Coverage of national and international news, including breaking stories. Chairman, Paul Manafort. He has pleaded not guilty, but heres why this really matters. The first trial to come out of the Mueller Investigation will give us the most detailed snapshot yet of what cards Robert Mueller really has. And as soon as this week, the president s lawyer says he could decide whether to sit for an interview with the mueller team, although weve heard that one before. Right now the president s not happy with mueller. Donald trump firing off a whole bunch of tweets, trashing the investigation, offering up new details, too about his previous claims of mueller conflicts of interest, claims the Justice Department has shot down. Lets go to the white house with nbcs kristen welker, here to get us started. Rudy guiliani had more to say about all of this, just a couple of hours ago, including what seemed to be a shifting of the goalpost, no . Reporter it was striking, hallie, to hear Rudy Guiliani, yes, seem to shift the goal posts on this key issue of collusion. As you pointed out, whether or not there was collusion, Rudy Guiliani seeming to suggest no big deal. Why is that important . Well, because, of course, the president s key talking point
fixer, Michael Cohen, trying to discredit him. And as you pointed out, President Trump taking aim at Special Counsel, Robert Mueller, calling him out by name, saying that there are conflicts of interest, calling the investigation illegal. In terms of those conflicts of interest, we reached out to the Special Counsel, got no reaction. But we can tell you that back in june, Deputy Attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, said there were no conflicts of interest. That they were aware of that would prevent this investigation from moving forward. Now, you and i, among the reporters here at the white house last week, hallie, that tried on ten separate occasions to ask President Trump about all of this. He ignored all of our questions, but today, joint press conference, i know youre going to rush back for it. And we will have our questions ready. 2 00 p. M. Eastern, 11 00 pacific. Rudy guiliani is also making news about the june 16 meeting between the Trump Campaign and the russians at trump tower. Heres what he said. Listen. This meeting that cohen is talking about took place before
the meeting with the russians. The other thing thats 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 weve been able to interview. The people we have not been able to interview have never said that about that meeting. So im 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, ive 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 idea there was a premeeting, a
strategy session to talk about how to approach this Infamous Trump tower meeting with the russians. And as we parsed Rudy Guilianis 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 thats cohens 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 20minute 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 youre going to continue to work on that. Were any of these people involved in this alleged meeting that guiliani says cohen is talking about, were they ever asked about it by congressional investigators, do we know . Did they ever say, hey, did you
ever strategy about this meeting before the meeting . Well, we dont know the answer to that, because we havent seen their secret testimony. Some of them sat for nine hours of interviews. What my source says was every question you could imagine about the context of this meeting was asked. So it stands to reason that if this meeting would have happened, they would have been asked some question that would have led them to reveal it, hallie. Ken delaney. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Joined by assistant attorney general tom dupree, kimberly atkins, Chief Washington reporter for the Boston Herald and ms. S in contributor. Jonathan allen also at the table. Tom, to you first, broadly here. Is Rudy Guiliani at all in trouble for what he just said . Or is Michael Cohen more in trouble for what Rudy Guiliani is talking about . Hallie, i cant make sense of what rudy is saying. And rudy likes to freelance a bit. A bit . And its difficult to tell times whether hes actually intending to make news or whether hes actually intending to make a disclosure or whether he just didnt phrase it the right way. I agree, if it turns out there was a premeeting before this meeting at trump tower, that is
very significant. It does seem a little peculiar that rudy, if that is what happened, would disclose it in this way. Although he seemed to be saying that cohen was lying about this meeting anyway, so he was bringing it up just to bat it back down. But why even go down there. Whats thats puzzling about this. There is also this piece, broadly seen under the umbrella of President Trump and his legal team, Rudy Guiliani, escalating now. In the last 48 hours, attacks against the Special Counsel and attacks against the investigation, and attacks against Michael Cohen. I think ive actually been on the set and literally said those words before the escalation piece. Thats because it keeps happening here. What are the pieces of escalation is this idea of conflicts of interest from Robert Mueller . If you have a little bit of dejavu, there is reason for that. The president had alluded to this. The New York Times reported out some of these illusions a couple months ago. Here are the specifics of what the president is saying his conflicts of interest are. A dispute over fees at the Trump National golf club. Turned down mueller who head the fbi. Says mueller worked for the law firm that represents jared
