inflounce t influence the proceeding. i want to go back to what matt was saying about the lies around trump tower. this is one of those things regardless of why they lied, why he lied, it s a huge deal. this was a fraud on the american public. this was donald trump we know from the cohen plea documents was in communication with michael cohen, knowing michael cohen was talking to the putin government about a project that needed vladimir putin s approval. while the russians were attacking our country, attacking our election. and he lied about it. he said it wasn t happening. would he have been elected president if the voters knew that information? regardless of why it hand, it s a huge deal on its face i think, nicolle. ken, i know you re freezing, hate asking you one more question but i m going to ask you one more question. you make the perfect point. we re having this narrow legal conversation. as someone who spent my career on the political side of this, it is a political scanda
some former intels call a political 9/11, it might have been a very different outcome. exactly. and i think we can extrapolate that through the whole investigation. even if robert mueller does not bring a massive conspiracy indictment that proves donald trump sat down with some russians and orchestrated the whole thing, that doesn t mean there isn t an enormous, potentially impeachable scandal here, that these people took meetings with russian folks who are were connected to an intelligence operation to manipulate our election. whether they did it wittingly or unwittingly, they were warned by the fbi and took no action. they took the trump tower meeting. the fbi told them they should call the authorities if russians contacted them. they didn t do that. that is a scandal, nicolle. if it wasn t zero minus 400, would i keep you talking but i will let you go. matt apuzo, great to have you back. joyce, ken, thank you all. after the break, donald trump on fake news and what he consider
in 2016 the last conversation he had about the project was he said, quote, i would sap it was early to middle of the year. now, i don t know that cohen didn t go a little bit longer than that. i don t think it would be much longer. he added, i was running for president. i was doing really well. the last thing i cared about was building a building. matt, joyce, ken and heidi are all back. joyce, this seems to be that sort of heartbeat of the mueller probe, was there a financial tie? was russia aware of things that we weren t aware of back here in terms of donald trump s pursuit of a real estate project there? and the president seemed in this interview to come a whole lot closer to corroborating michael cohen s timeline than his own original position, which the talks stopped in january of 2016. yeah, this is what you have to do as a defend or as a subject of an investigation, if
with some of our favorite reporters and friends, the new york times s reporter matt apuzo is back, joyce vance is here and nbc news national political reporter heidi preside preside president billia and at the white house today, ken dill lanian. ken, let s start with you. i understand all of the flamboyant press conferences may be coming to an end. they may be coming to an end, nicolle. the judge made it clear she wants her parties to do they re talking in the court, not outside as roger stone had been doing. he said it was okay to talk about immigration or tom brady but not about the facts of this case. she said she s entertaining a gag order and she asks both sides to submit briefs. i guess the main news that came out of this today, nicolle, was that the mueller team talked about a trial date of october in the fall. she said she would prefer one in august but she would entertain
october. some are not objecting to that, going along with waiving the right to a speedy trial because of the massive amounts of evidence rob the mueller is essentially dumping on them. he said he sees terabytes of information, i believe, over the course of a year or more in subpoenas to telecom providers and to you know, banks and financial institutions. now he s turning that over to stone s team with hard drives, and they have to go through it all. he also sees some material in the search of stone s house and office. that they are still going through. they re doing a filter on that to make sure none of it is privileged. they also turned that over to stone s lawyers as well. it will take some time before this case goes to trial, th nicolle. ken, i would love your comments on reports by maggie peterson and baker being assured by rosenstein he was not the target of a subject or probe.