exchange at a hearing that is actually happening now. watch. we know what he is hiding. he doesn t want anybody to see him. i don t think he s hiding anything. so you don t know. are you aware then that by denying this that you are in direct violation of the law? no, absolutely not. i have been advised i am not violating the law. i never would have done anything that violated the law and i have been advised if i turned them over, i would be let me move on, sir. here is the thing. democrats are armed with maybe some new ammo this morning in their fight to get their hands on those tax returns. draft irs memo first obtained by washington post that says the tax returns must be given to congress. there s a catch. unless the president takes the step of invoking executive privilege. the post writes the memo contradicts justification for denying lawmakers request for president trump s tax returns
had the right to do. he also said he didn t divulge its origin. i never mentioned the word or the name. reporter: and the washington post now reports trump has gone to great lengths to keep the specifics of his conversations with the russian president under wraps and that there are no detailed records of his five meetings with putin. trump denies hiding anything. but experts are warning tonight, this overall pattern signals that putin, a former kgb colonel now in charge of the kremlin, could have the upper hand in the relationship and may continue to use trump s deference toward him to his own advantage. doing things like stepping up his aggression in ukraine and in syria and he feels pretty safe from american pushback. if you look at what russian tv says, they basically play around with trump. they make fun of him as being a russian lackey. reporter: and analysts are warning tonight that president trump s patterns with putin are sending signals to america s other rivals and
insist you weren t hiding anything. and then step three, even if you were matter, it s all legal. i need to find out if it does matter. i certainly think it does. i want to bring in my panel. a former federal prosecutor and legal analyst. our guest, a partner of the law firm who represented several white house employees during the clinton scandal. elise jordan, former aide to the george w. bush white house. my friend jason johnson, politipolitic s editor at the root.com. he says cohen s a liar but the president s attorney says cohen and trump are telling the same story about the moscow project. it s not going to work is the short answer. first of all, if he was lying when he was making the statements outside of congress about how there was never a russian deal, and the president
truth matters. we have plenty of differences, josh hawley and i, and we should be campaigning on those. and undercover video from project veritas were a senator said she would be for suffering gun-control laws more than she talks about publicly got her some attention in the race. i voted for most of those things before. so you came out and someone asked you questions about what you would do, what s your reaction to that? well, people know where i stand on this. i stand for the second amendment and gun safety. i voted at the end of fall 11, it s not a secret. the thing about those films that bothered me was not what was on them because you don t do 52 town halls and let anybody come at the door or think you are hiding anything, it was just they hadn t done it themselves and our office has for weeks on end. that guy had access to our computers and he wasn t in there
his deals with the ukrainians so all of that is going to help the defense and i m sure knowing this defense team there is going to be other indications of issues with his credibility, perhaps other bombshells that are yet to come under cross-examinati cross-examination. this is typical of what prosecutors do, they get everything that may be negative out ahead of a cross-examination obviously so that it doesn t appear like they re hiding anything. but the idea we couldn t believe it when we heard yesterday that rick gates said that he had been stealing, essentially, from paul manafort, making up expense reports. that is going to help the defense. laura, do you believe that this testimony that we got yesterday and more of to come this morning from rick gates ups the pressure and the heat on manafort to take the stand? it does.