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But it is true that the 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 ...

You said, of urgent concern. and that's rare. as i understand it, there have been few, if any, of those in recent memory. what that means is it had to involve waste, fraud, or abuse connected to an intelligence activity. and that's what's important here, because, you know, obviously as john said, we don't know if this is ukraine, the reporting seems solid, nbc news has not confirmed it's the july 25th ukraine call. but if it was and the allegation about that call is that donald trump made an inappropriate proposal for an arrangement, that still doesn't cover an intelligence activity, as i unde...

Simple matter of you know a difference of opinion about policy matters. that's excluded by statute. this is something related to a serious flagrant violation of law concerning an operation of an intelligence activity. this whistle blower did everything right. they went through the process properly. i've heard people, including some calling him a snitch. no, this person did it properly. real quick, brad. the fact that there is a disagreement at the least between the dni and the ig about this very issue of urgent, does that surprise you? because is that something that you're laying out that re...

Nature of his contacts with the russians. >> susan, you say that this latest development makes it completely impossible to believe that the dni reasonably concluded that it was not an urgent matter and that they would try to hide this from congress. tell me why you think that. >> yes. so the question here has always been why exactly the dni was refusing to forward this whistle-blowing complaint to the intelligence committees, which is required by law. it's not optional. so the question was what the dni general counsel had said was that they didn't believe that this complaint met the statutory ...

Something so disturbing in the communications between the president and a foreign leader that this member of the intelligence community who "the washington post" said was detailed to the national security council, that that person felt the need to file a whistleblower complaint. that complaint was of such urgent concern in the mind of the inspector general of the intelligence community that that person then took it directly to the congressional oversight committee. now the director of national intelligence then responded to a subpoena by the house intelligence committee chairman adam schiff sa...