Our other top story this morning is Michael Cohen and the resulting standoff between the Justice Department and the special counsel. After the fbi raided the home, office and hotel room of his longtime attorney. Today a person of knowledge tells nbc news that director Rod Rosenstein directly approved the application for the search warrant. Last night the president name checked rosenstein in a rant where he called the investigation a farce. So i just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys, good man. And its a disgraceful situation, its a total witch hunt. This is the most biassed group of people. These people have the biggest conflicts of interest i have ever seen. Democrats all, or just about all, either democrats or a couple of republicans that work for president obama. Why dont i just fire mueller . Well, i think its a disgrace whats going on. Well see what happens. A few quick fact checks, no one broke into Michael Cohens office, the fbi conducted the raid with a legal search warrant and the democrats that trump claims is behind it, the folks are republicans, Rod Rosenstein, Robert Mueller are all democrats. He tweeted in all caps, a total witch hunt, three exclamation points. But bottom line, trumps personal fixer is in legal jeopardy. Cohen is under investigation for possible bank fraud, wire fraud and Campaign Finance violations. And the allegationless if true could send cohen to prison for decades. And trumps soother, hope hicks is gone, john dowd quit, he no longer listens to his chief of staff, according to reports. This es in the process of firing all the folks that made him uncomfortable. And now he is publicly musing about firing Robert Mueller. To be clear, there are a few hurdles he would have to jump through to get that done. But our big question today is, if he does try, what are republican lawmakers going to do about it . Lets get right to it with our team of reporters and analysts. Kristen welker is at the white house north lawn. Also with me, tom winter, nbc news investigations reporter whos been following every move of this, and tom hamberg whos a reporter with the Washington Post and assistant attorney general under the trump administration. Donald trump has lost all of his balances, his guardrails, hope hicks is not there, john dowd is not there, all of the quote, unquote adults are leaving, hes firing people he doesnt like, hes replacing them. John kelly doesnt have influence any longer. It feels like its always been chaotic in this white house, but this has got to be the most chaotic yet. Reporter its certainly chaotic and we also learned that tom bossert is out today, this is someone widely regarded as being effective in his job, just one more person, one more indication that the president s inner circle is narrowing. Important to point out, john bolton, the Incoming National skirt advisor is bringing in his own team, which is why were seeing tom bossert leaving. As well as the search of Michael Cohens hotel room. He called this a witch hunt, so the question becomes is he going to fire his Deputy Attorney general Rod Rosenstein and move to try to get Robert Mueller ousted. Ive been speaking to officials here at the white house, Sarah Sanders says, look, the president s comments stand on their own. Not in and given the responses we have seen from this white house, it may be a shift. The white house comes forward and they continue to deny firing rock Robert Mueller. We will ungoutdoubtedly be aski Sarah Sanders if she denies that the president is trying to remove his special counsel or if she chooses her words carefully today, katy. Some people within the trump orbit are thinking this was ultimately Robert Mueller pushing this. And they believe that Robert Mueller has officially crossed the line and the feeling is the president is Walking Around the white house right now saying he wants to fire Robert Mueller, 10 people inside the white house are telling him its a bad idea, which is only making him want to fire him more. What are you hearing . Reporter Robert Mueller is at the center of this, and the reason is that according to Law Enforcement officials he referred this to new york and the reason is he had some reason to believe there may have been some type of crime committed and also didnt believe it falls within the purview of the russia probe, thats why he referred this matter to new york. Theres some in the white house that say this could be bringing the president s anger toward Robert Mueller to a head, effectively bringing it to a confrontation with Robert Mueller. And legal people behind the scenes are still having those very Sensitive Conversations about an interview between the special counsel and Robert Mueller. You have to imagine thats having an impact on those very sensitive negotiations. Kristen, thank you very much for joining us. Tom winter, youve been doing all this reporting this morning and initially the word was that the person who okayed this warrant, who okayed this fbi raid was the u. S. Attorney for the Southern District jeffrey berman, whos a donald trump appointee, also a republican. Youre saying that donald trump was not involved, can you explain . In the u. S. Attorneys manual, which is kind of the guide book or field book about how special counsels are supposed to carry out special investigations, one is to engage with the u. S. Attorney and from there the u. S. Attorney would go to main justice