understand you have an obligation, a statutory obligation to share intelligence matters with the congress. now, we don t know with respect to the details of the ukraine story that broke in the papers tonight. if it s true, of course, it would be an extraordinary story and it would certainly be worthy of serious investigation by the congress if not others. point one. point two is i think joel brenner did a good job of laying out the situation. we have here a situation where the whistleblower has followed the statute and the regulations to a tee. he or she didn t leak this information. they didn t go inappropriately to the congress. therefore, he or she should be absolutely protected under the statute here. second, we had the appropriate official under the statute make a determination. that official, by the way-s a trump appointee, as the inspector general of the intelligence community, made a determination under the statute that it was an urgent and credible matter and should go to the
some kind of promise. those are the key words that we know so far. we re not sure exactly how to connect them. yeah, lawrence, it s nice to see you. i d say three things. one is that it is an unprecedented situation. i don t know of an example, and i haven t heard anybody give an example of where a credible and urgent whistleblower complaint hasn t been shared with the congress. and indeed the practice is even to share complaints generally with the congress. if you re involved in the executive branch in the intelligence world, you understand you have an obligation, a statutory obligation to share intelligence matters with the congress. now, we don t know with respect to the details of the ukraine story that broke in the papers tonight. if it s true, of course, it would be an extraordinary story and it would certainly be worthy of serious investigation by the congress if not others. point one. point two is i think joel brenner did a good job of laying out the situation. we have here a
over audiotapes that showed the president engaged in a criminal conspiracy, and shortly after handing over those tapes richard nixon was forced to resign the presidency. richard nixon resigned the presidency because he was subject to criminal process and that criminal process closed in on him and forced him to turn over the evidence that condemned him. this is one of those nights when we hope to turn to a constitutional scholar of the highest authority and we can do that tonight because harvard law school s constitutional law professor laurence tribe, who has argued countless cases before the supreme court, has agreed to join our discussion. professor tribe has taught constitutional law to students such as barack obama, ted cruz, elena kagan, and chief justice john roberts. and as we just heard, former inspector general joel brenner, and now it s your turn to take a constitutional law class with professor tribe. joining us now is laurence tribe, harvard law school professor of constitu
whistleblower if the whistleblower s watching you tonight that we are grateful for their courage in coming forward. we are going to do everything we can to make sure this urgent issue is addressed and that you are protected. that was house intelligence committee chairman adam schiff in the last hour on msnbc with rachel. joining us now is joel brenner, the former inspector general of the national security agency under president george w. bush from 2002 to 2006. joel brenner was also the head of u.s. counterintelligence in the office of the director of national intelligence from 2006 to 2009. thank you very much for joining us tonight, mr. brenner. we really appreciate it. you ve been there. you ve been an inspector general thank you. i m glad to be here. just give us your reading on this situation as we know it at this hour. we ve got a statute here that s pretty clear on its face. you have a complaint that s come in. it does appear to be urgent.
this as sessions was pushing back today after the latest of many broadsides from his boss. slamming sessions in a tweet asking the inspector general to investigations of surveillance abuses by the fbi. the president claiming the i.g. is an obama guy, and calling the decision disgraceful. sessions responded saying the department will do its work in a fair and impartial manner. i want to talk about this now with joel brenner. he is a former inspector general for the national security agency under president george w. bush. it s an honor to have you on. we re seeing him once again publicly shame his own attorney general. jeff sessions fighting back more than he ever has in the past. first, why do you think sessions is pushing back so strongly on this one now? i think jeff sessions knows that his public career at some point is going to be over. he wants to go home to alabama. and be able to look in the mirror and say to himself that i kept my integrity in very