. >> ken delaney, i have to leave it there. thank you for talking with me.

for more lets turn to our andrea mitchell and our reporter ken delaney and our 35 years veteran in the trades and of homeland security and the author of a very timely new book of the plot to hack america and how putin's cyber spies and wikileaks tried to steal the election. and here with hardball with chris matthews with us late at night talking about all of this. en ken, i am going to start with you. first of all, how did briefers come to present this information both to the president and president-elect trump, what might have been their motives and along the way, can you get to how john mccain pops up in the story. >> sure, brian, i have to be careful of what nbc confirmed tonight with the help of pete william us and andrea mitchell. we know of two-page addendum of the materials that were presented to president obama and president-elect trump and senior leaders of congress, the gang of eight. that addendum summed up a larger group of allegations damaging, potentially explosives about donald trump and don't know if those allegations have been vetted by the u.s. intelligent community,

for more lets turn to our andrea mitchell and our reporter ken delaney and our 35 years veteran in the trades and of homeland security and the author of a very timely new book of the plot to hack america and how pew sup cyber spies and wikileaks tried to steal the election. and here with hardball with chris matthews with us late at night talking about all of this. en ken, i am going to start with you. first of all, how did briefers come to present this information both to the president and president-elect trump, what might have been their motives and along the way, can you get to how john mccain pops up in the story. >> slaughture, brian, i have to careful of what nbc confirmed tonight with the help of pete william us and andrea mitchell. we know of two-page addendum of the materials that were presented to president obama and president-elect trump and senior leaders of congress, the gang of eight. that addendum summed up a larger group of allegations damaging, potentially explosives about donald trump and don't know if those allegations have been vetted by the u.s. intelligent communit

kristen welker in new york and ken delaney in washington. i want to get to kristen first, covering the president-elect ahead of the briefing. tell us what the action has been and what you expect to see early this afternoon. >> the president-elect trump heading to conde nast for a meeting there. we are getting information about that briefing learning that vice president mike pence is going to attend. it's set to get under way at 12:30. we'll be tracking developments very closely. it's a pretty heated backdrop. the stakes could not be higher. ken's been doing a ton of reporting. i'll lay out a few details about it. we know according to intelligence officials, their report shows based on intercepts, top russian officials were celebrating president-elect's win. they've identified some of the go-betweens who helped disseminate some of that information. that getting under the skin of the president-elect before in briefing. the key question is is he going to believe them, how is he going to respond, what's he going to say publicly and how contentio

and ken delaney who covers intelligence and national security for us. jeremy, he chose this appearance to relitigate the crowd side yesterday, to attack the press. how is that going to go over? >> well, it was a nice gesture for the president to show up there. but i think it did veer off course for two reasons. number one, he said we invented isis, and we're going to go back and take their oil again. and that's really dangerous. because we have intelligence officers who are going out trying to recruit assets, trying to work with people in the middle east. and they're just going to say in return, hey, you guys invented isis, so your president said, you're going to come back and take our oil, it's going to make our job a lot harder. second, as you noted, this is hallowed ground. and i think back to the time when i was at the agency on december 30th, 2009, when we lost darren and harold and jennifer and liz and scott and dane and an officer named jeremy. seven officers killed in eastern afghanistan working on a counterterrorism operation. one of the worst

and ken delaney who covers intelligence and national security for us. jeremy, he chose this appearance to relitigate the crowd side yesterday, to attack the press. how is that going to go over? >> well, it was a nice gesture for the president to show up there. but i think it did veer off course for two reasons. number one, he said we invented isis, and we're going to go back and take their oil again. and that's really dangerous. because we have intelligence officers who are going out trying to recruit assets, trying to work with people in the middle east. and they're just going to say in return, hey, you guys invented isis, so your president said, you're going to come back and take our oil, it's going to make our job a lot harder. second, as you noted, this is hallowed ground. and i think back to the time when i was at the agency on december 30th, 2009, when we lost darren and harold and jennifer and liz and scott and dane and an officer named jeremy. seven officers killed in eastern afghanistan working on a counterterrorism operation. one of the worst

