Years. Good monday morning, everybody. It is october 7. Im Yasmin Vossoughian alongside ayman mohyeldin. President trump has a new defense for his july 25th phone call. To the president of ukraine that is at the center of House Democrats impeachment inquiry. Two sources familiar with the matter telling nbc news that trump told House Republicans friday that he was urged to make the call by Energy Secretary rick perry. Sources say trump suggested it was a call he didnt even want to make. In response to that news, which was first reported by axios, the department of energy press secretary tells nbc news quote this, secretary perry absolutely supported and encouraged the president to speak to the new president of ukraine to discuss matters related to their Energy Security and economic development. He continues to believe that there is significant need for improved regional Energy Security with additional options for natural gas supply will provide and this is exactly why he is heading to lithuania to meet with nearly two dozen European Energy leaders, including ukraine on these issues. Perry is reportedly set to resign from his position as Energy Secretary next month. A second whistleblower has come forward with information about President Trumps july 25th phone call with president of ukraine and an attorney representing the original whistleblower says their legal team is now representing the second whistleblower who has firsthand knowledge of the events that supports the accounts of the first whistleblower. This second whistleblower has spoken to the Inspector General of the intelligence community, michael atkinson, but legal sources tell nbc news, he or she is not filing a separate formal complaint. The news comes as House Democrats push forward with their impeachment inquiry. In fact, the existence of a second whistleblower could in fact undercut President Trumps repeated claims that the original whistleblower complaint was quote totally inaccurate. And President Trump has continued to deny that he did anything improper during his call with the president of ukraine. But republicans and the white house have struggled to put out a unified response. Trump tweeted last night this. Democrat lawyer is same for both whistleblower, question mark. All support obama and crooked hillary. Witch hunt. The president s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, also weighed in on twitter writing this. Surprise democrat lawyer has other secret sources. Swamp media will corruptly fail to point out it means nothing, now that the conversation is public. No money, no quid pro quo, unlike biden helping son make millions from ukrainian crook. Orchestrated dem Campaign Like kavanaugh. White House Press SecretaryStephanie Grisham put out a statement yesterday, she said this, it doesnt matter how many people decide to call themselves whistleblowers, about the same telephone call, a call the president already made public, it doesnt change the fact that he has done wrog nothing wrong. Only three republican senators have spoken out against president s call to china to investigate joe biden, Susan Collins said the president made a big mistake and called it completely inappropriate. And sasse says americans dont look to the chinese for the truth and if the biden kid broke law by selling to beijing, thats an american for american courts not communist tyrants running torture campaigns and no reaction got under the skin as much as the third senator, mitt romney, in fact, the president , or mitt romney tweeted when the only american citizen President Trump singles out for chinas investigation is his plinl opponent in the midst of the democratic nomination process its strange fragility to suggest that it is anything other than politically motivated. By all appearance, the president s brazen and unprecedented appeal to ukraine and china is wrong and appalling. Compare that reaction to what we have been hearing from the president s defenders. Lets start with the republican senator marco rubio. Its okay to President Trump to ask china to launch an investigation of joe biden and hunter biden . I dont know if thats a real request or him just needling the press knowing you would get outraged by it and he plays it like a violin and everybody falls into it. Thats not a real request. Do you really think he was serious about thinking that china is going to investigate the biden family . Why cant you answer yes or no . Do you think it is appropriate. I dont, because i dont think what is what he did. Well, i doubt if the china comment was serious to tell you the truth. You dont take the president at his word . No, the president love goes go out on the white house driveway, i havent talked to him about this, i dont know what the president was thinking but i know he loves to bait the press. So President Trump is escalating his attacks on joe biden and his sons dealings in ukraine and calling on the former Vice President to end his 2020 bid. Trump tweeted yesterday this. The biden family was paid off. Pure and simple. The fake news must stop making excuses for something that is totally inexcusable. Sleepy joe said he never spoke to the ukrainian company, and then the picture came out where he was playing golf with the company boss and hunter. And by the way, i would love running against 1 joe biden, i just dont think it is going to happen. Sleepy joe wont get to the starting gate and based on all of the money he and his family probably extorted in quotation mark, joe should hang tup. I wouldnt want him dealing with china and eu. In a statement reacting to trumps tweets the Biden Campaign said this, it is puzzling that donald trump claims he loves to run against joe biden seeing as how he just sent his administration into a tailspin by trying to bully a foreign country