or head of the Justice Division or an attorney general to get authorization to excute a warrant like this. But jeff berman who is a trump appointee as you said was not involved in seeking the search warrant, or the search warrant process and is not involved in this investigation. Its important to note that in early may, his appointment expires, he was not put forward as a nominee by trump and he was not confirmed by the senate. So he is not actually the u. S. Attorney, the permanent u. S. Attorney until such time as either he would leave on his own or he would be fired and appointed by somebody else if another administration came in or resigned or something to that effect. Thats why i think some folks got this confused the other day, but Robert Mueller did not have anything to do with the warrant or executing the warrant and his investigation is ongoing. If youre worried about Attorney Client privilege, and that needs to be approved by someone pretty high up in the chain. Rod rosenstein did this . Rod rosenstein executed this warrant. If you want to do a sports analogy, the gm or the one two oversees everyone, he oversees mueller. And from court documents, we know from filings, he has had a steady hand on this and mueller is the coach and calling the plays day to day and how this investigation proceeds, so the Southern District of new york thats executed by federal agents here and federal prosecutors here, that Rod Rosenstein is his input, control and authority to approve. Tom hamburg, wire fraud, investment fraud, why are we not hear about Stormy Daniels amend also the taxi medallions . We heard reported early this morning that Michael Cohen is under investigation for potential violation of law in three areas, you mentioned bank fraud and wire fraud and the third is Campaign Finance violations, we dont know precisely why those three are listed, probably in documents related to the search warrant. But it could be, since we know that there is interest in payments to Stormy Daniels, that there is an effort to understand whether the timing of the payment to Stormy Daniels, just 12 days before the election might be related to the trump president ial campaign. And if so, it could be construed as a Campaign Finance violation to make a payment to someone to be quiet and in order to enhance the candidacy of a president ial candidate. Why is donald trump so rattled by this, Tom Hamburger . Manafort was the subject of the investigation too, Michael Cohen was just raided by the Southern District of new york. It was referred by the special couns counsel, but as now we dont know if it would go back to the special counsel or if this is a complete offshoot that would have nothing to do with the president himself. Theres going to be two sets of crews going in and poring into the material to determine what is attorneyclient privilege and what is not. Michael cohen is a figure unlike any of the others who have been experienced or been the focus on bob muellers attention. Unlike paul manafort, who knew the president during the campaign and worked with him for several months during the 2016 campaign, Michael Cohen has been with donald trump for more than a decade. Hes a pit bull, hes a fixer for mr. Trump during the years they worked together in trump tower. And indeed we know Michael Cohen was involved in this effort to maintain the silence, apparently, of a former porn actress. This is the personal attorney of the president , he knows information going back a decade and we saw the effect yesterday, anyone who watched the clip showed a very agitated president trump, clearly concerned that his personal attorney has been, offices and residence and hotel rooms have been searched by the fbi. President trump, when he was making those comments there, it was clearly that he was telling Michael Cohen that he has his back. Lets go through whats attorneyclient privilege and what is not. One attorney tweeted attorneyclient privilege is dead, but theres a distinct process that makes sure that investigation between a attorney and his client could never be used against his client. It shows enormous solace tud for attorneyclient privilege, mainly because the courts are so serious about it and its a way to torpedo a case right away. Even a raid yesterday had two separate teams, one fbi team going in, double that, because there was a whole separate squad there just to be sure that the agents who are working on the case wouldnt inadvertently cast their eyes on what could possibly be attorneyclient privilege because they would have to remove them from the whole case. We have an entire squad of people, who are combing through all these documents. Anything that is a close call, theyre setting to the side and the special master will probably decide on that. Anything that is clearly attorneyclient privilege, nobody on the team whos prosecuting the case will ever see. Its only things that are completely uncontroversial that they will look at. They will look at newspapers and cut out articles, so that the team can never see them, its a very elaborate process and its in place because when somebody whos on the team stumbles across something thats Attorney Client privilege, it could potentially result this kind of disqualification. Its a team that goes through all the documents first, and then they turn it over to the clean team and then the clean team decides what is relevant to the investigation they are