Pending investigation. The irony of you making that statement here, i cannot avoid. For too many of us, its become safer to retreat into our own bubbles for all off our outward citizens. We all share the same price. Citizens. A lot of news in one day. Welcome to morning joe. A side of an dah you have an election or a runup to election. Its wednesday, january 11th. We have everything for you. We have with us msnbc contributor Mike Barnicle and msnbc anchor Steve Kornacki and in washington columnist and associate editor for the Washington PostDavid Ignatius back with us. On capitol hill, the New York Times reporter jeremy peter and in london is writer max fisher. The day ended with not only a political event but a cultural event i think the president s victory speech in grant park eight years ago. It was the sort of thing, i know a lot of my friends not only sat and watched last night, but they told their children. Come on. Lets sit down and watch this. It just was a night unlike people talked about it all day. There just arent a whole lot of cultural events that pulls us together but last night was one of those nights. We will play more highlights from president obamas Farewell Speech last night, including a really touching tribute to his family and some interesting moments about sort of the electorate. Mike, what do you think about last night . Whoever whatever friends of yours indicated that they told their kids to sit down and watch this with them, that is good parenting. That was a spectacular moment last night. You had the president of the United States going out the door. His presenidency now nine days left it. The speech, i thought, was spectacular, that it wasnt a partisan speech and it wasnt about yesterday, it was more about tomorrow and optimistic for the country. It was about tomorrow and it was also a good road map for democrats who got left behind this year on how to actually win elections moving forward. He echoed after the election what joe biden said that democrats need to start thinking about. I think the items he wanted to leave as his legacy, we can agree with that but i agree with you, mika, the Family Moments with his wife and daughters shows what kind of man he is and what kind of dignity he has. Our top story is about the president elect. Donald trump is set to hif i guess his fuirst news conferenc at 11 00 tomorrow and alleged contacts between him and his campaign and the russian government. Two u. S. Officials with direct knowledge tell nbc news that briefing materials prepared for the president elect, himself, included information that initially circulated among trump opponents and was passed to u. S. Intelligence agencies, making damaging allegations about his dealings with russians. Neither of the official said that the fbi was actively investigating the information which has not been verified by u. S. Agencies. Are you following me . Do you even know what im talking about . Because there is so many different not clarified, not verified. Its frustrating. But we go on because its potentially explosive. Buzzfeed made the controversial move last night of publishing a da who claims to be a member of British Intelligence. Inside the claims are is the russian government is cultivating and supporting and shifting the president elect for five years, even gaining compromising information about him in an effort to blackmail him. In publishing the documents, buzzfeed acknowledged the claims are unverified and contain obvious errors. Lets stop right there and we will get Donald Trumps reaction first. What are we talking about here . Break it down. One thing not in there, max fish fisher, i saw a couple of things you tweeted last night. One of the things that arent in there has to do with the fact that the person that was hired to gain this information actually was doing Opposition Research for trumps republican opponents and, later, his democratic opponents. One of these things where you said lets not after 2002, 2003, not get too far ahead of ourselves. You look at all of the alleged, all of the this and all of the that, it doesnt seem like we have at least this morning to hang our hats on, do we . There is really not much to go on in here. None of this is verified or verifiable. This is shopped around to media agencies for months and no one, before buzzfeed, agreed to publish it for exactly that reason. There is also a lot about it that strains credibility. The idea that this one former british agent has all of these high level contacts in the russian government just telling him, i guess, sure, here are all of our plots to discredit and own donald trump the last five years. It does, it sends my mind back to 2002, 2003 where we had, similarly, agendadriven, unverified, but very salacious reports. In this case, a rocky government links to al qaeda of iraqi weapons. Mass destruction. Then, as now, those reported here are caveats but this unverified thing is out there and that turned out to be quite damaging and a big role in the runup to the iraq war so i think we need to keep those revelations in mind. David ignatius, sorting through claims claims claims unverified and even the source saying inaccurate, but this was information that had been shopped around to News Agencies for sometime. What can you tell us about what you know about this, when you first heard about it, and how much credence you are giving it this morning . I first heard about this some weeks ago. Much News Organizations have been aware of it and we have been trying as hard as we can to verify individual claims within it because its, obviously, crucial material and goes to the question of contact between the Trump Campaign and russian intelligence. It goes to personal issues involving donald trump. We have gdone what News Organizations should have done, try to verify it and we at the the Washington Post have not been able to do that and not written anything about the substance of this document. What convinced cnn last night that