Committee today that adam schiff released is the Inspector Generals work hard to try to open the door for the whistleblower to go straight to the committee and eventually the Inspector General just had to tell the committee that hes reached an impasse with the acting director and the acting director is blocking the way with the support of attorney general william barr. Yeah. And schiff is now warning that the Inspector General himself i might not be protected from prosecution or reprisal from the Trump Administration here as he tries make this thing known. Its not even his complaint. Hes just trying to take care of it and protect that whistleblower. He may himself be in their legal crosshairs by doing so if they continue down this road. Its dystopic. And we have a former Inspector General joining us tonight. E so we will get a view from someone whos been there about how to make sense of all of this. Excellent. E thanks, lawrence. Thank you, rachel. We have so much ground to cover for you tonight in helping us all understand the days developments in the whistleblower standoff between congress and the acting director of National Intelligence about the reported now promise that the president allegedly made to a foreign leader. Tonight we will talk with someone who was inside the closeddoor House Intelligence Committee briefing today with the Inspector General who is at the heart of this controversy. Were also really lucky to be joined tonight by two Intelligence Community experts who have a lot to teach us. Joel brenner is the former Inspector General at the National Security agency. He was quoted in the original breaking news report from the Washington Post last night. Unique perspective on this story. And tom donilon, you have seen him dozens of times in situations with president obama including that memorable photograph from the situation room during the killing of osama bin laden. And Harvard Law Schools recognized authority on constitutional law, professor Laurence Tribe, will join us later in this hour. On the day when the president s lawyers finally said donald trump can indeed commit any crime that you can think of and no prosecutor in america can ever do anything about it as long as donald trump is president. The Trump Lawyers filed an extraordinary document in court today saying that in effect President Trump could shoot someone on fifth avenue and the Manhattan District Attorney could do nothing about it. Well get professor Laurence Tribes reaction to that later in the hour. We begin tonight with the breaking news from the Washington Post. Tonight there is new breaking news from the Washington Post tonight. Theyre reporting a whistleblower complaint about President Trump made by an intelligence official centers on ukraine. According to two people familiar with the matter, the complaint involved communications with a foreign leader and a promise that trump made which was so alarming that a u. S. Intelligence official who had worked at the white house went to the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, two former u. S. Officials said. The Inspector General testified to a closed session of the House Intelligence Committee today. Chairman adam schiff of the House Intelligence Committee released two letters from the ll Inspector General to the committee that preceded that meeting today that described what the Inspector General has done after he received the whistleblowers complaint. Inspector general Michael Atkinson told the Intelligence Committee in his first letter on the matter, during that 14day time period the Inspector General conducted a preliminary review of the disclosure. Co as a result of that preliminary review i determined that the complainants disclosure met the definition of urgent concern, t i. E. A serious or flagrant problem, abuse, violation of the law or executive order or deficiency relating to the funding, administration or operation of an intelligence activity within the responsibility and authority of the director of National Intelligence involving li classified information. The Inspector General explained that the acting director of National Intelligence decided not to follow the laws requirement, that he immediately send the Inspector Generals report of the whistleblowers complaint directly to the House Intelligence Committees the house and senate Intelligence Committees within seven days. The Inspector General wrote, although i believe and appreciate that the acting dni is acting in good faith, the acting dnis treatment of the complainants allegations alleged urgent concern does not appear to be consistent with past practice. The Inspector General noted that whistleblower complaints were routinely passed along to the Intelligence Committees including whistleblower complaints that the Inspector General thought did not meet the definition of urgent concern and were not credible. Even though the director of National Intelligence was under no obligation to transmit complaints that did not meet the definition of urgent concern or were not credible, even those complaints were routinely forwarded to the Intelligence Committees. The Inspector General added, past practice permitted complainants in the Intelligence Community to contact the congressional intelligence y committees directly in an authorized and protected manner as intended by the urgent concern statue. I am continuing my efforts to obtain direction from the acting dni regarding how the complainant may bring the complainants concerns to the congressional Intelligence Committees in an authorized and protected manner and in accordance with appropriate security practices. But a week later the Inspector General wrote to the committee again, this time saying, although i had hoped that the acting dni would provide h direction through me on how the complainant can contact the congressional Intelligence Committees directly in accordance with appropriate practices, i have now determined that the acting dni and i are at an impasse over this issue, which necessitates this notification and report on our unresolved differences. In that letter the Inspector General said, the subject matter involved in the complainants disclosure not only falls within the dnis jurisdiction but relates to onew of the most significant and important of the dnis responsibilities to the American People. In addition, it appears to me that the acting dni has no present intention of providing direction to the complainant through me on how the complainant can contact the congressional Intelligence Committees directly in accordance with appropriate security practices. Leading off our discussion tonight is democratic congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi from illinois. Hes a member of the House Intelligence Committee and the House Oversight committee. Today he attended the House Intelligence Committee briefing with Michael Atkinson, the Intelligence CommunityInspector General. En also joining our discussion ned price, a former cia analyst and former senior director and e, spokesperson for the National Security council in the obama administration. Ned was invaluable to our discussion in breaking News Coverage of this last night. Evelyn farkas is with us. Shes a former Deputy Assistant secretary of defense. She is also an msnbc National Security contributor. Congressman, let