Candidates. All of it as the 11th hour gets under way on this backtowork monday night. Well, good evening once again from our msnbc news headquarters here in new york. Day 1,089 of the trump administration, 295 days to go now until our next president ial election. This is the start of a big week in the impeachment case against the president. The importance of it underscored by this piece of reporting tonight from the New York Times that has been subsequently matched by the Washington Post. The russians have been hacking into the Ukrainian Gas Company at the center of the impeachment case, burisma. The times says the cyberattacks started back in early november just as we all started hearing more about this burisma, about joe and hunter biden, about ukraine and ultimately about impeachment. Bidens son, hunter, now famously served on the burisma board, and trump has been urging ukraines president to investigate that as he admitted back in october. Mr. President , what exactly did you hope zelensky would do about the biden after your phone call . Exactly . Well, i would think that if they were honest about it, theyd start a Major Investigation into the bidens. Its a very simple answer. In just about ten hours, Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be meeting with House Democrats to hash out the transmission of articles of impeachment over to the senate. They may also vote on impeachment managers, the house members who will be making the case to the senate for trumps removal from office. So no pressure there. Tonight pelosi was not sharing any details. Do you think that the vote cant be tomorrow because of the debate . I told you ill be discussing this with my colleagues tomorrow at the caucus. But the New York Times says the speaker is expected to select four to ten house members. People close to pelosi say its all about certain one of the managers will be representative adam schiff. Representative Jerrold Nadler of new york is also widely expected to be a leader of the group. The president now seems to be calling for the senate trial to be dismissed. Yesterday he wrote and we quote many believe that by the senate giving credence to a trial based on the no evidence, no crime, read the transcripts, no pressure impeachment hoax rather than an outright dismissal, it gives the partisan democrat witch hunt credibility that it otherwise does not have. I agree. But our nbc news team on capitol hill reports Many Republican senators do not agree. In fact, most appear focused on the debate over whether and when to hear from witnesses, including that man john bolton. Cbs news reports the white house is readying itself for republican defections who are willing to hear from impeachment witnesses and willing to put their votes behind that. The report identifies six senators on its list of possible defectors. Alaskas Lisa Murkowski says one group of senators is talking about some sort of deal for a protected vote to allow for witnesses or documents. Mitt romney of utah says hes also open to witnesses and to efforts to negotiate an agreement. Have you been working with senator collins on that . She mentioned theres a small group of you who are working together to try to get witnesses at the trial. I let senator collins know where i stand, which is that i support the clinton impeachment model, which is a vote on witnesses later. Thats something which im open to until after the opening arguments. Including john bolton . Pardon . Including john bolton . Including john bolton. Hes someone i would like to hear from. The numbers have moved on this quickly. Now a majority of americans seem to agree. A new quinnipiac poll finds 66 of respondents say they want to hear from bolton. Then theres iran, an issue still very much on the president s plate even with his impeachment trial rapidly approaching. And this detail tonight. Nbc news reporting that trump signed off on the killing of the iranian general soleimani seven months ago. The directive apparently came with the condition that trump would have a final say on an operation and only if irans action resulted with the death of an american. And this white house continues to face mounting questions about the intelligence used to justify the lethal drone strike that killed soleimani. Among his many unusual and fullon undignified defenses on social media, the president s retweet of a doctored picture from an unverified source of the speaker and the Senate Democratic leader schumer in front of an iranian flag, the two leaders are portrayed for good measure in traditional muslim dress with the caption democrats 2020. This afternoon the president responded to the growing criticism over his shifting explanations for soleimanis killing. I think its been totally consistent. But heres whats been consistent. We killed soleimani, the number one terrorist in the world by every account. Bad person, killed a lot of americans, killed a lot of people. We killed him. And when the democrats try and defend him, its a disgrace to our country. They cant do that. And let me tell you its not working politically very well for them. So we killed the number one terrorist in the world. We are also learning more about irans attack last week on american troops stationed at military bases in iraq days after the general was killed. Today our colleague, our chief Foreign Correspondent richard engel, got a look at the aftermath of a direct hit at one of those military bases. Reporter we were granted access to the western base in iraq struck by more than a dozen iranian ballistic missiles, some with direct hits where u. S. Troops were living and working. Officials say this shows how close the u. S. Came to war with iran. Captain Jeffrey Hansen had the wind knocked out of him by one of the first missiles, then rallied. So you were knocked on the ground. I was. And slid under a truck. I did. I went back to the shelter and knew that, you know, whatever was coming, it was much worse than we thought. Reporter iran says it did