Rachel Maddow takes a look at the day's top political news stories. they are known as the steele dossier. they allege, among other things, that the trump campaign had organized collusion with the kremlin. quote, this is something of huge significance. way above party politics, that intelligence officer told corn, that would be steele. quote, i think trump's own party should be aware of this stuff, as well. the official confirmation of the fbi investigation into the trump campaign's contacts with russia was not confirmed for many more months. it's even easy to forget that, because it's the kind of big information that's the center of american politics, so we all talk about it. people who don't even follow the news know about it. but let's be clear. it was not until march 2017, many months later is, that's after the inauguration, after the election, when fbi director james comey went down to the hill, where he was testifying and said, yes, there was an open probe. by that time, the fbi had also initiated a separate but related investigation and that has now been broken much into public in russia called the right to bear arms. so you have a putin-connected oligarch attached to a gun rights platform. and that is very odd. steven hall, the former chief of russian operations for the cia explains it thusly. the idea of a private gun ownership is anathema to putin. so the question is why? why was a pro-gun campaign being hac hatched by a leader in putin's own party? the answer put forward here, that putin was reaching out to attract the nra, specifically over to russia. this is part of what the justice department alleges. and again, the case is only beginning, but what they allege was a covert influence operation. torshin cultivating ties with the nra, all the way back in 2010. he and butina become nra members, which is weird. they begin attending the nra yearly conferences in the u.s., which are about domestic politics. they meet with top nra officials. they cultivate these friendships. the pictures tell the story. are more alike than americans and russians. we are hunters, we are shooters, we do the same thing and value the same kind of things and we need to work together. >> "there are no more peoples more alike than americans and russians." i mean, it's fine if you want to bring people together with commonality, but that's not usually what you hear from conservative political operatives in america, certainly not back then, 2013. fast forward to december 2015. the middle of what is, of course, the pre-presidential campaign season. keene as well as other nra leaders include pete brownwell, and they head back to russia. this is their second visit. they go to russia. butina facilitating a meeting with a ceo of a private russian gun manufacturer, which produces a sniper rifle identified by the pentagon not for domestic use or hunting, but actually as a threat to american soldiers. the nra leader is treated to a tour of that facility and a chance to shoot some guns on sight. the nra reportedly spent $30 million to support trump in 2016. and on the one hand, they do typically support republican nominees. but here's what you need to know. that was triple the amount they spent on behalf of mitt romney just four years prior. and then in january, you get this report in mcclatchy, the fbi investigating whether the fbi used this relationship with the nra to illegally funnel foreign cash into the gun rights organization as part of an effort to support trump. so ever science maria butina was arrested and charged with her conspiracy on behalf of russia, the nra has consistently declined to comment to all kinds of sources and all kinds of publications on this association with what is now an indicted russian spy facing those allegations. now, journalist david corn is raising this question about whether the arrest of butina caused a leadership shake up shortly after at the nra. corn writing that on may 7th, the nra released a curious press release, declaring oliver north, who has his own history as a key vague, anything. but they are declining to comment tonight. same for brownwell. corn reports he's not taking calls. i'm joined now by the reporter at the center of the action, david corn, washington bureau chief for mother jones. david, we always learn a lot from you. i appreciate you joining me this friday night. >> thanks for having me on the weekend. >> heading into the weekend. you have a lot on this story. as you know, rachel has been on many pieces of this story for quite some time. what has advanced through what's happened with the nra? and let me start with the biggest question. i don't need to save it. reading between the lines of your reporting, are you saying you have reason to believe there is another indictment coming pursuant to the nra case? >> i'm not saying that. i don't know that and i don't make any predictions on what the mueller investigation is going to be or the butina investigation, which is separate. we keep being surprised. and the big picture here, ari, is that we keep learning new things. things that we didn't know a week ago, six months ago. so on all of these investigations involving michael cohen, trump/russia, and of course the nra investigation. but it was, as you noted, it was very puzzling when the nra went through this leadership change. i remember getting the press release and it was weirdly put. oliver north is poised to become nra president. not that he's been chosen nra president, but he's poised to become