This is all about ego and retaliation. This has nothing to do with good order and discipline. And big apple billionaire. Former new york city mayor Michael Bloomberg jumps into the democratic race but is skipping the early states. Elections should not be for sale, not to billionaires, not to corporate executives. Multibillionaires like mr. Bloomberg are not going to get very far in this election. How did you get in here . Well, i tipped the doorman 30 million. Good day, everyone. Im Andrea Mitchell in washington where House Democrats are taking the next steps toward impeachment without getting testimony from top cabinet and white house officials as Congressional Republicans embrace discredited conspiracy theories to defend the president. Today two key trump allies are facing new scrutiny. The Washington Post reporting how acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, whos also the budget director, tried to justify withholding military aid to ukraine. And Top Intelligence Committee republican devin nunes will not explain his reported contacts with former ukrainian officials in searching to dig up dirt on joe biden. Bottom line, were you in vien vienna . I really want to answer all of these questions and i promise you i absolutely will come back on the show and answer these questions. But because there is criminal activity here, were working with the appropriate Law Enforcement agencies. Joining me now is nbcs jeff bennett. Ha what is your latest reporting on devin nunes . Theres new reporting, i gather, on not only the controversy over whether or not he actually went to vienna to meet with ukrainians, but your reporting is that he actually had either facetime or some phone conversation with these ukrainians. Right. Ill walk through this chronologically because i think it is difficult for people to understand. The first reporting is that lev parnas, the indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani, according to lev parnass attorney is prepared to tell house investigators that victor showkin met with devin nunes in the late 2018, in december of 2018. Now, you saw there devin nunes wouldnt really engage on the substance of the question when asked directly. But i dug up congressional records. Theyre public congressional travel records that show that devin nunes, in fact, in europe from november 30th to december 8th, 2018. At the time he was chairman of the house intelligence committee. Now the congressional records dont show precisely where he was or with whom he met. Since that reporting, cnbc is now reporting that earlier this year nunes staffers attempted to make a trip to ukraine in march but they scuttled the trip. They scrapped it entirely when they realized they would have to inform adam schiff, the chairman of the house intelligence committee. This is according to parnass attorney. The reason why this matters is because march, the spring is precisely when democrats say, according to all of the evidence that theyve amassed, that that is when this Pressure Campaign started. That is around the time that Rudy Giuliani and his associates smeared and ultimately led to the ousting of marie yovanovitch, the former ambassador to ukraine. This allegation speaks to the fact that devin nunes and his aides were involved in the very same thing allegedly that the house jeintelligence committee now looking into, whether or how President Trump and his allies used Public Office for personal gain and tried to manufacture dirt on the bidens. Lindsey graham is the Senate Judiciary chairman, has been a long time friend and ally, travel mate of joe biden when they were on bipartisan trips overseas. Lindsey graham speaking out in South Carolina today to try to defend why he is now going after the bidens, launching new investigations into the bidens on ukraine despite his long time friendship. My conscience is clear. I love joe biden as a person. He is a really decent man. Hes had a lot of tragedy in his life. But i have a conscience very clear right now and i have a duty if the house is going to shut it down, the senate is going to pick it up. I didnt start this. So phil rucker, this is where is Lindsey Graham and try to explain. What were looking at in your Washington Post reporting your team reporting new reporting that Mick Mulvaney, who runs the Budget Office and is the acting chief of staff, also came up with all kinds of excuses to try to explain withholding that ukraine aid. Two important issues here. First of all, with senator graham, hes clearly proceeding along the direction that the president wants him to by trying to investigate the paidbidens b trying to get those documents from the state department and make the inquiry into the bidens and ukraine more of a substantive part of the discussion as the impeachment inquiry heads toward a likely senate trial early next year. Now, with the new reporting by my colleagues over the weekend regarding Mick Mulvaneys role at the white house, its another example of how far reaching the effort was inside the administration and among the president s top aides to try to cover up what the president was trying to do by withholding that foreign aid. There are many emails that my colleagues referenced in their reporting showing Mick Mulvaney and others in the white house trying to come up with a rationale and reason for why that foreign aid was delayed to give to ukraine, reasons that would make more sense or be more ethical rather than the president s stated reason, which was to try to pressure the Ukrainian Government to launch that investigation into the bidens. And then there is Rudy Giuliani. Explaining Rudy Giuliani, he