People have made to congress to buttress the russian side of the collusion investigation. Thank you for that. We thank you for watching this hour of msnbc live throughout, i mean, from the very beginning craig melvin whos about to pick up our coverage from the day that Robert Mueller was appointed thrappoin appointed, this story has never been far from the headlines. Among these many days, this is huge. This is an infection pointing deep. Were going to continue our coverage. Good morning, craig melvin, msnbc headquarters here in new york city. That Breaking News on the Mueller Investigation is where we start. Shortly before President Trump left for his meeting with World Leaders in argentina, last hour just a few moments ago he called his onetime attorney and fixer Michael Cohen a quote, weak person, who is lying. Cohen made a surprise appearance in a Federal Courtroom in manhattan this morning. He named the president. He named President Trump in a shocking new plea deal involving Trum
but you have to let these investigations take their course. we got to be very careful, chris, not to jump to conclusions because that s how these narratives get built that actually end up being false in the long run. guys only say what you re saying right now when they re on the short side of the stick. this isn t what your brothers and sisters in the party were saying when it was about carter page, right? it was these people are going after him with a fisa warrant, it was wrong. we know that a grand jury subpoena is nowhere near the level of scrutiny you need to get a fisa warrant. just because the bar here isn t whether or not the grand jury subpoenas were warranted, that s a very low bar of probative recognition. it s that they kept expanding and kept looking even after senior staffers said there s nothing here. that s the suspicious part and they happen to be the people that president trump hated most. well, two things on that point, number one, i speak for myself, what peopl
get a fisa warrant. just because the bar here isn t whether or not the grand jury subpoenas were warranted, that s a very low bar of probative recognition. it s that they kept expanding and kept looking even after senior staffers said there s nothing here. that s the suspicious part and they happen to be the people that president trump hated most. well, two things on that point, number one, i speak for myself, what people say in the party, that s up to them. number two, as somebody who is actually pretty conservative, we ll talk about that in the next part of this interview, i ve always been concerned about fisa warrants. not just when it comes to situations like that, but across the board, since the patriot act was passed. that s been my position when it comes to fisa. all i m saying is this, this is new information. we haven t had an opportunity for it to be fully investigated. there s been no other sources that have come forward, to my knowledge. i m not the reporter. i don t kn
craig, we talk about donald trump lying. he lies all the time. that s kind of his thing. but this is pretty important because the key here isn t whether or not he was trying to make money while he was a candidate. he s already moving towards trying to blur it and make that the defense. the key here is this is not private commerce. this is michael cohen confessing to outreach to the kremlin, to the leadership of the russian government because as people know, as people have learned from all the extra reporting we ve done on russia, there isn t really a private market when it comes to big important things in the country. the oligarchs deal with putin, and obviously michael cohen and donald trump had that basic understanding because they weren t just calling up ceos or banks or hedge funds, they were doing outreach to the kremlin. the documentation also shows there were plans of trying to do meetings with the leaders of the russian government including potentially putin at davos, so we re