island entry. one more item many what seems to be the almost bottomless story. the latest came to light early today. jim sciutto is looking into it. >> reporter: tonight the timing and proximity of meetings between trump advisers and russian officials during the transition is raising questions among hill investigators. a congressional intelligence source tells cnn. in particular, whether the loosening of u.s. sanctions was discussed. the meetings are one part of an expanding web of contacts between trump advisers and russia during the election and transition. one of the latest revelations, a meeting in january on the island nation of the say shells, hundreds of miles off the east coast of africa a diplomatic source tells cnn, a week before he took office, erik prince met with a russian businessman close

toputin. >> there's no reason to find some russian business person or some contact with the russian government when you could easily have asked the state department of the obama administration to help create contacts. >> reporter: prince claimed to have influence with trump. both the white house and the foreign diplomat tells cnn the administration was not involved in arranging the meeting. still, gop lawmakers acknowledge growing questions. >> this is a centipede. this is why we need a select committee in order to get all through this, because there's more shoes that are going to drop. >> thank you very much. >> reporter: ties between former trump campaign adviser carter page and russia are under renewed scrutiny after revelations that page was in contact with a russian intelligence operative in new york in 2013.

court documents reveal a transcript of the russian spy's account of a conversation he had with page who is referred to as male number one. speaking about page, the russian says, quote, i think he is an idiot and forgot who i am and, quote, i will feed him empty promises. page admits he was in contact with at least one russian spy but claims he thought the russian was working for the u.n. office and said he didn't release any sensitive information. page saying, i shared basic immaterial information and publically available research documents. in doing so i provided him nothing more than a few samples from the more detailed lectures i was preparing for the students in my semester. the connections don't end there. michael flynn, a key adviser during the trump campaign, sat next to russian president vladimir putin in 2015 at a black tie gala for russia's rt

propaganda network. we now know the kremlin paid him more than $33,000 to attend. income he did not initially report as required to the u.s. army or to the white house. flynn was fired less than a month into the administration for lying to the vice-president about discussing sanctions with russia's ambassador. >> when i looked at the information i said i don't think he did anything wrong. but the thing is, he didn't tell our vice-president properly and then he said he didn't remember. so either way, it wasn't very satisfactory to me. >> reporter: the connections to russia extend inside the trump family. president trump's son-in-law and close adviser jared kushner met with russia's ambassador and the president of russia's state owned bank which is under u.s. sanctions. >> jared did a job during the transition and the campaign where he was a conduit to

leaders. and that's until we had a state department, a functioning place for people to go. he wants to make sure he is clear about the role he play and who he talked to. that's it. >> reporter: the ties extend as well to the very highest levels of the trump campaign. former trump campaign manager paul manafort worked for years in ukraine for pro-russian politician victor yanakovich. manafort partners with a russian ol gashg on business deals. according to the associated president, he worked for a man to benefit the putin government. manafort denies his work was representing russian interests. >> as far as the administration is concerned, you will see if you do any fact checking that i was the person that negotiated the framework which is based upon which ukraine is now a part of europe. that was my role. that's what i did. when it was completed, i left. >> reporter: now trump's own attorney general jeff sessions has had to recuse himself from

russia investigations because he also met with russia's ambassador twice. despite testifying that he never had contact with the russians during the campaign. >> in retrospect, i should have slowed down and said, but i did meet one russian official a couple of typeimes. >> reporter: there's trump associate roger stone who communicated with someone known as gusafer 2.0 through vie vpri messages on twitter. they say the persona is a front for russian intelligence. claimed responsibility for hacking the dnc before the election. it is russia's election related hacking that's at the center of fbi and house and senate intelligence committee investigations that continue. >> jim sciutto joins us along with jessica snyder. you have information on where the senate is on the investigation. >> the republican chairman of the senate intelligence

