Our nbc news headquarters here in new york. R this was day 866 of the trump administration, and while the president remains in the uk, tonight here in the u. S. A familiar name from his administration is back in the news. Perhaps because she started out as a student modeling for ralphe lauren and then built a career that earned her the title of White House Communications director at the age of 28, hope hicks was the subject of a lot of fascination, a lot of press coverage early on in the trump presidency. And her name came up again during the investigation as she was called to testify based on g all that she witnessed, all tha she saw and overheard in that job. Hope hicks is back in the news tonight because she has said no to a congressional subpoena because she was told to by the white house. Hicks along with another woman Annie Donaldson, former chief of staff to onetime White House Counsel Don Mcgahn have chosen not to cooperate with subpoenas from the house Judiciary Committee. The committees chairman jerry nadler had requested materials from both women as part of his committees investigation into possible obstruction and abuse of power by the president. They were due by 10 00 a. M. Os today. That didnt happen. The committee got a letter from the current white House Counsel who invoked executive privilege and added that the former aides, quote, do not have the legal right to disclose the white house records to third parties. And that acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to the president has directed them not to produce documents. Chairman nadler responded with his own statement which read in part, federal law makes clear that the documents we requested, documents that left the white house months ago are no longer covered by executive privilege, if they ever were. The president has no lawful basis for preventing these witnesses from complying with our request. Hicks has already turned over some documents related to her time on the trump campaign. She faces another big test as she and donaldson have been summoned to testify before the Judiciary Committee in person. Nadler was asked about that earlier today. Do you expect Annie Donaldson and hope hicks to appear for these hearings . That was that. For now the latest white house move effectively blocks the democrats access to some of the key witnesses related to the obstruction aspect of the mueller investigation. You may recall the white house also stopped don mcgahn from cooperating with a subpoena to submit documents and to testify. Next week, the full house of representatives is scheduled too vote on holding him and attorney general bill barr in contempt of congress. Barr has so far refused to comply with a subpoena for the full unredacted Mueller Report. The Justice Department had asked that the house call off the vote in respect to barr in exchanged for continued negotiations over the report. But tonight nadler rejected that overture. Uert all of this has democrats now working overtime to find ways to convince this man, Robert Mueller himself in the flesh to testify. He has already made it quite clear he has no desire to testify. It some members of the house st Judiciary Committee now say it is time for chairman nadler to demand his testimony. Im he has to come before the ny committee. If he doesnt come voluntarily, if thats the final determination he makes, then i have confidence that the chireman will issue a subpoena and he will comply. Thhe that man, congressman cicilli cicilline, a democrat from rhode island is one of 12 democrats on that committee who are now in favor of opening an impeachment inquiry. In total 58 House Democrats still just one republican are in favor of such a move. There is also news tonight in the case of Michael Flynn, trumps former National Security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the fbi about his phone conversations with a former russian ambassador. Th the federal judge handling the case had ordered the transcripts of those discussions between flynn and ambassador kislyak be made public and on friday prosecutors had refused saying there was no need to file the transcript. Tonight, that same judge has agreed and said nothing else was needed. Ne this is all unfolding as trump, of course, is in london on the second day of his state visit. Trump waded a little further into british Politics Today talking about brexit in a News Conference with Prime Minister theresa may and meeting with its most vocal supporter nigel farage. There was also a new escalation in trumps feud with london mayor khan khan. L im not going to respond by name t calling. Its the behavior i expect from an 11yearold. He is a negative force. He is not a positive force. If you look at what he says, he hurts the people of this great country. I think he should actually focus on his job. K t here for our leadoff discussion on a tuesday evening, carol lening, Pulitzer Prize winning Investigative Reporter for the Washington Post. Kimberly atkins, senior washington correspondent andes mika olang, veteran washington lawyer, former staffer for the house intelligence and Arms Services committees. Welcome to you all. Rv carol, i would like to begin with you. What will the democrats lose by not getting the testimony of these two young women, assuming they say no to that subpoena, as well . Th well, i think your opening was