weapon. he was now being summoned to rome where he spoeent hours in a discreet location telling american officials, some of whom had flown in from the united states, about his findings. the russians had damaging information about trump s personal behavior and finances that could be used to pressure the gop nominee. what s more, the kremlin is carrying out an operation with the campaign s help to tilt the u.s. election a plot steele said was ordered by vladimir putin. the fbi investigators treated steele as a peer, a russia expert so well trusted he assisted the justice department on past case, he provided briefing materials for british prime ministers and at least one u.s. president. during intense questioning that day in rome, they alluded to some of their own findings of ties between russia and the trump campaign. so this is new information. by this point, by the fall, september or october, 2016, before the election, christopher steele had been a key source for
steele s perspective my first thought has to be for your country. how else can i sound this alarm? now republicans in congress are trying to persuade the justice department to bring charges against him for having done that. joining us now is one of the reporters who broke this latest news and gave us this narrative detail about christopher steele, tom hamburger, national reporter for the washington post, hamburg hamburger, thank you for being with us. thanks so much. good to be with you. this report comes in the midst of a concerted attack on christopher steele himself fr republicans in congress, they re alleging he was basically peddling false information to try to take down donald trump for political purposes. one of the things that you disclose in this new reporting here is that there were at least a couple of meetings between christopher steele and the washington post during the time that this reporting describes. given that, given that you at the post met with him, tha
what s happened now, rachel, is that christopher steele is sort of moved to the center of the polarized fight that we re seeing so you have the nunes memo from the house intelligence committee that suggests that the fbi really didn t appropriately alert the fisa court, the court that granted a search warrant for monitoring carter page. that there was insufficient disclosure of who christopher steele was. and senator lindsey graham has raised the question publicly and in his letters to the fbi saying is christopher steele an informant for the fbi or is he in fact a political hired gun, an opposition researcher? and he asked the question can you be both. and so, rachel, what we decided to do was to kind of dive into that question and understand as best we can who is christopher steele, what were his
armed with nuclear weapons. he can go into a rage and enter the nuclear launch codes. how bad does it have to get before congress does something? he s here in person, he s here in studio. joining us is michael beschloss, nbc news presidential historian. great to see you. great to be here. i almost missed you there. i m used to high fiving you through the satellite. it s a pleasure to do it here. we broke this story a little bit in terms of the president setting up what appears to be a russia scandal legal defense fund and we were first to break the story that the legal document setting this thing up had been posted online with the office government ethics. we ve started to figure out the sticky wickets including the question of whether the president s inaugural committee
her name is ching hai, she s the leader of a religious cult. she had her own fashion line, she had a big chain of international restaurants, her followers were so devoted to her that i kid you not they used to buy her old socks. you get socks that wear them out, in her case her old warn t out socks, her followers would buy them and trade them amongst themselves like treasure. in the late 90s, ching hai, the supreme master of zen, she and a bunch of her many followers gave a really generous gift to the president of the united states. reporter: how would american followers of an obscure religious cult based in taiwan try to help bill and hillary clinton pay their legal bills. a cult with an odd blend of fashion, vegetarianism and buddhist teachings.