A discovery. This is earth shaking. Its far bigger than watergate. More troubling than the underlying crime in watergate. Whats the classic phrase . Fire in the hole. Fire in the hole we had no real idea what we would find inside. As it turns out, we havent found very much. I actually dont think it has any impact on the russia probe. This memo has frankly nothing at all to do with the special counsel. It seems, at least up to now, that weve struck out with the vault. Im disappointed about that, as im sure you are. Wow. Is the new republic put it, quote, it would be easy to compare nunes memo to opening al capones vault. Lets talk about that first of all. Poor geraldo. Youve got to have like Great Respect for a guy that would do that. I mean, on national television. Fire in the hole. Geraldo goes there, you know what i mean . Thats what we tell our kids to do, take a chance. Step out. Go big or go home. No. How often . Go big or go home. Just looking back at that footage, geraldo went for it. He did. Good for him. But, you cant say the same for the republicans. No. The memo finally came out. And despite President Trumps insistence that it vindicates him in the russia probe, the timeline, the memo hurts the president s claim, you just have to read it. Well know today just how partisan the gops memo may have been when that same committee decides on whether democrats can release their rebuttal. Welcome to morning joe. Its monday, february 5th. With us we have National Affairs analyst for nbc news and msnbc john hyalman. National political reporter for nbc news carol lee. Political writer for the New York TimesNick Confessore. Former Justice Department spokesperson and now an nbc justice and security analyst matt miller and get it ready, nbc news capitol hill correspondent host of kasie d. C. On msnbc. We reviewed some material from the game last night and saw nothing worth actually showing, so my first question to you has to do with the markets. Does anybody have nick foles seemed to be suggesting a slightly lower opening on wall street. What say you . I would like to talk about nick foles, joe. Do you have a minute for that . Kasie hunt, eagles fan. That was from start to finish that was probably one of the greatest super bowls ever. And nick foles story is a story that will be talked about for as long as they talk about super bowls. Take it, kasie. Whoa. Look, he stepped up in just so many ways. Coming in wentz hurt in december. Nobody expected this guy to be carrying the team. The defense, they hung in there. Hes really he is why we won this game it was kind of epic troll tom brady screwed up his own pass back to himself just a few plays later. Foels, im not sure if we have that highlight. Here he is. Touchdown. There it is, touchdown. Yeah. With his wife and baby after the game, i think it was just this was a great way for the eagles to finally win a super bowl. I mean, this was a great game from start to finish. Yeah, it really was. You know what, i didnt understand and i spend most of my life trying to explain to grand moms or to little kids and ive got 47 of them, rules of whether its soccer, football, or american football. And for the life of me i cant figure out what they were replaying 30 times going into the end zone on the touchdown that was plainly a touchdown. They kept saying was he a runner o or a receiver . Whatever that rule was that they had to think about forever, carol, i dont understand it. They need to get rid of it. Big eagles fan. Huge eagles fan. Born and raised. Shes in her eagles green today. Look at her. Play that again. What is the controversy here . The man, he has possession. It crosses the goal line. Its a touchdown. Because if youre a receiver, you have to you cant be diving into the end zone in that way. You have to be running. You have to be a runner to be able to do that. So the question is whether he became a runner after he caught the ball. But he had control of the ball. Long enough to be a runner . Hes running . I didnt understand that. So huge eagles fan as well and youre wearing your eagles green. I wore my eagles green, yes. Its a huge, huge thing for the city. Yeah. Now, i went to sleep after the game. How much of the city is Still Standing . Not much. I was wondering if those pictures were live. Here are the things that will affect you most in addition to street lamps and telephone poles, the awning of the ritz carlton in downtown philadelphia collapsed. Brought down not under his itself own weight. We have problems. Here is the thing i dont know where i dont exactly know where that is. When i go to philadelphia, i stay in super 6 lodge . I stay in a place where dan aykroyd stayed in trading place mrs. Sometimes the dupe brothers invite me back to their house. They get it back. If i told you before the game that tom brady would pass for over 500 yards. Yes. And that the eagles would still win the game, you would told me i was mental and yet i still will. I know you. That was an incredible thing. It was a fantastic game. The eagles defense did not stop tom brady and yet today we have a super bowl champion. Look, im happy in this time of partisan division the country has something to be happy about which is the patriots losing. Okay. Come on. Theres some people that like the patriots. Are you familiar with the loyalties of the hosts here . Oh, yeah. The patriots mika was for the eagles last night. Joey has always been a patriots fan. I always quietly root for the patriots. Mika was telling me something mika is moving on. The patriots have been to ten super bowl, which is incredible. Their record in the super bowl 55. There you go. Fascinating. Its is. Lets get to the news now. Despite the president s deck lor tlags the memo vindicates him in the russia