Trump officials preparing to brief lawmakers on Jamal Khashoggis death. Without the person who has heard the tape of the murder. National security adviser john bolton defending his decision not to listen to that tape. No, i havent listened to it. Unless you speak arabic, what are you going to get from it . You could get a translator. We begin today with a legal twist that is straight out of a john grishom novel. Paul manafort agreeing to work with bob mueller, and then turning around and feeding details about muellers investigation directly back to the president and his lawyers. I know, stranger than fiction. I have a panel here this morning to explain whats going on, but let me try and lay it out for you. It turns out that President Trump and his legal team have reportedly been getting the inside scoop on muellers investigation for months with manaforts attorney communicating information directly to trumps team, even after manafort agreed to cooperate with the special counsel. That is according to the New York Times. And now we can make it clear. The idea of trump and manafort coordinating their legal strategies, its not a new one. We learned in september that the two had a joint Defense Agreement that allowed them to share confidential information, up theically when a defendant flips and agrees to a plea deal, they have to pull out of agreements like that. As nbc news reported at the time, once manafort changed sides, the agreement should have been null and void. But giuliani told the New York Times there was still communication going on, an arrangement that legal experts describe as unusual. Heres my question, unusual, unethical, was it illegal . Giuliani defended the arrangement to the times saying it was a source of valuable insights into the special counsels inquiry and where it was headed. Yeah, of course it was. The New York Times went on to say that such information could help shape a Legal Defense and appeared to give mr. Trump and his Legal Advisers ammunition in their Public Relations campaign against muellers office. Heres an example. Giuliani told the times that manaforts lawyers told him muellers investigators were intent on finding out what the president knew about the trump tower meeting in 2016. He said that mueller was trying to get manafort to incriminate trump. That is just one single example. Remember this. Manafort met with muellers investigators over a dozen times. Thats a lot of information that could have been passed along. And this morning the president decided to weigh in on all of this on twitter, of course, saying this. While the disgusting fake news is doing everything within their power not to report it that way, at least three Major Players are intimating that the angry mueller gang of dems is viciously telling witnesses to lie about facts and they will get relief. This is our Joseph Mccarthy era. Oh, my gosh, im sad i only have an hour. We have a lot to get to. For more on that, i want to turn to nbcs Peter Alexander at the white house. Peter, first of all, intimated, thats a new word for the president , or somebody else is tweeting for him. What can you tell us . That tweet from the president echoes comments from one of his personal lawyers as well, Rudy Giuliani, as hes been writing about Robert Muellers team. Its clear stpt and giuliani are working if the same playbook in terms of their pr campaign. In a text message this morning to nbc news, giuliani accused federal prosecutors of treating manafort like a terrorist. Incarcerating him before trial, solitary incarceration, repeated questioning, after manafort denies, showing theyre willing to exert unusual pressure that could tempt someone to lie and get out of jail. Giuliani and trump also, as you noted, referring to a gang of dems, committed democrats, appears to be specifically attacking one of muellers deputies, a longtime Senior Justice Department prosecutor Andrew Weissman who has a reputation of being relentless. Critics say he can also be combative. It gives us new insight to what weve been learning over the last 12 to 24 hours. The most recent twitter attack, the president is saying wait until it comes out how horribly and viciously they are treating people, ruining lives, he said on tuesday. Hes been on twitter a bunch this morning, retweeting an account that shows a picture of Hillary Clinton, Robert Mueller, eric holder, among others, behind bars, effectively accusing them of treason. Stephanie . As i said, peter, we have a lot to get through. I want to bring in my panel. Joyce vance, ken dilanian, and Christine Todd whitman, the former republican governor of my home state in new jersey, and michael schmidt. He cowrote todays article on manafort. Joyce, i have to go to you first, information sharing. Where is the line between the unusual arrangement of Paul Manaforts attorneys speaking to trumps attorney and a legal arrangement. The idea of information sharing is a way that codefendants in an investigation, a group of people who are under investigation, can continue to share investigation or can continue to share information without losing the protection of the Attorney Client privilege, which would shield the conversation typically between an attorney and his client, but here sharing the information among the group. Thats something prosecutors dont necessarily like but its been approved repeatedly. Would we consider trump and manafort to be codefendants . I think i used codefendant loosely. Maybe its better to say people who are