Analysis and discussion of the days top stories and compelling issues from Lawrence ODonnell. General under president clinton and former federal prosecutor. Julia, i will have you play a few roles for me tonight because you do also cover the Justice Department. Jeff sessions in the room with the president when he is told that Robert Mueller is going to be Special Counsel, according to bloomberg news. Jeff sessions offered his Rec Resignation in that moment. I think the idea that Robert Mueller had been appointed was pretty obvious right there. He saw the writing on the wall, that it was because he had recused himself from this investigation that this had been allowed to happen, that Rod Rosenstein was allowed to appoint this Special Counsel. The way we all see it and the logical way to see it is the appointment of Robert Mueller was because of the firing of jim comey. It was actually the president s decision to fire jim comey, not Jeff Sessions decision. But knowing donald trump and i
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
Alex Witt hosts coverage of national and international news, including breaking stories. Alex Witt hosts coverage of national and international news, including breaking stories. Don jr. And it goes on to say this was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics. It is done frequently in politics when everyone involved is an american citizen. It is much more treacherous if there are any foreign nationals who are part of a meeting like that because there are violations of the law if foreign nationals contribute anything of value to a campaign. Money, information, anything of value. So thats where it gets a bit tricky. Now, one of the issues, we know, is that donald trump jr. , through his testimony and the emails that he released, did acknowledge that it was a meeting to get information, dirt as it was described on Hillary Clinton. We also know that another attendee of that meeting, jared kushner, who is the president s soninlaw and senior
Coverage of national and international news, including breaking stories. Putin meeting all around us in that setting. But they are also hearing the president in very few words undercut the investigation. The president also hit some other big topics like the border wall and of course smacking the media. Heres some of the highlights. Were fixing walls all over the border. And were going to start to get very nasty over the world. Anything i want, they want to oppose. I just figured out how to do the wall. Ill say, i dont want to build the wall and theyll insist on building it. I just figured that out right now. They can make anything bad. Because they are the fake, fake disgusting news. So fake, fake disgusting was a sort of updated iteration. There was cheering and jeering at us in the work area that is
the president getting funding for the wall. Remember, a Republicanled Congress has not supported the president in funding such an endeavor. Joining me to discuss, matt miller, an Msnbc Na
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