Brian Williams examines the days top political stories and current politicalcampaign news. Our colleague Kristen Welker there is still a steep hurdle to an interview with robert mueller. It would, quote, raise significant article ii questions going to the heart of president ial authority. Its not just about this president but about the presidency. Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani spokes with axios. They report, quote, there are two topics the president s lawyers want to rule out in order to agree to a trump sitdown with mueller. One, why trump fired fbi director james comey. Two, what trump said to comey about the investigation of former National Security adviser michael flynn. Tonight, bloomberg has also spoken to giuliani and also reports that those two topics are off limits. According to bloomberg, giuliani said, quote, if asked the president would tell the Special Counsel that he didnt urge comey to stop Investigating Flynn and Didnt Fire Comey to cut off his investigation into russian int
By the thousands still left. Theres approximately 8,000 of those still left. And so we will not have a winner, we will not have a concession by a loser, in this race until all of those votes are counted by august 18th. That is tonights last word. The 11th hour with Brian Williams starts now. Tonight, President Trump calls the russia investigation an illegally brought rigged witch hunt but says stay tuned. While Rudy Giuliani puts the chance of a sit Down With Mueller at 50 . In the manafort courtroom, the judge tells the jury disregard my criticism of the prosecution. And nearly one year later are we getting closer to learning the truth. What really happened in the dark aftermath of Hurricane Maria in puerto rico. The 11th hour on a thursday night begins now. Good evening once again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. Day 567 of the trump
presidency. Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani spoke with axios. They report, quote, there are two topics the president s lawyers want to rule out
trying to answer them so they wouldn t get follow ups and that mueller s team would not dismiss the answers as not really answering the question and they might have to subpoena him. this has been such a long process in terms of trump wanting to talk to mueller and yet his lawyer is saying if he did he would get in a perjury trap. that it would be very hard for him to tell the truth. in may, the president said he would love to sit down with mueller, but in this new fox interview he said he s finished. there won t be a sit down. do you think mueller will be satisfied with written answers? it s a good question and i don t know the answers. what we see is a president that s finally listening to his attorneys who have advised him not to do this. whether or not mueller accepts the representation by his lawyers that any questions that involve the transition period or
the question is what is the hold up here? why is it that they can t do that? they have known the exact issues for so long. there s nothing really new here. there may be a few new questions at the end and a few wrinkles. but this is a process that has continued to drag. and behind it all is the fact that the president has said he really would like to sit down with mueller, but you have to remember, it s the president s lawyers that are holding him back from that because they
that the president has said he really would like to sit down with mueller, but you have to remember, it s the president s lawyers that are holding him back from that because they don t trust that he ll go in and tell the truth. they think he ll increase his political exposure. so we re sitting here, you know, there s all this speculation about other things mueller may do. but at a very simple level, the president still has not answered questions and laid out his case to mueller about russia. okay, sam stein, our friends and fellow enemies of the people at politico report it this way. quote, you can see it in trump s body language all week long, said a senior republican official in touch with the white house. it led me to believe the walls are closing in and they have been notified by counsel of some actions about to happen. folks are preparing for the worst. sam, does that jibe with your reporting? yes, there was for about a month and a half this reprieve from mueller talk. mueller