Back him publicly and the c. I. A. Director even went so far as to say the russians didnt try to have an impact on the election. And now we know this the president of the United States tried to fire the independent counsel, Robert Mueller iii, who had been put in place because the president of the United States fired the fbi director because he wouldnt give him an oath of loyalty. And because in the president s own words, he wouldnt drop the fbi investigation into russia. And so, there you have it. Were going to have a very busy morning on morning joe this friday, january 26th. Willie, really unbelievable news. Once again, though, Michael Schmidt, Maggie Haberman coming through with some incredible breaking news. Weve got michael with us in just a minute. How many times on this program over the last eight, nine, ten months have someone said theres no way donald trump would try to fire bob mueller. It would set up a constitutional crisis. It would cross a line. He cant do it. And i think you and i and mika all said really . Its donald trump, you dont think hed try that . He fired his fbi director which led to the appointment of this special counsel Robert Mueller. First broke the story, New York Times reporter michael submit, well talk to him. Former chief of staff at the c. I. A. And department of defense, jeremy bash. Former fbi special agent and msnbc contributor clint watts. Former aide to the george w. Bush white house and state departments, elise jordan and Donnie Deutsche is here, how are you feeling, all right, buddy . A couple of white nationalists and i got into a little tussle in a bar. Bar fight. Mika will be back with us on monday. A source with firsthand knowledge confirms to nbc news that President Trump ordered special counsel Robert Mueller be fired last june. The New York Times was first to report the news and that the president backed down after white House Counsel don mcgann threatened to resign according to four people told of the matter. The Washington Post adds that mcgann did not deliver his resignation threat directly to trump, but was serious about his threat to leave. According to a person familiar. Last night, the white house put out a statement from one of the president s lawyers declining to comment, quote out of respect for the off the of the special counsel and its process, that from ty cobb. This morning, President Trump responded to the report, as he met with World Leaders in davos, switzerland. Why did you want to fire robert mule centre. Fake news, fake news. Typical New York Times fake story. Fake news, says the president. So two sources told the times of what trump saw as three conflicts with mueller. First, a dispute years ago over fees at Trump National golf club in sterling, virginia, that prompted mueller, the fbi director at the time, to resign his membership. The president also said mueller could not be impartial because he had most recently worked for the law firm that previously represented the president s soninlaw, jared kushner. Trump said mueller had been returning to the fbi director. Trump allies Newt Gingrich and chris ruddy discussed the subject publicly. I think that what republicans ought to focus on is closing down the independent counsel. Because hes not independent. He apparently is very close to comey. We know comey hates trump. You have to assume that that has to leak over to mueller. I think hes considering perhaps terminating the special counsel. I think hes weighing that option. I think its pretty clear by what one of his lawyers said on television recently. I personally think it would be a very significant mistake. Even though i dont think theres a justification. And even though i mean here you have a situation you dont think theres a justification for for a special counsel in this case. But also, i mean Robert Mueller. Theres some conflicts, he comes from a law firm that represents members of the trump family. He interviewed a day before or a few days before he was appointed special counsel with the president who was looking at him potentially to become the next fbi director. That hasnt been published, but its true. And i think it would be strange that he would have a confidential conversation and then a few days later, become the prosecutor of the person he may be investigating. I think that mueller should have not taken the position if he was under consideration. And had a private meeting with the president. And was privy maybe to some of his thoughts about that investigation or other matters before the bureau. Well of course that logic just doesnt add up for so many reasons. But the timing of course, Michael Schmidt, the timing around the same time that you had the president of the United States ordering don mcgann to fire the special counsel. Don mcgann according to your reports, said no. Tell us about your story, tell us about the reporting. Tell us if you can, how long youve been working on this. Well this is stuff that has come up in the interviews that mueller has done in the past few months with white house officials. Mueller has focused a lot on the president s conduct in office, what was he doing, why was he so obsessed with loyalty. Why was he so obsessed with a person running the russia investigation . Hes been interviewing folks from the white House Counsels office, the aides closest to the president to try to understand what the president was doing. And the white house has waved executive privilege and attorneyclient privilege and allowed all of this to be shared with the special counsels office, as they sifted through Different Things, they found