silence. is the payment is to maintain his control over them, then donald trump s paying it is wrong. it also could be a way of evading any restrictions on the rnc paying for it. they re paying donald trump s legal fees and it certainly looks bad to all of those people who can t afford to pay their own whereas donald trump could apoured to pay his to have the rnc paying for him and not for them, but there may be restrictions on the use of campaign money to pay for staff. so it is a nice gesture, but i m afraid that it s going to look very politically bad and that most people will view it as trying to keep witnesses from telling the truth about what they know. julia, we are also reporting tonight that mr. cohn, dot s long time personal attorney is going to appear not at a public haefrg but behind the saepts with investigators from both house intel and senate intel as early as this week. remind us what exposure he might
importantly, his attempts to get help from the kremlin in building a trump tower in moscow. and we have e-mails that show the correspondence where he was asking for help. and this is at a time when donald trump was denying that there was any investment in russia or any interest in investing in rush or any attempt to understand in russia. so there s something that is directly contradicting what the public statements p trump were about investments in russia and it could be the follow the money sign that we know. so i would certainly be focusing on that for now. thank you both for making us smarter on this. julia ansly with us tonight from washington. jill wine-banks from chicago. thank you both very much. another break for us. and coming up, who was john mccain talking about today when he talked about those who evaded responsibility to serve their country in the vietnam era? a pugh lit zbler prize winner
comes two days after michael cohen pled guilty to crimes president trump told him to commit. the week began with news that the president s white house counsel don mcgahn cooperated extensively in the special counsel s probe and spent as much as 30 hours talking to investigators. mcgahn is potentially an eyewitness@obstruction allegation. it increasingly seems like it s every person for themselves in trump s orb it. one by one, they seem to be showing him what loyalty looks like. sessions is pushing back against the president. at this point you have got think people in the white house and the president s orbit are wondering, who isn t working with investigators? joining me julia ansly, joshua
certainly does not need it. sure. what about the news of the immunity going forward? is this likely limited for just this case, or is it something that after it s granted the southern district can woman back and essentially say, hey, we have given you immunity on this stuff we need more immunity. there s two types of immunity. testimonial immunity cannot be used to charge you and use immunity, which essentially you re given a free pass. doj s policy is once someone s given either type of immunity, they re not going to be charged. can it be renewed? absolutely. if weisselberg goes down a certain road and says, i think the extent of the my immunity has been reached here, the southern district can renew or change the focus as necessary. let me bring the panel in here. julia, in a week of all this, weisselberg felt like another big shoe, but how big?
joining us now, julia ansly, justice reporter for nbc news, one of the reporters who broke the flynn news. also with us, eugene robinson, a msnbc plit cap analyst and ron klain, chief of staff to vice presidents and president obama and a former chief counsel of the senate jewish yeah committee. julia, first to your reporting on the flynn case and i should say the flynn cases, michael flynn, the father, michael flynn, the son. yes. i mean, what we re seeing here is a ramped up pressure on michael. the flynn, the father, because he s a very important part of this investigation for robert mueller. if you think about all of the work that mueller s investigation has done over the past few months, pulling documents, all of the data and figures they need, they need people to fill in the gaps, tell narrative of how closely the trump campaign may have worked with russia leading up this election and michael t. flynn, the father, can do that because he worked on the campaign and he also was the