there are so many different levels of law enforcement in some fashion looking at the president or his family or the organization? how did you interpret that reference? reporter: it s so important that people understand that law enforcement never operate in asylum. mueller s team are under lock and key. mueller has to deal all the time with other agencies, other u.s. attorney s offices. we know there has been overlap and coordination with the southern district of new york. the district of kilometer yamplt have you all sorts of offshoots of the case. law enforcement is overlapping, even in far less complex cases. i wasn t dealing with southern district of new york people. i was dealing with dea, u.s. attorney s office, sometimes with state officials. so you have to understand that there are a lot of people who could have information. the question, though, is what is the level of directness? first-hand information is one thing. but it sounds in this case the buzzfeed people were relying
thinking, not hyperbole and tribalism. and that just got much more difficult. i want to know what you think. go to my website smer dconissme. do you believe remuneration will emerge regarding the buzzfeed allegations of president trump directing michael cohen to lie to congress? co joining me to discuss this is a former prosecutor of the southern district of new york. elly, before trump gets cocky, you know, despite everything i ve just said, hadn t mueller ratcheted up his own credibility and made it more difficult the next time the president wants to say witch hunt, because people will remember that mueller in this instance threw a flag. reporter: absolutely, michael. look, robert mueller already had sort of the highest credibility that one can have in this profession. i think he just enhanced that
the president twitter teases a major announcement about the southern border he ll be making saturday afternoon. the 11th hour on a friday night starts right now. good evening once again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. i m steve kerr nacki. brian williams is under the weather. day 729 of the trump administration, day 28 of the shutdown, soon to be day 29. we begin with breaking news. special counsel robert mueller is disputing this buzzfeed report that broke late last night claiming that the president of the united states directed michael cohen to lie to congress about negotiations to build a trump tower in moscow. citing two law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation, buzzfeed reported that trump also endorse add plan to visit russia during the campaign and to meet personally with putin to advance the deal, and that the president in two & two of his children, all
welcome back. it is exceedingly rare for the special counsel s office to comment on anything related to the ongoing russia investigation. robert mueller is known for running a tight ship, one that typically does not leak. that s part of what makes this dispute over buzzfeed s reporting so remarkable. joining us now, cynthia oxney, a former federal prosecutor and veteran of the justice department. jill wine-banks, attorney, former assistant watergate special counsel and msnbc legal analyst. thank you both for being here. cynthia, let me start with you and continue the conversation we were having in the last block and ask you the question that i think everybody is sort of asking and trying to chew over right now. you have this report 24 hours ago from buzzfeed that put material out there that immediately suggested, if true, possibility of impeachment. you have the special counsel essentially for the first time
just to add to my point before about how trump is using this to bludgeon all media, in the tweet you showed, he accuses buzzfeed of publishing the fake dossier. buzzfeed recently won a court ruling, a defamation suit that said that it was newsworthy about a public figure and they won on the dossier. again, this allows trump to kind of say everything, buzzfeed, and all other outlets published that i don t like it, it s negative, it s fake news. yeah, and, again, buzzfeed is still standing by this story, again, calling on mueller to put more information out there. matt miller, so much here about the supposed evidence, documentary evidence that their sources tell them that mueller has. in the buzzfeed story, this is referred to as law enforcement sources.