the new york times, and in the new york times article it references that he learned this almost two weeks ago. he s certainly been doing a lot of media interviews over the past two weeks. why is he dropping this now, do you think, on a sunday afternoon? you know, it s hard to know. i can tell you though that taking a look at the president s tweets and knowing now that he and rudy giuliani have spoken all weekend about this, about the issue of the informant, seeing the tweets, seeing this come out in the media interviews he s given, it would appear to be a coordinated strategy. i can tell you having talked to rudy giuliani for stories in the past, oftentimes he doesn t give you information until you ask a specific question. doesn t mean he s trying to obfuscate or hold anything back. just the way he works. we want to get into the tweets in a little bit but i want to go to paul butler for a second and ask you about the timing of this. does it make sense to you that somebody like
all right. two big breaking news stories that we re following for you this hour. the president s attorney rudy giuliani himself telling nbc news that robert mueller will wrap up his obstruction inquiry by september 1st, his words, not ours. before the mid-term elections is when giuliani is saying that would happen. there is no confirmation of that whatsoever from the mueller team, and the other breaking story we re following for you, president trump tweeting out a demand to the doj about what he has been calling a spy or informant that he claims infiltrated his campaign. let s bring back my panel i have with me david corn, paul butler and malcolm nance. david, let me pick up with you. what is the president hoping to achieve by launching this investigation that we re seeing today and keep in mind this is the department of justice where he has appointed his top two
what s in your wallet? so, we re continuing to follow two breaking stories in the russia investigation. president trump s lawyer rudy giuliani telling nbc news that special counsel robert mueller will wrap up his obstruction by investigation obstruction investigation by september 1st, and today the president tweeting his demand that the justice
the showdown that he s been brace for with rod rosenstein as well as the attorney general, jeff sessions. these are two guys that he personally appointed. there s obviously been a lot of history between jeff sessions and donald trump publicly. do you see this, the fact that he tweeted out to make a public demand as setting up a showdown now with the attorney general, do you think that he is now back in the mix, that his job is on the line if in fact he defies the president? i think he very well could be. always hard to know. we ve seen the president make demands out of justice department before and venting. damaging as it is, i don t want to minimize it by saying it s venting. he doesn t follow through. if he does follow through that s exactly what he s doing. if he comes in and calls rosenstein or has the white house chief of staff call rosenstein, he s asking him to take an unethical action, to launch an investigation where there is no criminal predcality and to cover up the presid
department open an investigation into whether the fbi and the department of justice surveilled his presidential campaign for political purposes. joining me now matthew miller and msnbc justice and security analyst and former public affairs director for the former department of justice and back with us again paul butler and former federal prosecutor. great to have you join the conversation. let me begin with you. first of all, you were at the department of justice. how frequent and how often does it happen that the president can ask the department of justice or fbi for an inquiry or possible investigation? put aside for a moment that this president decided to tweet it out to the world that he ll demand it but the very nature of it, is it something that s common or frequent? basically never happens. the own instances where it happens it if there s a terrorist attack or a massive school shooting or something like this where the president, you know, obvious threat to public safety where