Pretty major they can do about it. Thats later. But we begin with the growing heat on donald trump in this russia probe culminating in pressure now hitting trumps family. Also Paul Manaforts lawyers today facing off with the mueller team in court. This was a new and separate proceeding. This all comingut of th way mueller yanked and blew up the plea deal because he says as you may have heard by now, that Paul Manafort kept online. So one of muellers top lieutenants Andrew Weissman says he could face new and separate charges. Meanwhile accusing manafort of lying about his business dealings and his foreign outreach. In our legal system nobody just takes bob muellers word for it p. Today a judge explained exactly how its going to go down, ordering muellers prosecutors to basically prove that case with details and turn them in by december 7th. And a judge would scour those arguments for potentially months because manafort wont under this plan actually get sentenced until march. Meanwhile new reporting asking witnesses about ivanka trump and the trump tower moskow project, and investigators have clearly gotten their hands on some hot emails that showed cohen talked to ivanka and don junior about this controversial project. And ivanka recommended a specific architect for it if it were to happen. All of this has forced donald trump to change the story hes had about this that has gone back for years. Hes now claiming he just lightly looked at doing deals in russia, which is a major upgrade from quote, no dealings. I have no dealings with russia. I have no deals in russia. I have no deals that could happen in russia because weve stayed away. And i have no loans with russia. Thats a lot of nos that are not nos. And cohen meeting with muellers team, and he clearly would have given up a lot more information than what was just released in that relatively spare piece of charging materials we got yesterday. Donald trump didnt even know about those meetings until the guilty plea dropped. So that means to be clear, onald trump doesnt probably else cohen told mueller about trumps ties to russia unless some of it was leaked back through that manafort double agent thing, well see. And then donald trump probably doesnt have a lot of insight as to why the russians will well, will he find out why they were so eager to help him . Theyre doing it to try to influence the election for donald trump. Maybe because hes praised putin, maybe because hes said he agrees with a lot of what putin wants to do, maybe because he wants to do business in moskow, i dont know the reasons but we deserve answers. The answers keep coming in, and weve got some professional answer givers to join me tonight. Kim, is there any crime that you see in this horrific National Security scandal . Well, with respect to the president , we dont really know. There could be a conspiracy to defraud the United States that involves the russians. We already know theres an indictment against several russian operatives. We could have some Additional Campaign financial violations, problems if there was a quid pro quo. Look, across the legal landscape of the United States, this notion of getting goodies for favors is something that the emoluments clause doesnt like, the securities clause doesnt like it, the foreign practices act doesnt like it. When president ial candidates announce theyre going to run, they have to disclose information. So theres lots of places in the law where this is problem and of course the politics are problematic and all of it bears on impeachment problem. The other question i want to go to you before we brought it out on the law is when you list that off, thats a target rich environment of basically federal crimes youre talking about. Do you views those as in directly in the collusion investigation mueller was assigned or basically arising outlet of collusion. Well, to your point the referral from rosenstein to mueller is quite broad. It would clearly encompass all of that. But to me what came out if you read carefully the information that mueller issued with respect to cohen, you can see in the emails that are documented in that information, this is not just mr. Cohen talking, linking the president and communications with the russians relating to the moskow deal during the campaign. But Business Crime that may not be quoteunquote collusion. Well, collusion is not a crime. Conspiracy is a crime. Collusion is like what the shorthand people are talking about for this connection between the russians and the election. As far as the crime, it would have to be what we know is conspiracy, a meeting of the minds. And any showing of intent and very difficult. So thats crime. I want to talk to you, eleanor, about lies which are bad for democracy even when they are potentially lawful. What we just showed, donald trump changing the story, suggests that he does feel the need to revise. Your view of that. Well, the fact that he covered this up, he knew that there was something that didnt sit quite right with what he was doing, and so he lied consistently. And now hes faced with a plea agreement that everybody can see where a person acting on his behalf, working with the top aide to the russian president was offering a 50 million suite on the top of trump tower. Now, i dont know how you define bribe, but