This shows a second problem because as bloomberg and nbc ano rachel have been reporting, pecker may have played himself here and blown up his own immunity. Pl translation. If david pecker told the feds about other crimes he committed during those immunity talks, he could now be on the hook for them. There could be a lot more pressure on this trump ally. Bezos published emails that reveals how he threatened to publish photos of bezos unless he publicly backed down. First they wanted bezos to say the tabloid coverage was not politically motivated. Why did they care . Well get into that. He wanted to end how they obtained private messages. Certain powerful people who experience Washington PostNews Coverage will wrongly included on their enemy, President Trump is one of those people. Tr trump did seize on that National Enquirer story about bezos divorce writing so sorry to hear the news about jeff bezos being taken down by a competitor whose reporting is far more accurate than in his lobbyist newspaper. Hopefully the paper will be placed in better and more responsible hands. Ed thats a lot. Today the white house laying low. Is the president aware of the bezos situation . What is the white house reaction . Im not sure if hes aware of it. Were not going to get into a situation of something between jeff bezos and tabloids magazine. Bezos reporting after President Trump became presidenr he rewarded mr. Peckers loyal ty in which he brought a guest with important ties in saudi arabia. Pecker was pursuing business there. Bezos reporting the Washington Post coverage of the murder of a person who wrote for them, jamal khashoggi. Many remember this. This was in the saudi consulate in turkey. Saudi arabia is a huge critic of the post investigation. S and now for some reason is david pecker and this, again, to what jeff bezos is asking is a big question. He writes several days ago, an ami leader advised us that pecker is apoplectic about our investigation. For reasons still to be better understood, a saudi angle seems to hit a particularly sensitive nerve. Thats a lot. A lot of it looks bad even if its not all true. Now, let that all sink in and now, let that all sink in and look at a brand new report from the daily beast which details the larger patterns. Da private investigators who have literally directly worked for ig them and the quote, war of blackmail that goes on and helps explain their Business Model ana perhaps their brazenness they r thought they could get away with this against the richest man in the world. Joining me now as promised is the editor in chief of daily beast who can give us a lot more details. Im joined by jonathan alter. Both have been in saudi arabia and i have not. Dont know im going any time soon. I couldnt prejudge a whole region. Youd like it. You may not find it totally comfortable. Maybe part of it. Im sure i wouldnt like the way the government plays ball. Certainly the way they kill journalists. Before we get to that, walk us through new reporting tonight. Most people who heard this story even if you dont get all the details say wow. Who thinks they will get away with trying to thuggishly take out and intimidate the richest man in the world . These cats. Why . Because they have been doing it for decades. We talked to two private es investigators today. Both are colorful characters. One is a former porn star turned private investigator. The other guy got a joint for a gambling operation. Our viewers can handle it. Its late friday night. Nicholas is a Pulitzer Prize winning new york journalists who does humanitarian investigations. Lets keep it at his level. They are helping refugees and they came back to describe what they did for the national ey enquirer which is the same kind of intimidation tactic over and over again. Everybody we talked to in conjunction with the National Enquirer today, every veteran ir and we didnt just talk to those guys. They used the term blackmail. Used it over and over again. Ill slow you down but give you the mike back. This is a criminal Business Model. Im not going to use the term your sources are describing basically getting material and making money through repeat al crime. Blackmail and extortion, allegedly. Allegedly. Sometimes they would work with the very lawyers of the targets of this. F you would get a celebrity. Their own lawyer would have dirt on them and serve it to the private investigator and serve v it up to the National Enquirer and they would do a blackmail or trade deal. Its not just what they did to celebrities. Its also their attitude toward add adversarial journalists. We have a guy on our staff, a National Enquirer veteran. They tried to hit him with a 5 million lawsuit while we were t reporting our story on them. How did you handle that . We kept reporting. How often does this work . I dont know how it works in other shops but in our shop it doesnt work. Journalism is a tricky trade. The Business Model is really tough now. I can imagine that for some shops being threatened with millions of dollars in legal g fees or millions of dollars in damages that would be a big deal for them. That might dissuade them from a story. You look at the multiple theories and one is that donald trump is behind this because he acts like hes behind this. I want to read for you what harvard law professor said in describing that. Are donald trump and the murderous saudi prince coconspirators with pecker to blackmail and extort jeff bezos as owner of the Washington Post. Asking for a friend. Thats one theory this is all about. Its unproven but it has the ring of plausibility to it which is an extraordinary thing to say about a president of the