Congressional ally demands a briefing. Trying to create stone a victim here. Show of force to try to depict me as public enemy number one. An nbc report, Russian Hackers are using documents they claim to have stolen from Robert Mueller to try and discredit the special counsels investigation. The art of the deal no more. Fox conn apparently back pedaling on their plans to build a factory in wisconsin. This after receiving record tax breaks and a ringing endorsement from the president. This is a great day for america. The eighth wonder of the world. This is the eighth wonder of the world. And in the era of me too, is the fear of being accused of harassment or worse a fair excuse for male executives now saying they will avoid mentoring women in the workplace . We begin with the president and Top Republicans questioning last fridays raid at roger stones race. The answer might be in court papers filed before the raid went down. First, lets give you a quick explanation of what were talking about. President trump and Lindsey Graham would have you believe that the fbi was out of line when they sent agents to arrest roger stone. Mr. Stone told the daily caller it was a very disappointing scene and said he might ask for a review of the fbis tactics. Senate Judiciary Committee chair graham went even further, asking fbi director chris wray to brief his committee on the raid including the number of agents the tactics and the specific timing. To review, 6 00 a. M. Friday morning at least a dozen armed fbi agents came to stones house, knocked on the door and ordered him to surrender. To shots were fired. Theres been a suggestion that the fbi did not need the show of force. It could have asked stone to turn himself in. Look at his filing from last thursday. The day before the raid took place. It says Robert Mueller was worried that letting anyone know what was coming would, quote, increase the risk of the defendant fleeing and destroying or tampering with evidence. Now remember that part of the reason stone was indicted in the first place was that because he made, quote, multiple false statements to a house committee. Those are lies. About his interactions regarding wikileaks and falsely denied possessing records that contain evidence of these very interactions. If mueller was worried stone would destroy those records he had previously denied having, that could explain the raid. These tactics, theyre not completely out of the ordinary for the fbi or even the mueller investigation. Remember, agencies, documents and other materials in Early Morning raid on paul manmanafor home in 2018. In both catioses, investigators said they didnt believe the men could be trusted to hand over records. Kristen welker at the white house. The president could be complaining on twitter and anywhere else. Or he could be putting forth an actual investigation, a file, to look into how this happened. The white house hasnt clarified yet whether President Trump is serious about that. What we do know is that his language about the roger stone arrest certainly fits into a broader pattern that weve seen from this president when it comes to special counsels investigation into russian meddling. He frequently lashes out, as you well know, as you have covered extensively. I want to underscore that point you made. We did so much reporting on this in recent days, the fact that Law Enforcement officials agree, look, if you look at the legal documents that were filed, it explains why that raid was carried out. Because there was concern that he might try to cover up or in some ways destroy evidence. Thats sort of the legal perspective as President Trump continues to take aim. The president also making headlines in that interview that you mentioned by saying that he is going to let the Justice Department determine how to handle the findings of the mueller report. Thats significant, coming on the heels of whitaker indicating perhaps this could wrap up soon. Also saying if he want to shut this down, he could have. Again, under scoring the sort of aggressive tone President Trump has taken. What is he talking about today . Not the special counsel investigation but a topic i know interests you a lot. The fact that chinese officials are here having high level talking. Ahead of that march 1st deadline. This is the president s tweets. One of them in a series. Chinas representatives and i are trying to do a complete deal. All of the many problems are being discussed and will be hopefully resolved. Tariffs on china increased to 25 on march 1. So all working hard to complete by that date. President trump will be meeting with the vice premier of china later on today. A lot of pressure on these talks. Folks throughout the country, particularly farmers, concerned about the increase of those tariffs. What its doing to the trade market. Then of course hes tweeting about the wall. Saying a wall is a wall. As bipartisan negotiators are trying to hammer out a deal trying to keep the government open. Talk is very important. Its also cheap. Well believe it when we see it. I want to bring my panel in. Former rnc chairman michael steele. Former fork democrnew york demo congressman joe raleigh. The argument were hearing from the white house, this raid was for show, if roger stone had anything left in his house, he would have destroyed it. I dont think we can say this arrest i object to the characterization of raid. Because this was an arrest. Whats the difference . I think a raid we think of a s. W. A. T. Team going in an unanticipated way, responding to a situation. Raid is not a legal term of art. Its important for viewers to know this was an arrest pursuant to a warrant after stone had been indicted by a grand jury. And they had offered to do a search warrant at his home. So they were there for that purpose pursuant to a usual protocol of going at 6 00 a. M. For a number of reasons to make sure the person is at home, to make sure theres a minimum of disruption to the neighborhood and minimized