In the primary last year. But unlike a lot of other professional republicans, including senator rubio himself, rick didnt decide to eat his criticism of donald trump once trump won the nomination and ultimately the election. He has stuck with his critique. Hes the unusual highprofile republican who started off as a no to trump guy. And he remains a no to trump guy. And hes not the only one. There are some, but not many. Back during the election last year, last july, which was right after we started getting the first reporting about how russia appeared to be involved in the hacking attacks on the Democratic Partys email servers, last july rick wilson got a call from a reporter about something very strange, and honestly, very worrying that was starting to circulate about donald trump. An Investigative Reporter in the bb News Business called up rick wilson and said, hey, basically, youre a never trump guy, have you heard anything about this private intel operation that has turned up supposedly a whole sheef of allegations about trump being connected to russia . About russia having compromising material on trump . And trump being involved, or at least informed about this russia hacking the Democratic Party . He got a call that was an inquiry as to whether or not he had heard that stuff. Hes a guy who hears about Opposition Research. Hes involved in research in republican politics for a long time. Buddy, you heard about this . That call last july, thats how rick wilson learned, thats the way a lot of people learned that there was something out there rumored, right, described vaguely, something out there about trump that seemed like it might be really worse than your standard political onpo in this country. Last july there were a bunch of reporters that started hearing about this private intel project that had turned up, this russia specific information about donald trump. Now, it was just people talking about it. Nobody polished anything on it for months. But lots of reporters did try to chase it down. And the way you try to chase things down is exactly what you think. You try to retrace the steps of the purported investigator as best you can to try to independently corroborate whats in these reports that youve heard about. You call all the sources you know, who might conceivably have heard something about this, to see if they can give you any other detail, any other angle on what youre trying to track down. You call around, track down sources. And that process last summer of reporters calling around to their sources to check out this rumored thing that they had heard about, that was the very casual way a lot of people in washington first heard about the supposed dossier, that we now call it, the dossier of alleged russian dirt on donald trump. Now, david corn and mother jones magazine, he did get out ahead of the pack. He was first to publish a piece on this intel project, this intel reporting on trump. He published just before election on halloween night last year, in his piece describing a former western Intelligence Officer who was well respected in his field who had gathered this inflammatory information on trump that was starting to circulate in political circles. But again, because the intel itself, the allegations themselves about trump hadnt been independently verified by the journalists who were hearing about it and reporting on it, the intel really could only be described in very, very vague terms. Until finally, well after the election was over, it all broke open. What broke the dam on this story seems to have been the news that leaked in early january, that the product of this private intelligence operation, the report that was produced by that intelligence operation about trump and russia, it was leaked information in the first ten days of january that that reporting which had been rumored for all these months, it was now being taken seriously enough by the u. S. Intelligence community that the findings of that report had been summarized and briefed to the outgoing president , barack obama, and to the incoming president elect trump. Cnn was first to break that story right at the beginning of january. That went off like a flashbang grenade in the news. It led immediately to the obvious urgent followup question, okay, theyve been briefed on this intel. Weve all been hearing rumors on it. What is it . What does this intel actually say . What is this inflammatory explosive information thats been briefed to the president and president elect trump . What is it . And thats where buzz feed came in to break the whole thing open. On january 10th, less than two weeks before the inauguration, buzz feed went ahead and did it, they uploaded the report. 35 pages of it. Turns out david corn was right. It was from a respected former western intelligence operative, a former mi6 agent from britain, and as had been hinted about and rumored for months, the claims in this intelligence product, in this report, they were in fact lurid. Even if you got through the first couple of pages and then put it down, and reacquainted yourself with the other side of your stomach, even if you didnt make it all the way through, all 35 pages, right upfront it was very blunt. The thing that got the most attention initially was a description of alleged salacious personal behavior by the president elect that russia had supposed documentary evidence of, the implication being that russia could use that tape of his behavior to blackmail him, and thats the thing that resonated most loudly. At first, for obvious reasons. But if you could get past that alleged xrated stuff, what was also made clear in that dossier was that russia didnt necessarily need to blackmail him. Whether or not they had a tape. What was in the dossier was spelled out, a detailed allegation that there was a mutual operation under way here, that there was collaboration and coordination between the Trump Campaign and the russians. Yes, during the election, as the russians tried to