United States. Noah has been describing a very seemy form of transactional journalism which has been going on in the gutter of american journalism for a very long time. Whats different is this is not directly involve the president. We know that he was involved in what they call catch and kill at the National Enquirer and benefitted him in the Stormy Daniels and Karen Mcdougal case. We know hes in this world. We know that hes very close to the saudis. We know that even today the Trump Administration is breaking the law. The global magninsky act that requires them to take action in response to the khashoggi killing. Today was the deadline. As they are in violation of the law. Thats how much they want to sugar coat this brutal crime that took place. We have pecker, mbs from saudi arabia, President Trump. Om they are all in alignment. They all have a motive to have committed this blackmail. You explain why after getting caught up in this federal probey would go back to what looks like such great risks to himself . I cant accept this is the way they play. They actually thought they could intimidate the richest man in the world. Gh they had strong interest in trying to do the president s bidding. The president just tweeted he thinks this disgusting public indication would be preferable as the owner of the Washington Post. He said its a Better Newspaper than the Washington Post. This is the way despits all around the world are playing now. They are buying up the biggest newspaper in their country to silence it and quell criticism. Thats what trump would like to do in the United States and taking us away from democracy. Hes not going the get away with it because hes met his match in jeff bezos. It is chilling because you have a lot of experience in working with media institutions without naming names. Theres been more that have been courageous over the years depending on what is in charge. This is an individual, what every one thinks about bezos, who got hit with something that took personal kind of embarrassment and stood up to it and other people might not. T alter here. Can i call you by your last name . Sure. Theres another theory that wouldnt be as bad for trump but still go to a very Important National intrigue which is that mbs and the saudis are doing through this the enquirer to go after american journalism and matters around the world. Do facts matter, do stories matter . You bet that do. Brennonis of that theory. I have no doubt, the killing of khashoggi that he would try to discredit, embarrass and hurt bezos financially if he could. Thats the theory that comes from them. Im a little more skeptical of that because i think that mo saudi arabia is indeed agast at what the Washington Post has been writing. In my conversations with the saudis they havent tied that so directly to jeff bezos. They tied it to the Washington Post. O i would just emphasize that we have to be really careful about speculating here. We have a bunch of dots. We should just be careful about connecting them. What we know is that we have sort of this blackmail model on the part of the National Enquirer. We know as john said that the National Enquirer has leveraged the material it has for the benefit, the political benefit of the president of the United States. We also know that saudi arabia has indeed had very close ties with the president mbs, Jared Kushner. The National Enquirer has had close ties and business ties with saudi arabia. Theres several dots and theres also a line. The line is the emails have come out and the enquirer are not saying if they are fake or false. Te mails outline that go beyond the enquirers desire to enrich themselves or make money. They want to cut off bezos, the post, from finding out where they got the stuff. If they got it from a private eye that wouldnt be so bad. A jeff bezos seems to think theres a saudi connection. J we dont have further evidence of that. I think we should be careful about a rush to judgment on whether this goes beyond National Enquirer. There are reasons for suspicions and a lot of questions. I think we should be careful about answering them. The other thing we have to note is bezos mistress has a brother named mark sanchez. Hes an associate with mr. Trump figure, carter page and roger stone. Hes had something of a relationship with ami over the years. Hes something thats been interviewed in the private investigation that bezos fundedi it may be all of these Geopolitical Forces or it may come down to something much more personal or some combination. I agree that we dont have any evidence. There are other data points. One of them is a hundred page publication called the new e kingdom. It was put out by ami, the owner of the National Enquirer that just slobbered all over mbs in way that was reporting that they i guess they did some of the same kind of reporting during donald trump during the campaign. In there was no ads. It wasnt clear who paid for this. Pecker said he paid for it out of his own pocket for reasons that unclear. The state department, interestingly, last year when this came out was asked whether there was a connection between h the United States government anc the publication by ami of this hundred page magazine about how great saudi arabia is and they sort of issued a nondenial denial. I think the quote was to our knowledge theres no connection to the u. S. State department which raises some real eyebrows. Theres a lot of reporting yet to be done between the saudis, david pecker and the Trump Administration. When you look back at iran contra. One of the things that struck people is it seems like such a t stupid idea from the start. Ik this stuff seemed