If its tuesday, we are talking about rudys duties. Blamh good evening im chuck todd here in washington. Welcome to a whirlwind day and welcome to mtp daily. We begin with a flood of new legal headaches for the president and his new lead attorney Rudy Giuliani. Most of these new headaches are selfinflicted thanks to comments made by giuliani in the past 24 hours there is seemingly more evidence that the president and his campaign tried to interview in the russia investigation. Hears giuliani talking about the president s mindset when he fired then fbi director james comey. He fired comey because comey would not among other things say he wasnt a target of the investigation. He is entitled to that. Hillary clinton got that. And he couldnt get that. So he fired him. And he said im free of this guy. According to the president s lawyer, he fired the fbi director because the agency wouldnt publicly clear him in an investigation we now know he is not a target but the subject of. Because of giuliani, there is seemingly more evidence tieing the president to the 130,000 hush money payment made to Stormy Daniels during the campaign. That money was not campaign money. Sorry. Im giving you a fact now that you dont know. Its not campaign money. No Campaign Finance violation. They funneled it flew the law firm. Funneled through a law firm. And the president repaid it. Oh. I didnt know he did. Yep. There is no Campaign Finance law . Zero. You heard that right. Funneled flew a law firm. President repaid it. Thats what the president s attorney just said. Not only did giuliani break news about the president s connection to a payment he claimed to know nothing about he also teamed to uncut the president legal agent that this payment had nothing to do with the election. You are saying that Stephanie Clifford made these allegations, told Donald Trumps lawyer and deny them. And then said it wasnt true. However, imagine if that came out on october 15th, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton. So to make it go away. They made this they didnt even ask. Cohen made it go away. He did his job. Buy the way. The payment happened the day before comey two, if you recall, the infamous letter to congress. Folks, whether it is the russia investigation or the Stormy Daniels days case, the scope of all of these selfinflicted wounds is remarkable. The biggest question perhaps is how deep do these wounds cut. And what does it mean about about the president s strategy Going Forward . Before we get further into the giuliani news, we have a correction via nbc news. Earlier today nbc reported there was a wiretap on the phones of Michael Cohen trumps longtime personal attorney citing two separate sourcing with knowledge of the Legal Proceedings of Michael Cohen. It is not a wiretap where they were listening into the phone calls. But Something Else specifically. Let me bring in tom winter here to explain. There is always a difference when you hear the words wiretap and surveillance. The level of detail of the surveillance, sometimes its monitoring when a phone call comes in. Sometimes its overhearing. Explain what we reported and what we now know. Chuck, based on information from two independent sources who have a long term track record of credibility in providing Accurate Information to this News Organization they today earlier today based on that information we reported there was a wiretap on Michael Cohens phone meaning they were able to listen in to conversations from phone Lines Associated with Michael Cohen to any other person that he might have talked to. In part of that reporting we said one of those phone calls was between a phone line associated with Michael Cohen and the white house. Now, three senior u. S. Officials are telling us that this is a it was not a wiretap. Instead it was what is referred to a pen register. That means it is a log of phone calls that were made from a specific phone line or a specific phone lines. Any this case we know that Michael Cohen had several phone lines. In this case, they were able to see who he called or who somebody using his phone lines called but they were not able to listen in real time or record those conversations. It is an important distinction, chuck. I want to add to that by saying it doesnt change necessarily the legal bar here. In order to get a warrant of this type, its still a very serious matter because they would have needed to fill out a significant affidavit and be able to go down a significant road to get this approved by a federal judge. To bring back a phrase we used to use a lot during the snowden revelations and during the investigation in the boston marathon, this is metadata. Exactly. Meaning he is being surveilled, but they are trying to figure out who he is talking to not necessarily what he is talking about. Right. If i was going to call you, they would say my number and see that i dialed chuck todd. They would not know what you and i talked to each other. We could have talked about everything and fbi anything. To your point with respect to metadata. Thats exactly what this is. Its a phone number and a time. Base on what we saw by three u. S. Officials, earlier the reporting was too far where it was a wiretap with real time monitoring. In this case, they were actually just able to see that somebody called