not want to kill u. S. Troops. You think this was lethal, lethal intent . Yeah. A lot of people would have died if we hadnt moved. Reporter 39 soldiers were living in these quarters. Dozens more were posted nearby. I think we were beyond lucky. On that note, here with us for our leadoff discussion on a backtowork monday night, peter baker, chief White House Correspondent for the New York Times. Jill colvin, White House Reporter for the associated press. And philip rucker, pulitzer prizewinning White House Bureau chief for the Washington Post, who happens to be coauthor with his post colleague, carol leonnig, of the new book a very stable genius donald j. Trumps testing of america, which is due out a week from tomorrow. Something tells me well be discussing it along the way. Peter baker, well begin with you tonight. Your newspaper and reporting since matched by philips newspaper. This russia story about russia attempting to hack into burisma. When people portray this as a Second Russian attempt to assist donald trump, will that portrayal be accurate . Well, we dont know for a fact what it is they were trying to do. We dont know for a fact what they were necessarily trying to get out of these computers from burisma. But it is certainly logical suspicion to wonder whether or not they were looking for some of the same information that donald trump had been asking the Ukrainian Government to come up with, which is to say information that would, in fact, incriminate the bidens in some way or another. You know, with the timing of it, the scope of it, the target, theyre all too much to be a coincidence. This happened, as you point out earlier, starting in november at the time and there was a great deal of focus and intention on this here in washington. So it begs the question what were the russians up to. This is the same unit, the gru, the military intelligence that had been involved with the election interference back in 2016, and it cant be it doesnt sound like it should be seen as a consequence dense that suddenly theyre looking at this otherwise pretty obscure ukrainian company. Hey, jill, as no one needs to remind you, the president enjoys taking the previously unimaginable and then owning it, sometimes minutes later. He publicly requested that china look into burisma on the south lawn of the white house if i recall. It often can normalize, again, a previously outlandish topic. So whats the chance he will welcome russian intervention in burisma . I mean i certainly wouldnt be surprised. You know, im heading with the president tomorrow for another rally, and i wouldnt be surprised if he would do that kind of thing, calling for, endorsing at least the idea that this company should be investigating, potentially suggesting that there are email or other documents that might be of interest to him. But of course the president has also been very careful over the years to try to distance himself from any allegations of Russian Election meddling or russian meddling in any of these processes because he still feels like they are an attack on the legitimacy of his presidency. So its still a difficult kind of you know, thread or needle that he has to thread here. Phil rucker, youve written tonight about a credibility crisis that we can state in plain english. No one seems to know where the president got that bit about four of our embassies being potentially targeted. Thats right, brian. At the pentagon and elsewhere in the government, there are no answers. Theres no evidence to back up the president s claim that he made last friday with Fox News Channel that there were threats of attacks on four u. S. Embassies. He said he believed that there were threats on those embassies, and so that leaves the listener to wonder was he conveying actual intelligence that hed received and studied and analyzed, or was he conveying his own personal belief, his own theory about what might have happened . But based on the information that we know right now, what the president said about four embassies was either an unfounded theory or an outright fabrication, and it is up to the administration now to come forward with some more information to either support his claim or explain where he might have heard that from. Peter baker, someone we both know, mike mcfaul, former u. S. Ambassador to moscow, has written an oped in the Washington Post warning about a russian disinformation campaign. Russians and elsewhere, i suppose. During the impeachment trial, as a veteran of impeachment trials, can you imagine russian fomentation on top of the bile that normally surrounds the partisan debate of an impeachment trial . Well, there are a lot of things we couldnt imagine just not too long ago that now seem to be kind of normal as you pointed out earlier, and that would be another example of that. The russians trying to find a way to stir the pot even as we, the american system, is debating basically the most fundamental question under our constitution, whether a president is fit for office and should continue to the end of his term. It wouldnt surprise us given what weve seen obviously these last few years. Its possible that the story my colleagues had tonight and the post matched on the russian hacking of burisma was in preparation for some sort of, you know, disinformation campaign. We dont know that. I want to be careful from going too far. Its something ambassador mcfaul said to be prepared for because theyve made very clear the russians are willing to do what they can to disrupt our faith in democracy, our understanding of facts, to spin out wild and unfounded conspiracy theories just to disrupt us, and thats the goal that Vladimir Putin started off with, i think, way back in 201415 when they got started with this election campaign, and theyre still at it. Jill colvin, what do you imagine its like to be Mitch Mcconnell right now . Mitch mcconnell, of course, has a tremendous amount of power here and somebody the president is relying on very closely as we move into