under investigation. And so in that sense we were told by giuliani that trump had joins Defense Agreements with more than 30 people who were under investigation by mueller, apparently including manafort. But heres where that protection ends. Once your interests diverge and you no longer have a common interest people who decide to cooperate with prosecutors will withdraw from a joint Defense Agreement, often joint Defense Agreements require someone in that situation to withdraw. What happened here with manafort and his lawyers and White House Trump lawyers is very unusual. They continued to share information. But legal it may be legal. We need to know the precise details. It could be problematic under the terms of the plea agreement, although here apparently there was nothing that explicitly prevented the sharing. It could be, for instance, witness tampering if pardons were being dangled and there was something of that nature, an effort to tamper with the witness. So it will be important for us to know the precise details before we can make a decision about whether this is unusual, unethical or perhaps criminal. Okay. Then ken, you wrote about this joint Defense Agreement in september. When Paul Manaforts team decided to cooperate, joyce is right here, it should have been null and void, their Defense Agreement, but it technically wasnt. Why . As a matter of law, i believe it was null and void because under a joint Defense Agreement you have to have a common legal interest. And their interests diverged, trumps and manaforts, as soon as manafort signed on as a cooperator with Robert Mueller. The key issue, those conversations between the lawyers may not be subject to Attorney Client privilege. What does that mean . That could mean that mueller would haul Kevin Downing and Rudy Giuliani and others before the grand jury to testify about what was said before so mueller can find out what information was passed. Thats the issue here is that whether there is an Attorney Client privilege preserved and most legal experts ive talked to dont think there is because manafort was cooperating. The other real damage that could have been caused here is not so much the questions mueller was asking. Everybody knows what mueller wants to know. The issue is that when manafort came into the fold as a cooperator, he might have learned secret and confidential information that mueller didnt want trump to know and he may have passed that on to the trump team. Very damaging to Robert Muellers investigation and it could add up to obstruction of justice. Michael schmidt joins us by phone. I was surprised that Rudy Giuliani was willing to admit this arrangement, he wouldnt confirm it to nbc. You tell us, what exactly did giuliani say and why would he tell you that . Im not sure why he said that, he talks on the record about the investigation a lot. And he basically said that this was something that was helpful to them, that allowed them to learn it. And he said it was fine and legal so he was defending it. And i think he thought maybe if he talked about it on the record he could defend it better. Im not sure. But what this did do is it gave them real insights into what was going on and it helped feed the president s anger about the mueller investigation. The president was learning that investigators were pressuring manafort. This is what manaforts lawyers were saying, to tell them what the president knew about the 2016 trump tower meeting, a meeting where the president s son met with russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. And giuliani said that they wanted manafort to incriminate the president. And that is a significant sort of detail to know that the investigators were so hard pressing on manafort to give them that piece of information. And why were they doing that . And giuliani using that fact as a way of saying, look, these guys are out to get the president. This is stunning to me. Governor, does it add fuel to the fire that what manafort is looking for here is a pardon . Because theres no goodness of his heart. Why on earth would Paul Manafort and his team be coordinating or sharing information after they did a deal with Robert Mueller, with rudy jewel ja rudy giulian . Hes cooperating, hes feeding them the kind of information they need to gear up a defense when it comes down. The thing that gets me, the president keeps saying theres no there there, why are you so worried about what might happen . Good point. Its a question ive had for a while. I always thought the truth was supposed to set you free. Is it possible this was the plan all along, that they were always going to coordinate . Because Robert Mueller is now in a situation where, yes, maybe you could use this as obstruction of justice. But would Robert Mueller have known, would he have believed, yeah, manaforts going to go straight back to trump . If he hadnt, its dangerous what giuliani may know at this point. Even if hes not seeking a pardon, hes still helping the defense of the president and hes violating the terms of his plea agreement and sharing information about this investigation. And that, in itself, should be illegal. So their interests never diverged. What it appears to be is that manafort intended all along to do this, whether its for a pardon or whether its because he intends to go to jail anyway so that putin wont poison his family. God knows what Paul Manafort is up to. There are many, many theories about why hes doing this. I would think, from what we know