Chris Hayes discusses the days top news. Confused, one goal of mr. Giuliani was pretty evident. Ive been sitting here looking in the federal code trying to find collusion as a crime. Its not. Collusion is not a crime. I dont even know if thats a crime, colluding about russians. Okay. You start analyzing the crime, the hacking is the crime. That certainly is the origin of the the president didnt hack. Of course not. Thats the he didnt pay them for hacking. As you know, it has led the meeting with the russians. If you got the hacked information from the russians here at cnn and you played it would you be in jeopardy of going to jail . Of course not. Okay. The president didnt hack and he didnt pay for the hacking. So thats an interesting thing to say. That, though, you that see there, is an idea that trumps allies have trotted out before. It doesnt hold up to legal scrutiny at all, particularly when you consider that mueller has already charged more than a dozen russians with conspiring a
Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes. One day before President Trumps former Campaign Manager is going to stand trial in Federal Court for Money Laundering and bank fraud in relation to his work for a prorussian Political Party in ukraine and one day after the president went on possibly his most aggressive twitter rant yet about the mueller investigation, which he called the operation an illegal scam, trumps lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was out today wildly, desperately spinning to try to accomplish two very specific things. One, move the goalposts to say that collusion is not a crime, and two, to get ahead of the emerging storyline of a Trump Campaign strategy meeting that maybe occurred two days before the Infamous Trump tower meeting that had promised dirt on Hillary Clinton. In two interviews this morning, interviews that were often confusing, bewildering, and in which giuliani often seemed confused, one goal of mr. Giuliani was pretty evident. Chris Hayes discusses the days top ne
Here at the table for the hour, Steve Schmidt and matt miller. But first, to react for the first time, single threads different threads of a single story. Questions about russians and contact with people in the president s inner circle. Former cia director john brennan, lucky for us, now a Senior National security and Intelligence Analyst for msnbc and nbc news. I understand now, sitting here today, why donald trump a week or so ago said dont believe what you see, dont believe what you hear on the news channels, because when you take all these events just this week together, they paint a very compromising position for this president on the question of russian influence. I think thats right, nicolle. I think weve seen over the course of the last two years basically an effort on the part of President Trump and others to pry to inoculate Public Perceptions of what actually
happened during the campaign. First, there were no meetings. Then there were meetings, but they were focused on adopt
had the sensibility to walk in and tell the truth the first time to robert mueller is a fantasy, that every one of the people who probably known t the meeting, because it is a small campaign, not a lot of chances that they didn t know what the meeting was about, they all told this lie to the press, to each other, to the rest of the white house, that the idea of every one of those people on the list of six names that robert mueller sent over, after it came out wasn t about adoption, could be in serious legal jeopardy. no doubt that s true. what we ve known for a long time, was there collusion? of course there was. when the leading officials of the presidential campaign go to a meeting with russian intelligence operatives for the purpose of receiving dirt on the democratic party s nominee for president, they were colluding with a hostile foreign intelligence power. what i don t know is does it meet the legal definition of felony conspiracy against the united states? and that s what we
know it was about adoption. then it wasn t about adoption. well, okay, they said here s dirt on hillary clinton. well, then we actually did talk about it after. so this seems to be part of the pattern, where every time you keep pushing on this one meeting you get more disclosure. yeah, that s right. and it s not the only case they ve done that. it s been true about the relationship with stormy daniels where they had one story first and they came out with another one. i think it kind of goes to this question two things. one is you talked about the importance of telling your lawyer everything. one of the reasons in a situation like this where your lawyer s going to come out publicly and talk su set the goalposts in the right place and you don t set the goalpost first my client never did this only to later move the goalpost to, well, yes, he did it but it s not actually illegal after all, which is what we see them doing. in some ways you re right in your analysis at the beginning