you can t explain. there s no way he can say he didn t know them. i mean, sure, the president takes a lot of pictures maybe with people he doesn t know, but there s a whole series of them here. they look very intimate with giuliani. i mean, giuliani, if and when he is under indictment, is going to have, you know, a strong case against him and exhibit 1 is going to be these pictures. and, matt, if they are closely connected with kind of deadly russian gangsters, that might make them very inhibited if the federal prosecutors are trying to get some cooperation out of them. yeah, it certainly might. look, i think the story that is going to start to emerge here is if they were working for rudy giuliani, for donald trump, they weren t being paid because we know donald trump wasn t paying rudy giuliani. he s working on his behalf for free. what i think they were really doing is they were then trying to monetize their access to the president and their access to rudy giuliani by going out a
ukrainian oligarch with ties to the russian mob, so they were, i think, trying to effectuate this really corrupt trade where they would get information from this ukrainian oligarch, manufactured dirt about joe biden that s not true, supply it to rudy giuliani who would supply it to the president of the united states, and in return, they were going to try to deliver for this ukrainian oligarch who is under indictment some kind of dismissal from the justice department or some kind of way for him to get out of his case. it is as corrupt as you can be and now you have both of them under indictment and rudy giuliani under investigation. you know, look, these aren t the first members of donald trump s legal team to go to jail. obviously, his former personal attorney went to jail. and i think you re right, if i were them, though, i would be much more scared of offending this ukrainian oligarch with ties to the russian mob than i would be federal prosecutors. matt miller, mimi rocah, thank y
before the american people, does that convince some of the republicans and some of these people who are on the fence that this was, in fact, the quid pro quo, the kind of real abuse of power, that a lot of people think that it was? mieke eoyang, thank you for joining us to start the discussion tonight. heidi przybyla, thank you for joining us with your breaking news reporting. really important to get us started tonight. and jonathan, please stick around with us. when we come back, two friends of rudy giuliani who have worked with rudy giuliani were described by their lawyer as members of donald trump s legal team. they have also been described as alleged criminals working for russian gangsters, and they are actually currently indicted. former justice department official matt miller will join us to connect those dots along with former federal prosecutor mimi rocah, next. about 50% of people with severe asthma have too many cells called eosinophils in their lungs. eosinophils are a
about it given the sensitivities of, you know, who rudy giuliani is and who he s close to and who he might hear things from. i m not saying the southern district doesn t trust other people in the department of justice but, you know, you could just decide this we re putting a lid on this. i think what s interesting, though, one thing that s interesting about this statement that was put out by the department of justice, is they say had we known that giuliani s associates were under investigation, we wouldn t have met with giuliani. those two things don t necessarily follow. if associates of mine, and i m a defense attorney, are under investigation but i, you know, have nothing to do with that investigation, that doesn t there s no reason why i couldn t get a meeting with the department of justice. it s only if that investigation has to do with me. and remember, the southern district, the department of justice, has never officially confirmed that rudy giuliani is under investigation.
the mueller report, parnas posted this victory photo with rudy giuliani and trump s personal attorney jay sekulow at a celebratory dinner. joining our discussion now, mimi rocah, former assistant u.s. attorney in the southern district of new york and matt miller, a former spokesman for attorney general eric holder. they are both msnbc contributors. mimi, i am fascinated by the compartmentalization apparently of the knowledge that rudy giuliani and his friends were under investigation. so, we have it s since been revealed that, yes, william barr knew about it, was known about it at the highest levels because it s normal to report those kinds of things from u.s. attorneys, but apparently not enough people in the justice department knew about it so that some of them were granting meetings with rudy giuliani. yeah. look, it s possible that, i mean, that that s true. sometimes the right hand/left hand, you know, don t know what the other one is doing. it s also possible that there was a