kushner. Deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein who oversees this investigation said this in front of lawmakers just recently. Mr. Chairman, if there were any conflicts of interest brought to our attention, i would discuss it with mr. Mueller and then there could be review within the department, if there were credible allegation of a conflict of interest. And so im not aware of any disqualifying conflict of interest. Yeah, i certainly havent seen any disqualifying conflicts of interest here. And i think the thing to keep in mind is that the president when he sends out these tweets, this is a shotgun approach. He is saying heres a whole bunch of things that in his opinion should disqualify mueller. Hes not playing to a District Judge to try to disqualify mueller. He is playing to the court of public opinion. I think from the president s mind, if he just starts making these attacks on bob mueller, hes got this, hes got this, hes got the golf club, the job, his law firm. Some residue of that will somehow stick in the public consciousness and people therefore may ultimately question what bob mueller concludes. Thats at least the strategy i think theyre going with here. Does that hold up no matter how many times we play that . Department of justice saying none of these are problems for us. Yeah, also keep in mind that Paul Manafort is about to go on trial. I think this is the big buildup this week. And the president is sort of trying to get out ahead of that to discredit this investigation as much as possible. Its also taking hold. Polling is showing that particularly among republicans, that there is less and less that there is less and less they believe Robert Mueller less and less, as this thing goes on, as the president continues this relentless Twitter Campaign against him. So i think he sees it so far as at least paying some dividends. You talk about, tom and john i want your take on this, the idea that there is a Public Relations strategy now. 24 hours ahead of the start of Jury Collectiselection for the manafort case, in which the president is bringing up concerns with the Special Counsel investigation more broadly. His own lawyer, however, does not seem to know what exactly those conflicts of interest might be. Because Rudy Guiliani was asked about it this morning. Its up to the president to
describe it if in further detail if he elects to do so. Or if mueller would like to come out and explain why its not a conflict, i invite bob to do it. If there was let me finish. We waived the privilege when the whole thing came out, because we were anxious to have you get the truth. So lets see if mueller has that same impulse. Rudy guiliani is no longer what any of us would really consider a lawyer in terms of actively practicing the law. The president seems to think so. The president is has hired him to do that. If you were a lawyer, he would not have just said on television in one of the earlier clips, that the president obviously didnt pay the russian hackers, because what that does is raises the question of whether russia was giving an Illegal Campaign contribution to the president , which is part of this entire investigation. Im astounded that anybody that would call themselves a lawyer would raise that on national television. And create the impression that they believe that they got something of value from the russians without paying for it. So number one on that. Number two, definitely a pr
strategy going on here. The president always tries to undermine anybody who is seen as an independent broker, whether that be a judge, Gonzalez Curiel way back in the day. Whether its reporters. We saw what he did with the New York Times over the weekend. He basically tried to use the times as a propaganda tool. Fortunately, the times pushed back hard. And you see this going on with Robert Mueller, who has not not only a sterling reputation, but the things the president thinks are conflict of interest are only as they are pertained to him being hurt by them. The president is not an honest broker when it comes to conflicts of interest. He has engaged in a lot of them and seems to think other people have them where they dont exist. This comes as kimberly mentioned, 24 hours ahead of the Manafort Trial. The broader context of this when it comes to the Special Counsel investigation, obviously we know that manaforts Defense Attorneys have said and the prosecutor told the judge, he doesnt anticipate even saying the word, like russia, talking about the broader implications for the mueller legal team. How do you see that playing out . My sense is that the Manafort Trial is not going to implicate
a lot of the issues that mueller is directly looking at right now in terms of the president s role in collusion and things of that nature. My guess is that the president knows that the Manafort Trial is going to consume a lot of the oxygen over the next week. There is going to be a lot of press about this and hes trying to lay a foundation, plant seeds in the public consciousness that this is an investigation that simply cant be trusted. Youve also got republicans now, as richard blooming that will is pointing out, trying to pump the brakes on the idea of the Witch Hunt Piece of this. Heres what the senator said this morning on this network. We do have republicans in the senate beginning to show some signs of resistance to this consistent, Concerted Campaign against the Special Counsel. Remember, this campaign has been ongoing for some time. Not just the president calling it a witch hunt, but also some of his i hesitate to say stooges, but surrogates in the house. Saying that it is all made up. Yeah. I mean, youre seeing
republicans who were standing up and saying this is not a witch hunt. Youre seeing republicans in both houses of congress saying, look, we need to back up our Law Enforcement amgencies and attacking them is not in the short term or long term a good strategy for republicans. Sort of not a big group, but you see some folks sort of standing up against the president there. I got busted looking at my phone. Sorry, its only because we have in just a minute ago a response now from Michael Cohens attorney, lanny davis, to some of the comments Rudy Guiliani has been making. I say response. Spoiler, its not. Davis is declining to comment. Well talk about that later in the show. Tom, thank you for coming on. I appreciate it. Kimberly and jonathan, youve got to stick around. I know you want to. Much more ahead, including the president throwing out a strategy that sounds a lot like republicans worst nightmare. Why he says hed shut down the government about a month before the mid terms and why that might mean a big win for democrats. Oh, look. Another antiwrinkle cream in no hurry to make anything happen. Neutrogena® rapid wrinkle repair® works in just one week. With the fastest Retinol Formula available. Its clinically proven to work on fine lines and wrinkles. One week . That definitely works rapid wrinkle repair®. And for dark spots, rapid tone repair. Neutrogena®. See whats possible. Take prilosec otc and take control of heartburn. So you dont have to stash antacids here. Here. Or, here. Kick your Antacid Habit with prilosec otc. One pill a day, 24 hours, zero heartburn. Theres also a lot to know. The most important thing . Medicare doesnt pay for everything. Yep. Youre on the hook for the rest. So consider an aarp Medicare Supplement insurance plan, insured by Unitedhealthcare Insurance Company. A plan like this helps pay some of what medicare doesnt. So you could end up paying less. And these are the only plans of their kind
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