Greater vezability into the investigation and its details. There will be more than 20 dedicated agents working on the investigation. They will brief comey on a weekly basis. Meanwhile, nbc news has confirmed that bombshell Washington Post report that the United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in january, a week before the inauguration between blackwater founder eric prince and a russian close to president Vladimir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back channel line of communication between moscow and president elect donald trump. The post noted that prince presented himself as an unofficial ann vey for trump. The blackwater founder gave a quarter of a Million Dollars to the trump campaign, and protrump super pacs last year and hes been sitting in the trumps transition offices in december. A spokesperson for prince rejected the story and the white house called the suggestion of a back water charge ridiculous. Meanwhile as the investigation moves forward, trump pushes stories that distract attention from the investigation. Yesterday, for example, bloombergs eli lake reported, white house lawyers last month learned that the former National Security adviser susan rice requested the identities of u. S. Persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the trump tran skpigs and campaign according to u. S. Officials fanl with the matter. Today, President Trump retweeted a drudge report headline abouthat story. In an exclusive interview wh andrea mitchell, susan rice explained there is a big difference between requesting information about sources in intelligence reports and surveilling political opponents as President Trump has alleged. Lets watch her. The allegation that somehow Obama Administration officials utilized intelligence for political purposes. Thats absolutely false. There were occasions when i would receive a report in which a u. S. Person was referred to. Name not provided. Just u. S. Person. And sometimes in that context, in order to understand the importance of the report and assess its significance, it was necessary to find out or request the information as to who that u. S. Official was. Well, congressman adam schiff, the Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee said the white house is trying to change the focus and divert the investigation into his campaigns ties to russia. Lets watch this. If anyone in the white house had a concern about any of these materials, they should have been shared and not gone through this charade that we saw over the last two weeks. What prompted that . What was the urgency there when weve already asked for materials about incidental collection . And i have to think the urgency was created at that monday hearing when james comey said not only there was no truth to the president s claim that he was surveilled or wiretapped or what have you, but also when the fbi director said that the trump campaigneam was under an fbi investigation. I think this was the response to th rather breathtaking hearing. Congressman denny heck is a member of the House Intelligence Committee. Simon marks, and david cornish, Washington Bureau chief. Congressman, let me ask you about this. What do you make of this investigation and the fact that comey, the fbi director, is really kind of focusing attention, creating a special section to go into what happened between russia and the trump people . So one former fbi agent indicated that this represents a surge in resources. Anybody associated with the trump orbit that was involved in russia final entanglements probably was calling their lawyer today, chris. Thats what i make of it. Let me ask you about this other later bombshell story, that there was a meeting nine days before inauguration between the blackwater founder, the brother of the person betsy devos, of course who was named by trump to be secretary of education, her brother. The guy over in the seychelles with the putin guy. What is a huge backer of a president ial candidate who has already become a president elect doing fishing out there, putting together relations with russia . I dont know whether its illegal, but it certainly suggests more entanglement between the trump folks and the putin folks. Chris, theres so much smoke here. Every smoke alarm in the house is going off. Theres so much smoke here you cant see a foot in front of your face. Listen, this thing is taking on a life of its own. Its gathering speed. Its the senate. Its the fbi with new resources and by the way i have it by word tonight that the house is going to get its investigation back on track. The chair and the Ranking Member, i believe, are near agreement on a witness list so we can enter the auction. And as i have said all along, i wouldnt be the slightest bit surprised if there arent also some local prosecutors looking into some things like this. Is the chairman of your committee his own man . Well, chris, i am going to give him the benefit of the doubt of an opportunity to get this back on track. Okay. Let me put it this way. I asked him to recuse himself. I think that was the right thing to do. But right now lets focus on getting it back on track. The reason i asked that is obvious. But i also know from a former member of the house who is now in the senate once told me that when you go into markup and you actually have to write bills, you can sometimes realize that one of your colleagues is in the tank with some corporation. They begin to behave like theyre not really their own person. Weve seen pretty adequate evidence that mr. Nunes is not his own person. Whats he doing hanging around picking up the laundry from the white house and taking it back to the white house after hes cleaned it by saying hes an investigator . He wasnt an investigator. He was a delivery boy, bringing this stuff back that they gave him and saying it was news, alarming news. If that isnt show