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This has to do with ukraine, we know that in the final days of july, specifically on july 25th, that there was a phone call between the president of ukraine, zlinski and president trump. that complaint then filed on august 12th. now, this was of such urgent concern, the inspector general found, that he went to the director of national intelligence, the acting director, joseph maguire, who is in theory supposed to forward that then on to the congressional oversight committees. instead, he went to the department of justice, who counseled him that this was not, in fact, part of intelligence activ...

President has very wide authority and discretion when negotiating with foreign leaders. i don't think there is any doubt about that. >> jeff, do you agree with matt that it is not clear that a lot of people have been saying, the democrats have been saying well, look, the statute is clear. it says "shall." if the inspector general says it's an urgent concern and applies to the intelligence activity, it's got to go to congress whether the dni can make comments on it, but can't stop it. jeff, do you think that's the law? i'm not saying it's not. >> i do think it's the law that it has to be turned...

Letter to the house intelligence committee. responding to the dni saying the complaint is not in our jurisdiction. he writes i never the less respectfully disagree with the determination. that the disclosure need not be transmitted to the committee. what he's saying, this does concern intelligence activity. he disagrees with the doj. and the dni. what you think about how this is handled? >> well a couple things, it doesn't matter that he disagrees -- that the acting dni thinks this is not urgent. this doesn't matter. the statute gives him the authority and responsibility to pass information on...

Intelligence activity, it goes to the core of what the dni's responsibilities are to the american people. that's pretty strong language. you and i are not yet privy to what the legal arguments back and forth. based on the reporting, we understand what's at issue here is conversations between the president of the united states and the president of ukraine with this shady business. whether it technically meets the requirement of the statute, i'm not sure. the legal answer is, we don't know how good the arguments are on either side. i'll give you a pragmatic answer, though. and that is, it's very...

Legal analyst, former u.s. attorney, preet bharara to continue this conversation. preet, thanks so much for joining us. does the acting director of national intelligence need to turn this whistleblower complaint over donto congress? >> that's the controversy we're trying to figure out. there's been something that's sort of an astonishing battle of letters and legal conclusions between the intelligence committee's inspectori inand th acting dni. the deni has taken the position that this doesn't need to be turned over because it doesn't relate to someone in the intelligence community and doesn't...