To convict, it could open the floodgates, but my concern is about whats happening is clearly an impeachable offense, there is no doubt about t but i do think there are process and prudential concerns. I think going this fast in the house makes sense if you really think you can remove him before he leaves office, thats not going to happen, so i think it would have made more sense to be a little bit more deliberate about it and especially you know, its one thing if you just want to impeach him a second time, its another thing if you really want to win over fencesitting republicans in the senate and if you think they exist, then you want to make sure this thing is totally airtight, every single word this that article is completely defensible and there is no debate about it. I think theres some draftsmanship there that they might regret if it gets close to the senate. Rich, its funny, i want to follow up on that, right now were at the top of the hour, its 10 00 out in the east, 7 00 out west right now, the house of representatives is basically this is part one of what is going to be about a halfday debate about impeachment. This is about the rule that sort of governs the vote itself, but it is in some way the process part of the argument. You will probably hear more detail parts of that, but i want to follow up on something you said there. You said you thought the wording of the impeachment articles somewhat was a bit flawed. I looked at it and felt like it was almost wordforword of what liz cheney said last week. I feel like this article was designed essentially not only to win over liz cheney but to win over basically what remains of the institutional wing of the gop. Did you not see it that way, rich . Well, i think what you hear in the senate when theyre going over this with a finetooth comb is, one, the word incitement was it technically incitement . Thats a word that has a legal meaning, do you want to get into that debate when you could easily sidestep it. Two, the question i think willfully is in there which is the highest standard of intent. Is it really true that trump intended for people to attack the capitol . I think its easy to write a damning article without even getting into any of that and, again, i think some of that language completely defensible in an oped, completely defensible in a statement, but when youre going to convict a president and disqualify him from office, again, i think they might regret not going over it with a finetooth comb again. I want to dip in here, were going to take a listen, this is nancy mace, brandnew member of congress from charleston, south carolina, very critical of the president , but has come out against impeachment. Lets hear her argument. To the two most precious people in my life. Mr. Speaker, the president of the United States the u. S. House of representatives has every right to impeach the president of the United States, but what were doing today, rushing this impeachment in an hour or twohourlong debate on the floor of this chamber, bypassing judiciary, poses Great Questions about the constitutionality of this process. I believe we need to hold the president accountable. I hold him accountable for the events that transpired, for the attack on our capitol last wednesday. I also believe that we need to hold accountable every single person, even members of congress, if they contributed to the violence that transpired here, but today im asking my colleagues to remember the words of the legendary the great leader in this country, dr. Martin luther king who once said the time is always right to do what is right. And if were serious about healing the divisions in this country, republicans and democrats need to acknowledge this is not the first day of violence weve seen. Weve seen violence across our country for the last nine months and we need to recognize, number one, that our words have consequences. That there is violence on both sides of the aisle. We have contributed to it. We need to take responsibility for our words and our actions, we need to acknowledge that there is a problem, take responsibility for it and stop being part of the problem and start being part of the solution. God bless every member in the chamber today and god bless the United States of america. I yield back. As you hear there this is going to be an awkward debate, i think, for republicans to have because youre going to have some that are going to be emphatic on these arent impeachable and you will see some that say yes and then you are going to hear a handful of members do what nancy mace did there which basically and it was sort of a similar conversation that we were just having with you, rich. Its impeachable, dont rush this. Claire mccaskill, what do you make of those arguments and do you think its going to have enough sway to somehow keep the republican count into single ditches . I dont know. I believe that people who i trust are saying that theyre going to have certainly more than the five or six that have spoken up so far when they actually vote today in the house, but this is really a different calculation in the senate. You know, im somebody who lived through a race and watched what happened when the Republican Party drew away from an extremist. You know, i won by a huge margin against todd aiken in 12 because the Republican Party decided they didnt want that extremist in their ranks. Who led the Republican Party then, claire . Think about it. That would have been Mitch Mcconnell. That would have been Mitch Mcconnell. And romney. No, but mitt romney made that happen. He was the nominee. Yeah. He was the nominee. So youve got people in the senate that have just steamed for four years over the conduct of this president and especially the older members and those that arent running again, i