ken delaney is an investigative reporter for the unit. and how putin cyber spies and wikileaks tried to steal the 2016 election. well, gentlemen, there is so much to talk about right now. the fact it is still going on, it doesn't end. >> so the investigation, nbc news confirmed there was a counterintelligence investigation going on, part of it is whether or not there were ties between the aides and russia. can donald trump stop that? can he just order the intelligence agencies to stop investigating and the answer is he may well be able to do that but it would be a disaster. it would almost certainly leak. >> is that why they announced it? >> it sure looks that way, doesn't it? >> two days before the inauguration, these things start to leak out. in terms of the cia and kelly's point, john brennan just criticized his remarks. this is a 35-year cia veteran, that trump went and spoke in front of the fallen stars, made very little if any reference to the stars or to the cia and all and talked about his size of his crowds at the inauguration, t

joining us on the phone right now is ken delaney, national security reporter. we've spoken to a member of the justice department and you gave us the tore earli here. there is a lot of question marks about them getting the heads up and then have doing something with the problem that we see here on screen on the left. >> reporter: yeah, that's right. i spoke not only to a career justice department if i recaoff also a official at department of homeland security both of whom say there was no coordination through the agencies about this order. the career officials who would normally review a policy like this didn't see it until shortly before it was signed. there was no input about its legality from career justice department officials. there no input about how to implement it, what the repercussions were. and that is not normal. there is a standard process, national security council tends to solicit input from various agencies whenever there is a major policy shift like this and that wasn't done in this case and as one person said, we have no idea what is going on h

we think it's pretty unusual. >> ken delaney, i have to leave it there. thank you for talking with me. >>> for more analysis let's bring in molly hooper. i want to start with your biggest take away from the intel report. what sto what stood out to you? >> so much was declassified and that the intel services found such overwhelming evidence that russia, you know, was involved in this. which is really interesting, because you've had members of congress up on capitol hill on the republican and democratic side in the house and senate calling for a select committee to investigate these allegations. but there hasn't been a lot of you know, support from the leaders. it's interesting because this is something that lindsey graham can follow up on. he was appointed the head of a new senate armed services subcommittee, specifically to deal with cyber threats. that's something that the armed services committee has not had because this is not, you know, a one off. this is not a one off occasion. we've had several big profile hacking attempts from other countries, you

>> not in my view. >> senator, ken delaney pointed out while there are sometimes agreements between these 17 intelligence agencies, there's no disagreement about julian assange. none of them trust hem. do you agree with president-elect promoting his claim that he did not get -- >> i agree with john mccain. there's great concern here. we're going to go into this highly classified briefing within the next hour, a bipartisan group. all of us are concerned about making sure that america is safe, america is strong, and america is secure, and we want to get to the bottom of this. >> senator, based on what you've already learned from intelligence officials, that which you can tell us, do you believe that moscow is behind the recent attacks? i don't mean russians in general. i mean the government of russia, or do you still have questions that you need addressed about russia's involvement? >> i believe russia is absolutely involved. to me it's two different tips of the iceberg. two different eye bergs. one is the fact that russia feels they can go after us from a cyberstandpoint, because we have l

and ken delaney who covers intelligence and national security for us. jeremy, he chose this appearance to relitigate the crowd size yesterday, to attack the press. how is that going to go over? >> well, it was a nice gesture for the president to show up there, but it did veer off course for two reasons. number one, he said we invented isis and we're going to go back and take their oil again. and that's really dangerous because we have intelligence officers who are going out trying to recruit assets, trying to work with people in the middle east. and they're going to say in return, you guys invented isis, or so your president said and you're going to come back and take our oil. that's going to make our job harder. second, this is hallowed ground. and i think back to the time i was at the agency on december 30th, 2009, when we lost darryn and harold and jennifer and liz and scott and dane and an officer named jeremy. seven officers killed in eastern afghanistan working on a counterterrorism operation when the worst days for the agency in its history. i we

okay >> nbc's ken delaney joins us now. i think it's not anger that he's accusing cnn who introduced the notion of this story that there was some material there delivered to trump. it wasn't delivered to him in person as you and i talked about. it was delivered to his office in a classified manner, an appropriate manner. but they were somehow using an alley-oop play, that somehow cnn was setting up buzzfeed to do the dirty work. or is he trying to smear cnn with the behavior of buzzfeed? >> i think you're right, chris. >> which is right? he said buzzfeed wouldn't have introduced it if you guys didn't introduce the topic. >> intelligence reporting is hard, chris. and this was highly classified information. is fact that a summary of this was included in a classified compartmented briefing that went to trump and president obama and members of congress, that was a hard get and when nbc news scrambled to confirm that last night it was difficult for us as well. we had to be careful about it. cnn did not public the 35 page list of

