With the black boys, you know. The black boys not players so im not going to make it there. I kept playing and playing. I said one day im going to play baseball. Tonights last word. The 11th hour with Brian Williams starts right now. Tonight, the president swears he did not know about that Trump Tower Meeting in advance, while someone close to Michael Cohen tells vanity fair cohen is sitting on top of a Treasure Trove of damaging information and theres a lot more to come. For the tenth straight time the president ignored questions from reporters and thats since the trumpcohen tape came out on tuesday. Donald trumps First Ever NationalSecurity Council meeting on the topic of election safety was convened today hours after the president was invited to moscow by vladimir putin. All of it as The 11th Hour gets under way on a friday night. On a friday night good evening once again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. Day 554 of the Trump Administration and the president escalates the war on his former lawyer and confidant Michael Cohen while denying he had any advance knowledge about the june 2016 meeting in trump tower. A source has told nbc news cohen is willing to tell Robert Mueller that donald trump junior informed his father about the meeting before it took place. Trumps son had the meeting with several russians after he was told they were coming prepared with damaging information about hillary clinton. The president responded so the fake news Doesnt Waste My Time with dumb questions, no i did not know of the meeting with my son. Sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam. Taxicabs, maybe. Well explain that one. He even retained bill and crooked hillarys lawyer. Gee, i wonder if they helped him make the choice. That last efrns of course is to cohens attorney lanny davis who has declined comment on the presidencys response or to the reports of cohens allegations. The president steered clear of this topic during his event at the white house today designed to highlight economic numbers. As trump wrapped up Kristen Welker asked him about Michael Cohen. Mr. President , is Michael Cohen telling the truth . Is Michael Cohen telling the truth . Mr. President , is Michael Cohen telling the truth . As we say, its been ten times now the president has ignored reporters questions since the Cohen Audio First aired tuesday evening. And for that matter there have only been three White House Press briefings in the entire month of july. On the cohen front politico reports the president s advisors have been taken aback by cohens no holds barred approach and his willingness to publicly reveal potentially devastating details of his private conversations with the
president s life. Donny deutsch, who recently spoke to cohen, appeared on this network and had this insight into the allegation about that Trump Tower Meeting. What michael has made very clear to me is number one and this is a man he worked for for over a decade. Nothing went on in this business without donald knowing about it. And he had led me to believe that he could bring trump back to russia, that he what came out yesterday to me was not a surprise based on Conversations Michael and i had had. Everything that was going on trump knew about. Did he reference this meeting in particular when you talked to him . Yes, he did. Robert mueller, for his part, has not yet spoken to donald trump junior but the two men were a few feet apart today. Politico published this photo of both men waiting for the same flight out of d. C. While seemingly unaware of each other at Washington National airport. There is another new development tonight regarding the special counsel. Muellers office says it plans to call 35 witnesses and financial crimes trial of exTrump Campaign chief paul manafort, which is slated to begin tuesday. This is the first of two trials for manafort. The witness list was made public just today. Biggest name on it no surprise is that man, rick gates. Manaforts former partner and onetime deputy on the Trump Campaign who pleaded guilty and is now cooperating with the Mueller Investigation. After all of that lets bring in our lead off panel on a friday evening. The aforementioned emily jane fox, Senior Reporter for vanity fair. We should add she just wrought book on the trump family. Its called born trump inside americas first family. Josh gerstein, senior White House Reporter for politico, and jill winebanks, attorney and former assistant Watergate Special counsel. Good evening to you all. Emily, here in new york, id like to begin with you. In this relationship hasnt soured, id hate to see a relationship that has. Seems a little chilly. Yeah. Help me go through the two camps of belief, will you please. How these recordings have entering the public domain. Theres belief number one that cohen has leaked these as a brushback pitch to say mr. President , theres a lot more where this came from. Theory number two is this is coming from the trump team, to go ahead, embrace and own some of the worst that they know is coming because that also takes an arrow away from cohen and his value as a flip target to the feds. Please. This is a both very important and very complicated parlor game that were playing here. Its difficult because both sides have credibility issues here. On the one side the cohen camp not only have people been saying, as you said, perhaps hes sending this as a signal to what he has and what he can