different events like this. Things where the president was trying to get rid of mueller. For most people its just astounding that just a month after comey was fired, he thought that getting rid of mueller was a good idea and was the right thing. In order to try to lift this cloud of the russia investigation from him. Now of course, their approach is lets just be as transparent as possible with mueller because we have nothing to hide. Mueller has gone on for many months and will probably be around for much longer. Asking for mcgann in march to lobby sessions to not recuse himself from the russia investigation. And the president saying afterwards that he needs someone to run the Justice Department who will protect him like rfk did for jfk or holder did for obama. So these are events that mueller has keyed in on to understand what was going on in the white house and theres first few months of the administration. Michael, and all of this certainly goes to state of mind for obstruction of justice and putting this story together, did you talk to people who thought that his actions were actions that Robert Mueller and the independent counsel staff would look at, as to state of mind, far obstructing justice . Yes, these are the type of things that help mueller understand whether theres a broader obstruction case here. Whether theres a broader effort by the president to get in the way of the russia investigation. What makes this a complicated question, is that obstruction comes in different forms, for there to be a better obstruction case, you need the president doing things outside of his purr in the executive branch. The president telling someone to lie or trying to destroy evidence. It becomes more complicated when hes exercising his power. He could fire the fbi director. But under the law he can do that, he can direct the Justice Department to do Different Things and he could have pushed them to get rid of mueller. Those are the more complicated questions. The cleaner ones are where he would be going outside of his executive power to try and hurt the investigation. So lets talk here michael about what exactly don mcgann did. The president s report to fire Robert Mueller was not carried out when white house lawyer don mcgann refused to order the dismissal. According to the New York Times report, mcgann disagreed with the president s case and told senior white house officials that firing mueller would have a catastrophic effect on trumps presidency. And mcgann told white house officials trump would not follow through on the dismissal on his own. And the president then backed off. Mcgann was also concerned that firing the special counsel would incite more questions about whether the white house was trying to obstruct the russia investigation. According to the order appointing a special counsel, hiring and firing power rests with Deputy Attorney general Rod Rosenstein since attorney general Jeff Sessions recused himself. At a hearing last june around the time when trump reportedly made his demand rosenstein firmly said he would not fire mueller. If President Trump ordered you to fire the special counsel, what would you do . Senator, im not going to follow any orders unless i believe those are lawful and appropriate orders. Under the regulation, special counsel Robert Mueller may be fired only for good cause and im required to put that cause in writing so thats what i would do. If there were good cause i would consider it. If there were not good cause it wouldnt matter to me what anybody says. At this point have you seen any evidence for good cause of firing special counsel Robert Mueller . No, i have not. Michael schmidt. Im struck looking at the date on that, june 13, thats at the heart of when all of this was happening. Can you describe a little of the confrontation or whether or not there was a confrontation between don mcgann and the president on this . Well mcgann was very unnerved by this. He knew the catastrophic impact that this would have on the administration. They had already, the comey fire hg turned out to be a complete disaster. It had come out afterwards that comey had asked trump to end the flynn investigation. And here they were, a few weeks later trying to figure out how to stop the president from doing something that they believed would hurt him. But this is something that mcgann has confronted many times as the president s top lawyer. Trying to balance the, the desires of his client against either things that are ethical or illegal. And the balancing act that mcgann would do. In this case mcgann was willing to give up his job to try to stop that. A lot of times when white house officials will say is that the counsels office would try to delay things in the hopes that president would fixate his attention on Something Else. We saw this in march and april when the white House Counsel first learned that trump wanted to get rid of comey. They basically misled him about his authorities to dismiss comey, saying that the president , needed cause to do so. In the hopes that the president would find Something Else to worry about. And that comey would remain in his job. Ultimately they werent able to stop that, either. Hey, clint so if you just take a score card here, of whats happened, what this president has done to try to impede the investigation. To try to, to overstep his bounds in so many cases, as it pertains to impeding the investigation, he fired an fbi director. Which is certainly within his power. But unfortunately for this president , he told lester holt on nationwide news that he did it to stop the Russian