probe, the Associated Press reported that several white house aides cautioned the president that the memo did not contain convincing evidence of a conspiracy. And other advisers inside and outside the west wing reportedly questioned why his administration had allowed the memo to become the dominant talking point during the week when he gave his first state of the union overshadowing the well received address. The republican memo ended up containing a sentence that undercuts a central claim the president s defenders have made against the russia probe, that it grew out of an unverified dossier prepared during the campaign. The memo states that information about russians and trump Foreign Policy adviser George Papadopoulos, quote, triggered the opening of an fbi counterintelligence investigation in late july of 2016. The memo also revealed that a fisa warned against the trump foreign adviser carter page was caught and received in late october of 2016. That was a month after multiple Trump Campaign officials had said it had cut all ties with him. Doesnt seem helpful. So, matt miller, it doesnt seem helpful at all to Donald Trumps cause, in fact, it hurts Donald Trumps cause. It may bring up a question of this one fisa warrant. And i say may because, again, the central argument for all of these stooges in conservative media ive got to say unfortunately a lot of places that i have respected greatly in the past but a lot of the stooges in conservative media are saying, look at this fisa memo. And it looks like, you know, we have evidence that it was, you know, that they put it out there, the fisa warrant was issued without adequate evidence. Well, they know that the central argument, that the Intelligence Community has been giving, that the fbi has been giving, that the Justice Department has been giving is we cant tell you the underlying information that justifies the fisa warrant because, guess what, thats classified information. And again, they know it. But the wall street journal is now parodying national nunes. They came close to excusing or parodying devin nunes, all of them knowing better. All of them knowing that its the underlying information that is classified that the fbi and Donald Trumps own Justice Department says we cant show the public. Theyre taking theyve become the party of wikileaks and Edward Snowden. I guess it was only a matter of time until Donald Trumps thinking affected the entire Republican Party, even on intel matters. Yeah, youre exactly right, joe. When we saw this memo, i was ready by the time it came out to sort of be disappointed in the claims and we just found out that we knew that it was going to be had a misleading by omission. I was surprised that it was such a flimsy document on its face. That the argument they rested all this argument that somehow the surveillance of carter page was illegal and we found out within minutes that, in fact, the court had been told that the dossier was paid for by a political opponent of Donald Trumps. It didnt say it was the dnc or Hillary Clinton campaign, but it was a political opponent. It knocks out that in fact the entire investigation began because of George Papadopoulos, not carter page. So its one thing for devin nunes to pull another one of these stunts. I think weve gotten used to it from him. What is so shocking is the behavior from paul ryan. He knows what hes doing here. And he has you have to conclude he has the same goals as devin nunes, he just dresses it up in kind of more principled sounding language where hell say this isnt about an attack on the fbi. This is about making sure the fisa process is being followed fairly and he knows better than that. He knows what this is. And if he didnt, the president has made clear what this is all about because he keeps telling everyone this for him is about ending the russia investigation. I guess thats the most revealing thing, john. Its not that devin nunes is a hack for donald trump. And its not that donald trump doesnt give a damn about Americas National security classified information as it pertains to him. He will throw anybody or anything under the bus, including the best interest of this nation, if he believes it will give him any advantage whatsoever. And if theres anybody throughout that questions that, i cant wait for you to grab your cheetos and put on your tighty whites and go down to your moms basement and start typing that blog away. Join the bots. That will be interesting. And by the way, order up your russian bots and youre off to the races. But for paul ryan, for Mitch Mcconnell to stay quiet, for the wall street journal editorial page to write the kind of editorial that they wrote on saturday, attacking the fbi and lending support, aid and comfort to devin nunes and donald trump when they know better, when they have reporters that have been advancing this story and doing a good and honorable job, for them to slander the fbi and the Justice Department is just shocking. And the wall street journal editorial page, its an editorial page i have been reading my entire life. Yeah. I could go on. The list goes on. But i sensed something last week, there is a shift, a slight shift, but there is a shift among conservatives who were honorable toward the fight against Donald Trumps worst successes, theyre starting to buckle. And there are so many who i have Great Respect for i dont even want to mention their names because i read their columns, i heard them on tv and i was heartbroken. Im keeping my mouth shut and im hoping this week they will find their conscientious again, but it was shameful last week. Look, you wrote a column hammering paul ryan last week in the Washington Post. I spent a lot of last week criticizing ryan on television for this very thing. Andrew