somebody else. Do we know the extent right now there have been some filings. And you and i were talking about it. The government admitted to some surveillance they have been doing for months over cohen. But we dont know the extent. Do we know the extent of how much they have been surveilling cohen . How thorough . Has it been emails . Texts . Phone calls . What do we know . We know from public filings that they were able to do surveillance on his emails. The federal prosecute oorgs put that in open court. Anybody with access or who wants to get the record can get it themselves. For that they had a filler team because there could be Attorney Client communications in that. They had a separate team look at that and hand over the relevant matters to the investigators working on the case. We know emails. We are told there was some sort of a pen register that have been used. We know what calls he was making or people using his phone lines were making. Could there be other types of monitoring as it relates to communication. Everybody uses texts or apps to communicate. Thats something we havent been guided to or told explicitly. A correction to our earlier report that we know has gotten some big headlines. Michael cohens calls are being monitored but not being listened in to at least as far as our sources are concerned. Nick ackerman joins us. And mimi rocha. Mimi, let me start with you. I want to pick up on the different types of surveillance a federal prosecutor can get. What does it take to get the monitoring of email versus the monitoring of phone calls, versus the recording of phone calls. Can you walk us through a little bit. There is important distinctions here. I will start with what we now believe to be the surveillance at least some of the surveillance that occurred of Michael Cohen, custom is the pen register. That is one of the least intrusive forms of surveillance. All it does is really records calls coming in to a certain phone and calls going out in realtime. So it is like a real time toll analysis. Prosecutors can get historical toll analysis from a phone company but if they want to get things happening as they happen they have to get a pen register. It requires an application to a magistrate judge. It is not a probable cause threshold, though. Its something lower than that thats hard to articulate. Because you are not getting content it is a little bit lower. It is lower than a probable cause threshold. All right. Walk me through in the filing on that day on april 13th the government admitted to covert surveillance of multiple email accounts. Right. Thats information. Is that a higher threshold . Yes. I dont know the nature of how they obtained those emails. There is different ways to get emails. You can either get it through a search warrant just like you get a search warrant for an office or a premises you can get a search warrant for an email account. That will give you again, historical emails that have been sent to and from people on that account. And that would require a very high showing just like weve been through and weave talked many times on your show and elsewhere about the probable cause standard and all the different high thresholds that you have to meet for that. You also could in some circumstances get emails in realtime. But thats very rare. And i dont know if thats what they were talking about here. It sound to me like a search warrant on an email account. All right mimi rocha. Thanks for that. Nick ackerman let me go to you on something that we on Rudy Giulianis tour of Media Outlets where it seems as if he may have created more legal problems for the president than he was hired to solve. On what he said on the new premise that he said about the reason why the president fired the fbi director, how problematic is this idea now, that according to Rudy Giuliani i will read the quote. Is that he fired comey because comey would not among other things say that he wasnt a target of the investigation. Well, when you put that together with all of the other activity that donald trump was involved in from the firing of comey, asking comey not to drop the investigation on flynn. To telling lester hold that he fired comey because of the russian thing. When you put that all together, it creates a pattern that shows Donald Trumps corrupt intent, which is the critical element in obstruction of justice. Hes trying to manipulate the system. Hes trying to prevent the investigation. Hes trying to impede the investigation. And i must say, what Rudy Giuliani did on the hannity show the other night, calling comey a pathological liar when comey has absolutely corroborated each of those conversations with contemporaneous memos, calls Rod Rosenstein out for not getting a proper fisa warrant because using the chris teefr steele dossier had he in fact what started the whole matter was George Papadopoulos a member of the Trump Campaign bragging to an individual who was connected with the Australian Government of the so this kind of attempt to manipulate the whole system, to put down the fbi, to put down the department of justice all amounts to one big obstruction. Going on the issue of obstruction, though, i know that technically you can be charged with obstruction of justice even if the whatever crime you were trying to cover up isnt proven to be a