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
i could have refused to file the tax return. that would have exposed the firm laporta reported. i could have called them liars. but manafort was a longtime client of the firm. i didn t want to do that either. she added, quote, i very much regret it. and that is immunity witness number one. there are four more people who have immunity who are ready to testify, plus the star witness, rick gates. we turn now to our in-house experts. josh garcia, and joyce vance, a former federal prosecutor as well as an msnbc analyst. they both kept a close eye on the case. josh, you were in the courtroom today. how damaging was cindy laporta s testimony and could you glean at all from the mood of the jury or the faces that she was hurt at all by the fact that she was in on the bad things she was talking about? i didn t get a sense that she was hurt. i mean, they knew that she had immunity.
firm laporta reported. i could have called them liars. but manafort was a longtime client of the firm. she added, quote, i very much regret it. and that is immunity witness number one. there are four more people who have immunity who are ready to testify, plus the star witness, rick gates. we turn now to our in-house experts. josh garcia, and joyce vance, a former federal prosecutor as well as an msnbc analyst. they both kept a close eye on the case. josh, you were in the courtroom today. how damaging was cindy laporta s testimony and could you glean at all from the mood of the jury or the faces that she was hurt at all by the fact that she was in on the bad things she was talking about? i didn t get a sense that she was hurt. i mean, they knew that she had immunity. but she did seem like she was