← Here's the Scoop
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Other in a desperate bid to avoid prison. All episodes are available now. To listen ad free. Subscribe to Dateline Premium on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Dateline premium.com.
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Hey, friends, and welcome to here's the Scoop from NBC News. I'm Morgan Chesky. Hard to believe, but we're now 17 days into the federal government shutdown and Capitol Hill is awfully quiet, especially since both the House and Senate are out of session until next week and a deal to reopen the government is unlikely this weekend. The real action in Washington today is happening at the White House where President Trump sat down with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy for what we're calling a working lunch. At the very top of their agenda, Russia pounding Ukraine's power grid, leaving a lot of that country in the dark, literally. Ukraine's asking for more American made air defenses and long range missiles so they can in turn hit back. Also, top of mind, a permanent end to the war. And President Trump's been working the phones. He spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin this week and it looks like perhaps they'll be meeting in Budapest at some point over the next two weeks. As for President Trump, he's optimistic.
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The war in the Middle east was far more complicated. We got that one done and I think we have a good chance. I think President Zelensky wants it done and I think President Putin want it done. Now all they have to do is get along a little bit.
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So to dive in further, I want to bring in John Herbst. He is senior director of the Atlantic Council's Eurasia center and he served for 31 years as a foreign service officer in the State Department. He also previously served as ambassador to Ukraine. So with that, welcome, Ambassador Herbst. How you doing, sir?
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Fine.
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It's a pleasure to Be with you, Ambassador. I want to start by asking about these Tomahawk missiles that are really at the center of today's meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy. Can you kind of explain what makes him such a crucial military component here?
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Tomahawks are cruise missiles, extremely accurate, hard to shoot down. They carry a large payload, and they travel as far as 2500km, I believe. So they could strike relatively deep into Russia. So they will give Ukraine a potent new weapon to slow down Moscow's aggression in Ukraine. By themselves, they would not represent a turning point in the war. It would just raise the cost substantially for Putin's war and save thousands of Ukrainian lives. And the political impact of a decision by Trump to send Tomahawks would be to tell Putin, Putin, your aim to pull America out of support for Ukraine in order to conquer Ukraine is not working, because Putin is counting on his ability to charm Trump from providing any support whatsoever to Ukraine. That's why the Russian media are going nuts about this possibility. That's why Medvedev is threatening, you know, mayhem on the United States if we were to do this. Medvedev, the former president. That includes strong statements by Pskov, Putin's spokesman, about how this would lead to deterioration of the already dreadful U. S. Russian relationship. So Putin would very much like to prevent Trump from making this decision.
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And the cards President Trump's holding are essentially Tomahawk missiles here. And when he spoke to Putin on the phone yesterday, he reminded him of that very fact.
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Correct, Because Trump understands that Putin does not want to stop the war. Trump, at the beginning of this term was offering Putin concessions to make peace, and Putin was happy to pocket the concessions but not offer any step towards an actual end to the fighting. Because Putin's aim is to take political control of Ukraine, and for that, he needs to conquer a good bit more territory. And again, his bet is he can persuade Trump to stop any support to Ukraine, including, for example, military intelligence, which is very important, so he could then proceed to conquer the country. But Trump's stated goal is to achieve a stable peace, and Putin is getting in the way of that. So Trump realizes he needs to raise pressure on Putin, and he's been talking about this since at least May. But we've yet to see Trump actually pull the trigger. In other words, applying specific measures to put pressure on the Russian military, which is what Tomahawks would do, or the Russian economy, which additional restrictive measures would do. But Putin watching the interaction between the United States and Ukraine since that meeting between Zelensky and Trump in New York is getting a bit nervous, which is why he wanted to propose to Putin that he and Putin get together for a meeting.
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Ambassador, we saw the buildup to that Alaska summit and very little come out of that. What are your realistic expectations for Budapest, if any?