community asked today if he might question the former national security adviser susan rice regarding these allegations that she improperly unmasked the identities of americans caught up in incidental surveillance. he says if the intelligence leads them there, they will call her and ask her questions about that. a possible expansion in this investigation yet again. >> jessica, what are the next steps for the house intelligence committee in the investigation? they seem to be somewhat more on track. >> a little bit. the house committee finally showing movement after the two weeks of turmoil. democrats say they have cut a deal with republicans. they have agreed on that list of witnesses they plan to interview. the witness list actually could include trump associates, republican congressman peter king toetdday alluded that both have agreed to interview paul manafo manafort, roger stone, carter page, michael flynn. devin nunes says they could

bring in witnesses as soon as two weeks from now but caution it's optimistic. democrats haven't agreed on a schedule. >> paul ryan seemed optimistic with the committee. >> he did. he said today he met with committee members. he said that all the committee members have the speaker's full confidence. then speaker ryan reiterated that the committee has to work on a bipartisan basis, something they haven't been doing. he wants them to get to the bottom of things and investigate in his words all things russia. >> jessica, jim, thanks. bring the panel in. jeffrey, carl, julia, van and jason. jeff, if the administration had just from the get go sort of laid out on the table, okay, there was this meeting, this meeting, this meeting, would it have been better? would they have avoided this now 70-plus days, however long it has been. >> if this was an organized event, probably yes. frankly --

>> the transition was organized? >> no, no. i mean the whole business about they talked to the russians. i mean, i think these things all happened in connections here, there, everywhere. i'm not sure that they know at this point who met with whom. because they're not watching the private life of roger stone or carter page or what have you. it's not as if they had a log of what everybody did so that they could lay it out. >> carl, do you buy that? >> the most significant thing that we have seen is the attempt by the president of the united states and those around him to impede and obstruct the investigation. instead of saying, hey, here is everything we know, here are all our logs, here is everything that we know, here is where the president of the united states who said to my campaign officials and to my family, go down there, tell those committees everything that you know. that's not what has happened. trump keeps saying that people are trying to delegitimatize his

presidency. he is the president of the united states. the only thing -- certified by the electoral college. nothing is going to change that. the only thing that is delegitimatizing his presidency are his actions in trying to inhibit and impede these investigations, because he is calling into question for republicans and democrats alike why not open up and show us what is truthful here. >> jason, now you have this new story broken by "the washington post" about erik prince meeting with a russian close to vladimir putin with the mediation of the premiere from the uae and his national security adviser. the administration is calling it flimsy. according to the washington post, the fbi is investigating. it's one of the many odd unexplained contacts. prince said there was a meeting,

but it had nothing to do with trump. >> in reading the story, there were a couple things that jumped out. number one, this was -- mr. prince had no role with the campaign, no role with the administration, no role with -- >> according to the washington post, not only had he donated a quarter of a million dollars, but he was in trump tower in december and so was this -- >> anderson, there are a lot of people that come into trump tower. i can't speak to that point. the fact of the matter is this was a meeting that looks like it was set up by someone from the uae. it looks like the uae person was doing it to prop themselves up. if the fundamental point of the investigation is to get to some supposed coordination between the campaign and some foreign government, then immediately upon leaving that meeting, mr. prince would have had to have walked out, gotten into his time machine, gone back months and hatched some plot to go and influence the election. the fact of the matter is after

months of this -- the democrats pushing this speculation, there has been one -- there has not been one piece of evidence saying there's any coordination between the campaign and some foreign entity. this is just -- at a certain point, this is a wild goose change. >> let me add one thing. i know beyond any doubt from people who worked in the trump campaign on national security areas that, indeed, erik prince was a part of the campaign, did see president-elect trump. what you just said -- >> who said that? >> i'm not going to say who said it. believe me, i think you have the ability to go find out. >> when you say part of the campaign -- >> i never heard a name. i never heard his name come up during the campaign. sgli sugge >> i suggest you talk to those involved in the national security area of the campaign and of the transition and you will find as i and many other journalists have that erik prince had a role, talked to a

number of people, including the president-elect and indeed bragged about that role. i think this idea to cut what is really true out of the story in the defensive way is hurting everybody's ability to find out what the truth is here. the truth might be innocuous. let us get there. >> i have to jump in real quick. specifically, the allegation here is that there's some type of coordination between the campaign and some foreign entity. that's the allegation. now you are mentioning transition, some other time. the fact of the matter is in all of my time on the trump campaign, i never heard mr. prince being brought up or brought into discussions. did he call or speak with somebody during the transition time? i don't know. you can't say that definitively because i'm not on every single call. i can tell you i did work for the president for a series -- a stretch of eight months. i think your information on this is bad. >> van jones, we haven't heard from you.

