Plus as 2020 candidates hit the primary states lets start by changing the rules in washington. A look at what is working on the ground. American values are under attack and it is time to change course. And todays stunning hearing on North CarolinaElection Fraud. We believe the evident we will provide today will show a coordinated unlawful and substantially resource scheme operated in the 2018 general election. All in starts right now. Good evening from los angeles. Im chris hayes. The man who first opened investigations of the president which would later become the Mueller Probe is now speaking out for the first time revealing just how alarmed Senior Justice Department officials have been by the president s disturbing and potentially criminal conduct. Former acting fbi director Andrew Mccabe, the president s abrupt firing of james comey after having pressured him over the russia probe set off a week long crisis inside the Justice Department. Mccabe telling 60 minutes senior officials were so concerned about the president s basic fitness for office that Deputy Attorney general rosenstein a long time republican personally appointed by President Trump raised the possibility of trying to remove the president under the 25th amendment. The Deputy Attorney general was definitely very concerned about the president , about his capacity and about his intent at that point in time. He was discussing other cabinet members and whether or not people would support such an idea, whether or not other cabinet members shared his belief that the president was really concerning. Rosenstein was actually openly talking about whether there was a majority of the cabinet who would vote to remove the president. Thats correct. Counting votes or possible votes. Mccabe confirmed previous reports that rosenstein had offered to wear a wire into the oval office to collect evidence on the president telling 60 minutes the idea was never pursued. Mccabe tells a previously undisclosed story about the president s trust in vladimir putin. Essentially, the president said he did not believe that the north koreans had the capability to hit us here with ballistic missiles. He did not believe that because president putin told him they did not. And u. S. Intelligence was telling the president what . Intelligence officials in the briefing responded that that was not consistent with any of the intelligence our government possesses to which the president replied i dont care. I believe putin. According to mccabe that comment which echoes many others was part of a pattern of dubious behavior which prompted the fbi to start investigating the sitting president of the United States. All those same sorts of facts cause us to wonder, is there an inappropriate relationship, a connection between this president and our most fearsome enemy, the government of russia. In almost two years since that time the president and his allies in congress and the media have done all they can to discredit mccabe and any other official. Mccabe is promoting a new book and was fired after the Justice Departments internal watch dog criticized his lack of candor under oath. But the things we dont have to just take mccabes word for it. Mccabes account of the president s behavior and the alarm bells it set off looks a lot like the one james comey gave in sworn testimony and a lot like the account of the senior official who wrote an anonymous oped basically warning the country that man the person worked for was unfit for the office and looks a lot like reports we read every day. Two years since the events mccabe describe, the president is still in office and if anything he has only gotten more volatile. I am joined by ted lu of california, member of the House Judiciary Committee. What is your reaction to what the remarkable account mccabe gives of the way in which the president s firing of comey triggered this kind of crisis at the department of justice . Andrew mccabe gave a number of disturbing statements about the behavior of donald trump. To me one of the most alarming was that donald trump believed putin over our intelligence officials. No president of the United States should ever believe a former kgb operative over u. S. Intelligence officials. It makes you wonder what does putin have on trump that would make him behave this way. The president has reacted to all of this. He and his allies on trump tv have had a narrative that these are rogue elements of the deep state who didnt like the results of the election and are plotting a coup. What is your reaction to that framework for understanding these events . Im a former prosecutor. These are Law Enforcement personnel. They are looking at facts trying to determine if crimes are committed. Rosenstein is a republican. He is looking at the same thing we all saw which is the president fired the fbi director and then went on national tv a couple of days later and said i did it because of the russia investigation. That looks like textbook obstruction of justice. It macks you wonder what is this president doing. What does it say about the status to your mind constitutionally of Justice Department which seems to be kind of the core question here . It is part of the executive. Its under the articles of power of the president. In some level we want it to be independent. Here you see the mccabe account is people wrestling in real time with where their responsibilities and loyalties lie . This president raises all sorts of different constitutional issues we have never encountered because no one has ever broken this many norms from the Fake National Emergency to the actions he has taken to really attack the Justice Department, attack Law Enforcement. When you look at the constitution, nothing in there says you cant indict a sitting president. And the lesson