the next phase and we start to learn what exactly the senate trial is going to look like. Look, throughout this process, mcconnell has been trying to convince the president that it is not a good idea to have a long, drawnout trial, that even though the president would like to see a parade of witnesses, would love to see hunter biden up there, would love to see, you know, joe biden up there, would love to see adam schiff up there, that thats actually not the best in the best interest of the president or the Republican Party. The president has sort of gone back and forth on that question, and we even saw over the last couple of days this idea that the white house and allies of the president floated of potentially just having an outright dismissal, not even really beginning a trial. It seemed today from senators as they returned to the capitol today that there is not enough support for just a dismissal. It seems like there is some interest certainly in calling witnesses, but theyd like to see that happen later on. But its up to Mitch Mcconnell now to try to keep republicans in line and to try to keep the Party Together throughout this process. Hey, phil rucker, i want to read a tweet from one of your colleagues. Aaron blake wrote this. Before 11 00 a. M. This is today trump has tweeted four typos including Bernie Sanders, pocahontus, and well let you read that. I guess rafical and eminent. He has retweeted a photoshopped image of schumer and pelosi in muslim garb. He retweeted an imagine of a corpse. He tweeted several false claims about gop and health care and tweeted about bloombergs height. Phil, given that the title of your forthcoming book is a very stable genius, are serious people right about now asking serious questions about his stability . Its a good question, brian. First of all, that title is the president s own words. That is what he has called himself numerous times, a very stable genius. And throughout these three years of the presidency, people who have been observing this president closely have had concerns about his stability. You know, we see with his tweeting pattern, with his social media pattern, that whenever he feels under siege, as he is right now having been impeached by the house of representatives and about to stand trial in the senate for possible removal from office, he is threatened. He is under siege. Hes on the defensive. And youre seeing him lash out. And he does so on twitter. Youre going to probably see that tomorrow night at that rally when jill goes up to milwaukee with the president , and it may be a shaky few weeks to come as this trial gets under way. It will all be interesting. Well be here for all of it. Thanks to our Three Friends for joining us tonight. Peter baker, jill colvin, philip rucker, much appreciated. And coming up for us, the majority of americans now tell pollsters they want to hear from john bolton, not michael bolton, mind you, but john. So what are the chances hell testify . And later, it had to happen, and now tonight the inevitable reports of friction, even a disagreement between two bigname democrats on that debate stage tomorrow night. All of it as the 11th hour is just getting under way in view of the west wing on a monday night. For a cold sore, i dont use some waxy cover up. I use herpecin l, it penetrates deep to treat. It soothes moisturizes and creates a spf 30 barrier to protect against flare ups caused by the sun. Herpecin l. It does more for a cold sore. So if the senate does not subpoena john bolton and other witnesses, will the house move to subpoena them . That is not excluded. Its not excluded, but well see what they do. But we do think that theres enough evidence to remove the president from office. But weve done our job. We have defended the constitution of the united states. We would hope that the senate would do that as well. Were getting a preview of what the president s team will look like during this senate trial, Maggie Haberman of the New York Times reports, as she does, quote, the basic configuration of the team defending the televisionsavvy president in a madefortv congressional event has been established. The two constants will be pat cipollone, the white house counsel, and jay sekulow, who has been mr. Trumps personal lawyer a lot of people operating under that title since 2017. Both are expected to have speaking roles during the trial. With us to talk about all of it, i guess a woman who qualifies as our personal attorney, maya wiley, former assistant u. S. Attorney for the Southern District of new york, these days with the new school here in new york. So, maya, listening to what the speaker said, i guess theres nothing preventing the speaker from saying, okay, senate republicans, if you choose not to be the democrats best friends, were going to call this guy you have to assume boltons going to respond. Were going to call this guy and maybe even concurrently have him testify. Is that a possibility . Sure. In fact, she could do a couple of different things, right . She could say, either you have him testify, or we will. She could say, were going to have him testify no matter what you do, which is actually what i think she should do because she doesnt know whether or not theyre going to even have witnesses, right . Shes got no commitment. Shes got no trial plan. We know that republicans, even mitt romney although he has publicly come out and said, yes, i do want to hear from john bolton, and he has suggested that perhaps there are more votes for that, but that either way theyre going to wait until they have heard the presentation of the case from the house managers, meaning them putting their impeachment case on for the senate, before they make a decision about witnesses. One might argue that they have oversight authority. They have, in fact, the obligation to make clear what happened with regard to ukraine whether or not theres an impeachment. Its their case. Its their case. But its also their job as legislators. Remember one of the fight