the sources say it's hard to imagine the crown prince from the uae doing something like from without a green light from the trump team. we should point out this is hardly a smoking gun. this is a meeting that erik prince says took place but had nothing to do with trump. >> you know, chaos has its costs. it's entirely conceivable -- i do don't think so. but it's conceivable that this is all coincidence. you have russians all over the place. who knows where they came from? it's weird. chaos has its cost. the trump campaign has been run -- was run in a crazy way that the white house is -- listen, it has benefits, too.

it was run in such a scatter shot way, white house is run in a scatter shot way, jared kushner is going all around the world. nobody knows what he is doing. it's almost seems like a good strategy to have so much crazy stuff happening that you can say, nobody knows what's going on. you can't blame up. i think it smells to me like a smokescreen. it seems like somewhere underneath all of this nonsense there is a consistent pattern of russian influence. and then a desperate effort to conceal and to distract. you know, i give it back to you. you are there. you don't know who is involved, because i'm not sure trump knows everybody that's involved because this whole -- it was a chaos candidate, jeb bush was right about one thing. now he is a chaos president. >> it looks chaotic when you have someone like carter page who was named by donald trump during the transition as a national security adviser.

then it turns out he never actually met donald trump. despite claims made by carter page in moscow about attending meetings with donald trump, he was talking about going to rallies with thousands of people i think in north dakota and considered that a meeting because he was using the russian term for meetings, which seems -- again, it seems kind of like a ludicrous explanation. it does seem somewhat chaotic that the president names this guy as his national security adviser but he has never met him, probably never got any advice from him at all and he was booted out of the campaign. >> yeah. i mean, this idea, this notion that trump is allowed to sort of become president and be president on training wheels, that somehow it's okay that all this madness is going on and that carter page is running around the world and manafort did this but we fired him, it's wrong. he is president of the united states. the most i can say right now is that where there is smoke, there is smoke.

in other words, the idea of dismissing it at this stage seems sort of both unfair to the trump administration, which clearly does have speculation around it, but unfair to the process by which investigators and congressional committees look at this. investigations like this are not a straight line. we don't hear about a story in the washington post and we're in the oval office to collusion. i'm looking at the chart. they take a lot of twists and turns. i think patience is important. what is also important is this sort of rush to judgment that trump absolutely did nothing wrong because there's no proof of him doing anything wrong is very premature. so if we can let these investigations go. they may lead to collusion. they may lead -- be benign. there might be questions about financial dealings and other things like that. >> we have to take a break. coming up next, is this smoke or a smokescreen?

susan rice and how the trump administration painted her as the true culprit here. we will talk it up with the panel. why so many advertisers have bailed on bill o'reilly and whether it has the potential to seriously sink his program. with advil, you'll ask what twisted ankle? what muscle strain? advil makes pain a distant memory nothing works faster stronger or longer what pain? advil. and now we unleash it onwerful your taxes.pecies has created. hello my name is watson. yep. h&r block and ibm watson together. come see us and get your taxes won.

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we are talking about the trump russia story which the president sees in another way. the administration message is the same, this is not in the administration's view a story of collusion with agents in moscow. instead, the white house says it's about improper surveillance or unmasking of trump associates and the leaking of names. the leaking is often conflated with the unmasking. one is illegal. the other is part and parcel of analyzing intelligence. the current villain is susan rice who spoke out earlier today on msnbc. >> the notion that -- which some people are trying to suggest

that by asking for the identity of an american person, that is the same as leaking it, is completely false. there's no equivalence between so-called unmasking and leaking. >> previously when asked about incidental collection as described that day by the devin nunes, susan rice says, i know nothing about this. when you see these two statements -- >> it looks like she's contradicted herself. but it's also a question of a total red herring here. what this story is about is a foreign power, an adversary of the united states trying to hijack our election. president donald trump has acknowledged that the russians tried to do that. what is trying to be found out by legitimate investigators and the press is what happened, was there a role by the trump campaign, his family, his

