Schneider from washington with cnns latest reporting on this derogatory information the russians might have. Reporter john and poppy, two former congressional officials and a source tell cnn russian officials discussed possibly having derogatory information about then president ial candidate donald trump and some of his top aides in conversations intercepted by u. S. Intelligence during the 2016 election. Now, one source described the information as financial in nature and said the discussions center and around whether the russians had leverage with trumps inner circle. The source says the intercepted communications suggested to u. S. Intelligence that russians believed they had the ability to influence the administration through the derogatory information. But the source is privy to the descriptions of the communication written by u. S. Intelligence. They do caution that the russian claims to each other could have been exaggerated or even made up. Now, the details of the communication shed new light on information u. S. Intelligence received about russian claims of influence. The contents of the conversations, though, made clear to the u. S. Officials that russia was considering ways to influence the election, even if their claims turned out to be false. And of course, as cnn first reported, the u. S. Intercepted discussions of russian officials bragging about cultivating relationships with Trump Campaign aides, including trumps First National security adviser, Michael Flynn, to influence trump. And following cnns report, the New York Times said that Trumps Campaign manager, paul manafort, was also discussed. John and poppy . So, outside of the president himself, do we know from our sources who the russians were specifically talking about when theyre talking about this dropdrop derogatory information . Reporter none of the sources would say which aide was discussed. One of the officials said the Intelligence Report actually masked the american names, but it was still clear the conversations did revolve around the Trump Campaign, though no specifics. And another source would not give more specifics, citing the classified nature of all of that information. Now, its important to note that asked for comment, the white house is telling cnn the following, saying, this is yet another round of false and unverified claims made by Anonymous Sources to smear the president. The reality is, a review of the president s income from the last ten years showed he had virtually no financial ties at all. There appears to be nor limit to which the president s political opponents will go to perpetuate this false narrative, including illegally leaking classified material. All this does is play into the hands of our adversaries and put our country at risk. And the office of the director of National Intelligence as well as the fbi bolstered on that comment and the president himself has insisted on multiple occasions that he has no financial dealings with russia. So, jess, does this fall under the purview of the special counsel . Is this something bob mueller is now investigating . Reporter it does. This fbi investigation is wideranging. Its into russian meddling during the u. S. Election. Of course, it was recently taken over by special counsel robert mueller, and it includes this seeking answers as to whether there was any coordination between associates of trump and examining the alleged financial dealings of key trump associates. At this point, the fbi is not commenting as to whether any of the claims discussed in those intercepts have been verified. And by the time trump took office, though, some of the questions about his aides financial dealings with russian entities, those were already under investigation. John and poppy . Jessica. Investigators are getting more and more curious about a meeting between President Trumps soninlaw, Jared Kushner, and a bigname russian banker. They want to know what exactly the two men wanted from one another. Lets bring in senior washington krnt joe johns, who is live at the white house. What else are you hear . Reporter well, i mean, the significance of this is that banker, sergei gorkov, he works for a bank under sanction by the United States government, and he has ties, certainly, to Vladimir Putin. The question is, what were they talking about . Was wha was inside that conversation . Of course, this first reported by the New York Times. Jared kushner also being looked at for his conversations, communications with sergey kislyak, the Russian Ambassador to the United States. A lot of focus on the notion that he wanted to set up some type of concealed communications, whats preefs n previously been referred to as a back channel, to moscow. And why he was doing that. Meanwhile, Jared Kushner and his wife, ivanka trump, have been keeping a very low profile here in washington, d. C. Kushner has sent the word through his counsel that hes willing to sit down and talk, explain what these communications were about. One possible explanation is the suggestion out there that has been reported by Gloria Borger of cnn and others that russia may have been the instigator or the initiator of the conversation about setting up a back channel, if you will, and that was because russia wanted to have some type of a communication with President Trumps National Security adviser about issues relating to syria. Jared kushner, for his part, one thing for sure, he has sent word today pretty clearly through a source that hes not going anywhere, hes keeping his