Requests were made by people within the obama administration, exclamation mark. The president wants his investigators to be investigated. And so to that end the white house says justice, fbi, and intelligence officials have agreed to meet with republican congressional leaders to, quote, review highly classified and other information that lawmakers have requested about the fbis use of an informant in the early months of the russia investigation. Chief of staff john kelly has been given the assignment of setting up that meeting. This agreement came after the president met today with Deputy Attorney general Rod Rosenstein and fbi director christopher wray. And a day after the doj asked its Inspector General to please look into the president s claims that his campaign was essentially being spied upon. And after repeated requests from republicans that details about the informant be released, yesterday rosenstein issued a carefully worded statement. Quote, if anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a president ial campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action. The controversy and the president s relentless hammering of Justice Department officials has raised alarm among many, including the former number two at justice, sally yates, who we heard from today. What were seeing here is the president has just taken his allout assault on the rule of law to a new level. And this time he is ordering up an investigation of the investigators, who are examining his own campaign. You know, thats really shocking. On the senate floor, the democratic leader gave a scathing assessment of the president s actions. The president s behavior is the kind of grossly autocratic behavior wed expect in a banana republic, not a mature democracy. By now we should all recognize that President Trumps latest demand is just another example of a Relentless Campaign to distract from the serious wrongdoing being uncovered by the russia probe. Now, among republicans on the hill, there was a range of reactions. Senator jeff flake, an outspoken and almost out of town trump opponent, was cautious. For the president to order the doj to investigate someone or something is simply not appropriate. I have my own questions whether thats constitutional. All the remedies, the real remedies, are on the back side, and we dont want to get there. So wed just encourage the president not to do this and for the doj to stand up and say, no, this isnt appropriate. Over in the house, republican mark meadows, who heads the freedom caucus, welcomed the president s move with this statement. Quote, i applaud the president s leadership and push for transparency, and i hope the department of justice will follow suit by making the relevant documents available to congress. While a referral to the Inspector General is a step in the right direction, the department has an obligation to comply with congressional requests for oversight. Their attempt to circumvent this responsibility will not go unnoticed. As trump wages war on the fbi, his lawyer, rudolph giuliani, is staying on message and on the offensive. He has told the New York Times that special Counsel Robert Mueller shared his time line and that, in fact, mueller hopes the obstruction portion of his investigation will be over, completed by september 1st. Meanwhile, a reuters report says, quote, a source familiar with the probe called the september 1st deadline entirely made up and another apparent effort to pressure the special counsel to hasten the end of his work. Today the onetime head of the trump transition team, who still talks to the president , former new jersey governor chris christie, revealed what he has told trump about the length of this investigation. Ive told him many times that theres no way to make an investigation like this shorter, but theres lots of ways to make it longer. And hes executed on a number of those ways to make it longer. Bob mueller himself is not a partisan. Hes an honest guy. Hes a hardworking guy. Hes smart. And you cant argue that the investigation hasnt been effective so far. A number of guilty pleas, a couple of indictments in a year. Thats pretty good work. Some quotes there we might be hearing again. Earlier tonight the Vice President took a contrary view more closely echoing the president and his core supporters. I think its time that the special counsel wrap it up. The truth is its been now more than a year. The special counsel has a team around them thats been looking into all of the allegations here. And with the full cooperation of the white house, theyve been able to assemble the facts. And i continue to hope and say very respectfully, that the special counsel ought to with all deliberate means complete their work. Lets bring in our leadoff panel for a monday night. Ashley parker, Pulitzer Prize winning White House Reporter for the Washington Post. Julia ainsley, Nbc News National Security and justice reporter. And jeremy bash, former chief of staff at cia and the pentagon. Former chief counsel to house intel. Jeremy, its in your capacity as a nonpracticing lawyer that id like to begin with you. Even though various press reports have been saying this gentleman identified was not, repeat not, an embedded spy in anyones operation, this whole thing went from idea to fullblown crisis in a big hurry. What does this trump move signal to you, and what does the Justice Department reaction thus far signal to you . Well, the reason why protecting human sources is so important is this individual may have played sort of a negligible role in this