crime. Ultimately you had james comey say i think it is a close call whether what he did is obstruction of justice. Giuliani just gave a new ration rationale which i think ramps it up. Is it fair to say that the obstruction case gets stronger if the conspiracy case is as strong when mueller presents it . No question about it. This is not about the coverup of its about the crime. And you have got several possible conspiracies that are likely to be charged. One relates to the crime committed against the Democratic National committee, the breakin, the hacking, and then you have got the entire operation that was done with Cambridge Analytic and facebook trying to manipulate the clinton vote by trying to suppress it by micro targeting on specific voters. Thats where the real crimes are going to be proven. And thats where you are going the see a couple of big conspiracy indictments. You have already seen one against the russians. Its just a matter now of them putting it together against the americans. There is no doubt there was a crime we all know was committed. Mueller has yet to tell us who he is specifically charging for that crime. We assume it will be the gru and russian intelligence. I think we have to wait to ehim talk there. Me me let me go to the other issue that giuliani seemed to dredge up and create problems for the president here. And thats the Stormy Daniels payment. Based on everything we now know that Rudy Giuliani said specifically, essentially speculating about you how it could have impacted the campaign, saying that the president funneled the money via legal fees, how prosecutable is this case right now under our Campaign Finance laws . Well, its we dont know all of the evidence obviously other than giulianis statements so far and sort of whats come out in the public record. But its certainly looking like a stronger case than it was even a couple of days ago or a day ago. And it was already looking like a rather strong case. Because if you compare to it the jon edwards case, which was prosecuted, this seems Even Stronger and some of the comments that giuliani made, specifically the one about tying it right to the timing of the debate really makes it look like this payment was to influence the campaign, the election. And thats the key analysis for this kind of crime. And so all of these other excuses and logistics that they are talking about, how it was paid, when it was paid, those dont do away with the fact that if its paid to influence the campaign thats the central analysis and whether trump paid the money back or not i dont think changes that. So i think it already was looking stronger if you want to compare to it the highprofile case that we know that was prosecuted it looks Even Stronger now. Im curious, what do you make of the very properly worded set of tweets this morning from the president using phrasiology in a we rarely see him use normally on his twitter account talking about the fact that he had a retainer, this is a monthly retainer, and he was there just represent is that enough of a backtrack to make it harder for you to bring this case . I mean they can call it whatever they want. For them to put the label on it isnt going to change the nature of the evidence. So, you know, the investigators are going to look at how the payments were actually structured, custom we dont i mean all which we dont all we have right now is what giuliani and trump in his tweet or whoever wrote that said. Investigators need to look at the actual payments, the actual record how it was structured and be informed by the actual other evidence, very important emails, information from cofreighters, current or future. There is a lot that goes into that. But them putting certain labels on it, call it a retainer doesnt change how the investigation will conclude. Final question to you nick ackerman, i want to put on your watergate hat again. Sure. What muellers team hearing now that they see giuliani deciding its clear to me the president has changed his legal strategy from hiring lawyers having a legal strategy to instead having a political strategy. How does how is muellers team taking this in in your mind. I think they are going to do exactly what they have been doing, plowing ahead on this investigation. I think ultimately they are going to serve a grand jury subpoena on donald trump. If this goes to the courts its going to be upheld and hes going to have to go into a federal grand jury before 23 citizens in the district of columbia and provide testimony while his lawyers wait outside the jury room. Mimi rocha, nick ackerman, trying unpack all of this every day it is a challenge. Thanks to both of you for providing your expertise. Up ahead a closer look at rudie giulianis role on the trump legal team. This is a political fight now, folks. We will see how it plays out. Kyle, we talked about this. Theres no monsters. But you said theyd be watching us all the time. No, no. No, honey, we meant that progressive would be protecting us 24 7. We just bundled home and auto and saved money. Thats nothing to be afraid of. But good night, kyle. [ switch clicks, door closes ] i told you i was just checking the wiring in here, kyle. Hes never like this. I think somethings going on at school. [ sighs ] hes not engaging. 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