Cone of uncertainty. Residents there are bracing for the worst stocking up ahead of the storm while the u. S. Virgins islands are recovering with scattered Power Outages throughout the area. Joining me with the latest on the storms track is nbc news meteorologist Michelle Grossman. Michelle, tell us about where this is headed. There are a whole lot of Populated Areas wondering if this is coming to them. Thats right, ali. A whole lot of Populated Areas at the worst time, labor day weekend. We are talking about lifethreatening flash flooding. We also have a storm coming to southern florida tomorrow on friday. So thats not going to help situations. Lets talk about where it is right now. Its moving to the northwest north of the virgin islands, also puerto rico. So still a category one storm. We havent had an advisory since earlier this morning around 11 00. Its not really going to be until 5 00 until we see an updated information. So the location 220 miles north northwest of san juan, puerto rico. Dont know where that came from. Winds at 85 Miles Per Hour and its moving to the west at 13 Miles Per Hour. Its keeping its speed. We have seen that speed over the past few days. We are going to keep it at a pretty fast clip, and then its going to really slow down as it nears the u. S. Coast and also bahamas. That is not good news because it allows it to kind of sit and spin and just drop more rain in those areas. Category one storm as we go throughout time, its not going to take much and its not going to take long to go from a category three storm. There is no land interaction to tear this thing apart. We are over the open waters. That is just fuel that is going to help give it its oomph. Thats saturday 8 00. Sometime between saturday and sunday, a category four storm. So that is the latest change as of the 11 00 advisory. I will be very curious to see what happens at the 5 00 advisory. Now its going over the northwestern bahamas. Here you want to have a hurricane preparedness place in plan. I do anticipate a hurricane watch later on tonight, maybe tomorrow in parts of the bahamas. Its going to move off to the north. Now its an interesting track. E west, almost parallel or perpendicular, excuse me, right to the coast. Category four storm, thats what were expecting when its going to make landfall in florida. But notice this cone. Its still way too early to determine where this is going to land, anywhere from southern florida up to parts of southern georgia. So this is something that were definitely going to watch over the next several days. We are looking at lots of rain, lifethreatening. We have a new moon in place thats going to help add some lifethreatening storm surge as well. Michelle, let me ask you this. Lets say it stays on that exact track, right . Its going in somewhere north of west palm beach. If youre in miami right now and you are boarding up your windows, if that stone goes in, how big is it in a place like miami or jacksonville . So its not a huge storm. You and i have talked about hurricanes that are just huge and wide and miles and miles. So its not the biggest storm weve seen, but still we are going to see storm surges because we have that new moon just adds to that storm surge. We are also going to see heavy, heavy rain. Florida has had aboveaverage rain. We are going to have a storm tomorrow. So even places like miami is going to get rain out of this storm. All right, michelle, thank you very much. Michelle grossman, we are going to be checking in with you later through the hour and every hour. Florida is under a state of emergency as dorian continues northward. I want to go to nbcs Mariana Atencio who is on the ground. Mariana, you have seen storms you were covering irma two years ago in florida right there. Back again. They are looking at a devastating storm. Whats different now about the way preparations are being undertaken . Reporter the urgency, ali, is definitely here. The lessons from irma two years ago, you said it i was covering it on the ground a couple of blocks from where i am now on ocean drive. And i dont know if you remember those pictures, but we were getting slammed with that rain that michelle was talking about. And irma was a similar case to what dorian could be. The storm hit north of miami and north of miami beach. But the devastation was felt here, the effects there were downed trees, there were homes without power. My own house in miami, ali, we were without power for five days. And i can see the urgency now even with my own family. My husband two years ago was like, oh, its going to be fine and again we didnt have power for five days. This time he is frantically calling me. My sister was in line for gas for 20 minutes. Water is running out in some of the local grocery stores. Doesnt mean that they wont restock that water, but people three days out are definitely making preparations. Here in miami beach, they are pumping out the water with vacuum trucks. The they are installing temporary generators. They are boarding up. Lets listen to what jimmy morlz told me earlier before. We are a Barrier Island with a lot of lowlying areas. So we are at the front line of any kind of hurricane like this. So we have to prepare. And we dont have a lot of time because