hurt Hillary Clinton and her chances in the election. But that was the product of a longstanding yearslong relationship between the russians and donald trump. Quoting from the dossier. Quote, the russian authorities had been cultivating donald trump for at least five years. Quote, trump and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence on the kremlin. In terms of specifics, the kremlin has been feeding trump and his team valuable intelligence on his opponents, including democratic president ial candidate Hillary Clinton. Now, i mentioned a moment ago that people in political circles and journalistic circles first started hearing rumors about the existence of this intel right after we learned that Russian Hackers had been involved in breaking into the dnc and stealing those Democratic Party documents back in june. Well, theres a lot of detail in the dossier on that part of the russian attacks. Specifically, quote, the russian regime was behind the recent leak of embarrassing email messages emanating from the Democratic National committee to the wikileaks platform. Quote, the reason for using wikileaks was plausible deniability by the russian regime, and the operation was conducted with the full knowledge of trump, and senior members of his campaign team. So this was all made public the night of january 10th by buzz feed. Caused a huge uproar. The day after buzz feed posted it and everything went nuts, the New York Times contacted eric wilson as part of their reporting on the impact of this dossier, now that it had been made public. Reporting also on the back story of when people first started hearing about this information, how long it had been circulating, how it ended up coming up into the Public Domain. Even though rick wilson had first heard of the existence of this intel months earlier, last summer, seeing it all come out in black and white in january, according to him, was a different thing all together. He told the times in january, quote, it is a remarkable moment in u. S. History, what world did i wake up in. Thats always stuck with me. Since that first came out. What world is this. Now, that was january. It is now seven months down the road. Trumps president , facing multiple investigations into his russia ties, multiple committees in both houses of congress are investigating his russia ties, from the fbi director Robert Mueller leading an inquiry into his russia tie. The russia area is not just the focus for this presidency and this president , it appears to be an increasing object of fixation for this president , probably for good reason, given the seriousness of the investigations that hes facing. Jonathan martin tweeted that a republican senator just called him to tell him that trump is, quote, consumed with russia. An unknown senior unnamed senior republican aide told politico tonight, quote, it seems trump is just always focused on russia. That quote comes as part of new reporting tonight from josh and elainea at politico saying that trump in recent weeks has been calling republican senators and berating them on issues related to russia. Politico now describing trump calling republican senator bob corker to yell at him and complain to him about a russia sanctions bill that corker had sponsored and supported. Politico also describes the president dialing up senator tom tillas, calling him on august 7th to complain about a bill he was working on, that was designed to prevent trump from firing the special counsel Robert Mueller who is looking into the russia matter. And its kind of interesting, the two Different Levels to look at this. All this reporting about the president , you know, calling senators about russia. Not being able to let go of russia. Talking about russia all the time. Its all evidence that the president is sort of centrally focused on russia at the moment. But if you step back from it for a second, its also evidence that lots of republican sources are willing to tell reporters about that now. Republican sources, congressional aides, senior republican congressional aides, maybe even republican senators themselves are now getting very comfortable calling up reporters to tell the press how fixated trump is on russia and what hes been saying to them about russia in individual private conversations. And that includes this bombshell report from the New York Times last night, with multiple republican sources claiming to the times that trump isnt just randomly calling republicans and yelling at them about russia. When it comes to Mitch Mcconnell, according to these republican sources in the times, trump called mcconnell on august 9th to berate him and swear at him and scream at him about Mitch Mcconnell not protecting the president from the russia investigations that are being conducted under mcconnells purview in the senate. The president , of course, is already reportedly facing an obstruction of justice inquiry from mueller, after comey rejected the president s pressure on him to stop the fbi investigation into the russia matter. Whats another inquiry on top of that . Two scoops. So all of this is proceeding, right . All of these investigations are ongoing. Republican sources are getting increasingly aggressive against the president , specifically on the russia issue. And now today, it comes full circle. Because today after the rumors started circulating about some weird intell sheef of stuff, after they started circulating, seven months down the road from when we first laid eyes on this crazy private intelligence effort that produced this almost unbelievable sheef of reports about trump and russia, seven months down the road from when we first saw the dossier, were back to the dossier in a way that may be a big problem for the white house. If the dossier is at all real. Yesterday we reported that the firm that hired Christopher Steele, that mi6 agent who did the dossier, the head of the American Firm who hired him to do it was interviewed yesterday by the staff of the Senate