nra president. and as he put it, it was "news to me." and no one could really explain how this very hierarchical organization, that had very strict rules of succession in terms of its leadership would all of a sudden pluck a guy out who didn't see it coming and make him president of the nra when he wasn't prepared to be. and then only recently with the butina case, did we learn about this fbi raid. and remember, her partner, romantically and politically, was a guy named paul erickson, who was an nra activist. and he had been working with her to infiltrate, penetrate, make connections with people in the nra and other conservative groups. so if she were raided, as she was, one would expect him to know about it and word to start filtering out. which could have caused a tremendous panic within the nra and might have -- and might have led to anyone being connected with butina, to be scared, i'm not sure about an indictment, but to be scared of being caught up -- >> certainly exposure. >> yes. >> and peter brunell was very much involved, having gone, you know, on trips that butina organized and having been one of the nra highest officials that she had cultivated. >> when you look at the nra, which has a lot of seasoned political professionals, people may disagree with their views on gun rights and access to guns, but these are people who have been around washington, made it to the top of one of the most powerful organizations around. how can one benignly or positively explain the complete ignorance that would be required to think that an authoritarian country would have a vibrant, private gun rights movement? >> you know, there's so much puzzling about this. in the book i did with michael isikoff, "russian roulette," we wrote about the butina case before it became a criminal case, and we noted that she had shown up at nra events and other conservative events like cpac, the annual get-together, and was really trying to make friends with some of the leading officials. in fact, one fellow, you know, who said, by his own admission, he's in his 60s, doesn't have a lot of hair, has a little bit of a paunch, said, i'm not used to young, attractive women coming up to me and saying, can i be your facebook friend? can i snapchat with you? and he thought there was something odd and weird that butina and this russian legislator named aleksandr torshin kept showing up, and that the nra that he was apart of was embracing this pair of boris and natasha. so there were some people who thought this was odd. but certainly if you watch that video of david keene, if you watch the video that was made of peter brunell in 2015, these guys are really having a good time. they're getting off making these russian connections -- >> so you're saying there was some suspicion about a snapchat honey pot? >> yeah. i think -- i mean, i think some people saw it that way. but it's clear at the time and it was clear in the 2016 campaign that whoever was masterminding this, whether it was torshin or somebody else, they had a pretty good insight into american politics. if you want to work your way into, you know, influencing republicans and conservatives who are now, you know, controlling all arms of government, do it through the nra. and they tried -- >> right. what decade warren zivon say? bring lawyers, guns, and money. >> yeah, the you know what has hit the fan. >> family show. family show, david! >> but i give them credit. >> you're saying -- >> it was done out in the open. >> you're getting at the fact that they were quite adept at infiltrating specifically the conservative wing of american politics in the way they did it. and that gives, of course, insight into what they're accused of with regard to the trump campaign, with j.d. gordon, a trump adviser who sits at the nexus of guns and trump. it's so much fascinating stuff, the final question i have for you we haven't even gotten to, which is the way you continue to figure in this. your name and reporting came up in the very controversial debates over the wiretapping of carter page and whether your material was underlying material for that unlawful wiretap. today we see in the little parts, and i shared this with viewers at the top, the little parts that we do glean from what's come out with steele is the fbi assertion that they stopped working with him, because of what he told you and what you published. your response, sir? >> well, i think we knew that already. we certainly reported that in the book, michael isikoff and myself. so it's not a surprise. it confirms that. and you know, the point i would make is that when i talked to christopher steele in the very end of october, 2016, he was talking to me very reluctantly. he was scared. the material that he had found, connections, allegations between the -- of interactions between trump and the russian government frightened him as a veteran counterintelligence officer. and he had taken his material to the fbi, had been working with them, but he felt this information needed to get out in some way before the election. that the american public had to be told this. so, he -- >> david, had the fbi publicly confirmed that on the record before? >> no, not at all. >> so why now? >> in fact, they were doing everything -- >> do you know why now? >> excuse me? >> do you know why now? >> well, the reason is, the conventional reason, that it was a counterintelligence operation that was ongoing and jim comey and others have explained that they don't make that information