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Look, there were two times in the last five months that Trump was on the verge of taking strong steps against Russia for continuing this war. I think it was the second Sunday in May. Zelenskyy and European leaders were meeting in London and they agreed they were ready to put immediate sanctions on the Kremlin if it did not agree to a ceasefire. They called Trump and Trump agreed to this approach. As soon as this news broke, Putin said, I'm happy to see Zelensky. And Trump said, good idea. And so the idea of sanctions with the United States participation fell to the side in May. Once that happened, Putin cavilled about seeing Zelenskyy. That meeting never happened. So that was one point where a prospective meeting, a proposal of Putin's undercut the introduction of measures against Moscow for continuing this war. The second time was even more vivid. Trump set a hard deadline of August 8th for Putin to stop his military operation in Ukraine. And he said there'd be major economic measures taken and maybe military measures taken if Putin did not do that. Of course, we know Steve Witkoff, the special envoy, showed up in Moscow August 5th. He had a meeting with Putin. He Witkoff reported to Trump that Putin was ready to compromise. Trump let his red line lapse without any pressure on Putin and agreed to the meeting in Alaska, which achieved nothing. So now we have a third iteration of this. Putin is counting on the same results. He's going to remove the threat of strong American steps against Russia by offering a meeting and then not offer anything in that meeting. Trump greeted this proposal yesterday with great enthusiasm, but he also took one step which suggests he may be wise to Putin's gambit. He said, you know, before Putin and I meet, we'll meet in Budapest soon. Rubio's got to meet with his Russian counterparts to talk about what that meeting will produce. So we'll see if this Putin game to string Trump along will work a third time.
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Ambassador, we appreciate your time and all eyes will be watching. Thank you, sir.
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All right, bye bye.
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All right, team, time now for a quick break, but when we're back, Bolton pleads not guilty. Stick around. It's cybersecurity awareness month and LifeLock is here with tips to help protect your identity. Use strongpad passwords. Set up multi factor authentication and report phishing scams. And for comprehensive identity protection, Lifelock is your best choice. Lifelock alerts you to suspicious uses of your personal information and also fixes identity theft, guaranteed or your money back. Stay smart, stay safe and stay protected. With a 30 day free trial at lifelock.com specialoffer terms apply. Not sure if you have the experience to start your dream job? Good news these days, it's the skills that count. Udemy can help you get those in demand. Skills. Want to be an AI mastermind? Learn with us Game developer. We've got you covered. AWS certified Cloud practitioner. We can help you prep. You'll learn from real world experts who love what they do so that you can love what you do. Go to udemy.com for the skills to get you started and get set for your dream job.
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Who's ready for some football all season.
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The Today show takes you inside the game.
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We are going to get this party started.
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Join us every week as we go behind the scenes with your favorite NFL teams for the biggest stories on and off the field.
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Big game tonight.
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Plus game day recipes that dial up your tailgate. Football food soup to nuts. From stadium lights to game day bites, the Today show is your home for all things football every morning on NBC. And welcome back to here's the scoop from NBC News. John Bolton once served as President Trump's national security adviser, but today he surrendered to federal authorities on charges that he mishandled classified information. Bolton pled not guilty. He has now become the third critic of the president to face criminal charges in. Let me look at a calendar. Yeah, just a few weeks. Last night, a federal grand jury in Maryland handed down an indictment charging Bolton with eight counts of transmission of national defense information and 10 counts of retention of national defense information. Bolton denied any wrongdoing and he released a statement overnight that reads in part, now I've become the latest target in weaponizing the Justice Department to charge those he deems to be his enemies with charges that were declined before or distort the facts. Joining me now to break this down is NBC News senior justice reporter Ryan Reilly. We saw the indictment yesterday. We heard John Bolton plead not guilty to these 18 counts, eight counts of transmission of national defense information and then 10 counts of unlawful retention of national defense information. Walk us through those.
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Transmission would be sending it to others. And in this case, the statement from John Bolton referred to his family members, it's believed to be his wife and daughter, who he was sending these dispatches, these diaries to. So that's sort of the transmission and then the retention is the keeping of those documents. The underlying issue here is the hacking by someone allegedly connected to Iran of John Bolton's email. So that sort of plays a role in this investigation. It was believed to be an AOL account. So the tricky thing with a lot of these classified document cases is you have to consider the risks to national security that you might create by bringing that information to a jury or out into the public. So there's always that extra consideration that makes it distinct from other criminal cases that don't have those same risks. So that'll be something that I think there'll be a lot of interplay between the judge, the prosecution, and the defense in those matters.
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Ryan, I hear classified information. You have 1,000 pages of evidence. Now, is this something where someone with knowledge can look through these pages and point to specific instances of. Ah, yes, that's classified. That's not. It must be more nuanced than that, right?