offer to donald trump but some people have argued that perhaps hes sending a smoke signal looking for a pardon. Now, people who are close to cohen and familiar with his thinking have flat out denied that time and time again to me. They have said the way that you would get a pardon is not by angering the president and sticking a thumb in his eye repeatedly. And even if he were to get some sort of prepardon then he would undoubtedly be subpoenaed and then have to testify and would not be able to plead the fifth. So that is something that according to all of my reporting he has taken off the table. On the other side you have President Trumps camp and there was a school of thought on friday when the recordings were first released and Rudy Giuliani was the only person on the record describing the subject matter. We quoted you on this broadcast. He was able to control the narrative for a few days until lanny davis did put out the actual recording this week. It was kind of a smart tactic to be able to define the narrative
even though we now know that in the very best case for Rudy Giuliani there are questions raised about the narrative he laid out there. What you have is a complicated set of motivations from each side. Characters on each side that are not necessarily the most trustworthy or have the greatest credibility. And so to try and determine who leaked what when is a difficult game. I will say that from my reporting in the cohen world of the past 24 hours particularly after this revelation last night about what Michael Cohen may know about the Trump Tower Meeting, they have said over and over again we did not leak this because this does not serve us. To have this out in the public was not our strategy. We wanted to be able to go to the special counsel, Robert Mueller, with this information. It doesnt serve us to have this out in the public. Its possible, in some way, that it does serve President Trump to have one of the most damaging things out there perhaps to control the narrative and make
own family had been told had some connection to the russian government. Theres no question this would injure his narrative if people believe it. I think the problem is as emily points out theres a need for some additional corroboration. You have a number of figures here whose credibility is not particularly high and who have made a number of statements that prove not to be accurate. And the real question i think is not whether Michael Cohen has stories that could damage the president but whether he can lead Robert Mueller or other federal investigators like the folks in new york to provable facts to other sources of information that can allow them to assemble a damaging case against the president. If its just stories that hes telling Michael Cohen, i dont think its going to be that damaging. And now to jill winebanks. Counselor, if theres a short version of this answer, if its answerable, in your view how has
if you believe the theory that the leaks have come from the trump camp, that would hold this is some of the worst, most damaging stuff cohen has to tell the feds. But your reporting tonight is that cohen is sitting on top of a, quote, Treasure Trove. Is that a promise or a threat or did they not characterize that . I think its both. I think theres a combination of things thats happening now. Cohen had been preparing since early july for the onslaught that we are now seeing. He had heard word from people in the president s orbit that this kind of Character Assassination was coming. He wanted to be ready to combat it. Because he, as he has said, he has a family to protect. He has a duty that he feels he wants to serve to his country. And he wants to smack back, if hes smacked. He feels right now hes the most under siege from someone who he
Brian Williams examines the days top political stories and current politicalcampaign news. Landscaping and half Million Dollars that manafort spent on that. Its really going to be sort of a Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous episode i think with one after another of these individuals coming in and testifying not just that manafort spent Hundreds Of Thousands of dollars on their products but the method of payment was highly unusual. We had these exhibits come out publicly yesterday where people have written in in long hand these funds were transferred from some strangely named account in cyprus to cover these bills. Whether they be for Home Improvements or a mercedesbenz that went for 130,000. Probably not typically the way people pay for these kinds of purchases, even if theyre lucky enough to have the money to do so. Jill, were also going to be seeing something important next week. This the first of about 100 times i plan to say it. These are Public Servants who are going to be putting themselves and their argument forward at trial. Every one of the lawyers in this
