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President trump, quote, constitutionally required. and former deputy assistant for russia, ukraine, and an msnbc analyst. welcome to both of you. i want to actually dispense with what the cia general counsel made and what the justice department may be thinking. you know the justice department better than anybody. i won't say you know william barr's thinking better than anybody. >> i kind of do. >> if it's not a campaign finance referral, what could it be? >> bribery, extortion. possibly not the referral wasn't at trump. we don't know that. it could have been at someone lower. it could be abuse...

Authority directly from the president to declassify, they called it at the time quote full and complete authority to declassify government secrets. that was unusual. is that suspicious in this context? in other words, why does trump trust barr so much more than anyone else? >> to the whole thing is strange. we keep hearing the word unprecedented. this really is unprecedented. look, obviously, the president has the ultimate declassification authority. the president can choose to declassify anything he wants to. if the president truly thought this was nothing to hide in any of the conversations,...

Declassification authority. >> yeah. >> when it came to the russia investigation. i think the key point there is the president had to takepto active step. if ratcliffe is in that position, sits aen totop the ns 17 skbejs agencies, that wouldn't be necessary to bestow that authority on him. it will be inherent to his job to declassify and to classify. to keep what the president wants secret and declassify what the president wants out there for his own personal and political ends. >> we're out f o time, but could he apprise donald trump of what the contents of the counterintelligence investigati...

Then high-confidence findings of the intelligence assessment regarding russia's aggression. when he was president-elect he tweeted comparing our intelligence professionals to nazis. on his first full day in office. he went out to the cia headquarters, stood before the most solemn site in all of langley, memorial wall, at the time commemorated the 117 men and women of the cia who had given their lives in service to the country and bragged about the size of the crowd at his inauguration the day before. all the while he's politicized intelligence, suppressed intelligence, taken part in the politi...

The president's decision to authorize to the attorney general declassification authority, allowing him to essentially declassify anything he sees fit vis-a-vis the start of the russia investigation. we've all heard the news reports that informants in russia may have been key to the start of that investigation. all of these steps send a chill down the spine of the brave men and women who want to help us and who we and this president, i should say, are essentially turning away, turning away in droves, tying our hands behind our back and unilaterally disarming ourselves in places we need it most,...