that comes awfully close to it. And the president is now saying, well, he wasnt sure he was going to win, it was a good chance he wouldnt win. He had to pursue his business opportunities, there was nothing wrong with that. Let me push you on that. There was a former trump aide today who said you dont know donald trump at all if you think he would have ever accepted the recommendation to give away a 50 million suite in gift. Well, he wouldnt be giving it away, hed be getting something in return. So i think youd be weighing carefully the risk benefit. And thats what hes been doing ever since he entered the campaign and entered the white house. He measures the risk versus the benefit. He wasnt going to meet with putin at the g20 summit oops, yes, he is going to meet. The russians owned him. They were owned him since the early 90s where the only money he could get was from Deutsche Bank which has a wellknown reputation as acting as the financial conduit for oligarchs. I think its fascinating that the germans raided Deutsche Bank this week, and i dont know whats going to come out of that. But a friend of mine who works in finance says theres a saying that things happen gradually and then happen suddenly. And thats the phase were in. It has become commonplace to normalize congress as a failure that doesnt do anything. Im not interested in using that as a premise. I go from the premise the congress has oversight responsibilities, investigative responsibilities and you look at the report of russia that came out of the house on this very issue. It asserts that Michael Cohen attempted to reach out to members of the russian government, to make that very project proceed. But apparently it didnt have any direct points of contact, and that it didnt appear cohen ever received a response. What does it mean for that building there that thats the republican conclusion that in the light of day by mueller now we know to be false . Well, the republicans were clearly determined to find that theres nothing here to see, folks. You know, nothing really happened. Now, that in fairness thats what Michael Cohen told them, right . And so he lied. Now, they didnt go out of their way at all to test those lies and to try to, you know, as mueller did, to find out that, you know, that he wasnt telling the truth. And they certainly didnt go where eleanor suggests mueller may be going, to look at this at the whole nexus of relationships between donald trump and russian oligarchs and billionaires and people connected with putin over the years. And how much theyve spent buying luxury condos from him and where that money came from, and was it cleaner after they bought these apartments . You know, thats something i think muellers looking at. And eleanor, i want to ask you about the way donald trump is reacting to lof this. Theres much has been made of what a tv presidency this is, but washington has been a tv town for some time. When you were on the Mclaughlin Group and those of us were growing up watching it, that is where the table was set. And only thing thats changed is its happened faster and constantly. With that in mind i read to you the reports about donald trump watching tv, and it says every time he sees Michael Cohen on tv he grows aggrieved and cohen is now seen as an existential threat at or more so than the investigation itself because when trump sees him onair he knows this was his fixer for so many issues. Well, and he says that Michael Cohen is a weak person, Michael Cohen is lying. At the same time Rudy Giuliani, whos speaking on the president s behalf as his lawyer, said that the president s answers in his written document to mueller lines up with what Michael Cohen said. Now, id like to see that released, if this white house really wants us to believe this president has any credibility. I guess, i cant even use that word in the same sentence with trump, but they want to prove something, that they are telling a story that their supporters will believe. That this was a business opportunity, that there was nothing untoward here and he was entitled to do this, and now hes being pushed around by this weak person whos telling lies because he doesnt want to jail. And the trump narrative at least for his fans, hes really good at picking people, he picks the best people, but also some mysterious process constantly delivers him really weak liars that constantly turn on him. That he hardly knows or he barely met. You know, Michael Cohen could turn out to be for prosecutors the gift that keeps on giving, and not just mueller but the Southern District of new york, the manhattan district attorneys office. Its not hard to imagine years worth of work that could be done by prosecutors investigating the trump organizations finances with, you know, Michael Cohen as kind of the, you know, the guide to show them the way. So this is friday nights news in washington, and weve done the law, the lies and the congress. What i want to do now is actually take a moment and look at where we are on this friday night with the whole week. Because i will be the first to admit sometimes we are always chasing the latest in this very unusual political environment. And we miss the larger context. And so for that, i set aside a little time to bring in one of our friends and a long time analyst, howard