today on inside politics , new and exclusive reporting reveals the special counsel is asking questions about an oval office free for all, and the free yeo who pushed donald t trump. plus, hiring is solid, but new numbers fall short. does it all point to another rate hike from the fed that could crunch your credit? and the freedom caucus purges marjorie taylor greene from its ranks over questions about where her loyalties lie, to the hard right or to the house speaker. i m abbey philip in for dana bash. let s go inside politics . up first, the screaming patch at the center of the special counsel s investigation. exclusive cnn reporting gives new insights into jack smith s months long focus on that december 18th 2020 oval office meeting. the people inside that room and ses brat and legal ideas that then pushed donald trump. and cnn s caitlin pollonz is part a that report. what does this tell us about where jack smith is in the process? this reporting from a keep of us led
in that july 26th raid fbi agents seized documents related to special counsel robert mueller s sprawling russia investigation. i own nothing in russia. i have no loans in russia. i don t have any deals in russia. and in a last russiagate revelations this week we learned that trump s business was still trying to make that deal with russia for a trump tower in moscow happen at the same time that he was running for president of the united states. that s the million dollar question you ask. the outcomes razor here, the simple thing for everyone to think about is the explanation for why this is occurring is does it line donald trump s wallet? special counsel robert mueller now has a draft of the original letter that trump wrote firing comey which offers an unvarnished view of trump s motive. trump poured all of his rage into a letter filled with, quote, his unfettered thoughts which he dictated to adviser steven miller and which they
you don t have to rob a bank, right, to actually plan to rob a bank and take the money. let me be clear, i never had meetings with russian operatives or russian intermediaries about the trump campaign. the new revelations, if true, contradict the various explanations that sessions has offered about the content of those conversations. special counsel robert mueller is now tapping multiple grand jurys in his investigation of russia s interference in our election. news of a recent fbi raid on one of paul manafort s homes had donald trump trying to put daylight between himself and his one-time campaign chief. in that july 26th raid fbi agents seized documents related to special counsel s robert mueller s sprawling russia investigation. i own nothing in russia. i have no loans in russia. i don t have any deals in russia. and in a last russiagate revelations this week we learned that trump s business was still trying to make that deal with
confusing. ken, let me begin with you. walk us through the scenarios and expectations for monday. well, thomas, if, as our sources are telling us, this indictment is made public monday, i think it s going to have a significant and hard to predict impact, because what this is, the american public has been hearing a lot about this investigation for many months. but now they will see an investigation into the president s campaign, whether it colluded with russia, has resulted in criminal charges. and then the question will be, are these figures close to the president? and are these charges related to russia, or are they ancillary, tangential charges like lying to federal investigators or tax evasion? i think the very to that question will tell us how much of a political impact this will have. in terms of procedurally, how the day will go, one or more defendants will turn themselves in or be arrested. they ll have an appearance before a federal magistrate, be granted bail. but the answer
is it just easier to go for obstruction of justice and also as ken was pointing out, to follow the money, basically, to look at connections as opposed to teams actively working together, hand in hand, to throw this election? well, it could come at it in two ways. one is, i think we have remember that mueller is a very serious guy. he s got enormous experience, not just as director of the fbi, but he was a federal prosecutor before that. he s amassed a team that s extremely highly respected for their expertise, money laundering, international financial transactions and so forth. so i don t think there s any question that he s looking in an extremely serious way. i would be surprised if he s winding down the investigation. what this shows is that they re very seriously going forward. on the other hand, you can t get everything all at once. so it may be that at the same time, they may be trying to, if