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>> right. >> so what we derive from that is that it's based upon or derived from top secret information that was contained in the affidavit, the application for that wiretap. and what does that mean in the government? i'm here to tell you that the average fisa application from the fbi is actually marked secret, not top secret. when you go to top secret, you're dealing with extremely sensitive signals intelligence likely from another agency in the u.s. government and what does that mean? it means it's intercepts. intercepts of communications. intercepts of foreign communications. likely interce...

An effort to distract from the russia probe and try to put government on trial. >> joining us msnbc contributor for daily beast, jordan fabian and eugene scott, political reporter for "the washington post." betsy, let's start with that exclusive rebuttal coming from jerry nadler, the important point here is he has seen the fisa warrant. nunes has not. >> right. and it's one of the biggest surprises from yesterday of course was nunes revealing that he hadn't actually looked at any of the understood lying intelligence, the fact that he was so open and candid about that was really interesting. an...

Classification. the fas as they late out show it as when you get the top secret designation, it is information that could cause exceptionally grave damage, this is opposed to serious damage under secret and the lower classification which is confidential expected to cause damage. but this is the highest of all the classifications. and what might this mean then based on this group of republicans in the house intel committee decide to focus on this particular fisa warrant. did they pick the wrong one? >> well, i think what we're seeing here is tremendous fear because they're very concerned about ...

Some mafia guy and your informant is jimmy the weasel, maybe he's got a grudge against the cop, judges deal with that all the time. the test is always is there some reason to believe is the informant credible. and that's what jerry nadler says in this memo here. he says, a -- in his letter rather to his colleagues, he says, a, the fisa warrant to get the wiretap order against carter page doesn't rely heavily on the steele dossier. but secondly, steele's a credible guy. so those are basically what he's saying. and he's saying the case law has always supported using informants even if they have ...

Conyers left once he was facing serious accusations of misconduct involving several women. this was probably the first major public headline grabbing step that nadler has taken since he rose to that position. it's interesting that he's taking this step as a way of directly going after another committee, another sort of partisan divide but standing up for the fbi which is in his jurisdiction as head of the judiciary chair. sort of him staking out his turf if he's able to take over the judiciary committee if democrats flip the house that he might take a fairly aggressive approach to some of thes...