think if mitch wants to he can convince them that this is the way to get back to normal in the Republican Party where principles matter instead of a cult of personality. I think thats there. The question is and, by the way, the president dropped 12 points among a hypothetical primary race just from december to january among republican primary voters. Thats a big drop. And it would drop even more precipitously if the Republican Party in the senate kind of coalesced at this point. To that very point, Michael Steele, who in the white house is working to ensure republicans dont vote to impeach the president over the last four years you had Mitch Mcconnell keeping the senate in line. The president had access to twitter and thats what he used to throw his weight around and scare those republicans with his threats into saying i better stand with him. Right now he doesnt have either. No, he doesnt, and there is not the coordinated level of effort that we saw in the first impeachment process, even going back into the mueller period of that investigation where the white house out of the political shop, you know, would fan out to the hill and coordinate it and have that direct communication with the leadership in the house and the senate. That is completely broken down. That is not in place right now. It is a little bit like the wild, wild west in that sense that everybody is kind of on their own, which makes the role of a Mitch Mcconnell and Kevin Mccarthy and certainly a liz cheney that much more important to the ultimate outcome. You know, you are not going to have a wide swath of vote coming out of the house in favor of impeachment. We know that. But as i said before, the fact that liz cheney has been able to from a state like wyoming, i mean, we are not talking about new york here, shes not representing new york, shes representing wyoming, her father was dick cheney, so the conservative bona fides are real. Step into the space the way she has tells you the lack of coordination but more importantly the break between this white house and the senate and house leadership on a matter as important as this. And let me tell you that lack of coordination i think is very real. Its a question i asked just last night to a bunch of sources, hey, who is handling any kind of outreach to folks on the hill on the part of the white house and the response from one person came back, and i will tell you very sarcastically, mark meadows has it handled. Hes got it locked down. There arent many people who are left in the west wing and in the white house. I want to ask you, senator mccaskill and rich i want you to answer this as well. One of the interesting things and we heard this from congresswoman mace, too, the idea that the process is bypassing, for example, house judiciary, et cetera. There was also a comment made i believe it was congressman mcgovern who said we are at a crime scene. You have to remember the very floor where these members of congress are standing was one week ago invaded by rioters, invaded by a mob who was on that, you know, breaking the windows, there is glass being cleaned up even as recently as last night from this and i wonder, senator, if you could talk to this is visceral. This isnt like the first impeachment where youre bringing witnesses and people are talking about something that you dont really have knowledge of what happened and youre looking at documents. This is visceral for these members of congress and i wonder how that plays out for both parties here. Senator, to you first. I do think it makes a big difference that this horror played out in realtime on video screens all over america. Everybody in america knows what happened. Now, they may put a different spin on it, based on who they support and who they dont support, but theres no question that something happened in america that is unheard of, that is vile, that is extreme, that is dangerous and theres no question that donald trump rather than going to the sit room as soon as it happened, calling on america to stop, calling on his supporters to stop, he sat and watched tv and kind of liked it for a while, until he finally was prevailed upon to Say Something and even that wasnt very helpful. Everybody saw that. Thats the problem the president has. This is not complicated. Its a gut punch. And it wasnt, rich, just that people saw it. The people who are speaking now, even those House Republicans we are talking about, they felt it. They were there. They experienced it. It is very visceral, and this is why tom cole is a good and conscientious guy so im not directing this at him in particular but the argument for some republicans we cant do this because of unity, because we need to unify as a country after excusing or looking away at every divisive act by this president and after many of them voted to throw out the votes of a free and Fair Election in various states, that doesnt hold water. But theres still this prudential concern. From where i sit and i just think the most important thing is taking the Republican Party away from donald trump over the medium and long term. And does this advance this or not . If you shoot at him in the senate and you dont convict, you dont dis you will qualify him, you get six to eight votes and Rudy Giuliani is walking out of chamber claiming another victory and another dastardly attempt to get the president , have you advanced that political goal or not . Thats a legitimate worry for republicans who want to move beyond trump. I do think, though, rich, that this did not come with the likelihood that you could ban him from holding federal office it might not get the traction its getting. I take your point. It isnt going to be 15 votes in the senate, right, its going to be like five or 25. Lets check in with Leigh Ann Caldwell on