as long as he wasn t representing himself as part of the campaign. right. and there has been a lot of scrutiny of this trip. and a lot of different stories about the trip. and it s been really unclear. it s been hard to pin down exactly what happened and who he met. and what became of it. and so i think this was significant because it is the first time that he s acknowledging that he did meet with russian officials. but there is obviously more to learn. mark, i appreciate the reporting. fascinating. another detail. back now with the panel, jeff. could we just step back and ask, how many members of the trump campaign met with representatives of the russian government? george papadopoulos. carter page. donald trump junior. jared kushner. paul manafort. jeff sessions. what s going on? and as congressman jeffries pointed out, when asked about it, virtually all of them, let s
different ways in telegraphing that something was coming at the clinton campaign. these are all extremely close trump associates who have been disingenuous about their communication. when donald trump continues to maintain nothing happened. it s all a hoax. well, michael. why can t they come clean? is it possible, you and i have talked about this before, there is another explanation to this? again, this is all just that i think you and i have talked about this. the idea that trump didn t expect to win and was looking for possible future business dealings and jared kushner and manafort also had financial interests in maintaining contacts with russia? that a lot of these people had, carter page you could argue as well, i guess george papadopoulos as well, would have had some even if he wasn t going to become president, it wouldn t hurt to continue business in russia? i think actually at the outset a lot of the outreach to russia was business driven. trump wanting his hotel.
and that s an example anyone else going through any investigation that they be as truthful as possible. you got the impression from k carter page that he was telling the truth? this is under oath. oh, you mean judy woodruff is not under oath? anderson is not under oath? he s only responsible in the national committee. if anyone believes you have heard the last and final version of carter page, i think you are not paying full attention. right. he s the meaning of the person in this campaign. he keeps changing what a meeting is. way to bring up are you saying he learned from bill clinton? could have. we ll take a quick break. new details tonight on the dnc chair s claim that the primary election was rigged. we ll hear from campaign manager robby mook next.
asking these questions and he wants them to be truthful. i think it s important we are following the money trail now things that happened before the campaign. but the real crux of what people are focused on is russian collusion and that s where we need to find out in the meeting back in march what did george p have the authority to do, did the president go along with it. here s what we do know happened, i ve talked with j.d. gordon, he was in that meeting. and he said, look, this young kid who was on the foreign policy team, he brought this up, tried to suggest the meeting between the president and vladimir putin, jeff sessions says absolutely not. that was shut down. it never came up again. but he took it upon himself to go around their backs and go to other people in the campaign to try to get this going. so right now what we are seeing is younger people, they were not volunteers, these were unpaid people that were advisers on the foreign policy team between gorge p. and carter page.
that the administration has not done to date, about his contact with russians, if any. and of course the president wasn t wrong whether he said paul manafort s commercial dealings don t necessarily point to the campaign. but this guy has a long track record of working with pro russian entities and people in ukraine. so we re going to want to know whether there was any follow on. we learned yesterday carter page who gave hours of testimony, apparently told the committee that he had mentioned to jeff sessions at a meeting that, or in passing, that he was going to go to russia. are you willing to cut jeff sessions slack that this might have been something said in passing and not something that he should have remembered in his multiple testimonies? having been in the room when carter page said that, i ll tell you being in the room with carter page is really something. when the transcript comes out and the transcript will be out.