conducti conducting. One more question, could this go back to the special counsel, realize that this was a very burdensome case load to go through all that document and then pass it off to them when necessary . The short answer is no. As tom was detailing, what happened here is mueller came across this information. Almost certainly the bank fraud, wire fraud, its all about the 130,000 payment. He sat down with Rod Rosenstein, this is exactly what happened when ken starr sat down with janet reno and said theres new stuff about this Monica Lewinsky person. Reno said you take it, starr, Rod Rosenstein said dont take it, i have now referred it to the Southern District, thats now a separate file there. If trump should ever be fired, the Southern District is in for the whole ride. Theyll get resources from main justice, but its not going back to mueller. Guys thank you very much. And turning now to our other massive story today, in just a few minutes, Facebook Ceo Mark Zuckerberg will face lawmakers questions in a hearing here on capitol hill, he will give a status update on the Senate Judiciary committee and the Commerce Committee after it was revealed that 87 million users had their data improperly shared. Zuckerberg posted this on face book, in about an hour im going to testify about how facebook will take broader responsibility to make sure that facebook stays a place where everyone can stay closer to the people they care about and to make sure that its a positive force in the world. The question is, will any of this change how facebook handles your personal information . I have chris hayes, also the hosts of the 11 00 a. M. And 3 00 p. M. Hour. Executive editor and an early investor in facebook, also an advisor and mentor to zuckerberg. Chris, what questions does Mark Zuckerberg need to answer today to restore the faith in his company . Well, im not sure he can do that today. I think the way that i would be approaching this if i were Mark Zuckerberg and the way that i would be approaching from the other side, is there are two areas to think about. One is there are a bunch of facebook controversies that they can talk about, that has to do with came bridge analytica. And then theres the facebooks business model. And the Cambridge Analytica gets to the score of it. The model is, the most personalized system of surveillance ever constructed in human history, being that eegsz the core of the business, thats why its the profitable business it is. My question is how deeply do the senators go and how deeply does Mark Zuckerberg go in defending that specific core model of the company. You read an article today talking about how its a little bit ridiculous to assume that Mark Zuckerberg is not going to be ready for this. So ill ask you, is he ready for this panel . For this hearing . He has to be, i mean my issue in the article i wrote was that we treat these boy geniuses of Silicon Valleys are boys when theyre adults running Major Companies and they have to be held responsible for what theyre doing. Every time we give these people an out and rejuvenilize them, we lethem off the hook. I know i sound like a mean mom, but this is kind of ridiculous, these are billionaires that run Major Companies, they better be responsible for it and if not they shouldnt be running the companies. I dont know how else to say it. Is the facebook model meant to allow people to share their information and build contacts and connect with friends and loved ones, not only in their home but around the world . Or is the facebook model toing a greg ga aggregate all of that user data for them to sell it again and make a lot of money. Its a free service, people like it and everything else. But its a data gobbling, privacy violate iing data minin operation. This platform has been hijacked in a number of different ways including being taking advantage of peoples privacy. You notice the spate they have Just Announced that they could have to protect peoples privacy and let them know exactly whats going on with it. My big issue, i just got some texts that i found a little bit disturbing is that inside the company, they dont think its a problem, i think, a lot of top executives do think that this model is fine. I think a lot of people dont. And youll see a lot of these senators and congressmen talking about this. Roger you said its a cult. It is, inside, its a really difficult problem you have culturally, because they have lived this perfect life, where they have been on a speedway going a million miles an hour, and all you had to do to be part of it was believe in zuck. Theres been a culture of not ever speaking truth to power. And as a result, they got huge, but no one ever questioned the methods they used to get huge, and those methods not only need to be questioned, they have to be stopped and we cant trust them without significant external oversight. What can congress do to regulate facebook . I mean what can they israel realistically do to regulate this social media giant . This is not russia, theres laws and privacy laws in place, the broadcast industry is quite regulated. Tech as the lowest regulation of any industry, although they say they are innovative and say they cant stay innovative if theyre regulated. But it is an idea of no irritants in the system. Theres nobody saying, and i have asked this of many executives there, is anyone saying no, what about this . What about that . And theyre not pe