boating for the president , i dont know what is. What do you think it was . I think the best thing that can be said about it is that its ham handed. Ive said all along i feel like im watching a 3d movie, deception, deflection, and distraction. Thats what hes trying to do. But its not going to work. One of your colleagues on the committee, another democrat on the tension Committee Said on cnn just day he thinks some of President Trumps associates could end up in prison or in jail, he said. Lets watch. I guess i would say this, that my impression i wouldnt be surprised after all of this is said and done that some people end up in jail. Really . And how high does that go in your suspicion . Thats all we could call it right now. Well, thats yet to be determined. Youre confident that at least some Trump Associates will wind up in jail . If i was betting, i would say yes. Including some who are working in the new administration or people who worked or advised the president during the campaign and maybe during the transition . As you can imagine, wolf, ill have to comment on that later. But, again, if somebody asked me my impression, i would my impression is that people will probably be charged, and i think people will probably go to jail. Congressman, last question. What do you make of Michael Flynn, the general who was head of National Security, asking for immunity . Immunity means immunity from prison basically. He must think somethings coming his way. I can only quote general flynn, who said nobody asks for immunity that hasnt committed a crime. I want to respectfully disagree with my dear friend joaquin castro, next to whom i sit on the intelligence committee. He said he would not be surprised if people ended up going to jail. I will be surprised if people dont end up going to jail. Okay. Thank you very much, congressman denny heck of washington state, right . Yes, sir. Thank you so much. Lets go back to these other folks. Simon first and then david. This thing is getting coherent. Comey is taking it seriously by outward effect. What do you make of it all . People are talking about immunity. Were getting more information about the seychellesseychelles. You dont mean the seychelles if you want the people to know about it. Look, im old enough to remember when sean isiser was standing behind that lectern assuring everybody theres nothing to see here, time to stop digging. Now youve got the fbi surging resources, according to the financial times. That is a very, very clear indication that they think theres something there to dig into and to get their teeth into. And trump gets more and more for a man that you would think well, i dont think hes totally innocent of any of these relations. Theres no reason to believe he doesnt have russian connections. Every time this gets tighter around his neck, ebb starts getting crazy with the tweets over the weekend. Look at this. He keeps calling this a hoax. Thats his word. Its a hoax. Its a hoax. Fake news, fake news. You have the director of the fbi, that he oversees as president , saying actually this is not a hoax, and this is getting more intense. It shows me comey is not dismissing it. Hes finding more to focus on. You have republicans who lead the intelligence committees, even nunes, saying this is real. You have nikki haley saling this is real. What does itean tha all these nikki hal has said that as well. All these republicans, people in his own cabinet say its real, and he keeps saying its a hoke. I think nikki haley sees herself having a future. Thats why shes keeping herself clean. You notice the opera aspect of this. First he goes after donna br braziel. Passed apparently some questions from a debate to hillary. That shouldnt have been done. Why is he going back after that . Why is he going after hillarys performance in the debate . Why is he going after susan rice . Hes like an old deejay. He pulls out the old records from 20 years ago and plays them again. Well, hes like the magician whos saying dont look over here. Look over here. Hes desperate to get everybody tody swrert their attention today. I do think susan rice lets watch that. As soon as reports about susan rices roll in unmasking the names of Trump Associates emerge the, many republicans pounced. I believe susan rice abused the system, and she did it for political purposes. She needs to be brought in and questioned under oath. She did an interview 12 days ago. Was she forthcoming in that interview, senator . I have no idea. But when it comes to susan rice, you flood to verify, not trust. Susan rice is the typhoid mary of the Obama Administration foreign policy. Every time something went wrong, she seemed to turn up in the middle of it. Okay. Bates motel. Mike huckabee tweeted yesterday, donald trump will await apology from the media now ha he has revealed susan rice unmasked names. Orange jump p suit in issight. I do think notice its always a female . Just a thought. Thats also true. But i do think she slightly played into that hand. Typhoid mar pri . Clearly not. But the best things susan rices job is to watch narc security. As she told andrea today, she made it very clear what she was doing was when she saw an american name show up in a surveillance of a foreign perhaps agent, she went into who that was. Whats wrong with that . I dont think theres necessarily anything wrong with it. I think unfortunately for susan rice, shes given two contradictory interviews, an interview to pbs a couple weeks ago where she said nothing to see here. She said there was no surveillance. She wasnt saying she didnt pick up some names by asking through Proper Authority whos are they talking about. By the way, this is all after the election. This wasnt politics. At the end of the day, we need some element of decency. When rand paul gets out there and says shes abused this right, there is not an iota of evidence that shes abused