full portfolio of work here at the white house, which includes the middle east. Back to you, poppy and john. China, trade. Its a full portfolio, to say the least, as most of the portfolio inside the white house sometimes, it seems. Joe johns at the white house, thanks very much. Susan hennessey is a cnn National Security and legal analyst, steve halsey and retired cia chief of russia operations. Susan, first i want to get your take on this reporting from the cnn team, jim sciutto and others, that officials are saying that they heard russians claiming they had derogatory information about then candidate donald trump and his staff. What should be the headlines there that jump out . All right, so, its important to keep in mind that just because something was intercepted in signals intelligence, it just means it was said. It doesnt mean that the underlying information is accurate. The russian sources could be wrong, they could be exaggerating, it could be misinformation. What this is an indication of is there are very, very serious russian efforts either to interfere in the election or to confuse the u. S. Intelligence community. So, this is further indication that President Trump himself should be wanting to take this investigation seriously to get to the bottom of it so he can move forward. And exactly to that point, i mean, steve, if this was disinformation, which, you know, the russians use that tablgtic a lot, thats one thing, but there seems to be a real genuine lack of interest from this white house to get to the bottom of anything. They constantly say this is nothing to see here, this is a Smear Campaign by political foes of this president. Do you see this white house as not interested and curious about it in total . Poppy, it really confuses me, because you would think that now this interplay back and forth, where you have leaks from the press about the russians, you know, how truthful they are and what the details of the context are, as you correctly indicate, could be misinformation or disinformation, but the white houses response is always something along the lines of, oh, this is the Democratic Party trying to get over their loss in the election, this is deep state. You know, theyve got all the im surprised they dont if you a different tact, because it really plays nicely into the russian game plan, i think. The russians are all about disruption, about driving wedges. We saw how successful they were in driving wedges when the president was in europe last week and a lot of our allies now expressing some concerns. But they also like to do that in washington, and its almost like every one of these leaks that comes out, the white house reacts predictably, and its sort of a win for the russians. So, you would think that even in their own interests, the administration would change tactic and Say Something along the lines of Jared Kushners going to testify tomorrow and hes going to explain all of this, or you know, these are very serious allegations and we hope the investigation gets to the bottom of this sooner rather than later, we stand by to help on that. But theyre taking a different tact, which for the russians is a good thing. You could say look, there are no financial irregularities here, but boy, we hope the russians werent spying. Itd be really, really bad if they were saying these things and passing that information. Susan, there is another strain of reporting which has to do with Jared Kushner and meetings he had during the transition, once with the Russian Ambassador, then with a russian banking official. The New York Times asked a question today, said investigators want to know why he had that meeting with the russian banking official, what was discussed there. You know, senators john mccain basically says he doesnt like the idea that it happened. Listen to the senator. My view of it is i dont like it. I just dont, i dont. I know that some Administration Officials are saying, well, thats standard procedure. I dont think its standard procedure prior to the inauguration of a president of the United States by someone who is not in an appointed position. Wheres the line of justifiability here, susan . You know, on what side of it would Jared Kushner be totally okay, and then where would he have crossed the line . So, certainly during the transition period, President Trumps team, including his close advisers, should have been thinking about the future of their relationship with russia and even having some forms of communication. Whats a concern here is that what is reported is not that kushner was really seeking a back channel but that he was seeking a covert channel. The only real reason why someone would seek to use Russian Communications equipment, a very, very significant deviation from sort of ordinary protocol, it raises the specter that theyre trying to hide from u. S. Intelligence surveillance or from, again, information getting out to the obama administration. So, these are the things that really in very serious National Security issues, we tend to sort of put the partisanship and the Campaign Season behind, recognize were all on the same team, we all need to have information in order to have that really, really critical situational awareness. So, this is really an area in which the white house needs to come out now, open the curtain, give a really fulsome explanation for exactly what their motivations were here, why they thought that was the appropriate method, whether or not they were seeking to evade only surveillance during