the potential of danger. And they were there to look for evidence as well as arresting him. As you said, it was laid out why they needed to do it this way. Because he had been indicted for obstruction of justice and lying, including lies about whether or not he had had text communications. Part of the reason for that lie, i understand, is to make sure that congress, which was asking him these questions, wouldnt be able to follow up and actually get that evidence, those text messages. So even if those texts already were in possession of muellers team, there could have within other evidence on the premise in hard drives, other computers. Also really recent communications, with other people, potential coconspirators, trying to get their story straight. And you dont want to tip somebody often theyre about to be arrestled ed so they can tel other people to flee and things like that. Graham is making the argument that the manner in which this arrest took place addled to the media circus. Do you believe that the fbi cares about optics when theyre carrying out these things . I think theres a media circus going on. For sure. All the president s men are either under indictment, going to be dietindicted or going to o jail. People looked at this and said what is going on . One of the biggest advisers to the president is arested. Its also not uncommon. Ive seen this throughout my career. Where elected officials, judges or other highprofile people are arested Early Morning hours, woken up out of bed, in their page jpa jammas. I think its disturbing to see guns drawn, but i think its probably protocol at the fbi. I think they had their reasons for doing it. Tampering with evidence is certainly one of them. I dont know what the risk of flight was per se. Certainly tampering of evidence is certainly something i think they had to be concerned about. Michael, whats your take here . Im kind of laughing at this idea of roger stone as a victim. The fact youve got Lindsay Graham and others trying to paint this picture that is so horrifying to see him arrested the way he was. Please. Spare me. Walk in any other neighborhood in this country when police are executing warrants. Its the same thing. When theyve gomt tt the goods you, theyre coming a. Er ye in. He knew at any moment his good nights e. R. Would nights rest would be disrupted by police. Anybody sitting back saying this is so horrible, what happened to poor roger stone. Spare me. The fact of the matter is, to the congressmans point, this is a process that has been played out over and over again. By many others who are within the president s circle, have gotten themselves caught and are now paying the piper with more pain to come. The process has been played out. Michael, stay there. I want to cover another big story in the russia investigation. Federal prosecutors are saying Russian Hackers altered information obtained from muellers own case documents and they tried to put it to use as part of a Disinformation Campaign against the investigation. Nbc news Investigative Reporter tom winter is back. Congratulations. He just got married. How do these hackers get this information and what were they trying to do with it . This happens when the case goes forward to time, and that is if youre indicted, youre entitled to see the evidence the government has. So the government turns over that evidence. In this particular case, what would happen is muellers team trned over certain parts of evidence that they had against a Company CalledConcord Management. A Company Owned by evgeny progosin whose nickname is putins chef. Charged as a result of the troll farm and all of the efforts that were put into play to interfere in the 2016 election. Basically, stephanie, the government says, okay, heres some of the evidence they have. They have to turn it over to the u. S. Company Concord Management for those Defense Attorneys to review. Muellers team says in october of last year some of that information popped up on a twitter account in an online file sharing account that was registered by an individual or entity with an i. P. Address belonging to russia. They had serious concerns because some of the file also they were able to identify as belonging to their evidence. Now that they have evidence that they know theyve shared with this Concord Management, ultimately owned by a russian individual, a russian company, they see it pop up online. The reason they say it was disinformation is because only a limited amount of the information was put out and essentially this twitter account made it seem like, well, this is all that Robert Mueller has against these troll farms and against the russians period. Obviously they have a lot more information. Thats the reason we know about this in the first place. Because Robert Muellers team has been arguing over past months saying hey, we turned over some of the information but we dont want to turn over the really sensitive stuff, the manner and the means as to how we know that this evidence exists and how we know the russians did it and they used this yesterday as an example in the court filing to say look, we turned over the most basic stuff. Its stuff we talked about on air. Its the facebook posts, those type of things. Not exactly the real sensitive goods so to speak. They say if youre already sharing this stuff, whats going to happen if we turn over the really sensitive material. Thats how we know about the issue in the first place. My god, can you imagine what its like inside Robert Muellers held . Well let you know. The hackers were successful in what they were trying to do here . It doesnt appear so. This twitter account has been suspended. The fact this came out in october and this is the first time really hearing it publicly. The fact they were able to identify this is already information weve already seen. It doesnt seem to have made any impact at this point. Its not something that seems to have gone viral so to speak. Doesnt appear this had immediate effect. Appears