anything. Calling her typhoid mary, all we know now is that she did her job. Did she do something wrong . There is no information indicating that. So they are making her, you know, basically theyre defaming her without any reason to do so because shes a woman. Maybe because shes a black woman. Maybe because they didnt like her during benghazi. This is all about the a little british commentary from me right now. Remember that scene in man for all seasons where henry the 8th steps ento the muddy water and all the kurt yeas jump into the water with him, led by huckabee. We have some breaking news right now to report. The south Korean Military has confirmed that north korea has just fired a ball isz tick missile into the sea of japan. It comes days before President Trump is set to meet with the chinese president. Lester holt is at the air base in south korea where these are tracked. What can you tell us about this disturbing news . Reporter chris, were getting confirmation now not only from south korean officials but also u. S. Pacific command, this missile was launched on the east coast of north korea. This would be the seventh in the last two months, a Ballistic Missile that traveled about 37 miles before going down in the east sea, also known as the sea of japan. This comes just on the heels of the North Koreans issuing more stipends against the joint u. S. South korea military exercises going on here. We were on some of those exercises yesterday. Theyontinue torain together for eventualities here including a lot of what we saw was dealing with the possibility of weapons of mass destruction. Now, we can tell you that that missile would have been tracked at the air Operations Center at Osan Air Base. Its about a 10, 15minute walk from where we are. It is underground. It is very secure. We had rare access there a couple of days ago. U. S. South korean operators have just moments to react when these things happen. Theyve got to identify the launch point and do the math or the computers do the math very quickly to figure out where its going to come down. In other words, is it an attack, or is it going to be a harmless test as this turned out to be . But it is a time of rising tensions, certainly on this peninsula. Weve spent the last four days with various military units. They continue to train to the standard they always do, and their slogan is ready to fight tonight. In other words, things could flip, they know, on this peninsula at any moment, and their posture is to be ready to go at any moment. Chris . Thank you so much, lester holt at Osan Air Base in south korea. Lester, of course, is an anchor of the nightly news for nbc news. Coming up, should President Trumps former National Security director Michael Flynn get immunity . He says he has a story to tell to pay for that immunity. But would that story net the bigger fish . Well, donald trump perhaps . Thats the question everyone is asking. John deans joins us in just a minute. Plus todays equal pay day, the day that symbolizes how far into a new year women must earn to catch up with men from the previous air. Ivanka trump says we need to close that pay gap, but her dad lled back an obama regulation last month that ensures federal contractors pay women the same as their male counterparts. And the hardball round table is here to talk about how can trump continue to talk to russia. Finally let me finish tonight with the same story with history actually. Past and present tied to the Top College Basketball team in the country, unc. This is hardball, where the action is. President trump is blaming his pretty sesors policies after a suspected chemical attack in syria killed at least 83 people including 25 children. The pictures are horrible. We want to warn viewers that the pictures from that attack are very graphic in nature to put it lightly. Syrian activists say the attack happened in a northern rebel held region and a Field Hospital in the area was also hit. Eyewitnesses say the attack was launched by an air strike from syrian and russian warplanes. Activists say it bears all the hallmarks of assad government. Both damascus and moscow deny responsibility. In a statement today, President Trump condemned the attack, calling it a consequence of the Obama Administrations weakness that was his word on the war in syria back in 2012 when president obama said chemical weapons used in syria would cross a red line. A year later the assad regime used chemical weapons against civilians, and president obama didnt act. At the time trump repeatedly urged obama not to use force. Will he agree with obama not to use force at that time. White house Secretary Sean Spicer says bashir is a political reality, but mccain says trump needs to take a more forceful stand against the syrian president. I want to hear him say wee going arm the free syrian army. Were going to dedicate ourselves to the removal of bashir assad, and we will not sit by and watch chemical weapons being used to slaughter innocent women and children. Thats not the trump view. Well get much more on what trump may do about the war in syria, especially given moscows support for assad later with our round table tonight. Well be rath back. Wanna get away . Now you can with southwest fares as low as 59 dollars oneway. Yes to low fares with nothing to hide. Thats transfarency. What bad back . Gels work so fast youll ask what pulled hammy . Advil liqui gels make pain a distant memory nothing works faster stronger or longer what pain . Advil. E trades powerful trading tools, give you access to indepth analysis, and a team of experienced traders ready to help if you need it. Its like having the power of a trading floor, wherever you are. Its your trade. E trade you only give immunity if youre going to get the big fish, and the big fish here is the president of the United States. Welcome back to hardball. The big question about Michael