public, even when members of congress ask. now, steele's position was that he thought there was enough connections, enough to worry about without knowing the full picture that the fbi should have worked harder, you know, at least the u.s. government, someone in the u.s. government, to make more of that available to the public before they cast votes on november 8th. so that's why he talked to me. when he did that, the fbi said, okay, now too much of your own, you know, of a lone wolf doing this on your own. and we don't want to work with you anymore. but i think he knew that this would get him in trouble with the bureau. he thought it was important that the public knew something about this. >> it's fascinating and it's a story that obviously has gotten deeper and you've been there from the start. i do appreciate your time tonight, sir. >> well, always good to be with you. you know that. >> thank you, david. we turn now to more news on this potential legal quandary for the president. i'm going to be joined in just a moment by the pulitzer prize-winning reporter who's actually tracked donald trump's business dealings as closely as just about any reporter. now, looking at those legal questions, this reporter began this day with a scoop of his own about a notable spike in revenue at donald trump's new york hotel. after two years of sagging revenue, that hotel suddenly gets 13% more in the first quarter. the hotel's general manager says the spike was from, quote, a last-minute visit to new york by the crowned prince of saudi arabia. those hotel stays by the prince's entourage was enough to boost revenue for the entire quarter. it's not clear from the trump organization or the saudis whether they paid for those rooms. it's unclear whether the president is violating the emoluments clause. last week, of course, a case got a green light for a lawsuit against the president over this very allegation. now, after "the washington post" published this story about the spike in revenue, the attorney general of new york announced her state also probing the same question. is the president violating this ban? joining me now is david fahrenthold, political reporter for "the washington post." what's most important here? >> the big picture we're seeing here is that we really don't know, even 18 months into the trump presidency, we don't really know even the basics about what foreign governments are spending money at the president's properties. what foreign governments are actually using trump's businesses to pay donald trump, who then is overseeing u.s. relationships with those countries. this letter from the gm at the trump hotel in new york indicating this big group of saudis came in and it boosted their revenue for the whole quarter. you know, that's just an indication of what's possibly out there that we don't know about. >> you obtained this letter, but it was sort of put out by the trump business side themselves. they put themselves on blast. was that out of -- you know why they did that? >> um, no. this letter was meant for investors in the trump hotel in new york. so the trump hotel is owned -- the individual hotel rooms are owned by outside investors. and so this letter was meant for them, to sort of reassure them. as we said in the story, it had been a couple of bad years at that hotel. 2016 and 2017, the numbers had gone down. this was the general manager saying, hey, things are looking up again. this quarter has been good. and i'll explain why. basically saying, you know, i'm working for you. i'm trying to make the situation better. here's how we did it this time. >> do you think we should infer something negative about the trump organization's refusal to provide actual accounting of what they're donating back? >> i mean, i don't really know what we can infer from it. the thing you can tell from the way they've reacted to these questions is that the trump organization is a private business. and it has always been a very private business. it had always kept as many details about its operation as it could secret. so even now that donald trump is in the white house, the trump organization, which is still owned by him, still seems to see itself in the same light, we're a private business, we do what we want, to the degree that there are legal requirements for us to disclose things about our business, we'll do it. but we won't go beyond that. the idea that there might be some sort of need for transparency above and beyond what the law requires, to be sure that the president wasn't sort of conflicted between his business interests and the public interests, they don't see that. they haven't responded to that at all. so we only know about his business dealings with foreign governments kind of through media reports, through dribs and drabs here and there. >> right, and through as often what you have been able to obtain by old-fashioned shoe leather reporting. david fahrenthold with "the washington post," thank you so much. >> thank you. we have a lot more in this show. we will be right back. we do whatever it takes to fight cancer. these are the specialists we're proud to call our own. experts from all over the world, working closely together to deliver truly personalized cancer care. expert medicine works here. learn more at cancercenter.com you wouldn't accept an incomplete job from any one else. why accept it from your allergy pills? 