of water gate is that the American People said no one is above the law and the d. O. J. Is charged with enforcing the law. So you think that you have made it clear before, you think that one of the ways to resolve this contradiction is just to say to the d. O. J. , you do have the power to indict a sitting president . Absolutely. If you say you dont, essentially the president is above the law because you are saying none of the laws in america can be enforced against the president and there is no way the American People would accept that. It is not in our constitution. I am proud of what the fbi and d. O. J. Have done so far as well as prosecutors in new york as well as state attorney generals. There is Something Interesting about mccabe saying the thing that precipitated this is the firing of comey. They sort of thought what they might be seeing is a cover up in plain sight. You have the man who is now the attorney general of the United States william barr saying the president firing comey because it was exercising constitutional duties almost by definition cannot be obstruction of justice. What do you think about that . It is interesting what barr said later which is basically he didnt have all the facts when he wrote the memo. It is also very interesting to hook at his testimony. He does concede there are lots of Different Cases where the president can obstruct justice. Just because trump does this in public in full view doesnt mean its not a crime and thats something the House Judiciary Committee is going to investigate. We are going to hold hearings and look at obstruction of justice, abuse of power as well as witness tampering. Finally, where do you see how confident are you right now in the independents and protection inside that Building Department of justice with barr at the top and rosenstein moving out, widely reported, that they will continue to do the work that they need to do. None of this is okay that you have career fbi officials struggling with what do you do with a president who looks like he is violating the law. I have more hope than i think some of my colleagues because even before the mid term elections last november we still had a republicanled investigation of a republican president from the department of justice. Thats very impressive and that investigation is still going on. The fact that Robert Mueller still has his job i think is a testament. You think they are holding so far. You dont think william barr changes that . I hope he doesnt. American people voted to give democrats subpoena power. Thank you very much. Thank you. For more on Andrew Mccabe and what to do im joined by staffer at the atlantic and msnbc legal analyst, a former water gate prosecutor. The stories that mccabe tells largely lineup with some previous reporting we had about the air of crisis, but it is somewhat remarkable to hear this individual say what he is saying about the reaction inside that building to the president firing comey. It is. And when i was speaking to him last week and we have an interview being published with him tomorrow morning, when i was speaking with him last week about all of this it struck me that we actually have not heard an fbi official let alone the official who had actually launched the investigation into the president confirm that this investigation had indeed been launched. So he was kind of talking about the process that the officials went through in order to determine whether or not this unprecedented decision was going to be made. He emphasized that this was not something that was precipitated only because the president decided to fire jim comey. He told me that concern about the president had been building for months and that is consistent with what weve heard from other people who were having those discussions at the time. So obviously i dont want to give away too much about the interview before tomorrow, but i will say that that is one of the biggest take aways from this is that this is not something that was perceived by people at the fbi as something that occurred in a vacuum. That is why it is kind of disingenuous for people to say the president had the Constitutional Authority to fire jim comey. It is why did he fire him . It is obstruction being equivalent to a National Security threat. Is this completely unchartered territory . It is somewhat unchartered territory. I dont think this has happened before. I have been involved in a situation when the first water gate special prosecutor was fired by the president , president nixon. And i remember having long torturous meetings among the staff about what to do. I mean, people would say all kinds of crazy things just like you heard about the 25th amendment and about wearing a wire, things that people really couldnt act on. At the end of the day, we decided to tough it out, continue the investigation. I spent a lot of time talking to washington columnists, giving them the pitch that it was extremely important to have an independent special prosecutor investigating the president. So you go through a lot of turmoil. What mccabe described the other night on 60 minutes, i pretty much identify with and i can see where people would have different reactions. Yet at the end of the day, we toughed it out. I called my senator at the time and explained to him what was going on, the importance of having an independent special prosecutor. And by simply staying there, the investigation continued just as the investigation here is continued and things worked out. I think the same has happened here. You know, part of what is striking about mccabes account to me and this syncs up with what you were saying, in some ways there is the narrative of the antitrump forces who are trying to get the president and rather the sort of opposite of that which is to