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
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
opportunity to back each other up. reporter: richard, you spend a fair amount of time overseas and is this something in moscow that followed as closely as it is here, and how is all of this viewed by people there in russia? reporter: so first of all, opening a trump tower in moscow would not be a straightforward business deal. you don t just open a major skyscraper in the middle of the city, skyscraper that would cater to russia s ruling e lite, to people in the inner circle, russian oligarchs without political support. this has been a project that president trump has wanted to do for many, many years, and the fact that michael cohen now came out and said that it was ongoing, there were ongoing lobbying efforts to try and build this tower even during the campaign is quite significant. also quite significant that he