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laporta replies, "it's not appropriate." and she confessed she went along with it and helped manafort falsify those critical documents. "i could have refused to file the tax return. that would have exposed the firm" laporta reported. i could have called them liars. but manafort was a longtime client of the firm. she added, quote, i very much regret it. and that is immunity witness number one. there are four more people who have immunity who are ready to testify, plus the star witness, rick gates. we turn now to our in-house experts. josh garcia, and joyce vance, a former federal prosecutor as well as an msnbc analyst. they both kept a close eye on the case. josh, you were in the courtroom today. how damaging was cindy laporta's testimony and could you glean at all from the mood of the jury or the faces that she was hurt at all by the fact that she was in on the bad things she was talking about? >> i didn't get a sense that she was hurt. i mean, they knew that she had immunity. but she did seem like she was someone who was along for the ride here. unlike even gates, she didn't have any direct financial interests in these offenses that were being alleged. she was just accused of, essentially, having accepted what her clients wanted her to do, rather than resisting them. but i thought, ari, this was by far the most damaging day yet for manafort in the trial. i felt like some of the other evidence earlier in the case about the tax issues that he was spending way too much and transferring money in from overseas, it's still a little murky, you know if his tax returns were off, how much were they off? by $100,000. is that a lot on $1 million? does that amount to fraud? i don't know. but the stuff we heard about today seemed like very specific transactions, not only tax fraud, but a lot of very damaging evidence on bank fraud also came in through cindy laporta today, where she was specifically involved in apparently forged documents being turned over the banks. and it just sounded like the kind of conduct that is very intentional and very hard to explain away. >> it's fascinating, coming from you, having been there every day in court. because, joyce, i think josh is referring to something that prosecutors know well, which is that lawyers and accountants and definitely judges love paper evidence. but normal people respond to stories. and cindy laporta told a story today. that she was under pressure, that this was wrong, but she went lang with paul manafort's alleged crimes. do you think that kind of story is critical to mueller winning this case? >> it's the perfect sort of compliment to the documentary evidence, to all of the paper that the jury is seeing. and it's not a problem if the evidence feels a little bit murky at this stage. because the prosecution's job right now is to put facts and testimony in front of jury. and then in their closing argument, they'll get to assemble all of those facts and do a cohesive story that will be used to convince the jury of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. the story, the sort of almost human interest that they hear today from laporta, i think is helpful in getting the jury through to that point. >> josh, on the idea of hiding the foreign accounts, how damning was that? because, taken together, it seems to go to manafort's deliberate criminal intent. that's the way mueller is playing it forward. but again, trials have two sides and i think we can definitely expect manafort's defense counsel, when it's their turn to say, after this entire probe, all of this attention is on whether he said or correctly remembered all of this foreign stuff, even if he got it wrong, how big a deal is that? >> well, you know, they did say that in addition to sending the typical questionnaire that goes out to clients about whether they have foreign bank accounts that the accountant said, well, we e-mailed them specifically and said, we want to ask you again, do you have foreign accounts? do you have signature authority over them? and manafort or gates in various instances wrote back "no." i think that that's problematic, but i do think it could be explained away potentially as an oversight or some confusion about what counts as signature authority. that's what the defense seems to be arguing. i do think, again, that the bank fraud testimony that came in cases where at one point, there was a $1.5 million loan outstanding, and it was a problem when getting another loan. and suddenly there was an eight-month backdated document available saying that loan had been forgiven and it was on stationary that seemed to be kind of shady and a signature that seemed shady, that kind of testimony, i just think is very, very damaging. and as you know, ari, bank fraud, those counts carry a 30-year maximum penalty on each one. the law takes that very, very seriously. and i think there's real trouble on the bank fraud charges for manafort. >> right. you see real risk there, as you say, this was the best day of the case. final word to you, joyce. when you look at what they're going to do when the -- when manafort's team gets in the ring, so much of this coverage is what looks bad for him. could you give us any wisdom on what they'll try to do to rebut what josh says has been a tough day? >> they don't have much of a rebuttal opportunity here. their best argument, the argument that they suggested that they would use in their opening statement is that it wasn't manafort, it was gates. but there was testimony from witness after witness yesterday and today, indicating that manafort