they developed the trump soho hotel together. felix seder is a career criminal with organized crime ties and the president maintained a relationship with him for over a decade and routinely said in public, i don t know him well. i m distancing myself from him. now with these e-mails, you see the president is not distant from felix seder, and in fact felix seder is the point person on a deal the trump organization is trying to do in moscow. it raises this quid pro quo issue that i think is going to be central to the mueller investigation, going beyond just collusion in the election. it s were there favors sought from the kremlin in return for certain quid pro quos? and people ix seder kept an office in trump tower during some of this period where donald trump says, oh, i didn t see him very much. and steve harper, on this release of what is basically evidence in the case, could it be that some of the defense lawyers involved with some of
from. they don t think like we do. they don t believe in quid pro quos, they believe in inspiration of the great leader and the instructions he gives. so it s a dark zone when you negotiate with them. but i think there is a diplomatic solution, in the end, as they did releasing this canadian recently, they end up taking steps that lower the temperature. and i think that s what we have to find, kris. one of the things that a lot of people are talking about obviously, and we heard it from rex tillerson today, yum anymorety on the u.n. security council, on the decision for tougher sanctions and david had a really interesting op-ed today, and i m going to read in part, it says if washington and beijing managed to stay together in dealing with pyongyang, the door opens on a new era in which china will play a larger and
for years intimately, got sued for it by him. there s an irony here that this is sort of the one realm or this is a major realm that he has always refused to discuss, refused to go into and release his tax returns and this seems to be an avenue that the investigators are looking into. yeah. and i think the president can talk about red lines and witch hunts but mueller is within his rights. to probe these issues. it goes to the heart, i think, of any quid pro quos that existed between the trump organization and the kremlin, the trump campaign and the kremlin, the trump white house and the kremlin. these are issues that have to get explored. and i think the reason he s so focused on this on almost a daily basis for months now is because he s concerned about what he might expose. he s got past relationships in his business relationship with the trump organization and relationships that i think came to the fore during the election that are problematic for him. so the trump supporters s
associates, including paul manafort, michael flynn, is directed to the special counsel probe. so even if it has nothing to do with russia or the 2016 election, it will go to robert mueller and there s a couple reasons for that. obviously they want to investigate every lead they can but it could be used as a tool to gain leverage in order to encourage cooperation among some of the subjects, anderson. pamela brown, thank you very much. stay with us. joining the conversation is timothy o brien, trump biographer. you looked into trump s finances for years intimately, got sued for it by him. there s an irony here that this is sort of the one realm or this is a major realm that he has always refused to discuss, refused to go into and release his tax returns and this seems to be an avenue that the investigators are looking into. yeah. and i think the president can talk about red lines and witch hunts but mueller is within his rights. it goes to the heart of any quid pro quos that existed
things later in the summer, that all of those facts are the kinds of things a prosecutor reviews in order to prove coordination. on the face of it just have a meeting with somebody who claims to be a russian official, who claims to have information from the kremlin that is damaging to your political opponent, on the face of it that meeting alone isn t necessarily illegal? right. if you knew nothing else about what was happening in this context, the it s untoward. well, but we have all the facts leading up to it. so as well as usual saying all the solicitations or this didn t happen in a vacuum. it s all of that together that leads to the circumstantial case of coordination. okay. so if you are looking at this case, say, you re robert mueller, what are you looking for next? well, i think you want to know whether what happened in that meeting is what they say happened, was it really about adoptions, was it maybe about e-mails, was it about sort of quid pro quos that m