i would expect jim comey to turn it over to some investigative arm and we would get to the bottom line. jim comey is an honorable guy. so is the president of the united states. the president must have his reasons. dana: director comey appeared before cameras today but didn t address the subject. he will be called to testify on march 20 other than open, public hearing by the house intelligence committee on russia s allegedly meddling in the election. the question they have a hard time answering is why doesn t the president just ask for the evidence? kimberly: the thing is, we just don t know. we don t know what stage of the proceeding, who has contacted, whether he has any kind of evidence. the purpose, nature, subject matter of any warrant contemporaneous with that time. was there a warrant that was larger and encompasses the area
back now live on msnbc. the director of national intelligence james clapper and fbi director james comey briefed the house intelligence committee this morning on russia s hacking activity in this country. we bring in congressman joaquin castro, a member of the house intelligence committee. congressman castro thank you for being here. i want to get your take thanks for having me. from this morning s briefing. there s been significant frustration, a lot of it directed at the intelligence community but specifically director comey and his handling in the waning months of the election of the email investigation. what can you tell us about what happened behind closed doors? obviously it was a very informative presentation. i think there is both republican and democratic concern about getting to the bottom of what happened with the russian hacking, making sure that we go back and figure out what went wrong. what specifically needs resolution would you say? well, i think a whole
appears to side with russia and insult the u.s. intelligence agencies. he where iz in part totally made up facts by sleaze bag political operatives both democrats and republicans. fake news. russia says nothing exists. he adds probably released by intelligence even knows there is no proof and never will be by people. we ll have a full report on hacking within 90 days. are you comfortable with this back and forth between donald trump and the intelligence community? you just sat in on that hearing and do you think there is any risk to america s national security to have these two clashing so publicly? i think donald trump s tweets eventually we ll look at them and conclude on balance they re a good thing. we always want realtime opinion from the president of the united states, president-elect. should that be public, congressman king? he s not put out anything there that i think is classified. we get to look at the tweets every day and analyze ourselves what they mean and we wan
now, but i think that it s going to be important for all of us for members of congress, but most of all for americans to understand the full extent of foreign interference with our elections. we know from reporting that russia has done this in other countries, and it s also important because going forward, unless we fight back strongly, russia s going to be encouraged to do this again. i don t think that vladimir putin is going to stop if he feels it was a weak response and he s going to do it to germany and other countries if he feels he can get away with it. how much responsibility does the obama administration carry in this situation? should they have acted sooner in responding to the evidence of russian hacking and would that have had any impact potentially on the election? could it shut it down? well, remember, the obama administration was fairly tough with russia. our relationship of course over the last several years has gone downhill, but remember, they gathered a group of