they should go forward is they learned that elements of the document had been briefed to both president obama and donald trump. Which leads to my next question if you have i dont know what the correct answer to this is, and its why we are so grateful for you to agreeing to come on this morning early. Im just wondering if its an unverified report, part of Opposition Research, and, as max fisher just said, in many ways, just strainge credibility to ths is this the sort of thing that should have been in that briefing document when they briefed the president and the president elect . What was your gut on that when you first read that . When i first read it, i thought the following, in a sense, it was strange that they didnt wait until they had established precisely what they thought was true and false in the document, at the time when it is widely circulated. You could argue part of the job of the president s intelligence is to make him aware of issues that are out there and are going to be part of an ongoing investigation. This material is in the hands of james comey and it was put there by a prominent senator three weeks ago, but i think he already had it from other sources. So the fbi is looking at it. You could argue that donald trump needed to know that and needed to be told in confidence that the fbi was looking at it. The decision that is then a story, that the public needs to know, is not one that the Washington Post had made. Its one that cnn made and, again, i have explained why i think they did that. To me, finally, joe, the key thing here is our political system has got a big rock already over the past year, and i think its important that there be a sober, sensible, traditional american investigation of this, the instruments that provide trust in our system, our legal system, the fbi, itself, u. S. Attorneys, some sort of bipartisan congressional effort. That is the way to take some of the politics, some of the emotion out of it and get a judgment on this material, that the American People can rely on. Max, let me ask you this and then turn it over to others who have a lot of questions here. A lot of things that cant be verified. One thing that can be verified right now, max, and may cause a concern is the fact that members of Trump Campaign, throughout the campaign, allegedly made contacts with russian government officials. Is that something worth pursuing . I mean, this is the thing that is so tough about these kinds of unverified allegations. Of course, thats something that you should be, and i think many people in many News Agencies are looking into as aggressively as possible. The specific way that it is alleged in this report is laea little bit tough. The idea there was a secret meeting in prague, its hard to imagine the russian government would do that given that leaves a lot of traces in a paper trail that then could be picked up. Its what concerns me about the decision to publish this report is that there are, i think, more credible allegations in ways in which it is possible there could have been contacts between the russian government and the Trump Campaign. This is not one of them. And that deepens the confusion and the uncertainty that i think a lot of people are going to have over exactly which allegations are credible and which are not and how do i sort through them and what is true and not true. All of that kind of deepens it makes it much easier to dismiss the next allegation even if it is much more credible, put it that way. To maxs position about these meetings, Michael Cohen a lawyer for donald trump met secretly in prague with officials and changed information. Cohen denies this saying he had never been to prague in his life. They say he was at university of Southern California at the time of this alleged meeting and confirming he was not in prague. Why would buzzfeed and cnn go with this . First of all, what is it that we are talking about . Its basically a collection of whispers and rumors. And, by the way, we are not even going to come close to what they put out there as far as correct. The allegations. What it is is an absolute bombshell and a molotov cocktail thrown on january 11th with no verification. But to davids point its been out there for several months. We have all heard elements about it, gossip about it dating back to the fall. Why do you publish that . Why did cnn put it out . Cnn, i think, had a hook to hang that story on, a small hook, but, you know and they used that hook to hang it on. What was the hook that just i have had justified . That the intelligence agencies told donald trump at a meeting with him last friday at trump tower. That is understandable too. Jim clapper is leaving after 51 years in the business. Right. John brennan, he is leaving because he is going to be replaced by mike pompeo. Then you had admiral rogers there so they dont know when they get a chance to sit with the principal, the president elect of the United States and they got that chance last friday. They dont know if he is reading the daily intelligence briefing reports that are afforded him. They dont know whether general flynn or donald trump reads them so they are going to tell him and that is the hook that cnn used. On this question of the media in the buzzfeed decision here, one thing that was striking to me last night watching president obama in that speech, i know youre going to talk about it a little bit later. A lot. He was talking about the tendency we have to retreat in terms of the information we receive and how we talk about it to retreat into bubleeds. What i watch happened last night when this broke online, when buzzfeed put these documents up, unverified claims that no reared has a reader has a way to verify. If you looked online last night, if you looked on social media, this stuff was spreading as accepted fact like wildfire. This happens on the left and it happens on the right. I heard that in the president s speech last night and i know a lot of people on the left