good evening. at the end of a full and somewhat harrowing day which included a record plunge on wall street and president trump accusing democratic lawmakers of being un-american and treasonous for not clapping at certain moments of the state of the union address, we begin tonight with the president's claim of vindication in the russia investigation, talking about the nunes memo on saturday, the president tweeted, quote, this memo totally vindicates trump and probe, but the russian witch hunt goes on and on. there was no collusion and there was no obstruction. the word now used because after

one year of looking endlessly and finding nothing, collusion is dead. this is an american disgrace. today in cincinnati, the president continued to focus on the memo in a speech about tax cuts and the economy. he went off prompter at a point and said this. >> but did we catch them in the act or what? you know what i'm talking -- oh, did we catch them in the act. they are very embarrassed. they never thought they were going to get caught. we caught 'em. hey, we caught 'em. it's so much fun. we're like the great sleuth. >> well, we should point out that earlier today he lashed out at the house intelligence committee's ranking democrat, adam schiff, or the president now calls him little adam schiff, and he also heaped praise on devin nunes, calling him a man of tremendous courage and grit who may someday be recognized as a great american hero for what he has exposed and what he has had to endure. putting that prediction aside, let's focus on the idea that the president is pushing that the nunes memo somehow, quote,

totally vindicates trump. keeping him honest, whatever else you might think of the nunes document, whether you believe as the fbi does that it contains, quote, material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo's accuracy, one thing is plain just from reading it. the memo does not exonerate or vindicate anyone, let alone president trump. it largely deals with applications for fisa surveillance court warrants targeting carter page, the one-time foreign policy adviser to the trump campaign. the memo alleges deputy fbi director andrew mccabe told the house intelligence committee that no warrant would have been sought without the steele dossier information. christopher steele, as you know, was hired by fusion gps, which was initially hired to do opposition research on candidate trump by a conservative media outlet, then was later hired by the dnc and lawyers for the clinton campaign. now, the memo alleges that in neither the initial fisa filing nor three subsequent renewal applications was the clinton connection disclosed even though according to the memo, this was known to senior fbi and justice department officials.

democrats say that the court was told there was some sort of political motivation behind the fusion gps information. either way, legal experts have told us the dossier would likely not have been the sole basis for a warrant. carter page after all had been on the fbi's counterintelligence radar for at least a year prior to all of this. and even if you believe everything the nunes memo alleges about bias, even if you believe all of it, the nunes memo itself actually undermines any notion that the russia probe then followed from the fisa application which came in october of 2016. the memo itself states that sometime months before in july, something in july sparked the probe. that's when the fbi launched a counterintelligence investigation of george papadopoulos. he's another trump campaign foreign policy adviser you probably no who pleaded guilty to lying about contacts with russians and is now cooperating with special counsel mueller. the fbi was looking at possible trump campaign-russia connections months before, asking for a warrant for carter

page. george papadopoulos drunkenly boasting to an australian diplomat about russian contacts was hardly the sole factor in the probe's genesis. and the nunes memo does not speak to any of it, nor does it mention this investigation has so far yielded guilty pleas not just from papadopoulos but also michael flynn, the president's former national security adviser and the indictment of his former campaign chairman paul manafort, nor does the memo mention that former mueller investigator peter strzok also co-authored the first draft of the comey letter reopening the clinton e-mail case just 11 days before the election. so if peter strzok's behavior showed bias and colleagues say it did not, you could argue he was biased against both candidates. but keeping him honest, however you choose to read the nunes memo, you ought to know how one of hillary clinton's harshest critics in congress, a republican, reads it. >> the dossier has nothing to do with the meeting at trump tower. the dossier has nothing to do

with an e-mail sent by cambridge. it also doesn't have anything to do with obstruction of justice. so there's going to be a russia probe even without a dossier. >> congressman gowdy is not alone among gop lawmakers pointing out that whatever else the nunes memo says or suggests, it does not say what the president says it does. >> no, the memo isn't about the special counsel's investigation. it's not about trump. >> i support the mueller investigation. now, i hope that he does it fairly and honestly. of course we would always expect that. >> it would be a mistake for anyone to suggest that the special counsel shouldn't complete his work. i support his work. i want him to finish it. i hope he finishes it as quickly as possible. this memo has frankly nothing at all to do with the special counsel. >> while president trump is claiming without any evidence that he's somehow vindicated by the nunes memo, he isn't. and if he was expecting trey gowdy and other republican congressmen to back him up, apparently that's one memo they

