed to turn on giuliani, then he seemed to embrace him this weekend. and just on cue, here he is, distancing himself from him today. >> rudy was seeking out corruption. and i think there's nothing wrong with seeking out corruption. >> did rudy register as a foreign lobbyist? >> i don't know what he did. i don't know. that's up to him. that you have to ask -- excuse me, no. you have to ask rudy those questions. don't ask me. >> "you have to ask rudy." anyone who's been a lawyer for donald trump knows that's not the greatest sign. meanwhile, democrats are asking mike pompeo's former adviser about what was an abrupt resignation, suspicious given everything that's going on. and that individual, his name is michael mckinley, is testifying that he saw this plot, these politics as undercutting his foreign policy obligations and he resigned over the ousting, which rudy giuliani and others had pushed for, of the u.s. ambassador to ukraine in the trump administration. meanwhile, the person who took over as acting ambassador to ukraine, bill taylor, is on his way to testify. he is another key witness. remember, there's a lot of names here, but he is the one where if you don't remember his name, i bet you remember his text exchange, because he talked to donald trump's hand-picked ambassador to the eu, gordon sondland. mr. taylor is the one who wrote, quote, it is crazy to withhold financial assistance. speaker pelosi just described a potential, what she sees as a kind of a meltdown today after the united states house passed this resolution condemning the president's decision to withdraw from syria. >> go ahead. >> witness on the part of the president was a meltdown. sad to say. >> he was insulting. particularly to the speaker. she kept her cool completely. but he called her a third-rate politician. this was not a dialogue. it was sort of a diatribe. a nasty diatribe. >> i'm joined now by matt miller, who worked at the doj during the obama and holder administration. maya wiley, from sdny, and the daily beast's betsy woodruff-swan. good evening, everyone. matt, given all the inner branch interplay and something you've dealt with when sometimes agencies have reasons they push people from testifying or how they testify, what do you see here in what is widely being described as a stonewall crumbli crumbling? >> i think the most important thing that's happened over the past week is that we've seen that there are a number of people from the administration who have decided to put either patriotism or self-interest over protecting donald trump. and look, people come forward for different motives. i think there are some people, bill taylor is probably going to be one of them, who will be ordered by the administration not to testify, who don't care. george kent yesterday, the state department official came and testified despite a state department directive not to do so. and i think both of them will do so, because what they saw inside the administration, they very much disagree with, and they see it as their patriotic duty to come forward. and i think there are other people, kurt volcker is one of them, george sondland is another, who see themselves as being fingered as having key liability in this plot. as being part of the people who are trying to carry out the president's corruption wi ee's . and they want to get in and tell their side of the story to make sure that when this story is written, they are not the fall guy for donald trump. >> yeah, you talk about the fall people. betsy, what we see here is, to the extent the idea was to keep this plot under wraps, it was actually too widespread. too, perhaps, i don't want to say sophisticate, but it had too many moving parts to keep it under wraps. and now a lot of these people are saying, hey, i've got to tell the story. from matt's point, i want to read from some of his reporting, because there are so many different strands tonight. the former adviser and ambassador, fiona hill, talking about mr. sondland, who was initially quoting and kind of defending, allegedly, the trump view of this. and she says, look. sondland, she saw, as a national security risk, describing him, the trump donor-turned ambassador, as metaphorically driving in an unfamiliar place with no guard rails and no gps, betsy. >> that's right. and part of the reason that this is seen so widely throughout the trump administration is that rudy giuliani's influence project was wide ranging. he wasn't just reaching out to the president, but to folks throughout government. and everyone who he talked to about this particular undertaking is now, whether they like it or not, wrapped up in this investigation. and part of the reason that we're seeing so many of these folks come forward, including people like sondland, who have been political allies of the president, is that they're having to think, you know, for perhaps the first time in this administration, about life after trump. and they're raelealizing this in historic moment. >> so take us through your point, there are all of these diplomats. some of them are just career people, which means we expect them to do their level best. some of them, like mr. sondland has a diplomatic job, like ambassador, but you're saying he's a trump guy and he's turning? >> what we know about sondland is he made a very generous contribution to trump's inaugural fund. i