Coverage of national and international news, including breaking stories. Coverage of national and international news, including breaking stories. Stories here, who has more perceived credibility at this point . Its a tough call. What do you think . Well, thats a good question, i dont think either one of them does. President trump says things that are untrue all the time. He has about this very anecdote because the New York Times reported a year ago he helped create a false statement about this meeting. Don jr. Most likely told his father about this meeting, its not plausible that he wouldnt have. Michael cohen doesnt have credibility. Rudy giuliani doesnt have credibility. I think what this does, we dont know again if this is collusion, if collusion is a crime. If this is actually an impeachable offense. Well wait for mueller to figure this out. Whether or not there was a direct act that could be
translated from collusion to conspiracy. But i think what this does is, with Michael Cohen
if he knew that the meeting was to take place, he did not tell his son to cancel the meeting. he did not tell the fbi about the meeting, and if anything, he further encouraged and emboldened the russians to hack. because he went out and said, russia, if you re listening, which was two years ago from today, you would be rewarded for hacking hillary clinton s e-mails. it s an interesting time line that gives us more of a picture of this mosaic. what do you make of the congressman s comments. you really see this defense that trump has laid out is very rests very much on him not knowing about this meeting. one of his own talking points has been, why didn t the obama administration do more to publicize the russia threat. if you knew that was rush yaz was actively trying to help your campaign by peddling dirt. why didn t you do more?
so they sat down with russian representatives who asserted they had dirt on a fellow american, their opponent, and they didn t report it. in fact, the opposite, don jr. says if it s what you say it is i love it. so the leader, their candidate, is not setting a tone of integrity, doing the right thing but rather a tone of let s get dirt if we can get it and let me know. and then don jr., it strains creduli credulity, said he didn t speak to his father about it, somehow the president crafts a letter about adoption and it s in a vacuum? and then there s the question of blocked phone calls. meanwhile, the senate judiciary committee opened up books on interviews of the president s top campaign officials about the june, 2016, trump tower meeting between donald trump jr., paul manafort, jared kushner and the russians who are peddling dirt on hillary clinton.
russian election meddling, all of the intelligence agencies say swb tr is true. many of the meetings that the dossier discusses were corroborated. and as a lot of people have noted in the timeline here, the fbi was concerned about the dossier. they didn t pay for the dossier. the fbi was concerned about the dossier because they had people telling them that the russians were peddling dirt to george papadopoulos in may. let me ask you asked the fbi. tell me anything in the dossier that you know is true. the russians meddled in the yeah, but we already knew that. that wasn t your question. your question was, tell me something that s true. i just told you something that s true. okay, i m talking about number two, there are meetings between russians, carter page, meetings with russia. george papadopoulos, meetings with russia. well, of course, u.s. citizens meet with russians every day. but that was in the dossier. that doesn t mean they re conspiring. thousands of bus
those today. he could have released them next week or two weeks from now. he did it today and 90 minutes after when we were all digesting the gates and manafort charges and when people from the white house were already starting to say and trump allies, this isn t about the campaign. this isn t about collusion. and then, boom, the papadopoulos documents landed. and here was collusion. here was collusion and bob mueller saying you don t know what i know. and i know now from folks i ve talked to that everyone is now sort of reracking their own tapes about their knowledge and their conversations about that done junior meeting. that seems to be emerging, ken, as a central incident around which people may have perjured themselves. also now we know that the campaign was already on notice that the russians were peddling dirt. when don junior it s even the same word, dirt. that word comes up now twice in the context of the papadopoulos conversations and the trump