of Robert Mueller, that this is not his first rodeo, and he would anticipate that someone as reckless and gangster as Paul Manafort would certainly be tempted to go before the president s lawyers and be ratting out everything about the questioning and the investigation. I dont think this would be coming as a surprise to Robert Mueller. I believe he probably has a contingency plan. How damaging is it to Robert Mueller, that President Trump and his steam have basically had the inside scoop on all that hes been focusing on. Well, i think amys right when she characterizes manafort as gangster and says its likely mueller suspected this was happening. Mueller has this background that suggests to us that hes very skillful at playing both ends in a situation. He worked in ukraine and in other parts of the world where he sort of manipulated both sides. No surprise that he would try to do that here. One suspects that prosecutors knew what this game was pretty early on and perhaps even used this situation to see if manafort and trump would align their responses to questions. Of course, mueller waited to spring the trap on manafort until trumps answers had been submitted. So theres some possibility that well see alignment between the president s responses and the story that manafort was telling prosecutors, that prosecutors may be able to make some use out of down the road. Bottom line, i dont think mueller is particularly damaged by this situation. Ken, can mueller use this as potential evidence for obstruction . Were going to find out soon, stephanie, when mueller files that document when hes laying out crimes and lies that caused this plea agreement to fall apart, particularly if manafort lied about the fact his lawyers were feeding information to trump. That could be very germane going forward. Michael, its more than just manafort. In your article you point out that giuliani had joint defense arrangements with 32 witnesses, or subjects of muellers investigation. Is it possible hes getting a whole lot more information than we realize . Caller yeah, and thats not that unusual in any type of large white collar investigation. It sort of speaks to the severity of whats going on and how serious the investigation is. The interesting thing for us was that a year ago mike flynn, the former the president S National Security adviser, pulled out of his joint Defense Agreement with the president several days before he agreed to cooperate with mueller and since has been in a Cooperation Agreement with mueller. So he sort of more formally put distance between his legal team and the president s legal team and then essentially went to go work for mueller. We have no indication after that that flynns lawyers were giving messages back to the president. Governor, is this still a legal fight or do you believe the president has pivoted this to be all about the court of Public Opinion . Thats what hes trying to do. No question about it. Hes been brilliant at doing it in the past. But i dont think so. Robert mueller has a terrific reputation. And so far he has held this so tightly that you cant say that hes out there leaking things and trying to make things look bad for the president. He is doing his job and he will not hes the kind of person that once he is given an assignment and he thinks hes got something to do, hes going to do it to the very end. Hes a bulldog that way. But no one has ever questioned, except this president , his integrity. And the fact that he really is someone who is going to dot all the is and cross all the ts, and hes not finished until hes done and were not going to know a lot until he is ready to share that. The one thing you dont do to bob mueller, dont lie to im. Thats been something drilled into him from the beginning, everyone knows that. Republican leaders, Mitch Mcconnell, paul ryan, the list goes on, are they going to weigh in here . When you talk to them privately the last year and a half they say well see what happens because they dont want to deal with the daily lies and the leaking and explosions around the clock. So what they say is well just what they say is wait and see. The question we were talking about, who at that point will say this is Joseph Mccarthy and bar barf out more trump tweets and say how its cooked up. Who will say actually there looks criminal . Do you think were closer . I do think that i dont believe Robert Mueller is about to wrap this up. I think hes about to wrap up part of it. And i dont have mueller sources. As the governor says, nobody does. I do believe this is more far ranging than people understand, and i dont think that this is about to conclude. I think that will drive the president crazy, but i wouldnt be surprised if this spills well into 2019. Before we go, ken, fill me in. It was over two weeks that it was reported Matthew Whitaker was going to be meeting with ethics attorneys who talk about will he need to recuse himself, conflicts of interest. Last i checked we havent heard anything about it and hes still in his seat. Theres been an information vacuum on this subject. The Justice Department has refused to answer questions about whether theres been a ruling on whether Matthew Whitaker is conflicted because of the many statements hes made prejudging the facts of the mueller investigation. We dont know if whitaker is in charge of the mueller investigation. Why dont we know . They wont tell us, steph. Then we just have to keep asking. Thank you all. Important conversation. Next, Presiden