did not get to see. the breaking news tonight is that the house intelligence committee has unanimously voted to make public the democratic memo rebutting gop allegations that the fbi abused surveillance laws. whether the democrats' memo actually gets released, that is now in the president's hands. cnn's jim acosta has late details. explain what happens now. >> reporter: the memo is now in the president's hands. it's in the white house hands at this point, anderson, and they have five days to act on it as they did last week. this is sort of the battle of the memos part two. the sequel may not be as good as the original, and it makes you wonder, anderson, how the president would respond if a democratic lawmaker were to shout out release the schiff memo. my guess is after the president's comments today, he would not say 100. we've been talking to our sources this evening. they're going to go through the same vetting process, they say, over here at the white house as they went through last week. they're going to have law enforcement and the intelligence community weigh in and make sure there aren't any practices and methods of the intelligence

community or law enforcement community revealed in this schiff memo. but at this point if you're going off of what the president was saying earlier today, that the democrats and congress were treasonous and un-american for not standing up and applauding him at the state of the union and the fact that he was calling adam schiff little adam schiff, you might not want to hold out as much hope for the release of this memo as the one last week. >> so, jim, the white house has not given any indication about whether or not they're going to release it. they're saying they're just going to go through the procedure that they went through for the republican memo. >> that's right, anderson. we pressed them this evening on this. they are stopping short at this point of saying, yes, they're going to release the memo. they're just saying they're going to apply the same painstaking process is the phrase we heard earlier this evening to the schiff memo as they did to the nunes memo. but remember the president was saying that memo last week was going to be released 100% before he had even read it. so it's not altogether clear what kind of vetting they're going to put this memo through.

but keep in mind as you were hearing those republican lawmakers raise doubts about the strength of the nunes memo on the sunday talk shows over the weekend, i just talked to a senior congressional source from the republican side earlier this evening, who was saying, listen, there was a lot of hype around this nunes memo, and clearly it did not meet the hype. so inside the republican party, there are serious doubts as to whether that nunes memo really accomplished much of anything. and if you had the president earlier today saying, aha, we got them, we caught them red-handed with this nunes memo, it's hard to imagine the president wanting to release the schiff memo, which the democrats believe really undercuts the nunes memo. >> cnn's manu raju reports chairman nunes had no comment after the vote saying you know the rules, we don't talk about committee business. hanging over all this, the question of whether chairman nunes or his staff in any way discussed committee business, in particular his memo, with the

white house. last week congressman mike quigley confronted chairman nunes on it, and nunes would not be pinned down. apparently the same thing happened today in the debate over the democratic memo. >> i also want to say that my colleague, mr. quigley, again and repeatedly asked the chairman whether he or any of his staff had consulted with, coordinated, conceptualized this memo in combination with the white house. you know, after all, the chairman embarked 0en a similar effort to coordinate a campaign early on in the investigation. and once again mr. nunes refused to answer the questions. at the very end of the hearing, he gave a very lawyerly written response -- or read a written response saying that the white house had not been involved in the actual drafting of the memo. but in terms of whether it was coordinated with the white house or they were consulted or

strategized, the whole consent, he refused to answer those questions. obviously there's a very important question for our committee. >> he's talking about congressman mike quigley. joining us is the congressman from illinois. congressman, thanks for being with us. can you tell us exactly what chairman nunes said when you questioned him today? as i recall, last week you asked nunes if he had been in contact with the white house. he said he had not. then you tried to follow up saying, had any staffers who actually wrote the memo been in contact or coordination, and he didn't answer. >> yeah. i tried to do the same thing. i mean you don't want to give anybody an out because you don't ask the specific enough question. so i tried to say members of the committee, himself, his staff, you know, and every possibility. i want to make sure i got it right, conceived, prepared, reviewed, coordinated, communicated with the white house about the moeemo, again, was the only member he wouldn't answer questions for. he answered another member's question, and he said, i'll answer your question because i like you. so besides having my feelings

hurt, he didn't answer the question, and as my colleague mr. schiff said at the very end, he had a very lawyerly answer that only responded to one small aspect of that. >> because it would seem to me a pretty easy question to answer. >> sure. look, it's fairly obvious. they have been blocking for the white house for a long time. they have coordinated with him when it came to that first nunes trip to the white house. if you witnessed what we have witnessed for almost a year now with the chairman refusing to sign subpoenas on key witnesses, going along with the gag order of the white house, it is a pattern of behavior that makes it extraordinarily difficult to do this. it's tough enough. we're investigating a foreign adversary. you're not going to be able to subpoena a russian oligarch. but we're also doing it as a minority against a white house which has several times, in my mind, obstructed this

