the world lead as congrethey ar investigating russia s part in the 2016 election. matthew chance tracked down sergey kislyak. he specifically asked him about members of the trump team and he joins me live from russia. matthew, did you get the chanid from sergey kislyak that he was trying to protect trump or trump associates? reporter: i think so. he didn t want to see us here in russia, he didn t want to talk to us, and he didn t want to disclose the contents of those meetings. i asked him about sanctions and the possibility of lifting any sanctions was ever discussed with any member of the administration or the trump team, and he refused to comment on that. i asked him about reports that had surfaced, about jared kushner raising the possibility of unofficial back channel
has had the united states as a rival on the world stage. and the president also not wanting to talk about some of the other news of this day, back channel communications or negotiations or other diplomatic steps that may in fact be happening simultaneously, wanting to get that close to the vest as all of this unfolds. c i say. actually, focusing a message here, john harwood, but i m not sure if i was a betting woman i would have put my that are on him taking questions if i wasn t going to put it on the mega millions today. and the fact that he is, again, day after day after day now giving essentially the same statement, same strong words, same threats, essentially, suggesting this man will not get away. if he utters one threat which he s been uttering for years or does anything with guam or any other u.s. ally or territory, eltruly regret it. the fact that he did this today, does that suggest to you at all
korean peninsula to a degree or on a path that they haven t flown over already. exercises have been done for months and are part of u.s. policy. we have to be careful north korea, this serves their interest to rile up and the danger of war. we have to be careful about sending a signal out that we are on the doorstep of war. laufrmgi launching missiles, there s a risk in launching missiles. look at it from the north korean side. if those missiles are shot down, that s a risk for north korea because it shows that the threat may not be as great as they ade to their people and the world. this will be the first real life test of u.s. missile defenses if this were to happen. it s also a test of back channel communications. what we don t know, we heard rex tillerson yesterday but what we don t know is if there are, what back channel communications are
investigate a former political opponent. joining me is kathleen clark specializing in legal ethics. kathleen, initial reactions to that tweet, rhetoric and langua we re hearing from the president. it sure likes the president is attempting to undermine justice department, attorney general in an attempt to protect himself and associates. would you encourage continued tweets of this nature? i would think not. i wouldn t, but i don t think the president takes advice from the likes of me or the likes of anyone. what s hpg on capitol hill. we re talking about that statement from jared kushner, 11 pages previewing what he s expected to tell senate intelligence committee and likely the house tomorrow. pointed out earlier they thought that back channel discussion, denial of back channel communications, the denial he did ask for some sort of comes channel seemed to stand out the
embassy at. but the same time he asked about any existing communications channel while president obama was in office. eliana, i ll start with you. does that also seem to you like something that stands out here in this moment or what does from what we expect to hear from kushner today? that, to me, the back channel communications was by far the most damming kushner-related allegation going into this meeting. and i think the thing that senate staffers are going to be most interested in figuring out. did he seek to establish one? what were the details surrounding it and what exactly happened there? i think his participation in this meeting with trump jr. is less interest and it s far easier to believe that he wandered into it. that he didn t read the e-mail. and he s going to have a lot more explaining to do about the back channel communications. that s very concerning. kelsey, he papts thints this picture of essentially being