believe it was a $1 million donation. and he's someone who came into the state department without foreign policy experience. the fact that he, to an extent, is pushing back against the administration's direction in order, according to our reports, and based on what, you know, members of congress think right now, in order to testify as part of this inquiry indicates that for him, in this moment, being on the record, even if it's behind closed doors to these impeachment investigators, is more important than staying in president trump's good graces. and that's part of this shift that a lot of these folks are having, where they have to think about what is life after trump going to be like, and whether they like it or not, what is history's view of them going to be? >> well, and that's a high-level statement you're making, but i don't think you're being at all dramatic, maya. we are talking about people who, again, take a step back, and not pre-judging what we'll learn from the probe. some of these are people who like the folks you've worked with at the southern district, give years or decades to public service. they are not the ones jumping in front of tv cameras, they're not the ones giving the first statement. i have mentioned on this show before, our review of a lot of these folks is, they err on the side of caution, not testifying if they can honor a legitimate request. but some of them are saying, these aren't legitimate requests, there is a crime fraud exception in most of the privilege issues. and it's time to go into congress, even if it means they might not get another term in any republican administration, even a quote/unquote more traditional one. >> absolutely. i think there comes a time in every public servant's career where they have to choose between the law and the constitution and what they took the job to do versus currying political favor. and for most of them, it sounds like, and this was true for fiona hill as well, that they did the best they could with what the job was and what the circumstances were. were seriously troubled by it, as we know from the whistle-blower, went through the proper channels to lodge and register those concerns. they didn't go outside of channels. >> they didn't leak, to your point. >> they didn't leak, they did what was obligated of them to do. and, you know, part of the problem here is public servants should not be punished for doing what they're supposed to do, which is serve the public interest. >> yeah. when you think about that, matt, take a listen to joe biden, who figures into this in more than one way, as we all know, talking about what he views as a thug operation. >> rudy giuliani, the president, and his thugs have already proven that they, in fact, are flat lying. what we have to do now is focus on donald trump. i've released 21 years of my tax returns. even richard nixon released his tax returns. mr. president, release your tax returns or shut up. >> matt? >> i think the former vice president is getting at two very important points there. one is the really -- the word he used is "thug," thuggish way that the president has run the government to try to take every instrument of government power and use it not to serve america's best interests, but his own personal political interests, something we've not seen from a president really since richard nixon, at least in this scope. and the second is just the blatant hypocrisy coming from the white house, where you hear the white house, you know, accusing the former vice president of being corrupt. accusing his son of trying to profit from the -- from the fact that his -- that his dad was the vice president. when you have trump personally profiting from his time in office, you know, because he hasn't divested his own interest and his son is going around and signing deals in foreign countries after the president saying he wouldn't do that as long as he was president. so i think you see the vice president making two of those very important points and i think he's right to do that. >> betsy and maya, with the little time we have left, i would like both of you to speak to, what are the most important remaining questions for these witnesses. because before you know it, it's thanksgiving, and the congress has to decide when it can, if it wants to be legitimate and fair, that they have enough evidence that they're either going to go or not go when it comes to articles of impeachment. first to betsy. >> one really important question is whether the state department issued any threats to current state department officials about whether or not they would face repercussion is if they testifi. of course, we don't know that that happened. but if it did and any of these folks have concerns about losing any of their pensions or salaries, that would be really significant. that's something i expect investigators to be asking and to keep an eye out for. >> and i think the question of, what did trump know? what conversations, if any, are people aware that happened with donald trump himself. i think there really is enough already that congress could vote articles of impeachment today. but that question is an important one for the american public. >> it's really striking, because it has come so fast and there's so much going on, perhaps a thing we say a lot around here, but it is very unusual to have this