Strzok and page exchanged antitrump messages during the campaign and the implication was the secret society was at the nexus of a plot to take down trump. Trump tv naturally went absolutely crazy. Strzok and his fbi lawyer mistress lisa page talked about a secret society within the fbi . Is this a banana republic. The fbi officials talk about a secret society. Part of a secret society. The secret society. Secret society. The antitrump secret society. A secret society. We have an informant talking about a group that were Holding Secret meetings off site. Secret society. Secret society. Skeet society. A secret society top cops. Trey gowdy is demanding answers. I want to know what society are you talking about. Of course you would want to know that. From the start, i got to say all this seemed suspect. For one thing, anyone in an actual secret society probably isnt calling their secret society secret society. And we now have evidence that the text was likely what pretty much anyone with any common sense whatsoever assumed from the beginning, a sarcastic joke. Last night abc news revealed the full secret society text which made clear the comment was most likely in jest. For senator ron johnson who obviously claimed he had an informant confirming secret meetings, that made things a bit awkward. After reading those transcripts of the Text Messages, do you think it was made as a joke . Its entirely possible. Lets see what the next texas. What about the number of texts. It will be interesting. Do you owe an apology sir for raising these concerns. Well see what the next texts there. He said well see what the missing texts. Are you heard of that one . Johnson is talking about five months worth of Text Messages between strzok and page that the fbi had been unable to find and turn over. To trump allies this was proof they had something huge to hide. The president called the missing texts one of the biggest stories in a long time. Wow. On trump tv last night, conservative activist tom fitten said the Trump Administration should raid the fbi to secure them. If i were the attorney general of the United States, i would be very concerned about what the fbi did here and i would send an independent Law Enforcement like the u. S. Marshals to secure and recover this evidence. Just be clear r clear, is he recommending president send in loyal Security Services to raid the Security Service viewed as disloyal now today brought bad news for the truthers. The Justice Department recovered the texts. The d oo j inspector say they had succeeded to get them back using forensic tools. The issue affected thousands of phones within the fbi, not just strzok and pages which doesnt held the text truthers case. Theres always the next theory to turn to. Cue, House Intelligence Committee devin nunes who obviously isnt up in to this sort of thing. He draft aid classified memo many republicans will say will prove finally the Justice Departments antitrump corruption once and for all. Release the memo. Release the memo. Call the number on your screen, 2022243121, Tell Congress the truth and we have a right to know. Act now. In a letter yesterday, steven boyd, a form he ever Jeff Sessions staffer informed nunes i quote here, it would be extraordinarily reckless to release the memo without Justice Department review saying to do so would be a real risk to National Security. allowed the entire gop caucus to read the memo while denying access to those who obviously might question it. Then theres this. At the time the republicans voteded to provide this flawed document to the house, i made a motion to allow the members to read the underlying materials before they voted on characterizing them in such a distorted fashion. They voted that down. Why would you vote to not have access to read things . The point was they didnt care what was in the underlying documents. They wanted to make a little statement. In the end, thats what all this is about from the madeup secret society to the misleading memo, that is what its all about. Its almost on a daily basis they create these false controversies to take off take the pressure off what is clearly special prosecutor mueller is getting closer and closer to the truth. Joining me now justice and security analyst matt miller, and Msnbc National Security analyst clint watts, former fbi agent. Clint, as someone who obviously worked in the fbi, what is it like to watch sort of portion of the american political system, these institutions like trump tv and conservative media and the white house and allies essentially sell the story to people that the fbi is this kind of like liberal fifth column that trying to bring down a president . Just historically to ever perceive the fbi that way doesnt make any sense. But it is a very conservative organization. You wear only two color shirts, white or blue. Everywhere pretty much is buttoned down there. I would guess we never talked about who is a republican or a democrat but i would guess it is strongly conservative and of all the organizations you would tend to think that because its Law Enforcement. Whats baffling is why you would do this. Even in just a political battle like this transactionally, its no gain or minimal gain. Ultimately it hurts our country. If you were going after a federal Law Enforcement institution at the same time youre advocating for the Opioid Crisis and weve got to take these networks down trying to going after ms13, youre going after an Trump Country