the transition period or whether or not this is something that they planned potentially for after President Trump assumed office. So, steve, this meeting that Jared Kushner did have with sergei gorkov, a bigname russian banker under sanction by the u. S. Government, why . What did the two men want from one another . And the timing is critical, right, because this meeting was during the time and this is a guy with a direct line, know, to Vladimir Putin during a time when President Trump was just railing against the Intelligence Community as a whole. How important is it that investigators get the answer as to why kushner sat down with gorkov and what they wanted from one another . Its important, and i actually think it could be more important than this whole brouhaha about saying he wants to go in, kushner wants to go into the Russian Embassy and use Russian Communications equipment to talk to moscow. That strikes me as bizarre. However, somebody like kushner, you know, a former, or current, i guess, new york businessman, talking to sergei gorkov, the head of a bank, a guy who does have contacts back to putin, but hes a former intelligence officer. You dont go through the fsb school just like night school. You go in to be an intelligence officer. So, yeah, it is important. And those financial ties, those economic ties are actually the ones that trouble me a bit more than this whole lets talk to the russians via their own equipment. That does indeed need a lot of investigation, but again, kushner has said, ill talk about that. All this could be put to bed tomorrow, as soon as they can schedule a meeting with mr. Kushner, say hey, whats going on with this . Thats a good point. He has from the beginning said i will come forward, i will answer your questions. Hes not talking to the press, but he will talk to investigators. Susan hennessey, steve hall, thank you both. All right, so today is the deadline for former National Security adviser Michael Flynn to respond to a pair of subpoenas sent by the Senate Intelligence committee. Committee leaders say if he does not comply, their next step could be to hold him in contempt of congress. Joining us now from washington, cnns phil mattingly. Phil, what are you hearing . Reporter well, right now still no response, at least according to committee staffers. Havent heard back from Michael Flynns lawyer yet. I think the key issue here is what these two subpoenas actually are. They tried to narrow down the scope, the Committee Leaders did. Instead of targeting kind of an overly broad, kind of group of documents that they did in the initial subpeona, these were very finely tailored towards two specific businesses that they believed they could get the documents from, and their point in doing this, guys, which is an important one, is while Michael Flynn made clear through his lawyers that he would invoke his fifth amendment privilege, business documents, they dont believe, can actually be used the fifth amendment cant apply to those documents. So that was the rationale for their scope. Again, no response yet. The big question now, and i dont think this is just on the Senate Intelligence side, this is also on the house intelligence side, what cooperation, if any, will they get from Michael Flynn particularly now that the special counsel has been appointed . At this moment, its really a game of wait and see. We do expect the House Intelligence Committee as soon as this week to also issue subpoenas related to Michael Flynn. As of yet, they have not, so no shortage of issues for flynn to be dealing with. The big question, is there a need or desire to speak to the committees at all . His lawyers have made very clear, they are uncomfortable with the scope and scale of the investigations that theyve been looking at so far. Phil, on the legislative front, we learned moments ago the president s calling essentially to change the rules to try to get some of those things through. He tweeted this can we put it up on the screen so i can read it . The u. S. Senate should switch to 51 votes immediately and get health care and tax cuts approved fast and easy. Dems would do it, no doubt. He wants to remove the legislative filibuster, phil. Reporter yeah, so let me take this swetweet apart. Tax reform and health care are being moved on a track that would require 51 votes for coverage, or 50 republicans plus mike pence. Thats via reconciliation. So there are a lot of constraints via reconciliation, this procedure thats done in the senate that frustrated a lot of republicans, particularly on health care. A couple points here. This is not a republican versus democrat battle right now, on both tax reform and repeal and replace. This is intraparty. So, the idea of changing the rules of the senate, this key cog on how the senate operates, and Mitch Mcconnell has made clear is not on the table. More than 45 to 50 republican and Democratic Senators said there would be no kind of Nuclear Option to this idea, but this proposal, while its not something republicans are interested in, at least at this moment, wouldnt solve their problems at all. It doesnt matter if its 50 votes or 60 votes right now on both health care and tax, guys. Its intraparty, republican versus republican. If they cant figure that out, it doesnt matter how many votes they think they need, nothing will get done in the future. Important points. There arent 50 points on health care now, so changing the votes would not help. Phil mattingly, thank you very much. The president withdra