many senior people, advisers to the president, diplomats, and the national security adviser, at least according to other people's quoting of him, all weighing in in short order about this plot. betsy woodruff, maya miller, betsy woodruff swan, i should say. thanks so much to each of you. appreciate it. we have a lot to have get to tonight. coming up, my special report is next on the trump fixers and the witnesses and why they are crucial to understanding where impeachment is headed. that's the special report i told you about. it's right after this break. later, new reporting on how trump's chief of staff is, quote, substantially implicated in the ukraine plot. and as promised and we are proud about it, rachel maddow live on "the beat" tonight on a whole lot of news. and her book. i'm ari melber. you're watching "the beat" on msnbc. 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corrupt agenda targeting trump's rivals and putting his business interests above the united states. now, remember, when trump first won in 2016, giuliani was gunning for the actual secretary of state job. he was shuttling to trump tower and netting headlines, from the ap to fox news, claiming he was trump's favorite for the job. >> john would be a very good choice. >> is there anybody better? >> maybe me, i don't know. >> talking about john bolton. but giuliani didn't get that job or any cabinet post. that doesn't mean, though, that he stopped working for trump. he just began to do it in a very important way for where the story is going. giuliani worked as an adviser and a lawyer and a pundit. we all know about those roles. but there's more to it than that. this is key. whatever anyone thinks of giuliani's tv appearances, they're not criminal. that's not why he's under investigation tonight. whatever you think of his legal advocacy in the russia probe, it's not criminal. mueller indicted many people, including a lawyer, but not giuliani. no, the question facing giuliani now is if he acted as if not just a shadow diplomat, but as a bag man, a fixer, someone willing to do what real diplomats and real lawyers are supposed to do. the dirty work. and the evidence shows that donald trump has pressed dirty work on his employees as part of his operation. he pushes him to do it. and if or when they resist, he goes ahead and finds people outside the given organization or chain of command, whether that organization is his company or now, of course, the government, and he pushes those people to still go get what he wants, to do the dirty work. and this is important now, not just as some kind of criticism, but because it speaks to both strands of this ukraine plot and the mounting impeachment evidence. the pushing for dirty work propelled trump's career. it can be effective. it's also uncorked more witnesses and whistle-blowers and now-corroborating insider accounts against trump than most politicians face in a lifetime. here's exactly how it works. some people get orders for dirty work from trump. and they stand by him. think corey lewandowski getting requests to obstruct the mueller probe and endlessly defending trump. others do the dirty work, but ultimately may still turn. think michael cohen. and some people begin resisting immediately. the congress now is starting to hear from the people in those second two camps. the diplomats are just the latest examples. several rejecting the dirty work requests, however they came down from trump or his shadow associates. this problem has now hit each of mr. trump's most famous lawyers. his first favorite, rio cohn, was indicted three times and disbarred in 1986. michael cohen, of course, in jail now on a campaign finance crime literally commit for trump's election. giuliani under investigation while his associates are under arrest. back in the '80s, trump told people about his scary fixer, roy cohn. >> donald trump said if someone threatens me, i would go to roy cohn, it scares the hell out of them and they back off. so roy cohn is a weapon for me. >> when trump thought his attorney general and government lawyers failed to control the mueller probe, "the new york times" reports he erupted in anger over jeff sessions not protecting him and asked, where's my roy cohn? chilling. trump wanted someone to do his dirty work inside the white house. and thanks to mueller's investigation, we know when his own government staff refused the dirty work, they didn't want to do it, so then he went outside to outsource the dirty work. you could call that a shadow justice policy the way people are saying shadow foreign policy right now. bob mueller called it, quote, substantial evidence of obstruction. trump asked advisers like mr. lewandowski and dearborn to do what government lawyers would not. press mr. sessions to try to take over the whole mueller probe. >> he dictated to you exactly what he wanted you to put into the mouth of attorney general jeff sessions, correct? >> i believe he asked me to deliver a message for jeff to consider delivering himself. >> "asked." but lewandowski says he took the orders and didn't complete them. even he knew that dirty work was too far, which makes him more careful than his former colleague who is now incarcerated. mr. cohen admitting he committed crime to benefit individual number one, donald trump. and that's why it's moved from going to prison and before