its one thing to take care of your house, it takes us 48 hours at least, maybe longer to secure our buildings, to protect our residents. So we dont have the luxury of waiting till saturday or sunday. Weve got to start now. The worstcase scenario we did too much and it was a great exercise. But in the best case scenario, we are ready. Reporter a city like miami beach, ali, has no shelters. Now the mayor of miami did say in a press conference earlier today that they have capacity to house 100,000 people in shelters. But again you dont want to get to that point. Authorities telling people to prepare as if the storm was coming toward miami and miami beach. Ali, back to you. Its good to know that people are taking the preparation seriously. This is a hard one though, mariana, because you saw what Michelle Grossman said about where this storm could come in. The cone of uncertainty is very big. We are talking about the worst of it probably sunday night into monday morning. Reporter and also remember i flew in from puerto rico this morning. People in puerto rico were expecting it to hit the western part of the island, then the eastern part of the island. Then it didnt really impact puerto rico at all. So its definitely a very unpredictable storm. And that has people on their toes. Ali . Mariana, good to see you. And lets go to washington where the department of justice has declined to prosecute former fbi director james comey for leaking memos that detailed his conversations with President Trump in 2017. But the office of the Inspector General found that comey did violate doj and fbi policies as well as the fbis employment agreement by keeping copies of four memos in a personal safe and asking a friend to leak one of those memos after his firing. Comey tweeted his response to the report writing, i dont need a public apology from those who defame me but a quick message with a sorry we lied about you would be nice. To all those two spent two years talking about me going to jail, ask yourselves why you still trust people who gave you Bad Information for so long including the president. Joining me now nbcs Julia Ainsley who has read through the report. Now if you look at james comeys responses, they dont seem in line with a finding that he did something wrong. He specifically talking about the allegation that he leaked things to the media. Reporter right. He talks about classified information. And nowhere in this report do they say that he leaked classified information to the media. They deem that memo that was given to the New York Times and then other news organizations about that key meeting with donald trump in february of 2017 where he says if the president asked him to kind of let go of this whole Flynn Investigation thing. He said that that was actually confidential and so thats what comeys zero in on in his response that he is not someone who should be criminally prosecuted, and he was let off the hook. But this report does not let james comey off the hoochdget its very scathing. And one quote id like to read for you. It says former director comey failed to live up to his responsibility by not safeguarding Sensitive Information obtained during the course of his fbi employment. He used it to create public pressure for official action. He set a dangerous precedent for over 35,000 current fbi employees. Comey should not have taken it upon himself to leak this to the media because it was his intention to try to get a bigger investigation going after he had been fired from his role as director. Shortly after that Robert Mueller was appointed to oversee this investigation. So it did have that desired result. And the Inspector General comes down on him for that for breaking fbi and doj policy. Is there any potential followup from lawmakers . Is there anything for anybody to do other than just to react to this . I think we will see some political football. I dont think this is something where you want to haul more people in for more hearings, although somehow they find a way of squeezing that out of a lot of things these days. Right now we have seen from republicans like jim jordan whos been critical of the russia investigation saying, look, this shows what his intentions were and said people are using that underneath i think what everyones really waiting for next, and this may give us a window into that, is how the Inspector General is going to come out with his findings, what he will say about the origins of the investigation. And then there is another investigation into that led by john durham out of connecticut about the origins of the russia investigation. And seeing how hard the Inspector General was on comey here, its hard to imagine that they would go any easier on people who decided to open that investigation. But, again, no criminal conduct here, no wrongdoing. And really, ali, we all know that there is a lot of confidential information that is shared in washington. Thats how we make news. Its how we shine light on sometimes injustices or things that shouldnt be done. But its not classified. And so its really important to pull those thing as part. Julia, thank you. It is always something you do for us. You make it all easy to understand. Julia ainsley for us in washington. Since the report