was asked about indications, some hint that is the white house was walking away from him, that they might throw him under the bus to get the president off the hook. He said if they did, that he had an insurance policy. Now hes tweeted to try to explain that he meant hes got stuff on the bidens. If he had anything on the bidens, he would have made it public by now. The implication in the original comment was that he had stuff on the president that he could release if the president tried to throw him under the bus. Right. That wouldnt be much of an insurance policy, would it . Just more broadly, the whole thing is such a total snake pit now. You have a couple weeks in which facts were established, i think, beyond a reasonable doubt. Now with parnas, who by the way is not so trustworthy in his own right and graham and mulvaney and giuliani, you have this whole kind of counter attack based on both fiction and gutter politics. The overriding point, yes, theres criminal possibilities and theres ethical possibilities in the house. But come on, this is an important investigation now and the American People deserve to hear about this. The real sort of immediate sin is that we dont know what mulvaney would say, what giuliani would say, what parnas would say, what bolton et cetera would say. Thats still being hidden from view. That should be front and center now and instead its just this sniping innuendo with no factual basis. One of the points youve been making is abuse of power or obstruction by withholding dm i be an article of impeachment. I think theyre preparing and it totally makes sense. Thats the once response to the stonewall theyve received. Thank you so much. Jackie speier joins me now. First of all, what do you think about the possible travel of devin nunes now . Did he actually go . There are congressional records that he actually went to vienna. We dont know whom he met with. We now understand that he had communication, had calls with some of these former ukrainian officials as well, facetiming or phone calling in some way or fashion. Is there an ethics issue for devin nunes not to have disclosed this to his colleagues . I think there certainly is a potential if its true, a potential ethics inquiry that needs to take place. If he was on a political errand for the president , that was using taxpayer funds inappropriately and he should be investigated by the Ethics Committee and he should be forced to repay the treasury of the money that was spent for what was a purely pl lly politi activity. If he did not physically travel on the taxpayer dime, it would be different if he was gathering information. Sure. If he wanted to use his own Campaign Funds to do that, he was doing Opposition Research for the president , that would be a gift of money to the president s campaign and youre limited in how much you can actually contribute. So he could be hit both ways, to tell you the truth. Do you expect that the committee will hear in some fashion from lev parnas regarding Rudy Giuliani and his role . So we have subpoenaed documents from lev parnas. Whats been dribbling out is mostly incomplete commentary from his attorney. He has not been fully supportive of that subpoena. He has not disclosed as much as we have asked him to disclose. So were waiting for a more fullsome disclosure by lev parnas. Certainly from the closing statement by adam schiff on thursday it left very little doubt that as chair of the committee, that youre moving toward drafting a report, turning it over to the Judiciary Committee and presumably moving toward an impeachment vote. So after 30 hours and 12 witnesses, a number of whom were republican witnesses, the overwhelming evidence, a mountain of evidence shows that there was a bribe by the president trying to get from mr. Zelensky an investigation that would benefit his campaign. You know, the constitution is very clear about impeachment. Its treason, bribery or high crimes and misdemeanors. It was specifically meant to deal with a president who was placing his personal interests in front of the countrys interests. That certainly appears to be what the president is doing. Furthermore, there have been all these individuals within his administration that have been subpoenaed. There have been documented from his administration that have been subpoenaed. He has basically defied all of them and told all of his higherups to defy them as well. So again we have obstruction of congress. If you have nothing to hide, why are you preventing people from testifying to congress . When you proceed, though, given the fact that the public seems to be turning against support for impeachment as the hearings have progressed despite what you all see as strong evidence, do you risk losing the politics, the political argument if you impeach and head into a senate trial where the republicans will be in charge . Well, this is really the end of the beginning. There continues to be information just over the weekend that has come up that we didnt know about before. So i dont know that we can somehow look at the polling on one day and take a snapshot and think thats what its going to be for all time. Remember when Richard Nixon was being investigated with all those 51 days of hearings that they had on watergate, he was not being opposed by the American People until the end. What we have here is someone who has cheated. What some people are saying is, well, the election is next year. Well, someone cheats on a test and is a senior in high school, do you let him have a pass because hes about to graduate . It is a violation of the constitution and thats what we are here to protect. Are you