he did that blowing the whistle on trump. >> there's more to us than just a boss. he's a mentor, he's a sage. he's like family. trump is a con man. mr. trump is a cheat. i have fixed things, but i am no longer your fixer, mr. trump. >> that testimony called out all kinds of trump actions. you remember it. but that is not what pushed speaker pelosi over the line on this impeachment quest. and that brings me to the third category as we think this through, the people who work for trump, but resist the calls for dirty work, be they his like-minded ideologues or be their civil servants. this is the whole enchilada. their testimony is devastating because it combines eyewitness credibility with professional credibility. people who say they rejected the dirty work and ultimately spoke out. >> a whistle-blower had apparently come forward from inside the intelligence community with an urgent and credible complaint. it involves president trump's communications with a foreign leader. >> this whistle-blower is a accusing the president of abusing his power and further accuses the national security structure around him in the white house of trying to cover it up. >> in the course of my official duties, i've received information from multiple u.s. government officials that the president of the united states is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 u.s. election. >> i told them again that there were a number of press accounts, of statements that had been made by the vice president and other high-ranking white house officials, about general flynn's conduct that we knew to be untrue. >> those people who have been speaking out this whole time, but who are speaking out especially on ukraine, are exposing what some of them call a criminal conspiracy inside the white house. this year. also known as, quote, cooking up a drug deal. that's what mr. bolton has talked about, as he assessed this tumultuous administration. >> it's obviously a great honor. it's always an honor to serve our country. >> the headline is, bolton objected to ukraine pressure campaign, calling giuliani a hand grenade. house investigators were told on monday, quote, i am not part of whatever drug deal rudy and mulvaney are cooking up. >> wow. that's john bolton. he supports trump. he worked for trump. he wants trump to succeed, but bolton won't do the dirty work. and apparently he's not standing for it, either, because saying to your president or his shadow advisers are cooking up a drug deal is the ultimate indictment. which brings us full circle to the cost of donald trump's dirty work. it may propel him in the short run. we've all seen some of that. but in the long-term, people are talking. consider how, as things got hot, trump's business employees, they began talking. some flipping and going to jail like cohen. others merely cooperating, like mr. wieselberg. others talked a bit, pleaded guilty, and went back to lying during investigations. you remember them. and others, of course, out of their public service work, stood up and said "no," including law enforcement officials like mr. comey and miss yates. that's all up until, say, a month ago. boom, then you have the ukraine scandal kicking off with what you see on your screen are not faces, but the absence of faces, two anonymous whistle-blowers who decided to take a risk. that was a few weeks ago which set off the new round of these public servants and diplomats, most of whom we have never heard of, but who have long records, many of them bipartisan. and the stories we've heard are largely from these people over the past few weeks. diplomats, ambassadors, civil servants, as i've said. they prove john bolton's concerns, who has now become a sought-after witness, along with these other people who appear to quote the defense of trump's dirty work, like mr. gordon sondland, who says he was echoing trump, according to reports, but maybe having second thoughts in that apparently denial of a bribe of a quid pro quo. and then look at all the big finish on this screen. you have giuliani and the secretary of state he was shadowing, mr. pompeo. and then, of course, mr. pence, who was around for much of this. when you think about the trail of dirty work and the people on the screen, many known, some unknown, these people hold the keys to where the impeachment probe goes. and if there is the impeaching of the president. these witnesses and potential witnesses, there's a lot of them. now, we know some have already issued damning testimony. but i want you to think about this as we track this and track the facts and the evidence. the people on the screen who haven't yet spoken, who haven't proven whether or not they'll tell the truth, let alone under oath, they have to think hard about whether they will tell the truth. because there's pressure here. including criminal pressure. so to paraphrase aubrey graham, assessing criminal pressure, you may not want to do it and you may have every reason, but if you've seen what you do for fame, what would you do for freedom? it's a very big question. i'm going to get right into it with watergate special prosecutor nick ackerman and "the washington post's" kathleen parker when we're back in 30 seconds. thleen parker when we're back in 30 seconds. and we're back with nick ackerman and kathleen parker. nice to see you both. >> good to see