say a bunch of people who dont want to think the unthinkable, the president has conspired with a foreign adversary very slowly being dragged against their will to a conclusion that looks a lot like that. Lets remember that this was not revealed during the election. The thing that was revealed during the election was the fact that there was a reopening of Hillary Clintons email investigation. The idea that there was a deep state out to get the president while he was running for during the election and trying to make him not become president is just absolutely ridiculous on its face when you think about how hard they were trying to keep this investigation is secret from the broader public because they didnt know what they had. When you start to see things like perhaps the classified intelligence about what they were receiving, about the conversations between the campaign and russians, when you see how the president was cozying up to putin during the election and saying things out loud, it just became really untenable for them to just sit there and say is there really nothing going on here . And that i think is one of the biggest take aways also from my conversation with andy is that they did not feel like they had a choice here. If he is telling his own federal Law Enforcement officials that he believes putin over them, then what is putin filling his ear with when he is in meetings with him over the last two years . Its a really serious question that needs to be answered. It is clear from mccabes account of just how decisively the firing of comey back fired. That is the Inflection Point for all of this because that is what precipitates the concern and elevates the special counsel employment. Thats exactly right. In the context of Everything Else that was going on, before comey was fired and before obama left office, the New York Times was reporting in march of 2017 that members of the Obama Administration were trying to maintain all of this evidence, all of this information so that it could be kept and looked at later on by congressional committees or investigators. And it also has to be viewed in the context just as natasha said, you are dealing with the number two man in the fbi who has access to the most sensitive intelligence information that this country had on what happened during that election. So whatever he is saying, whatever facts he is giving, you know this is just the tip of the iceberg. Yeah. You cant shake this feeling when you watch him. I understand why people have attacked his credibility and he was fired for lack of candor. The sense that you get from him and others of alarm bells going off and blinking more and more urgently as time goes on. Thank you both. We have breaking news coming up, 16 states tonight just in the last few minutes have joined together to file a lawsuit against Donald TrumpsEmergency Declaration. That breaking news just ahead. Next Andrew Mccabes indictment of the Trump Administration extends beyond criticism of the president. Check in from afar with remote access, and have professional monitoring backing you up with xfinity home. Demo in an xfinity store. Call, or go online today. Former fbi Deputy Director mccabe kpfs book is making headlines but it may be even more brutal on jeff sessions. Then attorney general sessions comes off as a racist who has trouble keeping more than one thought iphis head at a time, someone who didnt read intelligence reports and mixed up classified material for what he had seen in newspaper clips and blamed immigrants for nearly every societal problem. Sessions believed islam advocated extremism and sought to draw connections between crime and immigration. Where was he from was his first question and the next where are his parents from. Sessions said the bureau was better off you only hire irish men, they were drunks but could be trusted. Joining me now msnbc legal analyst. The bullet that was dodged in sessions having to recuse himself early on given the account mccabe gives of sessions behind the scenes. Yeah except that since sessions appears to hate foreigners and russians are not domestic and he seems to be an encourageable racist, maybe he would have been fine as head of the russia investigation. Yes. Out of sheer sortof you wrote something about the investigation about the sort of nexus between obstruction and collusion and the moment that comey is fired. One of the things i think has come into view with mccabes recounting is just what that connection is. What is it to your mind . Right. I think one of the things that interested me about mccabes interview is the extent to which it validated that analysis that i did back when that New York Times story about the obstruction and collusion investigations came out. You know, what mccabe describes is that when they looked at the fact patterns surrounding the firing, and the constuilation of activities around it, they look at it and they say on the one hand this may be an obstruction crime, they also look at it and they say the obstruction crime itself may be a form of collusion. That is, why would somebody want why would the president want to shutdown this investigation designed to protect the National Security of the United States unless there were some untoward relationship between him and the russians. So we have this idea that has really permeated a lot of the way we talk about the russia investigation that there is an obstruction side of the investigation and a collusion side. And i think the point i was trying to make in that article and i think that mccabes interview really bears out is that from the fbis point of view, those questions were not distinct from one another. What is your take away on rosenstein . The d. O. J. Has pushed back a bit on the account although they havent explicitly de