associates in what the russians did? instead of trying to cooperate with these investigations and let the people of the united states know what, if anything, happened involving him and those around him, the president of the united states and his associates are trying to inhibit every bit of investigation and trying to make susan rice or the press or, quote, leaks the issue instead of the conduct of the president and the people around him. it's absurd. i hate to bring up the example of watergate. i do. but it's as if the example of watergate is that the press was responsible for what happened in watergate, not the president of the united states. >> at the time -- >> our conduct at "the washington post" was the real issue and deep throat and leaks. >> did nixon try to do that at the time? >> of course he did. the other thing is, we keep hearing leaks. usually, including in this story, reporters are working hard as hell to try to find out what happened.

there is nobody that i know of that is jumping over transoms and bringing reporters documents that show what happened. this is about reporters trying to extract information under very difficult circumstances from people with little pieces of information. it's called reporting. not leaking. >> jeff, do you see a continuum of the white house attempting to divert with susan rice now, ms. farcus last week. the morning of the house intelligence committee, he is tweeting with hillary clinton and uranium deals. a lot shiny objects thrown around. >> there's enough out there all the way across the board that we should really get into this. it strikes me as interesting that you have paul manafort and carter page and roger stone saying, i want to volunteer and come testify. you ask susan rice, well, you

know, i'm not sure. let's get it all out. get all these people out there. what did they know? to borrow a phrase, what did the president know? when did he know it? what did susan rice know? what did president obama know? >> what's the issue here? what's the central issue? >> there's two issues. i know you want it to be the russians and collusion. >> collusion, not collusion. the russians. and what occurred. it's not about the press. it's not -- this is a story about the national security -- >> let me finish. >> it's about the national security of the united states being endangered and what the russians did. that's what people are trying to find out. that's what's being inhibited. if in the course of this people talk to people in the press -- i'm not talking about susan rice and this question of unmasking which is a different question, that's not the central issue here. >> you see, this is what my friends call on my side the liberal narrative.

is that -- >> for you, the leaks are more important than -- or as important -- you think the leaks to reporters are as important as russia being involved in the u.s. election? >> i don't. they're getting the leaks. frankly, look, i've been around washington. the town leaks. somebody could go to jail for this and should go to jail for this. >> i want to thank everybody. tomorrow at 9:00 p.m. eastern and pacific, van jones hosts a town hall. tonight, breaking news on capitol hill, latest on efforts to reboot the healthcare bill. the freedom caucus a player. will talk with one of their members ahead. working on my feet all day gave me pain here. in my knees. so i stepped on this machine and got my number, which matched my dr. scholl's custom fit orthotic inserts. so i get immediate relief from my foot pain. my knee pain. find a machine at drscholls.com.

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here at the xfinity store in bellevue, washington. here at the store, we offer internet, tv, phone, customer service, home security. every situation is a little different. it could be about billing, simple questions like changing the phone number. sometimes, they want to upgrade, downgrade, but at the end of the day, you want to take care of the customer. one of the great things about comcast, there's always room to move up. of course, it depends on you, how hard you work. ♪ there's breaking news on capitol hill where vice-president mike pence is meeting with key republican law makes about finding a way to pass a health care bill. last night the vice-president presented a new proposal to the freedom caucus. jeff zeleny joins us with the latest. how serious is the white house?

>> reporter: that's a good sense. the president talked at a couple public speeches today. the words health care did not come out of his mouth. we hear from the white house that the president is intent on reviving this. the vice-president as you said is up on capitol hill as we speak. he was there last night as well. you don't get the sense there's a full throated effort here at the white house for the president to get this done. one of the reasons is, the same issues are standing now that happened a couple weeks ago. if you push this bill too far to the right, the moderates won't be into it. if you change it too far to the left, the house freedom caucus won't be into it. a lot has happened since that big collapse of the health care bill. the president has gone after the house freedom caucus members. what the vice-president is doing at this hour is trying to reassure these republicans that we want to get this done eventually. this was anything but a full court press here today. >> is there a strategy the more the white house talks about