was the person who provided them with final details. manafort saw and reviewed every document before it was signed and filed. it will be virtually impossible for them to make that argument. and they'll be stuck, as so many defendants are, simply with arguing that the government didn't present enough evidence to meet its burden of proof and that it's not enough for the jury to think that the defendant might be guilty. that the jury should, in essence, hold the government responsible for proving guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. doesn't look like the government is going to have a lot of trouble here, though. >> right. and that the best they can do is say, if you have any doubt, whether maybe rick gates was actually secretly pulling the strings or any doubt whether paul manafort was actually confused, then maybe through it all away. and i think that speaks to why it's been such a methodical case for mueller's team. my special thanks to joyce and josh. we greatly appreciate it. i will tell you, still ahead, goats can eat your trash. they can trim your grass. they can even help you exercise and nail your perfect yoga position, the downward dog. we are going to explain how goats fit into some very important developments. look at the one on the back. that is -- that's some serious yoga posing there. that's when we're right back. a hotel can make or break a trip. and at expedia, we don't think you should be rushed into booking one. that's why we created expedia's add-on advantage. now after booking your flight, you unlock discounts on select hotels right until the day you leave. ♪ add-on advantage. discounted hotel rates when you add on to your trip. only when you book with expedia. but climbing 58,070 steps a year can be hard on her feet, knees, and lower back. that's why she wears dr. scholl's orthotics. they're clinically proven to relieve pain and give you the comfort to move more. dr. scholl's, born to move. with i get rewarded explowherever i go. going out for a bite. rewarded! going new places. rewarded! learn more at theexplorercard.com with our largest variety of crab all year! like new crabfest combo. your one chance to have new jumbo snow crab with tender dungeness crab. or try crab lover's dream. but hurry in. 'cause crabfest will be gone in a snap. goats. then they sent two trucks. ultimately, there was some flag work to try to corral those goats, you see, and get them all back into their goat transportation systems. which does suggest why that organic solution to overgrown weeds can seem like more work than it might be worth. why not just have electric weedwhat cwee weedwhackers around. it takes perseverance to chase down your moving goat system. it takes patience, it clearly takes diligence and energy. and some ask, is it worth it? is this the best we can do? it's hard to track down all these goats. i know what you may be thinking as you watch the news, what are we even talking about? but perhaps these goats are an allegory for vigilance about facts in our trump era and how some people are using energy and diligence to fight assault on the facts and their slow progress could even put them in the running for, yes, goat of fact checking. the greatest of all time, my apologies, but we wanted to at least show you the goat videos. and that story is worthwhile and it's coming up. i can do more to lower my a1c. and i can do it with what's already within me. because my body can still make its own insulin. and once-weekly trulicity activates my body to release it. trulicity is not insulin. it comes in a once-weekly, truly easy-to-use pen. it works 24/7. trulicity is an injection to improve blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes when used with diet and exercise. don't use it as the first medicine to treat diabetes or if you have type 1 diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis. don't take trulicity if you or your family have medullary thyroid cancer, you're allergic to trulicity, or have multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. stop trulicity and call your doctor right away if you have symptoms of a serious allergic reaction, a lump or swelling in your neck, or severe stomach pain. serious side effects may include pancreatitis. taking trulicity with a sulfonylurea or insulin 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anywhere from a detention facility to being abroad. of the 572 children in custody, 410 have parents who are not in the u.s., likely because they were deported by trump. the trump administration is now saying this, the aclu should use their resources and network of law firms and volunteers to make contact with those parents abroad. the trump administration, of course, are the ones who deported or separated all of these people. now they want someone else, i guess, the aclu, to clean it up. how's that playing in court? not well. this is the new story. the judge tonight overseeing those court-ordered reunifications says this new trump effort is unacceptable. quoted, many of these parents were removed from the country without their child. all of this is a result of the government's, the trump administration, failure to reunite. the reality is for every parent who is not located, there will be a permanently orphaned child and that is 100% the responsibility of the trump administration. i'm joined by msnbc correspondent, jacob soboroff, who has reported extensively on this story for years now, before the separation policy kicked in, and before this period of litigation ensued. number one, your view of what was a smackdown of this idea that the aclu should clean up trump's mess. >> that's exactly what it was. it was a smackdown, a clap back from the judge. and i was in court a week ago tonight, down in san diego, when the judge said he was going to order both of these parties to come up with a plan to reunite the remaining kids. 2,551 was the overall number. 