you. >> kathleen, how about it? all of those individuals and those who have yet to speak? >> well, you know, it's long been known that if you walk into the trump administration, you're going to come out with -- dirty. and i think a lot of people -- i think we're probably going to see a lot more people coming forward. because they're not going to take the fall for this guy as your report makes very clear that once you are no longer useful to donald trump, he will though you underneath that very large bus that sits idling on pennsylvania avenue. the thing that puzzles me about all of this is why the democrats don't have these hearings in the open. the fact is, you know, they need to trust the american people to watch this. as far as the impeachment goes, whether the senate will convict donald trump is pretty unlikely, no matter what turns up in the next few days and weeks. >> well, i don't think we know. i would gently push back, even though you are a washington expert -- >> hardly. >> i would say anyone -- go ahead. >> i was just going to say that congress can get this information in different ways. >> but i don't think two months ago, anyone would say we would be on the precipice of impeachment and here we are. i don't think a year ago anyone would think that john bolton would be having a crisis of conscience and be talking about drug deals. from mick mulvaney. former officials say he contributed substantially to the unfolding crisis, connecting key events. and through his reluctance to ever displease the president. does he have a problem? >> oh, i think he clearly has a problem. he was very much engaged in doing some of donald trump's dirty work, as you say. and i don't know how these people think that they're going to somehow not be damaged by this. ultimately, you know, it seems to me that all roads lead to rudy on the impeachment. and everything that rudy giuliani has done, he's got a very odd position. he's the lawyer for the president, but he doesn't get paid, at least not by the taxpayers. he gets paid by these fellows that he associates with, and these guys are clearly shady and corrupt, and it seems that rudy giuliani did no due diligence on these guys, or he became engaged with them because they would do, you know, his bidding, as relates to either, you know, the biden investigation or the burisma special prosecutor investigation. but rudy made a lot of money from those guys. he's admitted that they paid him $500,000. what'd he do for that? obviously, they're paying him for access. they're paying him for access to the president of the united states. but rudy giuliani is -- how do you explain that to donald trump? >> let me bring in nick on that. kathleen lays it out so expertly. the last person who worked for donald trump for free was paul manafort. and it turned out he was getting paid by people in ukraine. >> and rnksussians. >> but the biggest money was ukraine and that was what got him tripped up with the feds. speak to kathleen's point and what we could learn from these witnesses? >> first of all, i think this stuff does have to be done in private right now. we're dealing with a lot of people who have information that's classified information. congress has to sort through that and decide what's going to be shown to the public. secondly, they've got to put together this whole story. and they've got to do it in a contained way, so that witnesses don't know what each other are saying. you want to be able to put this together in a contained way. >> and let's get into the intersection. you work at sdny. >> right. >> and you worked as a watergate prosecutor. >> correct. >> and here's sdny back in the middle of a big probe that also involves washington. and the reporting here, i'm crediting cnn, because we haven't confirmed this, but they report that agents and prosecutors come from the same public corruption unit that targeted cohen and it's clear that the investigation could result in, quote, more charges. >> and i think one of the people they're looking at, one of the subjects is rudy giuliani. you've clearly got a pry ma fascia case of hobbs act extortion, with respect to trump to the president of ukraine. >> you're talking about a federal law against extorting a bribe -- >> that's right, extorting -- >> extorting actions. and what would trump be extorting? >> he would be exextotorting to them to open an investigation into joe biden. >> and that's enough -- impeachment is this complex thing. you're saying up here in new york -- >> we've got a federal crime. >> that's already a federal crime. >> it's a federal crime also to be getting something of value for a campaign, which is what he's doing. >> when rudy said yesterday he doesn't have a lawyer and doesn't need one right now, what did you think? >> i think he's full of it. he knows he needs a lawyer. i think he even announced he has a lawyer, is my understanding. >> his lawyer left him this week. >> oh, is that -- >> yeah, they separated. >> oh, well, i think he needs a lawyer badly. because on the face, it looks as though whatever trump was doing, he was doing. it's not so much all roads lead to rudy, all roads lead to donald trump. >> and kathleen, briefly, your final thought tying it all together? >> well, rudy has been whispering in the president's ear all this time and telling him whatever conspiracy theories pleased his