perfect in describing what they lose. Both of these people are os insiders in the most dramatic way in the trump white house. Annie donaldson because she kepa basically a running diary of important things that were beinf said by the president that were ultimately used as potential evidence of obstruction of justice by the president , efforts to throttle the probe. Hope hicks as illustrated by your bs roll is also a compellg figure, a person who was by the president s side whisperring in his ear what she thinks he es should do and him responding he will agree with her or, no, he wants her to do something dramatic and also some of what she saw was used as potential evidence of obstruction of justice in the mueller probe. Really what the democrats are trying to do is bring these people to television so that they can speak and give voice t the Mueller Report, which is lengthy and dense and lawyerly u and not everyone has read it. Although, i should have worn my button from the Washington Post which said i have read the Mueller Report. Not everyone has and democrats want to bring that into the living rooms of american citizens because theyre not feeling that the American Public is in agreement that what the president has done is worrisome. That it rises to the level of either intense scrutiny or potentially impeachment in their view. Lin mika, in all of these cases, jerry nadler follows up with an angry letter. And all the letters seem to be some version of why i ought to. What leverage do the democrats have at this point . They can go to court to try to seek enforcement of their subpoenas. There are other places where they can try to get to collateral witnesses who may be able to shed light on things that may have been happening. There are other places where witnesses might be able to compel to sit at the table if they try to assert various privileges to not actually speak. That could be useful if they read to them the sections of the Mueller Report that are about them while they sit there and ab ask them to respond to silence. There are other things that nadler could be doing. He could be calling witnesses to talk about the importance of obstruction or of Holding President s accountable. There are other ways of trying to explain to the american. People, as carol says, to bring it into their living rooms why these things matter that may not necessarily require hope hicks to say what she saw a on air force one. Or what she heard the president talking about in the oval office. Kimberly, there are aspects of this while we are dealing with civilized people, most of them with advanced degrees that are right out of a mob movie. The latest plot line is the department of justice says, look, you make the contempt of Congress Vote on our guy go away, well show you a little bit more of the Mueller Report that was paid for by taxpayers. This is kind of an unbelievable development. Is it really is. I mean, its really extraordinary that this document that was created to get to the bottom of russian interference h in the 2016 election is now being used as a bargaining pawno between the Justice Department and House Democrats in terms of how much information comes out, whether contempt of Congress Charges are brought. It really is extraordinary, but it shows just how dug in both sides have become. J i say both sides. De i put the Justice Department on the side of the white house e which by and large has been has stuck with the position that there is nothing to see here. This investigation is over and no obstruction, no collusion. And democrats in the house disagree. And so i think those are the battle lines that have been drawn. It is a political battle. Ultimately impeachment is a n ma political exercise by its very legal nature. Ex and thats what youre seeing here. You are seeing the president believing that he wont be impeached, that he shouldnt be impeached and he is pulling out all the stops including ordering private citizens at this point, former white house officials not to cooperate and democrats becoming increasingly frustrateu by this, increasingly alarmed in when even those who have read the Mueller Report saw bob mueller finally speak publicly. Those two things converge and we are seeing an increasing number of democrats say at the very least they want to open an impeachment inquiry even if nota already on board to voting in on favor of impeachment. Kim, im glad you mentioned that. I got one more for you. Ou this is our friend susan page at usa today. Former Senate Majority leader ay harry reid who as recently as last month cautioned democrats about the perils of pursuing President Trumps impeachment now says the house should open an impeachment inquiry that might or might not lead to a formal effort to remove him froh office. Ff quote, its not the right thing to do nothing reid said in an interview. Now, respectfully, kim, when this came out today, i heard people saying it couldnt be easier for harry reid to say this. Hes in the cheap seats now. He doesnt have skin in the game anymore. Right. Thav thats a fair point. He doesnt have skin in the game. He was in the senate even when he was here. E and thats not where this decision is made to bring these charges. But its really remarkable in ar the past about two weeks or so the number of democrats who i have spoken to off the record who have said that their process