investigation. >> so -- >> for the independent investigator to block us too, it makes it very difficult. >> do you believe the president is going to allow the democrats' memo to be released? >> i think when he is briefed on it -- because i can't imagine he's going to read ten pages of footnoted academic-type material -- he's not going to want to. i believe he'll get some pressure from his own party and maybe his own staff hopefully to do just that. but i can't imagine he's going to go along with it. i think the best case scenario is he tries to seriously redact it. >> and if the president objects to releasing it, i mean do house intelligence committee democrats have other options or other ways of releasing it, i mean short of leaking? >> yeah, no. we don't want to leak this. we don't want to be as bad as what we accused the republicans of doing last week. and we respect the intel community and the justice department, the fbi that this is reckless and dangerous to release these materials. we think releasing the first

memo was a bad idea. the only thing worse than that is not being able to respond to it. so frankly you're seeing what we can do. we're talking straight to the american public. >> some republicans, though, have been critical of the democrats' memo saying that, in fact, adam schiff really doesn't want the president to release it, that it's full of sources and methods that would be dangerous to release and would be impossible to release and that it's basically a ploy to i guess make the president look bad. >> at this point in time, after the first memo is released, the second memo needs to be released to counter that fact. the fact of the matter is we spent a lot of time on this, and we hope the american public gets a chance to judge for themselves. >> well, if the democrats felt the nunes memo was a partisan memo and was dangerous for national security, why is it okay, then, for democrats to have their own memo? >> yeah, again, i think that the difference here is that there were -- i'd like to think

third-party active actors who reviewed it. as you referenced, the fbi and the justice department. and i think other legal scholars would agree with that as well. the fact is they have thrown something out there which not only attacks the soul of our relationship, the trust that we've had with the justice department and the intel community, it's also attacked their credibility. whatever it is they say. look, i'm glad that mr. gowdy and others have said what they've said. the fact is i don't know of any republican who has said those things who's not about to retire from the house. where are the profiles in courage of the member who's are sticking around? >> congressman, i appreciate your time tonight. thank you very much. >> thank you. next, a republican lawmaker's take on the now competing memos and the president's claim the gop version vindicates him entirely. also maggie haber man has a scoop she just published. the headline, trump's lawyers

want him to refuse an interview in russia inquiry. maggie is here. we'll talk to her about that as well. and later, today's record on wall street not a good kind of record. details ahead. s still buffering. what's happening? you're experiencing a network delay. you both need to be watching that on the iphone with verizon. the best streaming network. how long have you been here? i've been here a couple days. (avo) get the best unlimited on the most awarded network. and now, when you buy iphone 8, you'll get one on us.

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we're talking tonight about the two pieces of breaking news. one maggie haberman's new reporting on the president's legal team advising him to refuse an interview with special counsel mueller. also the house intelligence voting to release a democratic counterpart to the nunes memo as well as president trump's claim that the nunes memo vindicates him on any russia-related wrongdoing. before the break, you heard from democrat mike quigley. joining us now is republican congressman lee zeldin. congressman, thanks for being with us. >> good to be with you. >> this morning, you tweeted, saying friends don't let friends on the house intel committee compromise good sources and methods, schiff deliberately loaded up his memos with sources that shouldn't be released and he knows it. this is a zero percent chance that this isn't a deliberate to play games, meld, and obstruct. what evidence do you have that he deliberately constructed his

memo in a way that it can't be released? >> you can tell by the way he's been answering questions with regards to the memo. he has not revealed the fact that his memo was filled up with different sources and methods that have to be redacted. i think the responsible thing would be for the drafter of the memo to prepare the memo for release because it obviously includes a lot of different sources of and methods that shouldn't have been in there in the first place. >> i mean the committee, which has republicans on it obviously in the majority, they unanimously voted to release the memo today. so wouldn't the republicans have voted it down if you were right? and also the white house says, look, it goes through a review process just like the republican memo did, and you would think any sources and methods would be able to be redacted, no? >> i'm confident as this memo was going through the declassification process, that you will have to redact those sources and methods. and i'm glad you quoted that second tweet that i had sent out because it's an important point. i want the american public to have as much information as

possible, and that includes getting the schiff memo as well. as that second tweet went on, i said if congressman schiff wants to change anything that he's basically making the same exact point but without revealing certain sources and methods, i'm all for that. as it goes through this process of declassification, i'm confident we can get this out to the public. >> why do you think the republicans then unanimously voted on the committee to let it go forward? i mean you would think they would share your concerns about sources and methods. >> they do. they do. and as it's going through the declassification process over the next few days, i don't want to speak for them. but i know that i'm not alone in being highly confident that as this memo gets prepared for a public release, that it will include redactions. again, and i'm not saying redacting, you know, points that congressman schiff would like to make. i am all for him getting -- make the same exact point, just removing sources and melth odds.