palette at the moment. we know that donald trump is paranoid and inclined towards conspiracy theories. so there's always the question in the back of my mind, did rudy actually have anything to say that was based on any kind of legitimate facts? these fellows that were feeding him information clearly had their own agenda and i always wonder if there wasn't the possibility that rudy was played and the president was played and that may be why rudy is being thrown back under that bus. >> wow. it's a lot. and it's really interesting getting both of your expertise on this, at a time where we're feeling a breaking point coming, whether it breaks towards they have enough evidence and it moves or they've heard from everybody and it doesn't, it's a lot coming at us. >> great to see you. we have new revelations that are coming out tonight about vladimir putin. and what it has to do with ukraine, donald trump impeachment and oil. and guess who's here to untangle all of it live? msnbc's rachel maddow, when we come back. it live msnbc's rachel maddow, when we come back. 300 miles an hour, that's where i feel normal. having an annuity tells me my retirement is protected. learn more at retire your risk dot org. at outback, steak & oh no, it's gone.ck. phew, it's back with lobster mac & cheese. it's gone again. oh, it's back with shrimp now! steak & lobster starting at only $15.99. hurry in before these three are gone again. outback steakhouse. tthe bad news? ouyour patience might not.ay. new depend® fit-flex underwear offers your best comfort and protection guaranteed. because, perfect or not, life's better when you're in it. be there with depend®. president trump is under fire for alleged foreign collusion with ukraine and is now getting support in his defense from the last foreign leader he was accused of colluding with. vladimir putin defending donald trump's ukraine call and echoing the republican line that this is a, quote, pretext for democrats. he's also trolling. >> translator: i'll tell you in pa secret, yes, we will definitely intervene! it's a secret! so that everybody can laugh and so we'll go big, but don't nell anyone, please. please don't tell anyone. >> it would be tempting to let some of these foreign policy battles devolve just into rhetoric. putin's stage whisper, donald trump's blus her and calls for collusion from all kinds of countries. the stakes are also high because great power politics are undergirded by many hard assets, from those u.s. nukes, apparently jeopardized in the middle east after trump's shift on syria policy, to the international energy markets which russia both impacts and is vulnerable to. russia treats oil as a resource and as a weapon and a point of national pride. putin's aides, quote, believe their energy industry is about restoring russian honor and deploying power and leverage and advancing foreign policy aims as rachel maddow document in her new book, and those ames include ukraine, a state that russia has at times pushed around, even cutting the nation's gas supply and blaming that same country for russia's actions. something that maddow also documents. writing, quote, the infinitely corruptible energy business allowed putin to pick and choose who would be rich and who would be powerful in ukraine. when president trump won, he appointed an oil executive, rex tillerson, who was something of a putin ally to run the whole state department, which really you could argue spent years struggling under the weight of what you might call very blatant conflicts of interesting, only to find his replacement now laboring under the weight of a new plot and a new set of conflicts of interest regarding ukraine. it's a lot, but i think we're going to have help untangling it, because rachel maddow is here right now with me live on "the beat" and found time, somehow, to write another book, which we'll get into after the break. ok, which we'll get into after the break. well i didn't choose metastatic breast cancer. not the exact type. not this specific mutation. but i did pick hope... ...and also clarity... ...by knowing i have a treatment that goes right at it. discover piqray, the first and only treatment that specifically targets pik3ca mutations in hr+, her2- mbc, which are common and linked to cancer growth. piqray is taken with fulvestrant after progression on hormone therapy and has been proven to help people with a pik3ca mutation live longer without disease progression. do not take piqray if you've had a severe allergic reaction to it or to any of its ingredients. piqray can cause serious side effects including severe allergic and skin reactions, high blood sugar 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and if someone trys we'll let you know. xfi advanced security. if it's connected, it's protected. call, click, or visit a store today. welcome back to "the beat." i'm joined by rachel maddow, host of "the rachel maddow show," right here on msnbc. her new book is "blowout," about how the oil and natural gas businesses can corrupt governments around the world. and we can announce right here, right now, it is again number one on "the new york times" best seller list. that is new and for the second week in a row. >> thank you. that's brand-new news. that's awesome. it's weird. mostly awesome. it's weird. >> thank you for stopping by. you're doing a million