the fbi and muellers team were able to shut it down quickly. Twitter what is it good for, absolutely nothing. I want to bring my panel back. Jessica, what are muellers options . Does he have the option not to rescream this kind of information to the people being indicted . Mueller made a filing in which he was seeking to have the court deny an application by the Defense Attorneys to be able to share the sensitive material more wildly than the Court Previously authorized. Because hes saying we have to keep it locked down . The concern was about it being disseminated widely including to people in russia not subject to the courts jurisdiction, for example, for contempt. The defense has access to the material. The protective order condition is people cap onn only look at material in the office also of the law firm. In hard copy form. It cant be decimated electronically. This way, the lawyers are supposed to be able to keep control of the information so it cant just get out into gem circumstan general circulation. Wow. Michael, we know theres one thing Robert Muellers team is and its tight. If that altered information had gotten out, would that mean mueller has to make a Public Statement to help people understand whats true and what isnt . I cant imagine he wants to do that. Yes, he doesnt want to do that. I doubt he would. He may probably put out some innocuous point about the information. Because his concern would be disclosing more information by commenting on that than he otherwise needs to. I think with mueller, as weve just recently saw when the office put out statements in the last month, that they keep it very narrowly detyped. They keep it close lipped each when theres something that is outrageous. Theyre very measured in their response. I think in this instance, he would have been the same way. This specific information was class fewlew classified as nonsensitive. Does the practice, does what happened prove that it is a National Security risk . Had it been different information, it would be a different story. I think it also demonstrate also the hideous nature of the attack on our country right now to undermine our faith in our judicial system. This is not a new game. But cyber warfare. Use of technology that we created is now being used against us to undermine our faith in our judicial system. That to me is each more important than this particular issue. Or even it is nature of thises what disclosed. And how its being used again to attack us as a country, as a nation. And the president s response to these things. Meeting with the ambassador. Laughing at the firing of comey. Makes a lot of people wonder what is going on. All right. Well take a quick break. Coming up, what happened to the eighth wonder of the world . Talking fox conn. Their plan to bring 13,000 jobs to the state of wisconsin now seems to be in doubt. I know it is winter. It is supposed to be cold. But not like this. That extreme and deadly cold is punishing a massive portion of this country. Were going to get an update from the today shows al roker, my dear neighbor in the center of the polar vortex. Hey. I heard youre moving into a new apartment. Yeah, its pretty stressful. This music is supposed to relax me, though. Maybe youd mellow out a bit if you got geico to help you with your renters insurance. Oh, geico helps with renters insurance . Good to know. Yeah, and they could save you a lot of money. Wow, suddenly i feel so relieved. You guys are fired. Get to know geico and see how much you could save on renters insurance. And the army taught me a lot about commitment. Which i apply to my life and my work. At comcast were commited to delivering the best experience possible, by being on time everytime. And if we are ever late, well give you a automatic twenty dollar credit. My name is antonio and im a technician at comcast. Were working to make things simple, easy and awesome. Welcome back. I hope youre warm on the couch. I know it is winter but outside went freezing windchills are sweeping across the northeast and the midwest. At least nine people killed. 230 Million People are dealing with subzero temperatures this week. With no relief until the weekend. Cold weather wreaking havoc with travelers. My friend and neighbor al roker is out on the hudson river in kingston, new york. Hey, al, good morning. How is it out there . Good morning. Were on the deck of the u. S. Coast guard cutter in the bay. Their mission is to go up and down the hudson river, making sure the shipping lanes stay open. Because this is a vital connection for the northeast to get fuel oil gasoline up and down the river. Theyve got to make sure they keep it clear. 121 Million People under winter weather, windchill warnings and advisories. Brutal cold goes on for at least one more day. But the good news is we do see relief coming. Starting tomorrow, after the dangerous windchills, but not as bad as theyve been over last 48 hours, we start to see a warmup. Well see temperatures by saturday up into the 30s by chicago. 30s in minneapolis. 30s in new york city. Even down into the south, temperatures into the 40s. By sunday, we are talking about near 60 for atlanta. Mid40s for new york city. Upper 30s. Mid40s for chicago and upper 30s for minneapolis. So this has been brutal. Again, for folks who talk about what happened to global warming, climate change, thats the term, and that makes for massive swings in our weather. Climate is long term. Weather is at the moment. And changing climate makes the weather have these extreme swings. We will be swinging back to more normal. I cant wait. Back to you, steph, have a great weekend. Thanks, al roker. Coming up, it was described as the single biggest economic comeback hope for the entire midwest. President trump even touted fox conns plans to bring thousands of manufacturing jobs back to wisconsin as one of his key talking points. He broke ground i think it was with a gold shovel. Those plans seem to have changed. Jerry reed singing eastb