calls. but then emin about a month ago gave a full interview on, i believe, vice on hbo, in which he said, no, we did speak. and he laid out what they said, and it seemed a bit vague, but at the end of it, he said, don said, if you re ask for the meeting, i ll do it. so i ve always said this, my e-mail was designed to get don junior s attention, not to get a meeting. and it worked. so manafort and kushner, you didn t invite them. did you know that they were going to the meeting? not until after that phone call. how do you think they got invited to meeting? if my e-mail from don junior is to be believed, he said, also joining us will be paul manafort and my brother-in-law, jared kushner. i assumed i always had assumed, after that call, he invited them. which is why i always thought, that call is what s important. do you think that there s any reason to believe that the president or then-candidate knew about the meeting, wanted his guys there, wanted hi son there,
there are conversations between your client and donald jr. we know this. that there are records of the conversations. donald jr. says, i don t remember any of those. but you say in the book, oh, he remembers. he has to remember, because after those conversations, that s when the meeting was made. you weren t on those calls. i wasn t on those calls. but your confidence is 100% they talked about this. i can only go by what i ve read and what i ve seen. so i ve seen testimony from don jr. in which he s said, i believe there are a few short calls. but then emin about a month ago gave a full interview on, i believe, vice on hbo, in which he said, no, we did speak. and he laid out what they said, and it seemed a bit vague, but at the end of it, he said, don said, if you re ask for the meeting, i ll do it. so i ve always said this, my e-mail was designed to get don junior s attention, not to get a meeting. and it worked. so manafort and kushner, you
have this new set of allegations concerning contacts that paul manafort made and tried to make with other witnesses in this case between february and april is really quite surprising. he sort of through multiple channels, telephone calls and electronic communications tried to contact other witnesses to tell them his side of the story or at least that s whate appeared to be trying to say. and evidently the witnesses went to bob mueller and turned over the evidence of those communications to the special counsel s office. michael, let me just get this right. so manafort s out on this $10 million bond. as he s out, these investigators find him talking to these witnesses and through the witnesses they have discovered paul manafort tried communicating with them through some sort of encryption app to pass along informati that he never should be doing in the first place. and he got in trouble for it.
papadopoulos tell you verbally or in an e-mail that russian officials told them they had dirt on hillary clinton, specifically thousands of her e-mails. do you ever remember receiving that message from george pop lop dou papadopoulos? i don t remember that. he was such a low level volunteer, i don t remember much interaction with him. i wonder if paul manafort is still glad the kids and some others kicked corey lewandowski out so manafort could run the campaign? corey lewandowski moments ago on the today show. joining us now, chris matthews, host of hardball. his new book, bobby kennedy, a raging spirit is out today. obviously we have to start with the big news of the day. yesterday, what s your take away from yesterday?
so manafort released a statement saying in part, this is manafort s request that the department of justice release any intercepts involving him and any non-american so trds parties can come to the same conclusion as a doj. there s nothing there. what do you make of this, and any way the doj will comply with that the. well, the department of justice is going to comply with the evidence as they find it. don, they have come to this because almost everyone on donald trump s team has not been forthcoming about their contacts. they have denied them, and only when confronted with overwhelming evidence have they started to acknowledge them. it s really unfortunate it s come to this. hopefully paul manafort and others will just be straightforward to the american