case could exponentially improve their salary in the private sector, especially with the pearl of any association to the Mueller Investigation on their resume. Instead theyre going to lay it all on the line. This is a very closely watched trial. The first of the mueller effort. It is. And every one of them is dedicated to finding the truth and to presenting it to a jury for them to evaluate. And i think thats what we will have. Its going to be a very exciting week. If i could go back to something that was said, i want to address why possibly trump would have leaked this. Its because one of the first things that a trial lawyer learns is that if you have bad news or bad facts, its better to get them out yourself first. Dont wait to have to take it on crossexamination. Put it out on direct examination. Its much for effective in front of a jury for you to put it out and in the way that this has happened they did have a couple of days of their narrative sort of explaining away this very bad for example, the tape. Then you hear the tape and you go, whoa. Its nothing like what giuliani said. Thats completely off. But after two days of hearing it his base will believe that what he said is true. They will pay no attention to what they actually heard on the tape. So that is a reason why he might have gone ahead with it. The other thing is the value of cohen is not diminished by these leaks because he still has to be a witness in a trial. Its not enough even to have the tape. Someone had to explain the tape and someone has to say did the president say use cash or dont use cash. And hes the one who can do that because he was the other party to this conversation. So i dont think it hurts his value as a witness and he still will be valuable and if he wants to make a deal with mueller, i think mueller would find him very interesting. Our thanks to jill winebanks, to emily jane fox, to josh gerstein, the members of our leadoff panel late on a friday night. The good news ive been assured, its friday. There will be no more of this for this week. Coming up, more talk of another u. S. Russia summit. This time one suggested by vladimir putin. And the white house says the president is open to a visit to moscow. Lord knows hes been there before. And later, with midterms fast approaching, the Administration Says foreign interference in our elections will not be tolerated. Well try to arrive at a definition of that when we come back on a friday night. We mentioned this before the break, Vladmir Putin has invited President Trump to moscow just days after the white house postponed plans to have putin visit us here in washington this fall. White House Press SecretarySarah Huckabee sanders released a statement after the invite from putin that read President Trump looks forward to having President Putin to washington after the first of the year, read midterms, and he is open to Visiting Moscow upon receiving a formal invitation. Just hours after that statement went out, President Trump actually met with his National Security council on the topic of Election Security. That was a first meeting of its type for this presidency. After the meeting the white house released statement that did not mention russia but read this part, the president has made it clear his administration will not tolerate foreign interference from malicious
from any nation state or other malicious actors. All this as nbc news reports, as the headline says pretty clearly, Trump Administration has no central strategy for Election Security and no ones in charge. Thats pretty direct. Our own ken dilanian writes it this way, even members of trumps National Security cabinet have acknowledged the need for a central unifying effort, one that experts say is missing. Senior officials have also admitted that the government has failed to take steps necessary to give the russians second thoughts about intervening in american politics. Thats where these next two gentlemen come in. With us to talk about it, two guests, each with a book relevant to our conversation. First malcolm nance, veteran of naval intelligence, security ops, homeland security, and the author of, get, this the plot to destroy democracy how putin and his spies are undermining america and dismantling the west. Plus we have clint watts back
with us tonight. Former fbi special agent. Former member of the joint Terrorism Task force. His latest book, get this, messing with the enemy surviving in a social media world of hackers, terrorists, russians, and fake news. These guys are a lot of fun, trust me. So clint, are we getting played before putin ever dealt with our invitation to come to washington, which was smartly delayed after mcconnell and the speaker of the house visited the president. The president s now been invited to moscow, of all the places on the planet. As ive talked about on this show with you before, President Putin owns President Trump. Hes pushed him both directions and set him up in these scenarios. Im not sure that President Trump even minds because dorz President Putin it seems like so much. You could see this coming. I mean this play was going to be there and every time these overtures are made and pulled back, it puts russia in a very strong position where they can make these challenges. They can push these things. When you say russia do you have those emails . I think it was two years ago. When you make that statement it puts you in a very weak hand if you ultimately become the elected official because you have someone across the ocean who has been influencing the election, who is in a powerful position, and who is manipulating the system, whether its information in F