things. >> sure. >> why is it important to understand oil and business as an agent of a foreign policy problem around the world? >> i got interested in this topic in part because i was trying to figure out like why was the motive force for why russia attacked us in 2016. and where i got pretty quickly, to make a long story short, is that they were desperate in ways that i didn't understand. desperate, driven by their economy, which both sucks. it's a really small economy for a really big country. and it's really, really, really dependent on oil and gas. and their own oil and gas sector is terrible. so they were desperate to get u.s. sanctions dropped. i believe a lot of what they did in 2016 was about trying to get sanctions dropped. i think that's a lot of what they're still doing in terms of whatever influence they still do have. but a lot of that is just driven by the way that oil and gas warped their economy. putin likes oil and gas being their main economic pillar, because he wants to use oil and gas, as you were saying before the break, essentially as a weapon against other countries. but inso doing, making it basically an arm of his presidential office, he oversees an oil and gas industry in his country that's terrible at what they do. and it's really painted them into a corner, so they have very different options other than to sabotage and cheat their way to a new future. >> i have a very big question that i think you are perfect to answer and i think it touches on some other reporting you have been doing. >> why do russia always go, when they have options, they always go to the button, let's try to change u.s. policy. not every country does that. we've done a lot on the meddling, but also reporting of, let's just change who the ambassador is or what the extradition outlook is. why is that their go-to move and should we be concerned in the current era they're good at it? >> well, it wasn't their go-to move before this administration. they never before the trump administration had an expectation that they would be able to weheedle what they wantd out of u.s. policy. now it seems like they do. that's why i think the impeachment story about trump right now is at the one level, as you were just talking about with your previous guests, super simple. you can't go to another country for help against your opponents in the next election. done. it's over. that's a crime. it's obviously impeachable. the president has confessed to it and he will be impeached for it. what's getting to be more interesting about this story, above and beyond that, is who was helping to cook up this scheme and for what? and the giuliani factor here is interesting. his associates being arrested. giuliani himself being under investigation, now reportedly under counterintelligence investigation. the guy who appears to have been paying giuliani's associate who is just got arrested is a ukrainian natural gas billionaire who's connected to the kremlin. to the extent that russia sort of and their cutouts in all of these places has been trying to get the u.s. to do stuff, both a carrot approach and a stick approach, it seems like this impeachment scandal was part of it. >> when you look at where the congress seems to be headed on impeachment, and you track these stories, and a lot of people, myself included, wait to see you make sense of it at night, do you see this as a story with a deadline? because a lot of political stories have a kind of an endless contested quality, which is why i think some people in the country get very tired of parts of politics, particularly in washington. >> mm-hmm. >> does this have a deadline? because 2020 at a certain point begins and speaker pelosi either moves or doesn't. or because ukraine itself became a thing that was justified by new facts or new reports, it could still pop up in the middle of a presidential campaign. >> yeah, it's a super interesting question. and now that we're starting to see arrests. now that we're starting to see at least part of the justice department, southern district of new york involved here, and this has some criminal elements to it and some prosecutorial elements to it, that has a different spin on whether or not we think this stuff has a timeline. number one, that means statutes of limitations are implicated. that also means that we can watch things on court deadlines and can expect things to unfold on the timeline of prosecutors and the new york federal court system. but in terms of the impeachment stuff, i have heard, right, that nancy pelosi wants this done by the end of the year. i think that that make sense given the initial accusations against the president for which he's being impeached. but if this becomes a bigger thing, if this spills out into a major counterintelligence matter, which it's starting to look like it might, well, maybe that means the investigation and the proceedings against the president here might take longer. i don't know. i mean, i tend to think that nancy pelosi has good political instincts on these things, but but i don't know what those arguments are like within the democratic caucus based on what they're finding out. i mean it'll be fascinating what's in all these depositions when they finally comeute. >> you talk to a lot of officials from the interviews you do. do you think congressman schiff is better at this than other