online were saying he is going after republicans and going after fake news. I thought last night was a demonstration how the left can also have an appetite for this stuff because they want it to be true. Something does not feel right. Trumps response was in the form of a tweet. Fake news. A total political witch hunt. Sean spicer tweeted buzzfeed itself admits as we noted in our story there are serious reasons to doubt the allegations. Just pathetic. Here is the fbi director yesterday under questioning during a capitol hill hearing. The Russian Foreign minister was quoted in various news report saying that the russians had had contacts with People Associated with the Trump Campaign. My question for you, director comey, is has the fbi investigated these reported relationships, and, if so, what are the agencies findings . Thank you, senator. I would never comment on investigations whether we have one or not in an open forum like this. So i really cant answer one way or another. Mr. Comey, did you answer senator widens question there is an investigation under way as to questions between the political campaigns and the russian russians . I didnt say one way or another. Especially in a public forum, we never confirm or deny a pending investigation. The irony of you making that statement here, i cannot avoid, but ill move on. We sometimes think differently about closed investigations but you asked me if i had any pending investigations and we are not going to talk about that. That is what he has done when it was closed. We all thought a lot of us thought it was inappropriate for him to go on as far as he did. David ignatius, you do have, as you said, many people who believe there should be an investigation here. And as nonpolitical as possible. I think that is the heart of what i would offer to viewers. At this point, there are these inflammatory charges. Its really important to understand if any of them have any truth and that is what we have our Law Enforcement agencies to do, in secret, hopefully, go through this material and then tell the country what they have found. I think thats in Donald Trumps interest. We are now a country that is just buzzing with all this allegations, insin situation. Not a good ground for a president to take office on. I think it is in his interest to have a responsible, discrete inquiry, either by u. S. Attorney or by a joint committee of congress, or some congressional panel. At the end of the day, if that investigation doesnt exist, we will have a substantial part of the country believing this is true. Another substantial part of the country agreeing with trump that its an outrageous witch hunt and not a good way for a president to start his term. We saw Donald Trumps tweet at 11 00 this morning and in a matter of hours, he coincidentally holds a press conference for the First Time Since july where hell get to respond to all of it. That is absolutely right. Im told by sources insidehe trump transition if you thought that tweet was provocative and combative, wait until you see the press conference today. I think going back to the journalistic questions here raised by the decision to publish this, look at the explanation that buzzfeed offered. They offered this you report, we decide. They used that as the defense, you know, the journalist mission to report the facts and let the people decide. Its always been a much more nuanced mission than that. We dont throw things out there that we dont know to be true and then let the public fight over whether or not its true. And so while i do think that conservatives have taken this term fake news and appropriated it and aimed it at us as mainstream journalists in an attempt to on discredit us. It may be fake and trump may have a point here. Thats what im concerned about. Somebody said before you put out allegations and end up being false and you end up helping trump. Or you do what we just did which is carefully dance around the topic for 19 minutes. Seriously. We said nothing while we talked about something that might be true and we dont know its potentially incredibly explosive. But i dont know. At what point do you just wait until you know . Jeremy, here is the problem. You can go back and look at the transcripts from the day he came down the escalator and ive been talking about it nonstop. This is an example, the most magnified example i think yet that donald trump will do something that is shocking and then the press reaction will not only cover that, but then go five steps beyond it and play into his hands, so the next time the shocking revelation comes out, he can say, they oversold that too and they oversold that and lied about this. I think in this case, youre exactly right. Hes going to go out and he is going to call it fake news and the next time something comes up that might be legitimate, then he can discredit it again based on all of the overreactions the past year and a half. Right. He is a master of misdirection and master of picking fights with the media. And distracting us. I expect to see more of that and then, i mean, the news cycle is operating at such a warped speed right now. We havent talked about the messy confirmation processes unfolding on capitol hill. Pretty soon, we will be on to chasing the next shiny object. And if this is any indication of how the next four years are going to operate, its head spinning. Yeah. Speaking of that, we have got the confirmation hearings coming up. Jeff sessions was in an absolutely confirmation hearing. Rex tillerson today. We also are going to be talking about some of trumps cabinet appointees whose hearings have been delayed and happen to be a couple of people who are actually in trouble. Word out of trump tower, a couple right now concerned about their confirmation prospects, as well as Barack Obamas speech. That we have to get to next block. We will speak with four members of the key committees voting on Donald Trumps cabinet picks. Senators mike lee and dick durbin and jeff flak