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Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of labels that are involved in some of the original documents. When you're talking about classified information, they obviously have headers. So those are easier cases to figure out. I think that the trickier thing is with those diary entries, what is classified, what isn't classified? And of course, the government tends to over classify things. That's been a longstanding trend. It is a little bit of a tricky process. But here in D.C. classified information is just really something that is taken extremely seriously, seriously by everyone. Everyone sort of has a friend who works in some component of government that they don't really speak a lot about their job. And people take those protections extremely seriously. There are background checks for people who have access to this information in which they'll interview your friends, they'll interview your neighbors, they'll interview college classmates of yours. So this is something that the government does take extremely seriously because of the risk that it poses to national security should anyone who is enemies with the states be able to access that information. Especially in the technological age, this is becoming all the more complicated for the government to keep its hands and protect that information from getting out to its adversaries.
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People could see Bolton's indictment and very quickly lump it into recent indictments of James Comey and Letitia James. But his does differ in a few key ways. Walk us through those.
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Yeah, I think chiefly because it was handled not by just only prosecutors who were appointed by Donald Trump in the last few months. Right. This was a case that had history, had a background to it, that predated Donald Trump coming to office. This wasn't something that was brought forward by an ally of his who he appointed to a position. There's not really a question here about the legitimacy of the prosecutors themselves, because career prosecutors are on this case as well as the Acting U.S. attorney.
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In this instance, on the cases against James Comey and Letitia James, those were signed, those indictments signed by a single prosecutor out of Virginia. This indictment against Bolton out of Maryland, a little bit different here.
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You know, Lindsey Halligan is the person involved in those cases, and she was an attorney for Trump with no prosecutorial experience at all. It was certainly right into the fire there as soon as she was placed in this position. Not only that, but there's the question of whether she is legitimately in that position, which could kill those cases altogether, because she is the only individual who signed on to them. So when you talk about career staffers and career prosecutors being involved in this new case, that's definitely a huge difference between the James Comey case as well as the Letitia James case.
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Bolton, not a newcomer to this scene, he served under President Bush and then in the first Trump administration. So as far as knowing what to do with classified info and property, ways of handling it, one would think that he would understand the ins and the outs. Yeah.
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And in fact, you know, prosecutors are going to be able to point to various clips of John Bolton on television talking about the importance of classified information, of protecting classified information, some of that in the context of other mishandlings of classified information by prominent figures. If you go all the way back a decade now, we've sort of been in this area involving the handling of classified documents since the Hillary Clinton investigation, which. Which sort of helped bring Donald Trump to power. And then, of course, you had the investigation of former President Joe Biden related to documents that were found in his garage. And then, of course, you had the case against Donald Trump. So this issue of the handling of classified information has been this recurring theme, I think, throughout the entire stretch of this moment in political history.
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We watched John Bolton have his initial court appearance today. What are you keeping an eye on right now?
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There's the next step of this proceeding, how this case is going to play out. It involves, obviously, this classified information. So that's going to probably slow things down a little bit. Those are always complicated matters. But, you know, this is once again another one of Donald Trump's political enemies, someone that he's publicly targeted being prosecuted by the Justice Department. But I think this case stands out slightly from the others in that it. It predated Trump coming back to office. And it's not an investigation that was just started after Donald Trump came back. There were some facts out there and some information out there that the government had previous to Donald Trump actually coming back. So while the optics of this might look on a surface level similar to the other two cases that we've seen, of course, against James Comey and Letitia James, I think on a practical level and on a facts level, this sort of stands out from those other two investigations.
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Our senior justice reporter Ryan Reilly breaking it all down. Ryan, thanks so much.
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Thanks so much for having me.
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All right, team, here are some of the headlines that we're keeping a very close eye on as we enter the weekend. The US Military carried out another strike on what it claims is a suspected drug smuggling vessel in the Caribbean. And this one on Thursday marked a big first. Unlike the prior five deadly missions that killed at least 27 people, this latest operation off the coast of Venezuela left several survivors, at least two of whom are now in U.S. custody. That's according to two American officials. The Trump administration has called these missions part of its war on narcoterrorism. But six sources tell NBC News that there's growing frustration on Capitol Hill where lawmakers say that they've been given little insight into the intelligence or even the strategy behind these strikes. Meanwhile, Admiral Alvin Hosey, the head of U.S. southern Command, which oversees military operations across all of Latin America, announced he's stepping down at the end of this year. Now, Halsey's been in the role less than a year and said that he'll be retiring December 12th. He praised his team for what he called their lasting contributions to the defense of our nation. And in a post on X, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth called Holsey a model of naval leadership, but but importantly, did not say exactly why the admiral's retiring to Alaska now, where multiple communities along its coast are grappling with widespread devastation following a catastrophic storm surge from the remnants of Typhoon Hulong. So many people were left trapped or stranded by the rising waters. The state is engaged in one of its most significant airlifts in history. The storm brought record high water marks topping 6ft above normal tide levels to some low lying Alaska native communities. Here's how Alaska's Governor Mike Dunleavy described it.
