wondering if you're hearing anything from the white house on this new reporting about other white house officials who corroborate the whistle-blower's complaint? >> reporter: well, don, this is what's interesting because over the last several days before we really knew the details of this whistle-blower's complaint, you heard from the white house, from president trump and his top officials that they said they believed this whistle-blower was someone who was partisan, potentially disgruntled, someone who was essentially out to get the president, potentially a career employee. and now today as we're learning more about this whistle-blower's identity, as we're seeing this complaint start to take shape, you're seeing that the inspector general interviewed other white house officials who were involved in this, who apparently were giving some kind of a heads-up to the person who eventually filed this complaint because what you heard from the president even today during that press conference was that this person didn't have firsthand knowledge of the call the president had with the ukrainian president or any of the other events that are detailed in this whistle-blower's complaint. but based on what we're learning tonight, based on this new
officials in the trump white house and concluded there was reason to believe the whistle-blower's complaint was substantiated. that according to "the new york times." joining me now to discuss is jim sciutto, kaitlan collins, john dean. good to have all of you on this evening. thank you so much. kaitlan, i'm going to start with you because you're outside of trump tower right now, and i'm wondering if you're hearing anything from the white house on this new reporting about other white house officials who corroborate the whistle-blower's complaint? >> reporter: well, don, this is what's interesting because over the last several days before we really knew the details of this whistle-blower's complaint, you heard from the white house, from president trump and his top officials that they said they believed this whistle-blower was someone who was partisan, potentially disgruntled, someone who was essentially out to get the president, potentially a career employee. and now today as we're learning more about this whistle-blower's identity, as we're seeing this complaint start to take shape, you're seeing that the inspector general interviewed other white house officials who were involved in this, who apparently were giving some kind of a
state department career employees were subjected to hostile treatment from this administration according to a newly released inspector general's report. at least one top career employee was forced out of her position for what is being called inappropriate reasons. while others found themselves stripped of their duties because of the boss' political biases. all of this but all unheard of in previous administrations both republican and democratic. joining me now is nbc's josh lederman. you have covered the state department. you know exactly what we're talking about here. career employees have always had sort of an academic posture. you know, what critics would call critics in the trump administration would call the deep state were really career people. you go around the world, you wouldn't know if they're republican or democratic. they had no labels on them.
dedicated career employee at the cia. i think part of the problem is because the president has constantly questioned the intelligence product, it's made it much more difficult for her o to have that kind of honest and trusting relationship with the president that you should have when you're head of our intelligence force. >> yasmin. >> jumping of off what joe just said, speaking of the role of intelligence, you can't help but think about a war time president and a what that means. we talk about an attack on land and sea but we also rely on caseworkers, when it comes to this. how is that going to play into it? >> there are people laying their lives on line in order to get the kind of information that can be provided to the president and
in this case. >> yeah, i think it's interesting and important to clarify. the office of special counsel for career employees, regular career employees, they have authority to institute disciplinary action themselves, and they even said in their report today that if ms. conway was any other regular career employee, they would implement disciplinary action and recommend her termination. because she's a political appointee to the white house all they can do is recommend to the president that he take disciplinary action and they obviously recommend he take the most extreme disciplinary action possible. >> i doubt that's going to happen. >> i doubt it also. >> a programing note this sunday at nine p.m., don't miss the redemption project with van jones. he travels to indiana to meet two brothers whose father was shot and killed when he tried to stop a robbery. up next, nancy pelosi responds to president trump's blistering attack against her on the sacred ground in normandy.
you do this, you're breaking the law. by the time you leave, you're i don't know if i want this job. there are so many ways for me to get in trouble. and then you've got the ethics people all over you. so this is not an accident. if she is doing this, she is doing it consciously and knowingly. like i said, she actually is doing stuff that she never gets praise for on opioids and other stuff. i think when you break the rules, we've got focus on that. just follow the rules like all of the rest of news the white house. you can still get your guy re-elected, but you don't have to do it this way. >> the reality is the only guy who decides what happens to kellyanne conway is the president of the united states in this case. >> yeah, i think it's interesting and important to clarify. the office of special counsel for career employees, regular career employees, they have authority to institute disciplinary action themselves, and they even said in their report today that if ms. conway was any other regular career employee, they would implement displenary action and recommend her -- ah they can do is
so this is about a career employee of the treasury department versus barr's partisan, political department of justice. as a former federal prosecutor who worked for the department of justice, i'm embarrassed about this attorney general. >> if you go out and unpack the damage barr did to the actual letter of the mueller report, it really justifies closer scrutiny, this is what the mueller report said on obstruction. it says this, the incidents of obstruction were carried out through one on one meetings in which the president sought to use his official power outside of usual channels, viewing the acts collectively can help to illuminate their significance. mueller also makes clear that perhaps congress should be the one to determine how that should be handled with this. with respect to whether the president can be found to have obstructed justice by exercising his powers under article ii of
out and put that information out, we're trying to deal with this crisis as close to the southwest border as we possibly can. that being said, the numbers are very large. we have apprehended over 540,000 people already this year. >> i want to get to that because the numbers have been going up. why the disconnect then there? if the dhs secretary says we ain't going to do this and you said you never had direction to do it, why the disconnect between the president's public comments on this plan? >> i can't really speak to that, not being -- being a career employee, all i know is we have been focusing on movement of individuals along the southwest border. >> where will they go now? >> we are trying to spread the wealth, i guess i shouldn't say it in that fashion, but i have certain locations that are getting hit really hard, like south texas. i don't have the capacity to hold all of the individuals throughout processing so we're moving some laterally within texas and a few to california. >> you mean like share the burden. so a small handful of communities aren't taking the lion's share. >> exactly. >> okay.
publicly it was meant to be a deterrent. you're saying you're on the front lines here, you're not doing any of the separation as a deterrent. you're doing it only under specific circumstances. >> that's correct. >> the president announced a new immigration proposal last week, and one of the key changes here was instituting a points-based system that would favor highly skilled workers over many of the folks, and you and i talked about this last time you came on the program, that most of these migrants or asylum seemers are coming for financial assistance. looking at that, and i know you're a career employee. i'm curious about effects on the ground. would a points system like that help solve to some degree the problem you're facing at the southern border? >> in that portion, that's talking about legal immigration. what i deal with between the ports of entry is strictly illegal immigration. the impacts there, i'm not sure what that will have, but the system in and of itself makes
think -- and i haven't talked to the president about this, but he has his own plane and he wants the safest plane possible. and at one time he was thinking about buying a fleet of planes and starting an airline. he knows that the issue of safety is number one in the flying public's mind and he's a good enough politician to know these planes had to be grounded. so he made the decision. and it's a good decision. >> mr. secretary, part of this conversation is that the faa or the trump administration is simply too close to boeing, which is the nation's second largest defense contractor. is the administration too close? is the faa too close to boeing? >> the faa is not too close, peter. i want to stand up for the faa. 38,000 employees work at the faa. these are highly trained, highly professional people. they get up every day and care about safety. the acting administrator is a career employee. he's not even a political