counterintelligence investigation, its quite possible he has played a significant role in other counterintelligence investigations. And whenever you have a human source reporting on the activities of, say, the Russian Intelligence Services and they are core to that investigation, and then we reveal publicly or pressure others to reveal publicly that this individual is affiliated with u. S. Intelligence, that could jeopardize this sources life. So its terribly irresponsible for the president or any of his supporters to do that. As for whether the Justice Department is acting appropriately, brian, heres what i would say to that. I think it was appropriate to refer this to the Inspector General. It was, i think, fine for Rod Rosenstein to put out that statement to say, hey, look, if anybody did anything inappropriate or for political purposes, we want to get to the bottom of this because i think he knows well that nothing inappropriate or political was done in this investigation. Where im less comfortable and actually uncomfortable is with the white house meeting with only congressional leaders. Why is the white house involved with this . The president is the subject of this investigation. They should not be meeting with the Justice Department at all. Yeah, we have a guest in our next segment, a Justice Department veteran who feels rosenstein is giving up too much on an incremental basis. Well talk about that in due time. So, ashley, tell us the back story. This went from idea to full blown crisis in the space of one weekend. Whats the back story of the president s immersion in this . Well, it sure did. One thing that was striking is when this first came out, the idea of an informant, it was confusing for everyone. It was sort of unclear how this informant got in touch with the campaign when they were part of it. So within the west wing, there was real and sort of legitimate and genuine concern if a sort of political plant had been put there. What has been interesting is that as more and more reports have come out that have made clear that that was not the case, this was not someone put there for political purposes to spy on the Trump Campaign. This was someone who, with good reason, made outreach to, you know, a small number of people on that campaign who had raised flags with the Intelligence Community for other reasons based on their contacts with the russians, with Foreign Governments. The white house is still sort of now it feels like a bit more willfully chosen to still push that line of an improper political spy when, in fact, the case is much different. Its not quite an accurate thing to push, but it is helpful for their case in the court of Public Opinion. So, julia, this is a crisis independent of the known facts. There was no one with a stickon mustache sitting in the back of the press corps covering the Trump Administration as a paid federal government spy. Having said that, you cover the department of justice. How do you think . How have you learned the career professionals over there are taking this . I think this is just another day that has really kind of weakened morale over there. When they not only have a president who is going after the way they do business but also a Deputy Attorney general who is giving way on a lot of these things, who is willing to let the white house review what documents go to congress, and thats a congress and congressional committees that are very much in lockstep with this white house. They feel like the business that they do is no longer protected in the ways that it has been protected in the past, not just by tradition, but just by the constitution. I mean being able to allow a federal investigation to carry on its own without political influence is the way these people go to work every day. And another thing about this, brian, is this is not the first time that weve seen trump pick apart one piece of this investigation as the origin. Remember back to the nunes memo, he wanted to look at the way the fisa applications were applied for to say that that was done in a biased or improper way. And now hes doing it with this source. Hes always looking at something to show that the entire investigation was prompted by a biased witch hunt as he puts it. But of course the people who work in this space know that it is many pieces of information that get you your warrants, that lead to subpoenas, that lead to indictments. It is a Critical Mass that you just that you build over time to prove your point, and it is impossible to pick one piece apart and say that the entire investigation is flawed. So, jeremy, we said at the top of the broadcast, as we try to tally every night, this was day 487 of the Trump Administration. The president is still attacking barack obama. I heard our friend over on cnn, don lemon, say on a show this weekend that over on fox news, Hillary Clinton is always president. To what julia just mentioned, though, the people who go to work every day, how does any of this affect what you know about the mueller people and the Mueller Investigation . Well, the investigation, brian, is to protect our country. Its not to go after any one person in any political party. Its really to protect against russian intrusion in our democratic process. And notwithstanding whether the russian aggression in this particular campaign favored a republican or undermined a democrat, it undermined our democracy and undermined democracy itself. And so i think the way the professionals at doj and frankly throughout our National Security establishment view this is that they view themselves