we re back with more on this breaking news tonight involving both the house intelligence committee s vote to release a controversial memo disparaging the fbi. with us to talk about what happened today california democrat, current member of house intel congressman eric swalwell. congressman, you said earlier this afternoon on this network that this memo should never see the light of day. and i want to ask a question that sounds flat but not intended to be. what s the worse that could happen? good evening, brian. the worse that could happen is it would falsely poison the well of public opinion of the rule of law, of the independence that we are supposed to have at the fbi. you know, people ask me, you know, what s the big deal about this? in first world democracies you don t attack the police when they re investigating you, and you don t use them to attack your enemies. and this is falsely attacking the fbi to protect the
are increasingly under attack, andrew mccabe is out at the fbi. the reporters breaking the news on this story standing by for us with details. and what s it s going to be like when donald trump walks into that chamber tomorrow night as a man under investigation on so many fronts. the 11th hour begins now. well, good evening once again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. day 375 of the trump administration. the extraordinary rift between the white house and federal law enforcement agencies over this russia investigation has grown much wider and to some observers much more dangerous. earlier tonight the house intelligence committee voted along party lines to do what the justice department warned them against. they voted to release a classified memo that republicans say shows the fbi and the justice department improperly used their surveillance authority in the russia investigation. as our nbc news colleagues write, the vote will quote, make public a classified memo about
that sentence little rocket man. i think for the most part we have seen this president give controlled speeches and manage to read a teleprompter for a period of time. it s a longer speech we re seeing, for example, his address in davos. so there s always a potential that we will ad-lib a bit, especially if there s some negative reaction coming from lawmakers tomorrow night. there s a possibility for that. but i think for the most part this is going to be one of those controlled teleprompter addresses. hey, robert, before i sneak a break in a question about policy and this memo. your understanding of this argument is mi6 going to read this thing, are people going to publicly debate this memo in the streets or people going to view this as a shiny object? i spoke a couple of hours ago with adam schiff, and he said
political rivals. and this report is apparently going to make that case. and it s going to make the case that some of this information in the application for a warrant came from the dossier, the trump dossier. this is the opposition research that was paid for first by anti-trump republicans and then by hillary clinton. and so that is all tainted. now, look, i would love to see this memo. i d like to see the whole fisa application, the whole warrant application. the fight is you can t tell the whole list of abuses. and we have republicans trying to make the case this is all tainted surveillance, but we re not going to be able to see the whole thing. and the public is not going to be able to make that determination off of this
christopher ray, the fbi director, advised him earlier today to not move forward tory leasing this memo. he urged people on the house intelligence committee to follow that plan. that didn t happen, of course. they decided to release this memo to the public in the coming days. and now you see people in the intelligence community and law enforcement community they wonder if this intelligence is so susceptible to being released to the public, it could raise kbe questions in those different orbits. new reporting tonight on the russia front and new reporting the new york times about the first lady s role tomorrow night. that right after this. as you get older. but prevagen helps your brain with an ingredient originally discovered. in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory. prevagen. the name to remember.