joining me now, nbc news white house correspondent, kelly o donnell, nbc news senior investigatives producer, anna schecter. washington post national security reporter, matt z zaptowski, ben willis, also an nbc legal analyst. and former trump campaign adviser, sam nunberg. we ve got a lot of folks and a lot of news. we ll tripe to get to all of it. kelly, first to you. with news that the special counsel s office is wrapping things up, it has now been reported widely by multiple news outlets, what is the white house doing in preparation for it? well, we can imagine a couple of things. that when you talk about the president s outside legal counsel, so not directly the white house, they have long said that they are preparing a counter report to argue the evidence as they see it, to be able to respond. that kind of thing. to be ready with their own sort of counterpunch. within the white house, there is, of course, a department within the white house council s