hurricane harvey material. tell us brief us on things in muellerville right now. sure. our reporting was on the new subpoenas that went out last week. basically there that mueller has subpoenaed six pr firms in washington, d.c., that did work with paul manafort on in a lobbying effort. international lobbying effort, basically. the stated purpose for this it was for ukraine s bid to enter the european union. the subpoenas that are now they had subpoenaed documents. these are for grand jury testimony which is a significant step in the investigation and is obviously serious and suggests that things are moving quick moving forward in terms of the investigation into paul manafort and the back drop is this against against this is that mueller is trying to figure out sort of whether these lobbying effort that paul manafort did with russian backed interests
different corporations where people don t not know. the stimulus act businesses partners of the hhs could tell the personal health of every person in the united states. trish: you think this is a lobbying effort in your view? members of congress that are not willing to go that final step, because they are fearful that somebody is going to pull away the funds for the next campaign? big pharma will pay whatever it has to pay to make sure obamacare is not repealed. big pharma stand to make hundreds of millions of dollars. was they gain access to the personal health information of every american because they may no longer have to spray and pray as advertisements call it when they put out expensive advertisement. instead, they can use the database for potential clients. spew it let us talk about the
crumble is the single most central policy goal that vladimir putin has with respect to the united states. if we see that happen, i think you would have to be really either incredibly stupid or willfully blind not to be able to say, okay, this is the this is the policy piece of the if there s a quid pro quo, here it is. the white house would have to not sign the bill if it passed the senate or house or they have to lobby against its. ken dilanian, are you still with us out in aspen? you left us. he s not listening. he might watch later though. eli, do you get the sense that the white house is ready for sort of an above board lobbying effort against that sanctions bill in house and the senate or trying to weaken the bills? i font know they made a decision on that. this is not a white house that s playing a couple of steps ahead. they re just trying to handle the news of the day. and so that is a question
connected to a real kremlin operation here in this meeting? i think we still need more facts about that. the one thing i want to add that malcolm and matt were talking about in the previous segment, the question ai all along for russia watchers was when russia stood accused of meddling in the american elections, we were all puzzled because if you look at the lobbying effort mounted by natalia veselnitskaya and her cohort, it was laughable. they barely knew how the american political system worked. they didn t know what the dnc was or the d triple c was. they didn t know what florida 17 that district looked like in 2016. like how did they know where to aim their fire? did they have local help? i think that s the big red flag to people who know russia. and maybe she was helping or looking for guidance on where to guide those missiles.
white house somewhere said they would not sign? the reports are that the white house is heavily behind that lobbying effort to stop the sanctions bill which breezed through in a bipartisan basis in the senate. he makes a number of good points but overall the one thing that russia cares most about are those sanctions. the indication we have based on the reporting is the trump officials shortly after the election, mike flynn, did discuss trying to lift those sanctions for russia. that is the most important strategic goal. the trump administration has had its hands tied and unable to do anything like that. the russian compounds story would be another gift to the russians that would be important to them because we know for instance they were conducting a lot of their spy operation out of those compounds. for the most part, the trump