people. we hear about it in umbrella, multiple committees. congress gets back to town after you said these blockbuster depositions and we see the speaker, the intel chair and that's it. >> and the speaker of the house-sitting at it press conference listening. in terms of what's going to happen with these depositions, they are happening behind closed doors. we are getting a little bit of leak, a bit of description, but they're basically still very much under wraps. we know that there's a stated inintention they're going to release these depositions, but what do you think the end product here is going to be? do you think schiff is going to put something together that's like the watergate road map where, you know, they cited to all of the grand jury testimony to all the different witnesses and laid it out and said this is what the basis of the impeachment articles should be or do you think they're going to release all this stuff at once? what do you think they're going to do with it? >> we talk so much about fairness and under the constitution the senate is supposed to provide this fair process. that's not the house's job. and so i think to your question, it is do they decide if there's zero articles of impeachment, they explain and move on. that's like the declamation. but if they're charging do they come out with 1, 2, 5 articles, johnson started out with 11 articles and release evidence to support their case. because the public opinion is already moving from just from a kind of hey did you hear this, did you hear giuliani is walking h hand dpru nade or come out and do charges? >> that actually wasn't released publicly until this year but thank god it was because you could see the watergate prosecutor and juwarsky is there, goes through all the grand jury testimony from all the witnesses and just lays it out just the facts. here's the criminal acts and here's the basis we have for asserting these were criminal acts and that becomes the basis for the impeachment articles which by the time they're drawn up in the house it's an insurmountable barrier for president nixon. he also said he's going to release the full depositions. >> which then allows people to cherry pick. >> if this is happening alongside an active counter intelligence investigation which is whether or not this scheme was a foreign influence operation which is reportedly what sdny is looking at this that's going to be an interesting thing in terms of how those two things dove tail. >> because we keep an eye on your work before i let you go we did take just a couple of moments from the full decade history from the rachel maddow show. your first show, your interview with barack obama and you in iraq. as striking as someone who's learned from you and looks up to you as i said before it's not a secret to think about the evolution and reporting you do on the other side of a little bit of rachel maddow at work. >> welcome to the rachel maddow show here on msnbc. >> i think there are a lot of voters out there self-identified who actually think what the bush administration has done has been damaging to the country. >> we are coming to you live tonight from a u.s. military base inside the green zone here in baghdad. >> how is your job different now? what do you do more or less of? >> i clearly am not doing a better job with my hair. it's kind of -- over time. 12 years of basically the same haircut looking better or worse on the humidity. wow. you know, it's an incredible privilege to have a job where what you're paid to do is read the news, report, talk to people and explain to people what you think is important. and that remains the core of what we do every day. this what we're in right now for the past three years or so not just about the foreign influence on the 2016 election, not just on the impeachment croesus but everything in between i feel has tested all of our abilities to stay up on what matters, to keep all the dots in your head so you can see when they do connect. but the basic rules are the same. try to increase the amount of useful information in the world. try to make sure you've read everything and you've got a good sense how these things fit into context. >> well, you have to make sure you've read everything i'll say on behalf of the beat start right here. rachel maddow. again, the book "blowout." we'll be right back. the book "" we'll be right back. ♪ we would walk on the sidewalk ♪ ♪ all around the wind blows ♪ we would only hold on to let go ♪ ♪ blow a kiss into the sun ♪ we need someone to lean on ♪ blow a kiss into the sun ♪ we needed somebody to lean on ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ all we need is someone to lean on ♪ i felt i couldn't be at my best for my family. in only 8 weeks with mavyret, i was cured and left those doubts behind. i faced reminders of my hep c every day. but in only 8 weeks with mavyret, i was cured. even hanging with friends i worried about my hep c. but in only 8 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"hardball" starts now. the three amigos. let's play hardball. good evening. i'm steve kornacki in for chris matthews. we've got breaking news in the impeachment investigation plus a dramatic white house confrontation between donald trump and nancy pelosi this afternoon. this comes after days aof testimony by administration officials explaining widesprea