was released the president has had plenty to say about his former fbi director. Last hour he tweeted, quote, perhaps never in the history of our country has someone been more thoroughly disgraced and excoriated than james comey in the just released Inspector General report. His 2020 Election Campaign team also said, quote, james comey was a rogue fbi director who didnt think laws and rules applied to him, and he deserved to be fired. He hid information and violated wellestablished fbi guidelines all because of his personal vendetta against the president. Joining me now chief White House Correspondent hallie jackson. Hallie, this decision from the Inspector General at the fbi doesnt make anybody fully happy. James comey has tweeted that he is exonerated. And obviously the trump team is tweeting that hes the worst guy in the world. Reporter it is kind of an ink blot test for where you are in the political spectrum and how you view this report that, frankly, as Julia Ainsley pointed out, does blast james comey. Its not just the president himself tweeting in his campaign talking about this. We now have in just the last couple of minutes a formal statement from the White House Press secretary very frankly saying james comey in her view is a proven liar and leaker. Stephanie grisham goes on to say that because could emmy in her words shamefully leaked information to the press in blatant violation of fbi policies, the nation was forced to endure a politically motivated twoyear witch hunt going on to say the Inspector General said he violated the most basic obligations of confidentiality that he owed to the United States government and to the american people. That last bit is a direct quote from the report referring to how comey has acknowledged that he was hoping by sharing this information publicly to trigger the special counsel investigation. And when you look at how this has become politicized, the report, comey, generally is a light ring rod anyway for both conservatives and liberals. There are some democrats who say, listen, what james comey did happened at an extraordinary political moment, that essentially the argument is he did what he had to do to make sure that this would see the light of day and without comey the special counsel may never have been appointed. And here we are two years later. We may never have known what President Trump may have been done according to Robert Mueller. So that is the argument that youre hearing from some on the left. I think from some of the right senator kennedy said this proves he is a meat head. So it does depend on where you are in the political spectrum for how you view this. Comey himself is defending himself that at the time that he shared this memo with his law professor friend, nothing in that was classified at the time. It was later classified of course at its lowest level but not at the time he released it. So thats the piece that comey is seasoning on. Given the report, it almost feels like were back around to where we started. You either like him or you dont like him and theres not many people in the middle. And whatever came down today probably just fit into what your interpretation was to start this. Lets talk about this hurricane headed to florida possibly as strong as a category four by the time it gets there overnight sunday into monday morning. Whats the response from the white house . Reporter well, let me play it for you, ali, because President Trump is out, not publicly. Talking about the establishment of the Space Command. But he was on fox radio, and i want to play for you what he had to say. Fema and all of the First Responders did an incredible job with puerto rico. Then we got lucky, it took a different course. We got really lucky. But we were ready at puerto rico, and were very ready also in florida, and we have a great governor there. He is doing an incredible job. Very popular too. He won the election and hes really become even more popular. Hes doing a really fantastic job. Reporter stark contrast there, ali, with the way that President Trump just within the last 24 hours talked about the mayor of san juan, puerto rico. Luckily, puerto rico has avoided a direct hit. But all eyes are on florida as this storm continues to intensify. Keep in mind the president is expected to be out of the country this weekend. Hes got that trip to poland set to come back home monday. Hallie, good to see you my friend. Coming up next, the trade war is one thing, but the white house has moved this year severely undercutting the ethanol industry is the crack in trust that could cost President Trump his support in the midwest among farmers. We are going to hear from some of those farmers after the break. You are watching msnbc. door bell rings its open hey. This is amazing. With moderate to severe ulcerative colitis, are you okay . Even when i was there, i never knew when my symptoms would keep us apart. So i talked to my doctor about humira. I learned humira can help get, and keep uc under control when other medications havent worked well enough. And it helps people achieve control that lasts. So you can experience few or no symptoms. Humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. 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