fineman, here to msnbc, with a very particular brief which is not the last six hours or last 24, but how do you make sense of what is turning right now over the last week or two because i feel something happening . Well, if i was at the old news week magazine we would right now be discussing what the cover line was, and we thought we were doing the first rough draft of history week by week, so you came to the right person, ari. My cover line would be individual one, which is what donald trump is described as in the recent mueller findings. Hes individual one now not just as president but individual one at the absolute center of Everything Else that is going on legally. When he answered some questions in writing, he put his own first draft of history on the books legally. The problem he has is that Robert Mueller has spent the last year and a half gathering facts designed to assess the credibility and the truthfulness of what donald trump said in those on those pieces of paper. And because i think there are going to be major conflicts between that, between the president s story and everybody elses story, that makes him the story of the week in a way weve been covering over the last year the slow gathering process of mueller working from the outside in and from the bottom to the top. Were now reaching the top of the mountain, and there sits individual one. And so when you see the president react this way on the scale of premeditated, can he, ready for everything because hes conned of lot of individuals his whole life, at the end of the day he had a plan to get out from under it or do you see someone whos underreacting emotionally . I covered him when he was out and about as a businessman and toying with politics and i saw him on the campaign trail a lot in 2015 and 2016, and ive spent time with him and i think his confidence is shaken. And thought that when i saw him yesterday on his way to the helicopter giving one of the most confused and out of balance and unconfident answers that ive seen him giving by way of explanation of what the news that had come out that day. And i think the fact that were talking about the very innermost circle, not just manafort and not just stone, but now Jared Kushner and now even his daughter, ivanka, surfacing in some of these questions, thats got him off his props. And the other thing is this. Dont forget at the beginning of all this donald trump said, look, look at this if you want, i dont like it, but stay away from my business. My business is the red line here. Remember he drew that red line early on. That line has been obliterated because the whole mueller theory from the beginning has been to look at the Financial Relationships of donald trump and russian oligarchs, to look for motivation for collusion, cooperation, whatever you want. And now he realizes that every last thing about his business going back years with the russians is going to be out there for public view at some point between now and a year from now. And you raise a more profound question, which is what happens to a confidence man when hes out of confidence . Well, i think were getting close to seeing that. And i think if rudy is telling him, Rudy Giuliani is saying dont worry, we got this, i think at this point donald trump doesnt think anybodys got this. And the more he talks about weak people around him, the more i think in a way donald trump psychology here, hes worried about his own ability to stand up here. The pressure of the presidency in any circumstance is almost beyond anybodys ability to bear. With this kind of scrutiny coming down on him now its going to be interesting to see what he himself is made of. The same question, if he is a con man and a confidence man, how does he go forward now . I think its all about the family. I think the threat to don junior, to ivanka, drives him crazy. I think he will do anything. I think he thinks his main risk is impeachment, and it isnt. Because unless you have 20 republicans in the senate, forget about conviction and being tossed out of office. So i think thats misplaced and i think he spends his days escaping. He was tweeting and watching television at the g20 summit. Which you dont need to go to the g20 summit for. You can just stay home. And he actually stayed home from the Christmas Tree lighting the other day. That seems a small thing, but what other president has not taken part in the Christmas Tree lighting . Well, i teach constitutional law and i think the question comes down to accountability here. We also have whitaker not putting the brakes on this process. It looks like the Mueller Investigation is going on without his interference. Thats really important. And the second piece is we now have a congress thats going to flip, and we might see more perjury investigations in that regard. A lot here on this table. Thank you very much. Eleanor cliff, you are back for a special fall back friday at the end of the night. Its friday, we still have a little fun. Coming up the kremlin saying trump and putin will meet after all. What does that mean . Meanwhile Russian Military intel also linked to that fiasco. This is an original and exclusive reporting. And yes, a washington fall back friday. Well have all the details. 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So right now lets