>> congressman schiff says chairman nunes refused to answer questions about whether he coordinated his memo with the white house. that he did make a lawyerly statement that the white house wasn't involved in the drafting of the memo. it still leaves a lot of room for possible coordination. if there was coordination, would you be comfortable with that, if it was with staffers, some sort of coordination? >> i'm not aware of there being any coordination. everything i've come in contact with in all of my different conversations all substantiate there wasn't any cooperation at all in both the staff for the house intel committee and chairman gowdy. those are the people who actually read the underlying source material, and they air preparing of the document, i'm not aware of any cooperation. >> why not just say so? this is the second time that nunes has been asked, the white house has been asked and no one seems to give a straight answer, just saying absolutely no coordination on any level. >> listen, i wasn't in the meeting tonight that took place.

but congressman schiff, you could say, has been full of schiff at some times. he said that the majority memo was going to include national security that couldn't be released. that wasn't true. he said it was going to contain sources and methods. that's all public, now we can see that's not true. he said it was materially altered, and it turns out there was grammatical changes and the only changes beyond grammatical was requested by congressman schiff as well as a change requested by the fbi. there have been issues with regards to when don junior was testifying, congressman schiff walking out of the room and providing updates to the media even though it's a several-hour interview, and that was president supposed to happen. so congressman schiff keeps feeding all of these different talking points to the public. i was in the house intel committee this evening, but consistent with all the way he's been communicating his own talking points to the american public, i wouldn't be surprised if the way he put it isn't exactly what happened. >> finally, congressman, "the new york times" is reporting tonight a story that just broke

that the president has been advised by his lawyers to refuse to sit down for, as the times characterizes it, a wide ranging interview with the special counsel. would you support that course of action if the president's lawyers say don't do it, that he shouldn't? >> yeah, i mean i'm not aware of any evidence whatsoever that there has been any collusion at all between president trump and the russians. probably the biggest risk if he was talking to his own attorneys with regarding to a meeting is just a trap. i mean michael flynn didn't get in trouble for underlying activities that he was being asked about. it was the fact that, you know, when peter strzok and the others were asking him about it, he didn't tell the truth. same thing with papadopoulos pleading guilty to lying to the fbi. >> but that's not a trap. that's just lying. >> well, no, and it's really important that, you know, if the president wants to give testimony, that, you know, you have to be very careful. each question that's asked, you know, you can't shoot from the hip at all. you have to give the best answer you can possibly give with the information that you're aware of

in order to avoid that from happening. >> i don't want to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like you're worried the president would lie or just misremember -- >> no. i'm actually trying to answer as to why his legal counsel may not want him to give that testimony. but i don't know what is going on behind closed doors in their conversations. >> sure. >> if the president wants to give his -- you know, give testimony or not, you know, that's really his decisin with his attorneys. i would encourage, you know, the white house has provided tens of thousands of documents to the special counsel. many in the administration have sat down for long depositions with the special counsel. i'm someone who is advocating for the mueller investigation to end, not prematurely but ending by allowing mueller to complete his investigation thoroughly and effectively and not have this linger for years. >> right. >> let's bring it to an effective and quick conclusion the right way. >> as the times points out, if he doesn't sit down, it could very well going on longer.

more now on this story from maggie haber man. it deals with something the president less than two weeks ago appeared to welcome. let's look. >> are you going to talk to mueller? >> i'm looking forward to it actually. >> you want to? >> here's the story just so you understand. there's been no collusion whatsoever. there's no obstruction whatsoever, and i'm looking forward to it. >> to reach a higher standard, you would do it under oath? >> i would do it under oath, absolutely. >> joining us now is maggie haberman, anne milgram, carl bernstein and jeffrey toobin. maggie, let's talk about the new reporting. you have i believe four sources. >> mm-hmm. >> what have you learned? >> withere is a divide within t president's legal team. it's basically the entire universe of people advising trump among his lawyers and external lawyers versus ty cobb, who say member of the white house counsel's office, who is part of the president's advisory