on the front lines of protecting our country. Theyre not looking at this through the political lens of who it favors or who it hurts in our political system. They want to protect our country. Ashley, is this a strategy or a shiny object or that rare animal that is both . I think it can be both. I think at the end of the day, this all, for President Trump and his legal team and by that i mainly mean Rudy Giuliani is a strategy. It is basically a way to try to manipulate Public Opinion, especially with the president s base. But also just with everyone. So you see, as julia mentioned, that rosenstein is giving up a little bit of ground here and there, which is remarkable when you think of what the president is actually asking his Justice Department to do and accusing them of. And so when we get to the point, whenever that is, when mueller wraps up his investigation or, say, after the midterm elections as some trump confidants believe, when the president then finally makes the changes at the Justice Department that he so clearly wants to make based on his Public Comments, his private comments, and his tweets, that there will also be the ground work in the ether of Public Opinion to make this seem far less shocking than it might be had we not had all these months and months of sort of Public Comments by the white house getting the voters basically more comfortable with this idea. Julia, again, you cover the men and women who work in and around the Justice Department. Did anything sound like them to you when you heard Rudy Giuliani say, in effect, i had this assurance from mueller that the obstruction parts going to be its going to be all done by labor day. September 1, were out of here. Right. That could not sound further than like what we hear from the men and women of the Justice Department and through u. S. Attorneys offices throughout the country. They keep the time line of investigations under wraps. They would not share that kind of thing with prosecutors. What they might be talking about, though. What we believe theyre talking is when the president might sit down for a voluntary interview with Robert Mueller. And it could be that Rudy Giuliani is extrapolating his time line from that. If you remember, brian, just about a month ago we reported that mueller wanted to end the obstruction probe around june or july. That was when we thought that the president would not sit down for an interview. Thats when he was irate about the raids on Michael Cohens residence, and he did not want to sit down. And under that, mueller thought that he could wrap up the obstruction probe more quickly. Now that its looking like he may get a limited voluntary interview, maybe agreeing to a set of questions, that might be back on the table, which would actually extend the time line. Not only would they have to prep for the interview, do the interview probably sometime around midsummer, they would then have more questions they would have to pursue afterwards. There could be a time line hes extrapolating here, but promises are rarely, if ever ive never heard of a promise made to a defense attorney that this is when we will have this wrapped. Thats just not the way these things work, and there are many leads that we know Robert Mueller is following, and hes going to turn over every rock in the process. With big thanks to our leadoff panel tonight, our own julia ainsley, ashley parker, and jeremy bash, thank you for being with us tonight. Coming up, trumps latest demand of the doj is not his first. A look back at the president s demand for loyalty from various justice officials. Why this time, however, as weve been saying, might be different. And later, more on yet another trump tower meeting in the public realm now involving Foreign Governments and donald trump jr. The 11th hour on a monday night getting under way. Mom you called . Oh hi sweetie, i just want to show you something. Xfinity mobile find my phone. [ phone rings ] look at you. This tech stuff is easy. [ whirring sound ] you want a cookie . Its a drone i know. Find your phone easily with the xfinity voice remote. One more way comcast is working to fit into your life, not the other way around. Rod rosenstein is in the most difficult position probably of anybody in the history of the department of justice. Hes trying to thread the needle between a president who is pressuring him for political purposes and for his own interests against protecting an institution, the department of justice and the fbi. That was our friend and contributor and former fbi special agent clint watts weighing in on this news the deputy a. G. Rod rosenstein asked the doj Inspector General to review claims that the fbi had surveilled the Trump Campaign somehow for political purposes. As we reported, the move came after the president demanded an investigation over twitter this weekend. Legal experts are worried that this is a dangerous new benchmark in an area of obstruction. The rest of us can plainly see this president s public war with all things Justice Departmentrelated from the boss, Jeff Sessions on down. This is from a month ago. Quote, much of the bad blood with russia is caused by the fake and corrupt russia investigation headed up by the alldemocrat loyalists or people that work for obama. Mueller is most conflicted of all except rosenstein who signed fisa and comey letter. No collusion, so they go crazy. Here to talk about it, cynthia alksne, a veteran of the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department. Matthew miller is back with us, former chief spokesman for th