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A lot of houses were taken off their foundations.
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A lot of houses are floating, floating down the river with people in them. With at least one person confirmed dead and two others still missing, search and rescue operations have now shifted into a large scale evacuation effort using military planes and helicopters to try to move more than 1,000 people from those remote, devastated villages to emergency shelters in Anchorage, which is about 500 mil away. Many of those homes have been deemed uninhabitable, and local shelters unfortunately are already at capacity. And some stunning news from the royal family. Britain's Prince Andrew, the brother of King Charles, announced today that he will be giving up all royal titles, including Duke of York. After a discussion with the king, Prince Andrew said in a statement, we have concluded that continued accusations about me distract from the work of His Majesty and the royal family. And he adds, as I have said previously, I vigorously deny the accusations against me. Here's what he means. You'll remember Prince Andrew was accused of sexually abusing the late Virginia Giuffre when she was 17 years old and she was one of Jeffrey Epstein's victims. He's always denied the allegation, and that includes again today. But back in 2019, he did step back from royal duties and by 2022 had given up his military titles and patronages after a US Judge refused to dismiss Giuffre's lawsuit. He later paid her a substantial settlement. Here's NBC News foreign correspondent Raf Sanchez. So Prince Andrew's links to Jeffrey Epstein have caused years of embarrassment for the royal family. But the last straw here seems to be the imminent publication of this new autobiography by Virginia Giuffre. This book is being published posthumously and it is full of these kind of lurid alleys. Andrew, of course, has always denied these allegations. And so tonight you are seeing an effort to draw a line under this Andrew consulting not just with his older brother, King Charles, but also with Prince William, the future king, who has made very clear he wants to modernize and.
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He wants to shake up the monarchy.
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Thanks, Raf. Breathe it in, folks. That is the unmistakable October magic in the air for the LA Dodgers. After their 31 win over the Brewers, LA is now one game away from another trip to the World Series. And Mookie Betts dazzled with a highlight reel grab. The bullpen stayed dominant and Dodger Stadium was, of course, absolutely rockin'. And the boys in blue look built for another run at the crown. The winner will face off against the Seattle Mariners or Toronto Blue Jays, who enter game five on a two game win streak. Okay, finally, before we go, we gotta send off fit for a rock n roll legend. Yep. Ace Frehley, the original spaceman of Kiss and one of rock's most electrifying guitar heroes, has died at age 74. Fraley's signature blend of bluesy swagger, smoke spewing solos and of course, the black and white face paint helped launch KISS from a New York club act to a global rock spectacle back in the 1970s, fueled by anthems like and of course, talk about iconic, Frehley left the band for the first time back in 1982 so he could create his own group, Frehley's Comet. And yeah, kept putting out hits. I'm Back, Back in the New York Room. But Spaceman did eventually return to Kiss's orbit in 1996, blasting off again with the band for a wildly successful reunion tour. He took his final bow in 2002, fittingly, of course, on a global stage, performing with Kiss at the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. And the music stopped for Frehley. In fact, just last year he released 10,000 Volts, a solo album that shot to the top of Billboard's hard rock and rock charts. Now the amps are a little quiet, but his riffs still hang in the air for eternity, like stardust and feedback, a lasting reminder of the man who made rock feel just a bit more electric. And with that, our team adheres. The scoop's gonna be slamming our laptop shut till Monday. Thanks for listening. Signing off from la, I'm Morgan Chesky, where, by the way, in case you're counting, In a mere 1,000 days, our city's gonna be hearing this on loop. Yep, the 2028 Olympics will be here before we know it. And hey, if you like what you heard, like us back wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we'll see you guys next time. Cheers. It's Cybersecurity awareness month and LifeLock is here with tips to help protect your identity. Use strong passwords, set up multi factor authentication and report phishing scams, and for comprehensive identity protection, Lifelock is your best choice. Lifelock alerts you to suspicious uses of your personal information and also fixes identity theft. Guaranteed or your money back. Stay smart, stay safe and stay protected with a 30 day free trial@lifelock.com Specialoffer terms apply.