health care, less time to respond to questions about russia? is there concern that if they talk about it too much or if the president is too much out in front and let the vice-president work behind the scenes, that if it doesn't happen the second time around, then there's no blow back on him? >> there's >> reporter: there's going to be blow back on the president regardless. the white house is aware of the electorate is thinking, republican voters out there. they have been wanting this as their priority for seven, eight years here. republican members of congress and democrats as well are on the cusp of going back to their districts for two week spring recess period come friday. they want to show some motion. there's no question, today was a day of changing the subject at the white house. the top advisers here at white house want the president to be surrounded by news other than russia. it's been all but consuming over the last few weeks or so. they had him in friendly

audiences, hearing campaign applause, campaign-style applause, talking about infrastructure, healthcare, other things. russia, of course, hasn't gone away. the question is how much has that impacted the legislative agenda. it has, because this president has less juice than he had a month or two ago. we are not even at the 100 day point tonight. >> jeff zeleny, thanks very much. tom garrett is a member of the house freedom caucus. i spoke to him earlier. you have been meeting with vice-president pence to put together a health care bill. pence is coming up to the hill tonight to talk with your group as well as the moderate tuesday group. what do you want to hear from the vice-president to vote yes on a health care bill? >> there are two things primarily that held us up. we talked about see seessential benefits. the community rating is something we had a hangup on. what we had so far is with good intent and good faith a series of hypotheticals, if this then

what. so we're not where we want to be. but we're trying to get there. i think that's why the vice-president has been so attentive. we look forward to talking to him again. >> the proposals from the freedom group that would allow states to apply for federal waivers, exempting them, is that -- isn't that going to not get moderates on board? is there a sweet spot for this? >> i think there is. what the president's team has come back with is, how about if we power this down to the states? if you can get to essential benefits removal, you can get to a community rating removal, you can get to a work requirement, that sort of thing, but it's powered down to the states, we like that. i will say the way it was originally drafted or presented to me was there would be at the desk of the governor of the various states, i would submit it belongs in the purview of the legislative. >> there was talk when it failed

the last time about not trying to do one kind of over arching health care repeal and replace and try to kind of go piece by piece by piece over time. it doesn't seem like that's now on the table. >> well, you know, look, there are 435 members of house, 100 in the senate. i said all along on your show more than once what i would love to see is a repeal consistent with that with tom price put forward in 2015, that every republican voted for. then you take the aca and -- i believe i could vote for 18 out of 20 pieces of it if it were broken up. we have said the road to hell is paved with am a omnibus legisla. >> what do you say to those who believe this is a smokescreen from the administration to try to distract from the failure the first time around. they are trying to make up for not having a plan b. >> look, there's a certain component of american society that right now if president

trump cured cancer, they wouldn't like it. if you want to create a smokescreen, by all means don't talk about health care. >> you were saying you would vote 18 out of 20 of the items on this are things you can support. for a lot of lawmakers, that would be enough. to say that, you know what, i can never get 100% of everything i want, gotta compromise a little bit, 18 out of 20 isn't bad. >> 16 ounce soda with one ounce of stick nine will kill you. there's certain things we will not swallow. i think we did not -- the core functions of title i were still there. we know that if we remove the community rating, if we remove essential benefits that we will see premiums go down for the bulk of the people. that's what we're trying to do is make healthcare affordable. turn this into one where you don't have coverage where you can't get care because you can't pay your deductible but where you have access to care.