into spreading a comprehensivelydebunked Conspiracy Theory about the Vice President. Donald trump knows what over 70 poll, including his own internals, have demonstrated. Joe biden would beat this pathological liar like a drum. Soon, trump will run out of countries he can pressure to bail him out politically, and he will lose the oldfashioned way. An intervention by his own country, courtesy of the american people, in 2020. In an oped published in the washington post, biden criticized President Trumps public beef for china investigating him, enough is enough, every day, every few hours, seemingly new evidence is uncovered revealing that President Trump is abusing the power of the presidency and is wholly unfit to be president. He is using the highest office in the land to advance his personal political interests. Instead of the national interests. The president s most recent violation of the rule of law openly calling for china to interfere in our elections, as he today on the south lawn of the white house, is so outrageous, it is clear he considers the presidency a free pass to do whatever he wants with no accountability. Joining us now from washington, political reporter for the hill, julia manchester. Julia, good morning to you. Thanks for getting up with us. Always appreciate it. Good morning. Talk to us about how the focus on joe biden and hunter biden and their involvement in what is taking place with ukraine, how that has impacted the 2020 campaign . It has impacted the 2020 campaign in a huge way. I was talking to a number of democratic strategists and operatives last week, and telling me that there is some concern among those in the Democratic Community right now about President Trump and the Trump Campaign, really trying to spin this, like the 2016 campaign, and trying to make, not make a comparison but a similar scenario of joe biden and Hillary Clinton and her emails and we know that very much spoke to a lot of independents and some obviously President Trumps base in 2016, so youre seeing the Trump Campaign, through this 8 million ad buy, and messaging, really trying to push a message that joe biden is corrupt, that this is evidence that he is corrupt, and that President Trump is once again a political out sider really trying to drain the swamp, if you will. However, democrats are very much pushing back against that. You know, talking about President Trumps involvement, maybe in other countries and the elections, and that sort of thing, so very much a back and forth between these two sides right now but it has very much influenced the selection. And the, this election and the main way i would say it has made it a twoman race in the democratic primary. What potential could infighting among republicans have on trumps base as the house impeachment inquiry moves forward, do you think . I think there could definitely be a potential for that, for there to be some damage done. However, if we look back throughout the trump presidency, youve seen that republicans have very much fallen in line, and he has a very high approval rating, among his own party. So i think that is going to play very much in favor for him. Weve seen some republicans come out against him, mitt romney, susan colin, ben sasse, criticize him, if you will, in this ukraine phone call. However, i think they are a minority. Within the party, i think republicans are going to eventually come up with a very unified message, going forward. And it is still very early in the primary. Julia manchester, thank you. We will talk to you again in a little bit. Still ahead, reporting from the wall street, that ukraine officials were already sweating under pressure from the white house months before trumps phone call with the president of ukraine. And later, many Democratic White House officials, or white house hopefuls i should say, have released their new fundraising numbers but not former congressman beto orourke. We will show you his explanation for that. We will have those stories and a check of weather when we come right back. I didnt have to call 911. Help. And i didnt have to come get you. Because you didnt have another heart attack. Not today. You took our conversation about your chronic coronary Artery Disease to heart. Even with a stent procedure, your condition can get worse over time, and keep you at risk of blood clots. So you added xarelto®, to help keep you protected. Xarelto®, when taken with lowdose aspirin, is proven to further reduce the risk of blood clots that can cause heart attack, stroke, or cardiovascular death in people with chronic cad. Thats because while aspirin can help, it may not be enough to manage your risk of blood clots. In a clinical trial, almost 96 of people taking xarelto® did not have a cardiovascular event. Dont stop taking xarelto® without talking to your doctor, as this may increase your risk of heart attack, stroke, or cardiovascular death. While taking, a spinal injection increases the risk of blood clots which may cause paralysis the inability to move. You may bruise more easily, or take longer for bleeding to stop. Xarelto® can cause serious, and in rare cases, fatal bleeding. It may increase your risk of bleeding if you take certain medicines. Get help right away for unexpected bleeding or unusual bruising. Do not take xarelto® if you have an artificial heart valve or abnormal bleeding. Before starting, tell your doctor about all planned medical or dental procedures and any kidney or liver problems. Enjoy every momentand help protect yourself from an unexpected one, like a cardiovascular event. Are you doing enough . Ask your doctor if its time for xarelto®. To learn more about cost and how janssen can help, visit xarelto. Com. Welcome back, everyone. The the wall street journal is reporting that in the months before President