as an fbi agent and theyre saying youre part of the deep state or a member of some secret society. I dont want to aid you in this investigation. So youre shooting yourself in the foot. Thats why you saw the department of justice today. Theyre confused whats going on in this congressional setting. Matt, what did you make you now have had sort of standoff between the trump Justice Department under the direction of Jeff Sessions and a former sessions staffer writing to dern nunes basically saying cut this nonsense out. That was an extraordinary letter because it was signed by a former staffer to Jeff Sessions and remember the attacks theyre making all relate to a fisa warrant approved during the 2016 election when Loretta Lynch was the attorney general and jim comey was the head of the Justice Department, a republican who obviously now every republican hates. In this letter, you got a Republican Former sessions staffer speak on behalf of trump appointee Rod Rosenstein and chris wray coming out and saying, actually weve looks at the fisa application from the 2016 application and there was nothing wrong with it. Theyve now gotten the republican Justice Department to come out and say what the democraticled Justice Department did was completely 100 within the law. But the further claim that they make that for devin nunes to release there memo would be reckless and could jeopardize National Security, i cant think of a time when a Justice Department of one party has written to a Committee Chairman of the same committee with that big of a claim. Its even more strange because you have on the other side, just down pennsylvania avenue at the white house, youve had Sarah Sanders saying they want the memo to come out in the full interest of transparent sit contradicting the people who say it could hurt security. The white house has taken is the side of the allied media organizations against its own Justice Department. Take a listen, clint. There are serious questions about political bias at high levels at the fbi. Theyve existed for some time under the leadership of the previous director james comey. Its remarkable for the president s spokesperson to call it the integrity of his own fbi into question. They also selected certain Text Messages that fit their story and left out others that didnt fit their story. You give me your Text Messages, i can make you believe anything. Absolutely true. And the way social media and congress and the president played all these things in public, it continues on this barrage. Its release the memo one day, release the tests the next. Its the same playbook we saw in the campaign against Hillary Clinton with lost emails. Matt, they also do seem to be cycling through a bunch of different ones. Im old enough to remember when they were all about uranium one for about a week. That didnt stick. Unmacking. What do you make of the ways in which they procedurally move through these . They have to move from one to the other. He had pick one, say trump tower being wiretapped. That doesnt pan out. They move to another one. That doesnt pan out. They move to uranium 1. They have to have something with which to attack the fbi so they can focus on something other than the fact we keep seeing embarrassing and new revelations about the president. Theres a certain amount of partisanship kind of baked in in washington that you sort of understand. We are far beyond partisanship when you see the texts. These are dishonorable actions by dishonorable people launching attacks when they know the evidence contradicts their claims with no regard to career servants who obviously spent their careers trying to protect National Security no, regard for the credibility of these institutions theyre damaging, and all to thwart and subvert an investigation into how a foreign country interfered with our election. It is pauling behavior from the republican party. Hysteria. Theyre the masters of hysteria. The people who obviously read those hashtags have no idea what they mean. We saw it with President Trump. 50,000 emails. For more on the dubious moorm, im joined by White House Reporter austin and spencer ackerman. Spencer, youve been reporting on this. What are they doing . What is the game plan here . So, this is somewhat like this is somewhat like when galileo ends up transforming our view of a helio centric universe and in order to sort of fight off that transformation, you have to get into ever more exotic theories. Right. To kind of explain this. And you end up getting the idea of like the retro grade motion of gestalt. Spencer. Its an interesting thing to watch as applied to this memo which to be very clear, i have not read and we only get you know, snippets from what we can report on. What we know right now from our reporting last night myself and Betsy Woodruff at the daily buy of the, the memo names particular sort of conservative people of the moment to include the former fbi director jim comey, the Current Deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, and as one of the more famous targets at this point by the president the Deputy Director of the fbi Andrew Mccabe. Now, among the things all of these people have in common is that they have been involved in really substantial ways in the investigation to trump and russia. The question is sort of whats the through line there that connects them. What we sort of have seen from rather selective leaks, its to make an argument that the fisa an process that