that's what the argument should have been. >> last week, president trump took to twitter calling out the leader of the freedom caucus. the president's director of social media urged this. how much bitterness is there -- i don't know if that's too strong a word. what are the feelings between freedom caucus members and the white house? >> i will tell you that i have led soldiers into hazardous duty area. i have tried murder trials. ry donei have done a lot of stu. you can't describe the pressure i felt during this process. >> really? >> the president -- absolutely. the president is trying to do what he thinks is best for america. he didn't get it done the way he wanted to get it done the first time. he was frustrated. that makes him human like the rest of us. he has my forgiveness and my support. he doesn't have my vote until we get a bill that will be consistent with what i told the

voters who i ran for election in front of you. >> what do you think the chances are the republicans are going to get this done? >> we're going to pass a heal health -- we have passed association plans. we're starting to work on this around the edges. we should declare victory. we haven't. i'm not sure why. if you break this thing down into sub component parts, we could pass the vast bulk of it now. i understand there's some concern with the rules of the senate. i also know that the repeal bill passed the senate last time. i'm curious what the difference is now other than the president who will sign it. >> appreciate your time. >> god bless you and thank you for the opportunity. have a great day. just ahead, the advertisers fleeing bill o'reilly's program are growing. the number of advertisers reaching 20 tonight. what do you get when you combine an h&r block tax pro, with the deduction finding superpower of ibm watson?

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the intelligence reports will soon be made available to the full house and senate intelligence committees according to the adam schiff. he said this today. >> i find it more than ironic that some of the same people who are condemning of leaks of classified information are condemning me for not leaking information about these

classified documents. >> that's comments follow a tweet on sunday, the real story turns out to be surveillance and leaking. find the leakers says the president. whether that's a real complaint or a deflection, there's one thing no one can dispute, leakers have shaped history. >> the story behind the story in the unmasking of deep throat. >> he was the most famous anonymous source of the 20 century. >> just follow the money. >> mark felt, the high ranking fbi official who for more than three decades was known to the world only as deep throat. after helping fuel bob woodward and carl bernstein's reporting on watergate. >> i shall resign effective noon tomorrow. >> he was neither the first nor last to rock the country with insider knowledge. in the 1970s, a military analyst leaked top secret defense department study to the "new york times." the resulting bombshell known as the pentagon papers revealed the

government had lied to congress and the american people about the scope of the vietnam war. >> smallest chance of having some affect on the war was worth my going to prison for the rest of my life. >> charged with espionage and facing 115 years behind bars, he went free after a federal judge dismissed the case citing improper government conduct. in 2003, conservative writer and former cnn host robert novack wrote a column blowing the cover of cia operative valley erie pl. >> my name was leaked. >> then dick cheney's chief of staff ultimately was convicted in connection with the leak. his sentence commuted by president bush. seven years later, wikileaks posted classified documents on the wars in afghanistan and iraq. chelsea manning was sentenced to

35 years in a military prison for giving the documents to wikileaks. just before leaving office, president obama ordered manning to be released in may of this year. >> the sentence that she received was very disproportionate relative to what other leakers had received. >> there's been no president ia reprieve for snowden whose revelation left him fleeing charges of espionage. >> this guy is a bad guy. there is still a thing called execution. >> accepting asylum in russia. a lot to discuss. jeffrey, we saw deep throat there. do you think deep throat should have stayed silent? >> you know, this is a difficult question. because you know where this led. the problem i have with this is

the classified nature of this. i can see my friends at the harrisburg patriot news editorially waiting to see if i will say they shouldn't have leaks. >> leaked classified information -- >> what bothers me is it's not up to a private citizen to make the decision unilaterally that they're going to leak classified information. that's in the case we're talking about, that's against the law. that's what troubles me. on the other hand, i'm a first amendment crazo here. i want carl or you to have the right if you have a story, get it out there. the onus is on the government to stop the leaking. it's not on the press. no reporter should ever be going to jail, period. >> carl, it's an interesting thing. there are leaks which lead to important changes. elsburg was revealing lies the government had been perpetrating

for years. >> real whizstle-blowers know they risk going to jail. it's a risk that they take. elsburg took that risk. mark felt took the risk. let me tell you about the mythology of leaks. most of our sources in watergate and the important one s were republicans who worked for nixon. the information we got from deep throat was to confirm what we had learned already from, for instance, the treasurer of the committee to re-elect the president. in the current instance, i think it's very important for people watching shows such as this to understand the process which is about trying to get to the best obtainable version of the truth, not to come to a conclusion that convicts donald trump, that says donald trump is innocent of something. we're trying to get to what has happened or has not happened. what we are seeing is for our

