Coverage of national and international news, including breaking stories. Trump tower meeting between allegedly his son and some russians and some other folks. And it is true that parts of that investigation have blossomed into whole new areas, such as the manafort trial, which has nothing at all to do with the original russia investigation. In fact its one of the bases that manafort asked the judge to throw that case out, that it exceeded the power of the Special Counsel. So its hard to say what exactly Kristin Davis has information about, because the scope of this investigation is so broad. Just to give a little better sense pulling back the curtain from my conversations in my day job working over at the white house, in a series of conversations i had late this week with sources close to the president , they all tell me that the president s frustration specifically as it relates to paul manafort, remember that specific case he attacked as a hoax on twitter earlier this week, is in the
Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. By the letters, chs. Confidential human source. Now, the trove of documents detail reports of payments to steele, mostly redacted. You can see there, thats a lot of white space. There are two exceptions. The final page is information from a document, from february 2016. Of course, thats long before the russia probe began. It says steele was, quote, verbally admonished by the fbi and that steele acknowledged the admonishment and even signed a document noting it. Now, from this excerpt, which obviously is tantalizing, we dont have the wider context of why. The other item comes from page two of these new documents. It concerns the fbis decision to terminate its relationship with steele. Guess when . Just days before the 2016 election. Now, this document says steele had confirmed his relationship with the fbi to an outside party. And that he was a source for a, quote, online article. In addition to revealing his relationshi
Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. They are known as the steele dossier. They allege, among other things, that the Trump Campaign had organized collusion with the kremlin. Quote, this is something of huge significance. Way above party politics, that Intelligence Officer told corn, that would be steele. Quote, i think trumps own party should be aware of this stuff, as well. The official confirmation of the fbi investigation into the Trump Campaigns contacts with russia was not confirmed for many more months. Its even easy to forget that, because its the kind of big information thats the center of American Politics, so we all talk about it. People who dont even follow the news know about it. But lets be clear. It was not until march 2017, many months later is, thats after the inauguration, after the election, when fbi director james comey went down to the hill, where he was testifying and said, yes, there was an open probe. By that time, the fbi had also i
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
Exploring issues that affect leaders in the U. S. And around the globe. About. Can the legal system resist a Political Campaign led by the president of the United States. My favorite weird anecdote of yesterday, at One Point Giuliani was running out of so many people to talk to, he had to talk to a fellow lawyer. Jay sekulow had a radio show. Here is jay sekulow interviewing Rudy Giuliani, his boss as the attorney. Listen. Mayor, i know youve said and ive said we want to see this come to closure soon here. Mayor . Yeah, we do. Its about time that it ends. I also think, and i hope the Special Counsel is as sensitive to it as we are. We do not want to run into the november elections. So back up from that. This should be over with by September 1st. Is that a threat . Look, its throwing everything at the wall and trying to see what sticks. I think everything thats said here is correct. This is a political messaging campaign, but its not without peril, right . Everything Rudy Giuliani said