strategy session to talk about how to approach this infamous trump tower meeting with the russians. and as we parsed rudy guiliani s words there, what he seems to be saying or could be saying is that michael cohen is now saying that such a meeting took place with these other people. and that these other people deny that. so there seems to be a dispute about whether there was such a meeting. but even that is huge news. never before discussed or revealed to the public. if that s cohen s story now. because what it would suggest is that this meeting, far from the nothing burger that some of the participants have described in kind of a 20-minute useless waste of time, they were strategizing for it, if this is true, getting ready for it. and it raises the stakes again for what this meeting may have been. after all, it was taken with a promise of incriminating information about hillary clinton, the democratic candidate for president, hallie. so, ken, i know you re going to continue to work
the meeting with the russians. the other thing that s contradicted is cohen also now says, because he says too much, that two days before, he would participate in a meeting with roughly the same group of people, but not the president. definitely not the president in which they were talking about the strategy of the meeting with the russians. the people in that meeting deny it. the people we ve been able to interview. the people we have not been able to interview have never said that about that meeting. so i m joined now by nbc news intelligence and national security reporter, ken delaney. ken, can you explain this? details about a meeting before this meeting with the russians that everyone has talked about. reporter: as you can imagine, hallie, i ve spent the last hour trying to get to the bottom of this. a source familiar with the congressional testimony of all these participants, paul manafort, donald trump jr., jared kushner and michael cohen said none of them brought up the ide
more problematic is cohen s new claim that the president was aware of the trump tower meeting previously and certainly the person with the bulls eye on them is don jr., he testified under oath contrary to that. right. he is the one that very much could be caught up for a lie if that s in fact what it turns out to be. sham shan wu, thank you. no details have been shared how to improve election security, but politics reporter is with us and cnn national security analyst. thank you for being here. jeremy, i understand you would not want to give too much into a strategy because you toent wado to compromise information. do we know if there s in fact a
that scares people in trump world, because he, as trump s lawyer, knows all of the skeletons, where all the bodies potentially are buried. reports he tape recorded telephone conversations and would do the president s, you know, dirty work as his xer. trump advisers that i talked to are less concerned these days with robert mueller s investigation as pertains to the actual campaign, but are worried about what the cohen matter might uncover. we have no idea what someone told me yesterday if there is one person that can blow up trump it iscohen. according to a source close to cohen, we show note, reached for comment, cone wrote in a text message to vanity fair, your alleged source is wrong. from michael cohen. all we have as of late. is he scared? is cohen, is he fearful right now? nervous? is he anxious? what are your sources telling you about his emotional stat if will you? volatile and there have been reports to this in the past. he s feeling isolated.