process to be called into question as the central issue in what has happened in our government or not happened. and that's the problem here. we should not be, nor should the whistle-blower be the issue here. the real issue is the national security of the united states according to the intelligence community. all of it. has been endangered by a hostile pourer trying to undermine our election. >> there are also -- just for viewers out there, there have been plenty of instances where newspapers and news organizations have gotten information about classified events and the government -- gone to the government for a comment. the government say if you publish this, this is going to put lives in danger or an operation in danger and they have held back on reporting it. >> responsibly. >> can i add one thing? i would be interested in your thought on this. every day of most presidencies,

the president of the united states and those who work for him in the national security bureaucracy, quote, leak national security information on background as it's called to reporters who cover the white house, the state department. the defense department. that is their process. many of the same people that we are watching decrying leaks up on capitol hill, all of them practically have been anonymous sources, quote, leaking classified information at one time or another in their careers. there is so much hypocrisy about this. what about that? >> we're going to have to discuss that another time. we're out of time. >> well done. >> thank you. the growing advertising revolt against the o'reilly factor. we'll be right back. allergies with nasal congestion?

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statement saying "we value our partners and are working with them to address their current concerns about the o'reilly factor. at this time the ad buys of those cliepts have been reexpress reexpress reexpressed." >> to have 20 advertisers pub c publicly say they're going to distance themselves from the o'reilly factor. we've seen this before. glen beck was the subject of an ad boycott. eventually his show went away. >> some of the charges are not new. the one he allegedly paid out -- $9 million from his own pocket years ago to a booker or producer. that's been known for quite a while and he seemed to have weathered that. >> what's new is the spotlight

and bill cosby, rauoger ailes. other big scandals. ailes resigned under pressure from many women including gretchen carlson and megyn kelly. and now he's at a network that's hired new executives and yet o'reilly is still the top man there. the question is is he invin invincible. >> how do all these past settlements from fox effect other lawsuits. because when you hear the sheer volume of lawsuits and the behavior, i can't imagine. i can't believe this went on for so long. it's stunning. >> that shock and awe is one that was shared presumably by fox news and said we didn't real really know about this. and that was one of the things

that many employers across the country cling to with both hands to say listen if there was a problem, it was an isolated incident or we're not liable because we had no knowledge of it. now that kwou had a track record of known settlements, you can't hide behind that claim of ignorance. it's every single potential future allegation and lawsuit against fox news to say listen this is so ingrained that you renewed the contract of the person who was one of the biggest offenders. >> one of the arguments that bill o'reilly has made publicly is look, i'm a magnet and anybody in the public eye is a magnet. i was sued wunonce years ago. someone fell in my house. >> that's the case for sean hannity, anybody in news and entertainment.

>> these are all specific kinds of lawsuits. >> and i can't point to anybody else in television news that has this pattern of lawsuits and settleme settlements. >> if this person had paid out settlements in corporation, would they be allowed to stay? >> they would be a liability and therefore the employer would be liable. so it would tend to show you in other environments this behavior is not acceptable practice. so while it may be an industry standard within that organization, that's a problem they have to face. a hostile work environment is hard to prove. now you have a company who's aware of a pattern and practice of behavior and you have a series of women making the same allegations. it starts to smell like fact and culture and that's a lawsuit. >> follow the money. ultimately it's about the

murdock and how much they're willing to lose from advertisers. >> we'll be right back. s. so i stepped on this machine and got my number, which matched my dr. scholl's custom fit orthotic inserts. so i get immediate relief from my foot pain. my knee pain. find a machine at drscholls.com. and now we unleash it onwerful your taxes.pecies has created. hello my name is watson. yep. h&r block and ibm watson together. come see us and get your taxes won. yet up 90% fall short in getting key nutrients from food alone. let's do more. add one a day 50+ a complete multi-vitamin with 100% daily value

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free with xfinity on demand. russia bomb shell. a member of the house intelligence committee warns somebody may go to jail. this is cnn tonight. i'm don lemon. people will probably be charged and i think people will probably go to jail. >> that's as president obama's national security advisor that is she leaked the names of trump associates. rice insisting she never has and never would leak anything. is this another distr