Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. Many months later, thats 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 view, much more, because the break came with this very curious indictment of a woman named maria butina. Now, she was suspected as an unregistered agent of the russian government. That she was trying to mount this covert influence operation through a conservative group, a Gun Rights Group in the u. S. Tonight, the same reporter who had the Breakthrough Scoop about the Steele Dossier has a new and obviously provocative question. Did alleged russian spy, maria butina, cause a Leadership Shake up at the nra . The backstory here is an fbi dive, prior to the fact of trump becoming president , into russian attempts to inf
Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. By the letters, chs. Confidential human source. Now, the trove of documents detail reports of payments to steele, mostly redacted. You can see there, thats a lot of white space. There are two exceptions. The final page is information from a document, from february 2016. Of course, thats long before the russia probe began. It says steele was, quote, verbally admonished by the fbi and that steele acknowledged the admonishment and even signed a document noting it. Now, from this excerpt, which obviously is tantalizing, we dont have the wider context of why. The other item comes from page two of these new documents. It concerns the fbis decision to terminate its relationship with steele. Guess when . Just days before the 2016 election. Now, this document says steele had confirmed his relationship with the fbi to an outside party. And that he was a source for a, quote, online article. In addition to revealing his relationshi
Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days 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 trumps own party should be aware of this stuff, as well. The official confirmation of the fbi investigation into the Trump Campaigns contacts with russia was not confirmed for many more months. Its even easy to forget that, because its the kind of big information thats the center of American Politics, so we all talk about it. People who dont even follow the news know about it. But lets be clear. It was not until march 2017, many months later is, thats 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 i
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,
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 why 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