so whacky. If it were a movie and this scene in the movie right after the midterm elections. The president s tabloids killer who hides bad stories, youd say its too much. The whole catch and release idea of the National Enquirer c paying for these stories was pretty wild. This is kind of one more layer of wildness or top of that. I would make the point we dont know whether there was terrible malpractice here. We know there was vast malpractice more broadly. The cia has concluded the crown prince murdered a Washington Post columnist that the president refused to hold the crown prince accountable. Id Jared Kushner acquired about whether the u. S. Can help the crown prince take over the e succession. The crown prince is torturing and imprisoning womens rights activists and the u. S. Government refuses to even mention their names. These are things that are indisputable. I think we have to hold the American Government accountable for that failure to act on the murder of a journalist and on the imprisonment and torture. I think this week one more thing is the crown prince was quoted as saying that he quote wanted to put a bullet their efforts to distance themselves are not going well. This is an important to reflect on. L. Youre talking about the true on stakes and state sponsored murder and free speech around the world. You talked about the pornographic sources that you have and thats why youre here. Im kidding. I know all three of these individuals and they are talented journalists. That was a joke. Your story was great. Thank you. Re coming up, we have a lot of other stories including a big wake up call when the acting attorney general goes before thw committee and gets a sight of oversight. Roger stone has been talking a lot about fbi raid on his home. He said it was outrageous. Im going to show you actual footage of the raid itself. Its the first time we have seen the feds arrest a mueller target. Later, a theory about what kind of case bob mueller and te federal prosecutors could be working on even though the trumr family is denied that are worried about any legal jeopardy. vo only verizon was ranked 1 by rootmetrics. 1 in 3 opensignal mobile experience awards. 1 in video streaming according to nielsen. And 1 in Network Quality according to jd power. Were proud to be the only network to win in all four major awards not because of what it says about us, but what it means for every one of our customers. If you havent experienced americas most Reliable Network, nows the best time. Because youll get apple music, on us. The latest inisnt just a store. Ty its a save more with a new kind of Wireless Network store. Its a look what your wifi can do now store. A get your questions answered by awesome experts store. Its a now theres one store that connects your life like never before store. The xfinity store is here. And its simple, easy, awesome. Bob mueller is getting a new boss pretty soon. Today is the first time that one of muellersupervisors ever faced a committee. Members of congress grilling Matt Whitaker who has been criticized for not being qualified for his job. He showed that by not just being combative but being combative in a rude and juvenile way to a degree that the New York Times reported today his conduct at the hearing was a quote remarkable breach of decorum. Clashing with democrats, calling them out for ducking all kinds of questions. Theres no sentence of the u. S. Constitution that says the u. S. President cannot be indicted. Because that is the opinion of the office i dont care what the policy is. Yes or no. I havent it for you right here. I have a copy myself. Im going to mr. Chair, im going to submit the u. S. Constitution for the report and say that sentence is not in there. Confronting him about his own job qualifications. There will throughout the country who are confused. We are all trying to figure out who are you . Where did you come from and how the heck did you become the head of the department of justice . Hopefully you can help me work through this confusion. Congressman that was a statement not a question. I assume you know the difference. Some democrats scolded him for the breaches of decorum noticed by the New York Times. Can the clock be restored . I dont know if your time has been restored or not. Mr. Attorney general, were not joking here. Your humor is not acceptable. Youre here because we have a constitutional duty to ask questions and the congress has the right to establish government rules. The rules are that youre here. Democrats also looked at pushing whittaker into any uncomfortable positions that they believe his boss wants to to hear from him. Is mr. Mueller honest . You believe hes honest. You dont believe hes con conflicted. You see hes honest and not conflicted. Im not a puppet to repeat what youre saying. Are you able to say it . Im not here to be a puppet to repeat terms and words that you say that i should say. Can you say that to the president . Whittakers goal through a lot of this may have been to evades and grinds down the hearing into a parsing, petty fogging haze that exhaust the people participating or watching. We have seen that tactic before. When a witness does that they can achieve a tactical progress even though they look bad. They look uncooperative. There were a lot of moments of petty fogging today but when owe get through all of that, there were important moments. The democratic chair, jerry nadler marched whittaker that President Trump and he never spoke about the mueller claim. Its a yes or no question. Have you communicated anything you learned in that briefing about the investigation to President Trump. Yes or no . Mr. C