concerned that he would theoretically cheat again when he got to college, to use your analogy . I think he is capable of cheating and has shown us over and over again that he cheats and that he lies. So the combination is really toxic. Its a toxic potion that the American People should not be subject to. Thank you very much for coming on. Happy thanksgiving to you and your family. Happy thanksgiving to you as well. Coming up, firing line. The secretary of the navy is forced out after defying President Trumps support for a navy seal facing military discipline. L facing military discipline limu emu doug and now for their service to the community, we present limu emu doug with this key to the city. [ applause ] its an honor to tell you that Liberty Mutual customizes your Car Insurance so you only pay for what you need. And now we need to get back to work. [ applause and band playing ] only pay for what you need. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Im part of a community of problem solvers. We make ideas grow. From an everyday solution. To one that can take on a bigger challenge. We are solving problems that improve lives. Billions of problems. Sore gums . Bleeding gums . Painful flossing . Theres a therabreath for you. Therabreath healthy gums oral rinse fights gingivitis and plaque and prevents gum disease for 24 hours. So you can. Breathe easy, theres therabreath at walmart. Navy secretary Richard Spencer is out of a job today, fired by defense secretary mark esper after defying President Trumps support for navy seal Eddie Gallagher. Gallagher had been acquitted in a military trial of shooting iraqi civilians and killing an enemy fighter. But he was convicted for posing in photos with a dead isis soldier. The jury in this case recommended a reduction in rank. Earlier this month the president issued a pardon restoring gallaghers original rank. Joining me now Courtney Kube who just spoke with secretary esper about all of this. This is extraordinary. We have not seen the president of the United States stepping in to a military justice case. Especially one like this where the president has not only stepped in on the military justice part of this, but now hes stepping in, intervening in the administrative review process, which is essentially what this was for Eddie Gallagher. Its called a trident review board. A jury of his peers would look at the case laid out, in this case, that he was accused and found guilty of posing with the body of a dead isis fighter and they would determine whether that was a crime or something that was serious enough to warrant him losing his trident pin. Thats what President Trump was intervening in. He said the navy needs to leave that alone, let Eddie Gallagher keep his trident pin and let him retire as a seal. Secretary esper just talked to you about this. Did he defend the decision of the president to intervene . He did. In fact, for the first time now the one thing thats been unclear in what is a very amerimurky and confusing story is that the president has wanted Eddie Gallagher to keep his status as a navy seal. President trump was the one who directed secretary esper to end the Navy Review Board process to let Eddie Gallagher retire as a u. S. Navy seal. That was unclear. We know that Senior Leaders here in the pentagon including the now former secretary of the navy Richard Esper has said the process needed to go forward. This is a peer review process. Its an administrative process. His goal was to get the white house to continue forward with the process. We reported over the weekend he told the white house and we now know from secretary esper he also told secretary esper that if he was ordered by the white house to end the review process, that he would resign. So whats so confusing about this is now we just heard from secretary esper that the reason secretary spencer was fired is because he was intervening to help Eddie Gallagher keep his trident pin. The very thing he told his colleagues and superiors on thursday he would resign for is what he was allegedly working to back channel to come out as the ending anyway. Its a very confusing case. When asked about that, secretary esper acknowledged, look, i dont understand, he was saying one thing in public and one thing in private and thats why i lost confidence in him and asked for his resignation. Thank you so much. Joining me now is retired four star u. S. Army general barry mccaffrey. Its pretty stunning that the president for months now has been intervening through the gallagher defense attorney who is actually a former law partner of Rudy Giuliani. Theres clearly a lot of white house intervention all along the way during these court martials. I think the mini drama was secretary of defense mark esper firing spencer, correctly i think, for going behind his back and trying to cook a deal with the white house without informing he and the chairman. Thats a mini drama and spencer is gone. Some things are not in dispute. The president has unless its an illegal order, almost unconstrained ability to fire senior military officials. His Pardon Authority is almost completely unconstrained. What is unusual, though, if you want to back off this is that the armed forces now for a generation have been in combat. Weve had 60,000 killed and wounded and the special Ops Community has been in the lead of that. Theyre trying to reinstall, reinvigorate standards of discipline and weve had some real serious problems. So the president s command influence in public is unheard of. By the way, the uniform code of military justice didnt get written in the pentagon or the white house, its a federal syst