me start with you and what happened in the room that everyone wanted to be in today. What can you tell us about what you learned from the Inspector General in the Intelligence Committee today . Thanks for having me on. This is a very serious matter. I have not attended a hearing or briefing quite like this one. Ill just set the scene. You have an Inspector General who was appointed by the Trump Administration who came forward of his own volition to the Intelligence Committee to give us a headsup that basically a complaint was being withheld from us despite the fact that he believes that it should have been forwarded to us through the office of the director of National Intelligence. And he also further related, and this is also in his correspondence, that it was both credible and urgent. And this is something that you dont this is unprecedented. A credible and urgent complaint being withheld from congress. The purpose of the Whistleblower Statutes was precisely to have these types of complaints brought to the congress or to the American People to help expose that wrongdoing and obviously to remedy and prevent it from happening again. In his first letter to your committee, which is now almost two weeks old, he said he believed that Joseph Maguire, the trumpappoint acting director of National Intelligence who succeeded dan coats, was acting in good faith. Thats what he said then. Was that his assessment today . A we didnt get into that. And i dont think he was necessarily asked that question. But clearly he disagrees with acting director maguire with regard to the analysis of how the law that you ably described applies in this particular case. What we know is that acting director maguire raised at least two objections with regard to the analysis that the Inspector General had applied. One, that he thinks that somehow theres a privilege which would stand in the way of basically turning over this particular complaint to the Intelligence Committee. I think thats hogwash. Theres no such privilege that would stand in the way. And certainly theres no privilege that would shield information about wrongdoing from congress. N the second major objection that we learned about that the acting director raised is that somehow the fact that the person complained about is outside of the Intelligence Community somehow means that the statute does not apply, the ho whistleblower statute does not apply in this case. Again, that is completely wrong. The statute applies to any intelligence activity covered by the operations of the director of National Intelligence. And so it doesnt matter where that person actually lies, whether its inside or outside the Intelligence Community. So ned price, i just want to give you a wide open opportunity here because you just kept throwing things at us last night that i hadnt even thought of in my questioning. Hi so im just going to give you the floor. Where do you see this on day two . Well, i think what weve learned tonight, lawrence, is that it has something to do with ukraine. We dont know what precisely. We dont know what this promise may have been. No but i think, lawrence, it raises the prospect even more so that what were really talking about is a quid pro quo. And now, of course quid pro quos are part of statecraft. They are part of diplomacy. Its what president s do all the time. President obama sent 4,000 troops to west africa to fight the ebola virus in return for a coalition of countries joining us to counter a collective threat. But in normal quid pro quos the actor in both the quid and the quo is the nation. We give and we get. I think what weve learned of this matter over the past week and certainly over the past 24 hours raises the possibility that President Trump floated a quid pro quo where once again the quid is something the United States could pledge, something we could offer. Perhaps it may have been the ff release of 250 million in aid that the administration was withholding from the country of ukraine. But the quo in this case may well have been something for President Trump himself, not something for us, not something that served our national interest, but something that served President Trumps political interest perhaps. And time and again this has really been the heart of every trump scandal, where his personal, financial or political interests dont align with our national interests. And every single time it seems trump has gone with the latter, his own interests over ours. Evelyn farkas, you have experience with issues involving the ukraine. Were you surprised tonight to see the word ukraine in the Washington Post headline . No, lawrence, i wasnt surprised at all. I mean, the president seems to be, as ned pointed out, you know, looking out for himself and his interest with ukraine unfortunately has focused on trying to come up with some dirt on president biden, which really by the way doesnt exist. But the big yes problem we really have to pull back, and as the congressman pointed out this is about a tension between the executive branch and congress, between the white house and congress. We put laws into place. Congress put laws into place in the 70s in reaction to abuses by the cia. They conducted all kinds of attempted assassinations in the 50s and 60s. You know your history. You were in the senate. And as a result basically what Congress Said was okay, cia, you can do some dirty things overseas but every time you want to do a dirty thing you have to let us know and you have to have a whistleblower kind of a conduit directly to congress that if youre not letting us know or if theres some problem that people inside who are concerned who have really good evidence and reasonable cause to be afraid about harm to american National Security can report directly to congress. So my beef with all of this is we dont know yet exactly whatw at the heart of the no whistleblowing complaint but my concern is that congress is not getting the information that it deserves. T and you know, the acting dni, i know him well from his time as a special operations s. E. A. L. He is probably trying to make the president happy. Ly but its not the right approach. Congress deserves to know whatever it is thats in there. D and if the Inspector General thinks that its important enough to send over to congress, then it should be sent over to congress. Se again, it runs into the whole the whole tension right now thats going on between congres and the white house about the right of congress to have information that the white house doesnt Want Congress to have. Io evelyn, let me just take you back to Joseph Maguire because hes the mystery man at the se center of all this and most people dont know anything about him and he has not been very prominent. You do know him. Are you surprised by his conduct so far . I mean, yes and no. The man is obviously a longtim, military officer. So his impulse i think would be to try to do what the white house is asking him to do. But you know, s. E. A. L. S are known to be courageous can i just stop you there . Can i just stop you there . Us nowhere in the law does it say consult the white house. Why would a longtime military officer think beyond the sentences of the law that are right in front of him . Of what is the military tradition there that he would be following . I dont know whether so