indicating that president trump has known since january 6th, 2017 the new york times reports tonight that the president was briefed and real specifics how vladimir putin specifically ordered the invasion, the attack on our election and that donald trump has known this for a couple of weeks before he was inaugurated. lawrence, i m permitted to comment specifically on what the president was briefed and given the briefing but i can say this, as a member of the gang of eight, i was kept abreast of what the russians were doing in realtime during the election. i continued to get briefings after the election during the period in which donald trump was in the president elect and not just the gang of eight members, the candidate, the major presidential candidates will get a briefing on certain intelligence. when they become the president
discredit the investigation. therefore, he can never simply back down. the juggling act just became much more difficult at approximately 9:45 p.m. tonight when this article came out because donald trump now and the white house press secretary in the future are going to have to contend with this report that the president was shown e-mails and texts that proved that vladimir putin personally ordered this and ordered it to sway the election. donald trump saying i don t know, could be other people is manifestly a publically proven lie now. yeah. and it will come out and lie about that lie and say that of course many times you have seen him do this in the past. he did it over the past several days. he has come out and publically said that the russians interfered in the election. they always leave off he then casts doubt on them with other
in his campaign, in his administration and everyone who might be talking to the investigators about this. yeah. i mean, look, if just lying per se were an impeachable crime, donald trump would have been gone after the first week, right? but this is in furtherance of what one could argue is an ongoing criminal conspiracy, right? because it is to obscure facts that he knows, that putin actually did meddle with the election and indeed is continuing to do so and you could argue, i think, that that is an ongoing criminal conspiracy in which the president on that level, at least, is participating. now, i don t know if you could prove that in a federal court, but, of course, in the house of representatives in terms of drawing up articles of impeachment, that s a different
we are back with more of our breaking news coverage of this new york times report tonight saying that headlined from the start trump has muddied a clear message, that putin interfered. the new york times is reporting tonight that president trump has known since he was president-elect trump, on january 6th, 2017, that vladimir putin personally ordered the russian attack on our election and ordered it to sway the outcome of the election in favor of donald trump. the evidence according to the new york times report tonight the evidence included texts from russian military officers and information gleaned from a top secret source close to mr. putin who had described to the cia how
the kremlin planned to execute its campaign of hacking and disinformation. this was all presented to president-elect trump in trump tower on january 6th, 2017. the director of the cia, john brennan, was there. james comey, director of the fbi was there. director of the nsa was there. it was a full intelligence community briefing of the newly elected president and the president has known beyond a reasonable doubt, having been shown absolute proof of this since january 6th, 2017, that the russians at the specific direction of vladimir putin did indeed attack and attempt to corrupt the american presidential election. joining us is frank, a former fbi assistant director for counter intelligence and a national security expert for msnbc and nbc news. matt miller and gene robinson