ken delaney is an investigative reporter for the unit. and malcolm nantz, author of how putin cyberspies and wikileaks tried to steal the 2016 election. well, gentlemen, there is so much to talk about right now. the fact it is still going on, it doesn't end. >> so the investigation, nbc news confirmed there was a counterintelligence investigation going on, part of it is whether or not there were ties between trump aides and russia. can donald trump stop that? he's the president now, right? can he just order the intelligence agencies to stop investigating and the answer is he may well be able to do that but it would be politically disastrous. it would almost certainly leak. >> is that why they announced it? >> it sure looks that way, doesn't it? two days before the inauguration, these things start to leak out. in terms of the cia and kelly's point, john brennan just issued a remarkable statement through a spokesman calling donald trump's remarks a despicable display of self aggrandizement. he was really offended. this is a 35 year cia vete

. >> i am joined now by ken delaney, intelligence and national security reporter. ken, thank you, and a lot to talk about here on this holiday monday. you're plugged in. what is the reaction now from the intel community to these donald trump remarks that he has inside info and he's going to share it? >> well, you know, it's always dangerous to talk about the intel community, that's like saying the media. there's different points of view within the community. a lot of -- i've talked to several people that say trump views this as an assault on the integrity of his election victory. so we're taking it with a grain of salt all his resistance to our findings. i mean, nobody was happy when he mentioned the cia's mistake in iraq. that was a cheap shot. but, there is sort of a sense of like when he becomes the president and staurts being briefed by his own people, he'll come around on this stuff, hallie. >> our unit here as you know, our team has reported that since mid-august, the president-elect had been receiving briefs on the links between russia and the potential inte

joining me now, ken delaney, an nbc news intelligence and national security reporter, and david priest, a former intelligence officer, and daily intelligence briefer. he's also the author of "the president's book of secrets." great to have both of you with us. david, let me begin with you, your response to trump's tweet on, "intelligence services" and ding with julian assange over our own community here. >> you know, i focus on a different word in that and that's the word, "could." the intelligence community generally doesn't deal in coulds unless it's talking about a base capability to do something. intelligence assessments have to do with likely or probably or almost certainly. that is what actually happened to the best of our ability to assess that based on known information and based on the unknowns. the word, "could" being thrown out there doesn't really add anything to the debate. >> all right. ken, let me ask you this. you talked to senior intelligence officials about some of trump's tweets and some of his positions, particularly about this issue. what was their response? what a

delaney is here to takes through this. i want to take a step back here and just go through pretty much a timeline of what happened starting about 24 hours ago and we have the first report here, a lot of this unsubstantiated leading into this press conference today. this is something i have seen take off like wild fire on social media. a lot of this i have seen treated as fact when that is very much in question and bled over, we will show you into these confirmation hearings today. let's just establish some facts here because there's a lot of that's circulating. the two key pieces of information that sort of came out about 24 hours ago. two things here. there was this report, not report, there was this document that went up on buzzfeed. this was about a 35, 36 page document, they say this was compiled by opposition researchers, campaign opposition researchers who talked to one former british intelligence official made all sorts of accusations about donald trump and about the russians having information that could blackmail

>> ken delaney starting us off from washington, thank you. >>> democrats trying to slow down process to fill out president trump's cabinet. four committees met today to hold votes on a total of six nominees. however, democrats on the finance committee decided to boycott votes for two of trump's crucial nominees, their absence forcing republicans to push back votes for treasury and for health and human services as well. that move as you might imagine outraging republicans in particular committee chairman orin hatch. he called democrats stupid. >> this is the most pathetic thing i've seen in my whole time in the united states senate. i think my colleagues, once they really think it through, may very well say yeah, that was stupid of us, because it really is stupid. amazingly stupid. >> let's bring in kristen welker live from the white house briefing room, where again any moment we're told white house press secretary sean spicer will take to the podium. kristen, a lot on this president's plate once again today. let's start with the announcement about tonight's supreme court pick. any id