capitol hill. If you could reset a bit. We know we are 30 minutes away from the vote on this rule which if it somehow went another way would somehow table the actual vote on impeachment. We dont expect that. Walk us through what we should expect over the next approximately four hours. Reporter sure, chuck. So, yeah, theres about 30 to 50 minutes left of debate on this rule. They will vote on this rule and it is expected to proceed, for them to accept the rule is a more laymans way to say it, i guess. After that then they are going to start the official debate on this article of impeachment. Its only going to be a couple hours of debate so its not going to be very long. You know, what were trying to figure out now is what the senate is going to do should the house pass this article of impeachment which we fully expect it to. I just heard from Senate Democratic leader hoyer who told me that they plan to send these this article of impeachment to the senate immediately. There was some discussion earlier in the week that they were going to perhaps hold it for several weeks so that joe biden can stand up his government, but hoyer indicated that thats not the case. They are going to send them to the senate. He said it was an emergency and something that needs to be addressed now. So were getting no guidance from mcconnells office at this point on what theyre going to do. We do know that mcconnell sent a memo to his colleagues over the weekend saying that the earliest they could bring it up was january 19th, the day before inauguration. Senator schumer takes some issue with that, says that there are loopholes and emergency factors that they can take into consideration to bring it up earlier. But as far as whats happening in the house, theyre going to continue to debate this. We should see a vote within the next hour. That is not the final impeachment vote. Then the actual impeachment debate begins and then there will be a vote midafternoon, chuck. What this early vote could tell us, its what we sometimes refer to as a test vote. We may see just how many republicans are to be gotten depending on this rule vote there. Thank you. We are of course continuing to follow all the action on the house floor as lawmakers begin the process of impeaching president Donald John Trump for a second time. Youre watching msnbcs special coverage. Dont go anywhere. Were going to sneak in a break here so you get a restroom break. We will be right back. Here so you get a restroom break. We will be right back. 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Here alongside my colleagues stephanie ruhle, Hallie Jackson, as the house is beginning what is a procedural debate that will lead to the actual vote on impeachment today but this procedural vote which we expect in the next 30 minutes should give us a clue as to how many republicans are ready to join the democrats in impeaching donald trump a second time. Joining me now nbc news justice correspondent pete williams, msnbc contributor, senior fbi official Chuck Rosenberg, former acting solicitor generalist kneel cot yell and ari melber. Pete williams, i will start with you and really just if you could sort of characterize the current state of the investigation and what you took away from what was finally a public briefing by federal authorities, doj and the fbi. It is notable that it was not the highest ranking people at doj and fbi, but how would you characterize the state of the investigation and what was your biggest take away from yesterday . Yeah, first on camera briefing i guess we should say. Weve had some background briefings on the telephone with officials, but, youre right, that was their first on camera. Its an amazingly active investigation, they say theyve opened more than 170 cases so far. My understanding from the fbi is they have actually identified 200 people that were in that room. One of the most Amazing Things is they have received 100,000 digital files, people sending in video or still pictures. Now, thats not 100,000 phone tips with names, thats 100,000 people actually sending in pictures of people that they think they recognize. So theres an enormous amount of work yet to be done, its clearly going to be a many, many more cases, you know, in the hundreds, 500, maybe 600 cases that will eventually be filed here. So thats the first thing. Second thing is the variety of charges that they are looking at all the way from simple trespass which of course is a misdemeanor into some things that may not have seemed immediate obvious, but theft of mail, theft of digital devices, potentially theft of classified information, assault on Police Officers, we believe that at least 14 Police Officers were assaulted during the riots and of course murder if it can be proven that the death of the washington the capitol Police Officers was caused by the rioters, and theyre also looking at a charge of seditious conspiracy, sedition meaning opposing the government by force, and that would be other than murder the most potentially serious case. That one carries a 20year maximum sentence. Two other things that are openended that they say they have not reached a conclusion on. Number one, whether the riot had a leader or leaders that had planned this in advance, and secondly, whether the people that came into the building intended to take members of congress hostage. Now, thats supposition based partly on what was said on social media and partly on the fact that a number of these people were carrying either handcuffs or the plastic zip ties that Law Enforcement often uses to put people you know, hands behind their backs when theyre taken into custody. So those are yes, sir yet to be answered but its an amazingly active investigation with a huge amount of evidence to sort through. We did hear, Chuck Ros