russian/american businessman. he says in the new york times today our boy could become president of the usa and we could engineer it saying he could get the putin team s body in for the project. cohen did downplay this matter saying i abandoned the proposal because i lost confidence the prospected licenses would not bring the project to fruition. okay manu, you also learned about another effort to set up another meeting with trump campaign officials and russias. tell us about that. yeah that showed him relying a message from an individual from west virginia who wanted to set up a meeting with the trump campaign and vladimir putin. we ve learned this west virginia man is a 54-year-old contractor name rick clay who informed
happening there and an administration official says they are taking specific steps to mitigate interruption and recovery efforts when president trump travels to texas and essentially doesn t get in the way. first, learning more about how west virginia, a man proposed setting up a meeting with the russians in president trump s campaign and how campaign officials responded. senior congressional official manu raju first reported this and joins us. what can you tell us about a mystery person from west virginia? new details. discovered by congressional investigators, said an individual from west virginia sought to set up a meeting between vladimir putin and the trump campaign. since we broke the news last week the man s name is rick clay, who s a former contractor during the iraq war who privately reached out last year to rick dearborn, a top aide in the trump campaign and now the president s deputy chief of staff. mr. clay told me he was passing
along a meeting request from one of his friends who came into contact with russians during a christian function. saying mr. dearborn rejected the request and thought serious enough that it should go through the proper channels of the state department instead. also, jim, another twist. a republican source tells me mr. clay informed his senator, the republican senator shelley moore capito about his desire to talk to the campaign about his russian contacts and the senator s office confirmed she passed along his contact information to the campaign and said, that was the extent of her involvement. this is obviously going to be of interest to investigators. these congressional committees looking into this. and i suppose it adds another layer to this investigation for these panels to look at? absolutely and raises key questions and that russians
sought to employ covert tactics in the trump campaign and more broadly, russian intelligence services talked to conservative organizations including religious groups to build align alliances in the united states. it s unclear whether this meeting amounted to a tactic or just an innocent request for a meeti meeting. it s something investigators have to look at. what has the white house s response been? doesn t sound like we ll have a briefing today. the president is holding a news conference. what are they saying? last week when we presented them with the story he declined to comment on the dearborn email. and they wouldn t confirm clay s account or discuss who the russians were he wanted, set up this meeting with. but ty cobb, president s senior legal counsel dealing with the russian issue said that the facts i presented to them have now vindicated dearborn and