Judiciary committee for ten solid hours. We can also confirm tonight that glen simpson, the head of fusion gps, did hand over 40,000 pages of documents to the committee as well. We can confirm it tonight. But even if you put aside 40,000 pages of documents, think about his tenhourlong interview. We know what it was about. I mean, the only reason the head of fusion gps was talking to the Senate Judiciary committee for five minutes, let alone ten hours, is because of that firms role in commissioning the trumprussia dossier. When the head of the firm came out of his interview, his lawyer made a statement making clear that the dossier was the subject of the interview. And even though everybodys grown accustomed to habitually describing the dossier as uncorroborated and unverified, thats not the way fusion gps views it. Richard ben is a famous political figure particularly when it comes to investigations in complicated national scandals. He was a watergate prosecutor, also a member of the 9 11 commission. When glen simpson came out of that ten hours of testimony yesterday with the Judiciary Committee, his lawyer quoted richard benvinista in calling the dossier, a road map for the investigation. They want the congressional committees and the fbi and all of these other professional investigations, they want all those investigators to follow the dossier. Check it out. They want the dossier to be the basis of other peoples investigations. They are volunteering it. Check it out. They say they stand by their work. They say they are proud of their work. By their work, they mean the dossier. And even though the white house and people from the Trump Campaign and the Trump Administration keep denouncing it like this dodgy dossier, reporters routinely talk about it as unverified and uncorroborated. You know what . Thats less and less true all the time. This was made public in january. By february we had the first substantive reports that a lot of it was starting to independently check out. Investigators were following up what bits of it they could, and were finding that the dossier was true. Quote, some of the conversations described in the dossier took place between the same individuals, on the same days, and from the same locations as detailed in the dossier. I mean, that was just by february. After that, there was further corroboration of things like the specific details mentioned in the dossier about russian staff who were based at the u. S. Embassy in washington, who had to get sent home in the middle of the scandal. Those details, too, were checking out when people were able to independently verify them. The important thing thats now new here is that fusion gps is basically having to make itself known because of this testimony to congress by the founder of fusion gps, and now that theyve been sort of forced to answer questions about this stuff, they are inviting scrutiny of this dossier. They are standing by it publicly. We know that the dossier itself was delivered to the fbi. Its been reported that the delivery of the dossier to the fbi by Christopher Steele including him giving the fbi information on who his sources were that he used to create the document, again, to further help them verify his information, now as of today, we know weve got ten hours of testimony on that dossier. Yesterday in the Judiciary Committee. And i have to say, the dossier remains a series of allegations. But you know what, none of them have been overtly disproved, since it was first posted online. And that brings us tonight to mount ayr, iowa, southcentral iowa, really outofthe way place. A part of iowa ive never been to, so i looked it up on google earth today. Other nearby towns have amazing names like, gravity, iowa. Diagonal, iowa. And siam, iowa. Ive never been to that part of iowa and now i want to go. Especially after seeing this footage tonight from senator Chuck Grassleys town hall in mount ayr. The Judiciary Committee staff members, for ten hours, i would like to hear what they discovered in that meeting. I would like the transcripts released. Will you do that . The answer is, it will take a vote of the committee to do it. But i presume that they will be released. But if you heard from the lawyer for simpson in the evening news, the fact that we were going to release it, we cant release it until we give simpson and his lawyer a copy of it. So if theres something that the transcript is wrong, give them an opportunity to change it, or to correct it, or at least to negotiate what was typed. First of all, it takes a long time for the Court Reporter to get it ready to go. But well have to give it to them before the thing youre asking me about can be done. Will you do that . Of course, well put it to a vote of the committee. But heres what might happen as a result of this. We have not given up the possibility that we would have simpson and donald trump jr. And manafort, it depends what comes out of the transcripts. There has to be an open session. Thats something were going to wait until we get done. Will you release the transcripts . I dont know why i wouldnt. But i dont want to say so. In all the years ive been in congress, well, i guess ive only been chairman of two committees, ive never gone through this process before. So im not going to answer your question until i get a firm footing of what the precedence is. My statement is, i want to see the transcripts. Okay. But you understand the necessity of giving it to them, to make sure its correct. Absolutely. But i dont see that that would take a long time i would guess, even better than what youre asking to be done, is if we decide to have a hearing, an open hearing on this issue. With those three people. Its already been said for ten hours okay. Go ahead. Okay. I dont know who that guy was at the town hall, but i love you. Senator Chuck Grassley tonight speaking with one of his absolutely persistent and well informed and plain spoken constituents at home in southcentral iowa. I think wha