led to the surveillance warrant on carter page last year was in some way tainted. Thats where again from other leaks weve gotten, the idea is that they relied on Christopher Steele dossier. Now, at the risk of stating you know with an fbi agent who obviously has been an afinite in the fisa process sitting next to me, the people ive talked to involved in the process say that theres simply no credible way that you would have a judge ever approve for a title 1 fisa warrant a statement for probable cause, an application for probable cause that relies on a dossier where the affiants involved cant say where the guys information comes from or whose informants they are. So the question that were facing for this memo, i personally would like to read this memo very much, is how all of this knits together in some kind of coherent way. It seems to me the white house is very clearly in on this. Theres this is sort of back and forth between allies on the hill and the white house with the aim of subverting and discredititying their own Justice Department and federal bureau of investigation. Absolutely. And before i get to that, i must address what you were mentioning earlier especially regarding the secret society con spiry theory imploding in on itself. The way it imploded it resembles an episode of veep. A lot of this is ridiculous but part of the problem why this has legs and will not die is because according to people i have spoken to in the white house over the last few days, the president of the United States is absolutely obsessed with these theorys and something he seize as an abscam level scandal of the deep state or whatever out to get him. No matter how many of these things get debunked or theres no reason to take them seriously from anybody reasonable or objective, you can expect the president of the United States to talk about this and tweet about it for quite some time. Partly because hes consuming this stuff. Thats right. Its like the snake is eating its tail here. The president watches this on his television. He then tweets about it and the cycle repeats itself. Talk about some of the ramifications of this. You mentioned the Judicial Watch guy proposing that the u. S. Marshals raid the fbi. Now, we hear a lot particularly during this life span of this story about the deep state, that this is some sort of conspiracy by the security agencies to go after trump to undo you the results of the 2016 election and you get coup talk thrown in from people like alex jones. What a deep state actually is a rogue Security Apparatus pursuing its own highly politicize the agenda and particularly is prone as we see in countries like egypt and turkey to attacking the unfavored security agents. Exactly. The irony is ultimately you could create a real feasible prospect, a real a circumstance that for all of the rhetoric is a rather dangerous one where you politicize the security agencies and particularly create loyalty tests for security agencies as we heard the president apparently asked the interim director of the fbi Andrew Mccabe who obviously he vote ford, that could result in some sort of you know, some sort of conflict or otherwise result in this cooptation of one of these agencies against basically allamerican laws and traditions. Thats a really serious thing to play with. Laying the foupgs for the kind of hinge that engenders deep state. Thank you both for joining me. Next, donald trump jr. And the russian conspiracy back in the headlines today. The back and forth over trump juniors Senate Judiciary testimony and why one democrat says the transcript may be material to the Mueller Investigation in two minutes. My business was going nowhere. So i built this kickin new website with godaddy. Building a website in under an hour is easy 68 of people. Who have built their website using gocentral, did it in. Under an hour, and you can too. Type in your business or idea. Pick your favourite design. Personalize it with beautiful images. And. Youre done and now business is booming. Harriet, its a double stitch not a cross stitch build a better website in under an hour. Free to try. No credit card required. Gocentral from godaddy. All right. We have breaking news just in the last few moments from the New York Times. A just published a few minutes ago, im going to read you from the times article headline. Trump ordered mueller fired but backed off when white House Counsel threatened to quit. President trump ordered the firing last you know of Robert Mueller iii the special counsel overseeing the russia investigation according to four people told of the matter but ultimately backed down after the white House Counsel threatened to resign rather than carry out the directive. This is last june. The west wing confrontation marks the first time mr. Trump is known to have tried to fire the special counsel. Mr. Mueller learned about the episode in recent months as his investigators interviewed current and forrer senior white house officials in his inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice. Barbara mcquaid is a former u. S. Attorney from michigan and msnbc legal contributor. I know you have seen this a few seconds ago as i have now. Your reaction . Well, its really extraordinary whenever i hear talk about the president firing Robert Mueller, i think about the saturday night massacre which was really the Tipping Point for Richard Nixons demise. So i always think it would be an incredibly politically dangerous thing