sullivan talks about this moment where we have total tribalism in our politics and the dominant frame for how people now behave, it is now to much greater degree than has ever been true before, it is you dont care about the facts, you dont care about the other interests of the country, it is just tribal leader is at risk and we must now rally to the tribal leader. The wall street journal, you know, on friday had a piece, incredibly good piece one of their good reporters looking at the struck emails, Text Messages. By the way, its funny, that was one of the most fascinating stories ive read in a very long time. Guy sat down and read all 3,000 of the Text Messages and comes to the conclusion, there was no antitrump conspiracy here. Thats in the wall street journal on friday. Nobody paid attention because of the nunes memo. Im looking at it on a plane, the wall street is still doing good reporting on this. The wall street journal is pushing this forward. I said that on saturday. Then on saturday, the editorial page was weighing in on this way, theyre behaving in this tribal way, its all just to protect trump. By the way f youre at home, you may not understand this, but there is a chinese wall between news reporting and the editorial page. What happens in the editorial page happens on the editorial page. What happens in the reporting is completely different. And there always has been a division, especially at the wall street journal, a very conservative editorial page, but youve had reporters for 25 years, even during the clinton scandals when the editorial page was hammering away at clinton, the wall street journal played it straight down the middle on clintons administration. What is the disconnect for paul ryan and Mitch Mcconnell, who i guess i must adds wife works in the administration. Maybe that plays a role, but dont they read . These are people who were elected to be leaders who i think democrats and republicans thought they could count on to do the right thing at times like this. Look, i find it baffling and it goes back to the election. If you recall when harry reid asked for the fbi to release information about an investigation into trump and it was phrased in very general terms. Right. And Mitch Mcconnell said no and now we have a sense i think of what reid was speaking about because he had some access to this information a long time ago and the investigation into carter page and George Papadopoulos. Look, this party is made an alliance with donald trump. But they have a lot at stake and they have decided to be invested in shaping his presidency and protecting it even at the expense of these other institutions of Law Enforcement and government. The incredible thing, carol lee, is again everybody is tribal, everybody has been tribal. Ive been i was deeply disappointed in other administrations that people that i knew that went into the administrations, its almost like they put their brains on neutral and just did what fearless leader told them to do. That happens across administrations. But this is a war on law. This is a war on justice. This is a war on the Justice Department. This is a war on the fbi. This is a war on investigators who are investigating the white house. This is a Republican Party taking part in obstruction of justice. At least on a political level. And its all its like short everyone is thinking in the short term. Everything is done on the short term. Its political shortterm benefits. The president thinks that way. You see the republicans adopting that. The idea that this is not going to have a longterm effect on the party particularly when it comes to, as the Washington Post wrote over the weekend, this law and order, the party of law and order is now being reshaped by donald trump. Donald trump is reshaping it in a number of different ways. If you add them all up together, the one common denominator is for a shortterm political gain. How do you hold on to this majority . But there are going to be very longterm consequences. The party of law and order, the party that talked about the importance of protecting classified documents, that talked about the importance of classified information that preached to us through the entire Hillary Clinton campaign and through that investigation, theres a c on that. Oh my gosh, how many classified information. Oh any god. They went on and on and were breathless and now, now theyre the ones, kasie hunt, who are attacking the fbi and attacking the Justice Department and are ignoring the pleas of the head of the fbi, a republican appointed by donald trump. And republicans in the Justice Department who are saying, dont release the info. If you release the memo, it gives an incomplete picture. The only complete picture that can be given is by releasing information that is so classified that it would hurt our sources. Then this weekend, there were republicans and conservatives saying, lets have total transparency. Lets just release everything. They have adopted Edward Snowden and wikileaks view of National Security. How do they go back to the voters in the fall and justify this . Its an astonishing turn of the events, joe. And i was very struck by what trey gowdy said over the weekend because he and you have to keep in mind that paul ryan views trey gowdy kind of his man on the Intelligence Committee. Thats the relationship there. Remember its a select committee. Paul ryan chooses the members. And gowdy was one of the only ones who was out there saying this memo from devin nunes has no connection to the Mueller Investigation. And what you saw him doing instead was ticking through all of the reasons why that investigation is legitimate, all of the other data points that have the that underlie these investigations in some ways making the