Trumps controversial phone call with ukrainian president zelensky, ukrainian officials were already feeling pressure to cooperate with the white house to find out information about former Vice President joe biden and his family. Now, according to the journal, just two weeks after zelensky was elected he got word that trumps personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani wanted to visit kiev to talk to zelenski about information regarding his clients political rival. However zelenski fearful of getting sucked into a foreign drama declined to take that meeting. Over the next several months zelenskis administration tried to sort through conflicting signals out of washington that have become central to the ongoing impeachment inquiry in President Trump. Most worrying, the ukrainians learned long after that washington had decided to withhold nearly 400 million in approved military assistance, the journal notes that zelenskis difficulties were magnified with his lack of familiarity with american politics. Late last month, during a press conference with trump, zelenski said that he did not feel pressured by the president. But with ukraine now thrust firmly into the middle of a partisan fight in washington, ukraines prosecutor general Just Announced last week that it would look at a number of investigations that had been closed under previous administrations, however biden was not specifically mentioned by name. Joining us on the set, msnbc legal analyst danny cevallos. How could this impact, danny, this revelation, how could this revelation impact the impeachment inquiry, or this tick tock leading up to this phone call with the ukrainian president . It fleshes out some of the grounds for the impeachment inquiry. But any evidence that there was, as you say, pressure on the ukraine, i did it again, ukraine, long before the phone call of july, tens to show or could show that there was no quid pro quo, there was no this for that in the phone call. No demand, no pressure. But owner, it really doesnt matter under federal law how separate the quid pro quo is, it could be months earlier and a benefit not necessarily received by each of the parties but somebody important to them so traditional notions of quid pro quo have been so expanded by federal criminal law, that just because the pressure may have come at a different time, or the parties were not direct recipients, doesnt rule out the notion i guess of quid pro quo. I think one of the points of the whistleblower complaint is to take everything in context, not just the phone call but the pattern of behavior over a period of months and that has made the president question the accuracy of that phone call. Now we have a second whistleblower that has come forward, according to his attorney, and could potentially corroborate or substantiate the entire account that was provided by the first whistleblower, talk to us about the significance of a second whistleblower as it undermines the claim that the first account was not an accurate one. You said the magic word and it is corroboration. Any time you have two stories that relatively match each other, its going to be difficult to counter them. But in a sense, we always knew there might be some form of corroboration, because these phone calls, these actions by the executive, dont happen in a vacuum. They dont happen alone. Theres either somebody listening in terms of a human or sometimes there is even electronic listening and transcribing. So there is not, there is not too much surprise that there may be a second whistleblower act that contains a lot of the same information, because we knew all along that President Trump is monitored, either on the american side or even on the side of the other country that hes speaking to. So this is not that much of a surprise. But again, i would just ask, how does it really strengthen the case for the impeachment inquiry, especially when the defense is that this first whistleblower did not have firsthand knowledge of what too place. Supposedly the second whistleblower does have firsthand knowledge. Thats right. And depending on what that modge is, the firsthand knowledge is important, and it could tend to show that the first whistleblowers claims are corroborated and more truthful, but i caution everyone that just because something is secondhand information, in terms of an investigation, doesnt make it less valuable. It does in the sense that if youre going to trial and you have hearsay evidence thats not admissible, then its value is diminished, but investigators on the front end of an investigation welcome secondhand information. Its often how an investigation begins. It is also probably very hard given the fact that this is in the intelligence world, for anyone to have hard evidence to substantiate their claims because a lot of it must be classified. Thats right. You dont want to compromise how a certain methodology of intelligence gathering happens. Thats right. Danny cevallos, thanks. Good monday morning. Here we go again. Last week was all about the heat wave. Historic. Remember, we also had the snowstorm, too. And now we will have the second snowstorm already of the fall season. Winter storm warnings in areas of western montana. And winter storm watch for areas of northern wyoming. A decent one, not epic like last week but anywhere in the red it shows eight inches of snow, but anywhere in the light blue is two or three inches. A pretty good footprint throughout much of the mountains in the Northern Rockies and some of this will spill in the plains here. North dakota, from bismarck to rapid city, and even a little section here of scott bluff. It looks like denver, you avoid staying out of this. And here is how were shaping up. Anywhere in the tennessee area, northern mississippi, alabama, it is