Investigation. He told the Russian Foreign minister and the ambassador to the United States from russia that he, he got rid of comey to stop the investigation. To take quote the pressure off as he said. He wanted to fire his attorney general. He wanted to fire Rod Rosenstein, his Deputy Attorney general and now we find out that he wanted to fire the independent counsel. And every step of the way he kept getting pushback from his staff members. Whats the overall portrait . And what is the independent counsel looking at now when he looks at donald trump, an executive who seems desperate and has seemed desperate at every step to kill this Russian Investigation. Yeah. I think this is the missing piece that i was really looking forward to understand why weve seen so many interviews related to the obstruction part rather than the collusion part of the special counsel. And if i had to guess, its probably because they thought they were under a clock. Meaning that if mueller could be threatened with firing or was fired at they point, they wanted to get as much evidence in the books on the obstruction case as possible before that happens. And so what we may actually have been seeing particularly in the past month, weve seen a lot of questions about obstruction at the very highest level, interviews with sessions, everybody that was involved, we just hear that mcgann was maybe being questioned for two Straight Days what we may have been see something a push on the obstruction case, because there could have been a clock out there from the special counsels office on this for perspective. The other article is how silly the notion is that it is a witch hunt really is. Youre talking about fbi director mueller, who by trumps own account has represented his soninlaw through this firm. Has actually had membership at his golf course. Was interviewed the day before becoming the special counsel, basically to become the fbi director again. So its really takes air out of that counterargument. Hey clint, also, has been a republican far, far longer than donald trump has been a republican. Donald trump has been given far, far more money to Democratic Candidates than bob mueller ever has. I mean and its not even a close call. So youre right. When they say this is a democratic witch hunt and you have Andrew Mccabe, who i guess hes a republican, because he voted in the republican primary. But didnt vote in the general election, you basically have republicans around here, that are the main players in this socalled democratic, this democratic coverup for hillary clinton. And this democratic witch hunt on donald trump. Thats right. And i think we should also consider as weve been hearing about the special counsels investigation, that they went on this obstruction angle, questioned everybody, but that doesnt mean people wont be questioned again. That evidence that they provide, once you get all the interviews this. You then redirect your strategy before you go to the president. This also doesnt necessarily mean theyve investigated the collusion angle of this all the way through, either. There could be two totally different teams or multiple directions going with this investigation. I wouldnt be surprised if we see a lot of the people who have been interviewed so far, march right back up into the special counsel investigation just to talk about the russia angle. Jeremy bash, were talking about june of last year. Bob mueller was appointed on wednesday, may 17. This could be a period of two weeks, a month, maybe a little more than a month that President Trump according to reporting of Michael Schmidt and Maggie Haberman and confirmed by nbc news, was considering firing him. This was something he thought about almost immediately. I think the important word in michael and maggies report something ordered. He didnt just think about it, the president of the United States ordered his white House Counsel to do it. If you look at the statute on obstruction, it says that in addition to whoever obstructs, it says whoever endeavors to obstruct or impede a lawful investigation is guilty of an offense. So that element of endeavor to, or attempt to, is part of the criminal, the elements of the crime in the obstruction statutes. That said, i agree with michaels earlier analysis, that this alone probably would not form the basis of a, of a count or indictment or impeachment matter against the president alone. It sort of goes to state of mind. It shows that he was interested in concocting phony cover stories for getting rid of his investigators. And in the case of comey, the phony cover story was hey, im looking out for the best interests of hillary clinton. No one ever believed that. And here it was about golf fees and no one is going to believe that. I was interested in the tape that you played of Rod Rosenstein who said that to fire mueller you need to have it in writing and state good cause. Thats exactly what they did with jim comey. They wrote it down and they gave quote good cause, it just was a phony, concocted cover story. All right so we have a lot more, were going to get to elise jordan when we come back. Also going to be getting to the battered and bruised Donnie Deutsche to figure out what, what happened there. What angry person took him apart. Joe im going to tell you exactly what happened. No, no, well hear about it right now. Well tease it out over the break. Michael schmidt is going to be remaining with us. Because were going to also talk about serious things. And also fascinating, fascinating response from the spin machine boys over at Donald Trumps favorite ne