seven days ago the new york times was reporting the fbi had opened an investigation into president trump and whether he might have been working on behalf of russia. this past week also saw reporting that the president went to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with vladimir putin. but it is obvious the president has been a frequent critic of those investigations and those running them. the people doing that investigation were people that have been caught that are known scoundrels. they re i guess you could say they re dirty cops. about what the president calling dirty cops as this government shutdown stretches into week five, the impact is now hitting federal law enforcement officers. the washington post reports efforts by the fbi and federal agents are now being directly impacted with dangerously low operations. with us tonight clint watts a
and he didn t learn that through witness interviews and he didn t learn that through cohen s direct testimony. so there may be some ways to parse this. i tend to agree with matthew that this is a fairly significant and straightforward denial by the special counsel s office. but it doesn t mean the president has no responsibility for this lie that we know definitively michael cohen told to congress. right. again, on that subject, i say it s some new reporting that s out there tonight. i showed from the washington post. the new york times also in its reporting tonight, we can put this up on the screen. they have one person, one source they say familiar with mr. cohen s testimony to the special counsel s prosecutors said that mr. cohen did not state that the president had pressured him to lie to congress. jeremy, you re talking about this. i know there were some of those court filings in conjunction with his sentencing suggested that cohen s lies were an effort to align his testimon
crooked hillary clinton and the democrats as opposition research on which the entire russian probe is based, a very sad day for journalism, but a great day for our country. again, that is the president moments ago on twitter. let s bring our panel for another wild friday night here. jeremy bash, former chief of staff at the cia and the pentagon, also an msnbc national security analyst. andy carny, white house reporter for the new york times. joining us by telephone tonight, matthew miller. he s an msnbc justice and security analyst and a former chief spokesman for the justice department. matt miller, it s in that context, your background as a spokesman for the department of justice that i m glad to have you here. i want to begin with you. i want to put up on the screen a tweet, your reaction earlier tonight to this statement with the special counsel. you said in that tweet, let me see if we can get that up on the screen here. we may not there it is. he says you can spend hours pars
the president twitter teases a major announcement about the southern border he ll be making saturday afternoon. the 11th hour on a friday night starts right now. good evening once again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. i m steve kornacki. brian williams is under the weather. day 729 of the trump administration, day 28 of the shutdown, soon to be day 29. we begin with breaking news. special counsel robert mueller is disputing this buzzfeed report that broke late last night claiming that the president of the united states directed michael cohen to lie to congress about negotiations to build a trump tower in moscow. citing two law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation, buzzfeed reported that trump also endorsed a plan to visit russia during the campaign and to meet personally with putin to advance the deal, and that the president and two of his children, all received detailed and regular updates
went to lawyers. that s going to be interesting on the february 7th testimony. if those lawyers knew that what he was saying wasn t true, they re going to do some exposure. that is a very big deal looking down the pike, as well as we also know or we think we know that mueller asked trump, did you talk with cohen about your testimony or felix sater about the trump tower deal? and who else were you discussing this with? and he asked him that in his written testimony, his take-home testimony, take-home test, and that will also come out in the next couple weeks. everything has to do with this trump tower. cynthia alksine and jill wine-banks, thank you for being with us. coming up, president trump promising a major announcement on the shutdown tomorrow. will it be enough to end the stalemate and get thousands of furloughed workers much-needed