is shifting, that they are shifting to this place of, you know, supporting at least the opening of this inquiry, at least the ability to move forward. That will increase their rw abilities to do things like issue subpoenas, use the courts and really compel the kind of testimony. Of course, bob muellers testimony would be the absolute best thing. They say, look, when watergate happened, it wasnt that the information about watergate that this breakin immediately changed the mind of the public. They largely ignored it until you had hearings that really were brought to the televisions of americans that really shifted the opinion with watergate. They want to create that same thing with these hearings with this impeachment inquiry. Wam they think that can change the mind of americans and really shift this. Carol leonnig, if we can shift this conversation a bit to the flynn case, something you are more than familiar with. Were you surprised that this t judge changed his tune, this federal judge. We all in the media thought that we were going to be the purveyors to the public of a transcript of mike flynn actually having a we now know surveilled phone conversation with ambassador kislyak. The judge has suddenly thought better of that. I was surprised, brian. Tt this came about because the Washington Post filed a motion with the court seeking for a series of documents in the flynn case to be unsealed. Ri the case is done. Flynn is just going to be sentenced. He has pled guilty. Nt the post argued that many records in this case needed to be unsealed. The government agreed to release some. Rd and then the judge on his own se ordered that this transcript of this very controversial call and a very dramatic one according to National Security experts who had to review it, that it should be made public. The public should hear what the judge loosely described in court as the moment when he believed flynn had sort of he said, i think you sold your country out, sir. And he wanted the public to hear this. S for him to now accept that the government doesnt believe its relevant to sentencing, doesnt believe its necessary to sentence Michael Flynn is very, very surprising to me. Nn and i wonder if perhaps the government has had a conversation about explaining maybe the sensitivities of this conversation, that there is sa Something Else that kislyak says or that theres some precedent that would be set by sharing an intercepted phone call in its entirety. I dont know the answer. I hope we will know it soon but i do find it surprising. Mieke eoyang, do we not think the judge would have said in some verbiage im not going to let this out because portions of it shouldnt be in the Public Domain because it exposes something . Go and, second, how do you think this came about . Do you think someone just made . Very compelling argument to this federal judge and he thought better of it . Yeah. Its a little bit tricky. Theres not up much in the public record. What it looks like is that the government went in and made some kind of ex parte or sealed argument to the judge about the sensitivity of the transcript or the concerns here and then the judge agreed with that. Ou t oftentimes when judges hear classified information they hear it ex parte and secretly and the public might never know that. Perhaps sometime further on they will declassify the records, but for now we dont get to see what was argued to the judge. Kimberly atkins, about this president you cover, as president s do just like fdr and lbj before him, the president at 1 00 a. M. London time called schumer a creep. Im kidding about the prior president s. And then attacked bette midler around 1 30 in the morning. This is the night he had dinner with prince charles. How are we supposed to process this . Im not sure the answer to that, brian, quite frankly. I mean, i had to en route to coming hereto sort of figure out exactly what bette midler had said. Which i didnt anticipate doing today. This is a president who loves venting on twitter. It doesnt matter the hour. I it doesnt matter the proprietyo of the fact that he is overseas meeting withis heads of state a members of the royal family bringing his entire family along to do that. It really doesnt matter. He doesnt seem to need to sleep very much. R he needs to tweet very much. And today is no different. Just when you dont think attacking bette midler should be on the list of tasks taking on by a u. S. President , he surprises us again. Our great thanks to our initial big three guests for starting off our conversation on this g tuesday night. To carol leonnig, to Kimberly Atkins and mieke eoyang. As always, thank you so much for coming on. Coming up for us, the Paul Manafort edition of lockup. Are they really going to transfer Paul Manafort from his federal prison to one of the toughest city jails in this country . And later, is conservatism dead in the age of trump . O upinnain and if so, can it be revived . Pulitzer prize winning columnist george will will tell us what he thinks and share with us the one word he purposefully left out of his new book. The 11th hour is just Getting Started on this tuesday night. But im relentless too. Mbc doesnt take a day off, and neither will i. And i treat my mbc with everyday verzenio the only one of its kind that can be taken every day. 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