572 is the number of kids that still, months later, haven't been reunited with their parents, ari. and the judge was flabbergasted. he just said, there is no plan. nobody came up with a plan. i ordered you last week to come up with a plan. the administration submitted, in this paperwork, this court filing last night, thursday night, a plan that basically said, you know what, if the aclu really wants to do it that badly, you guys should take the lead and we'll be the supporting role here. >> right, it's remarkably cynical. you would expect it from other parts of the administration in rhetoric, to go to a judge and say it is pretty wild. it's as if somebody complained that, say, inmates are not being fed meals in prison and the response of the government is, fine, you feed them. you come to the jails and feed them. it doesn't even make sense. >> just logically, you're the trump administration. you are the ones that put into place this systemic policy to separate all these kids, that had never been done before, to take them away from their parents, to do this as a deterrence policy that nobody else would come into this country illegally. a strategy we know doesn't make sense. and then when the thing doesn't work out, just lake there was no plan in the beginning to put it into place and that's why it was such a disaster, they just decided, you know what, we're not really going to come up with a plan anyways to undo this and we'll ask somebody else to do it. >> right. so there's a lot of mess there. i do want to hit one positive part that i'm curious about your view, because you've been covering this so closely. you mentioned the filings, right, we have this. this is a government filing. the 572 number is what the trump administration coughed up under pressure. and so while much of this was a complete unforced humanitarian crisis because of trump's orders, what do you think of the fact that over these weeks, we see the court system working, we see the accountability and the pressure on, we see the majority of the families reunited under the combination of public advocacy, public scrutiny, and judges and courts forcing their hand. >> it's an extraordinary thing, and an inspiring thing, quite frankly, for me, making the journey down there, being inside these detention centers and seeing the children in cages, knowing that talking about this stuff, the public pressure not only to get the president of the united states to sign that executive order and stop the policy, but to go into the court, it gives you super fast speeds for all your devices, provides the most wifi coverage for your home, and lets you control your network with the xfi app. it's the ultimate wifi experience. xfinity xfi, simple, easy, awesome. here is a pivotal period on the calendar. some time in september that is when senate judiciary chairman chuck grassley wants to hold a confirmation hearing for brett kavanaugh, a pivotal trump pick. he's asked the national archives from everything it has from brett kavanaugh and he wants it by august 15th. and he got his answer, and it is no. the answer officially, quote, we currently expect to be able to complete this review by the end of october 2018, which is, golly, pretty close to the midterms. the national archives says it has over 9,000 pages to produce from the republicans request. this is a key space to watch. ♪[upbeat music] but prevagen helps your brain with an ingredient originally discovered... in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. now, we turn to something that is important around here, fact checking. donald trump made a giant claim in his first speech to congress. >> according to data provided by the department of justice, the vast majority of individuals convicted of terrorists and terrorism related offenses since 9/11 came here from outside of our country. >> sounds important, if true. well, the editor of "law fair" noticed it didn't sound like something the doj would have produced. separate data from the national security division of the justice division. but we kept pressing for the data he claimed was his source. finally this week he got an answer. there are no such records in justice court files. not an e-mail, no report, nothing. the doj said, the president stood up and made a representation to congress about immigrants that wasn't true and attributed it to the justice department data, which doesn't exist. this is a governing problem. democrats in congress pressing the administration on the issue of how this happened and who was involved so they can present it. the wider context is this forced fact checking comes as the president calls the press the enemy of the people and is in a fight with the new york times editor in chief this week over free press. the doj data reveals a separate prong of donald trump's strategy that should be exposed. if this all sounds exhausting, it may be supposed to be exhausting. he used federal transparency laws to expose the lie and make trump's own justice department confirm it. just like the washington post continues to check the