circle. he has been very much about a strategy about being fully complaint with robert mueller. almost everybody else thing thinks the president going in for a freewheeling interview with robert mueller is incredibly dangerous. >> given depositions he's given in the past. >> in depositions in the past, he's actually been pretty aware of where the line is, much more so of truth, much more so than in his public statements. those were civil depositions in civil cases. this would be a very different set of circumstances and most people just think that he could end up there with, you know, a number of investigators for robert mueller who are looking to trap him with any type of inconsistency in his statement. i believe that's their perspective, that he won't know what else has been testified to, that he might not even be able to help himself because of his penchant forr exaggerations and telling falsehoods and so forth. where this ends up remains to be seen. if he doesn't go ahead, it raises the prospect he gets

subpoenaed. and then there' a legal battle over it, which would draw this out for quite some time. >> which could go all the way to the supreme court. >> it could, sure. the supreme court has ruled in two previous cases, i believe, and one of them related to nixon and documents, not to actual testimony. so this would be a different circumstance. clinton showed that a president can be deposed in a civil case, but this is something very different. >> jeff, how have they ruled? >> well, the most relevant precedent probably is the paula jones case where the supreme court said bill clinton could not put off his deposition in the paula jones case until after he was president. i think that's a very good precedent for mueller because the way courts look at criminal investigations, it's that they are more important than civil investigations. so if he couldn't -- if bill clinton couldn't put off a civil deposition, if mueller hits the president with a grand jury subpoena to testify, i think the odds are that mueller would win

that case although it is not at all clear. this is untrod constitutional ground. the president is a unique figure under our constitution, so it's not a slam dunk. but i think the odds would favor mueller winning that case. >> why wouldn't mueller just automatically subpoena the president? >> well, as a normal course in a criminal investigation, you would start by talking to someone's lawyers and saying, hey, come in. let's have a conversation first. >> if the president refused, why wouldn't he just automatically -- >> i suspect he would try to convince the lawyers that if he did not come in, he would issue a subpoena. so before he actually even put the document in their hands, he would say, look, i'm going to put that document in your hands, again trying to be respectful to the person who is the subject of the investigation. but then, yes, i expect that, you know, and it's important to remember that when we hear these conversations, it's as people are acting as though we know all the evidence and information. the only thing we know for sure is we don't know everything that bob mueller knows. i would believe if he's asking to interview the president,

there's a reason he wants to interview the president, and he will push forward to get there. but i think he will go step by step. >> this is obviously a departure from what the president had said publicly although he did sort of couch it as a caveat about his lawyer. >> he's big on bravado as we know. he said this privately too for weeks. i'd love to go in there. he genuinely seems to believe in these private conversations that he can go in and talk his way out of almost anything. but realistically you heard him add that asterisk of depending on what my lawyers say, but otherwise i'd be thrilled to go out there and speak to robert mueller. there had been this conversation that as best i can tell from anybody involved is a non-starter about having him answer written questions. that seems extremely unlikely. >> those would clearly be written by his attorneys. >> and it's an incredibly controlled setting. it's just i think not what robert mueller's office is looking for. >> carl, ti'm wondering what yo make of this news tonight.

>> i think maggie's got a first-rate story, and at the same time -- and i'd like to ask maggie this -- what i'm hearing from people in the white house, and more often than he talks about whether he testifies or not, trump is going around the white house continuing to rage at mueller, at mueller's investigation, and that he's determined to make it go away whether it is by firing mueller, getting rod rosenstein to recuse himself, or even issuing pardons. that he's a rage-aholic on this subject, and that he can't be restrained. is that what you're hearing, maggie, as well, simultaneously? >> to a degree. mostly his rage tends to center around sessions, and then it extends on to other people. then rosenstein. then that's why we have mueller and all of this is nonsense and so forth and so on. the determination to make it go away from the people i've been speaking with has been less explicit but that doesn't mean it's not present in his mind. it's just that he has not been as vocal about it according to my sources.

>> i think it also gives us reason to think he's disingenuous perhaps in saying how much he really wants to go before mr. mueller. >> depending on what his lawyers say. >> right. >> primarily he wants an end to this investigation. >> that's true. >> on his terms and his base to support him. >> which as maggie points out in the article, it does not bring a quick end by refusing to testify. it could go to court. we're going to have more of this conversation on this breaking story. also tonight how the white house is responding to the market meltdown today. i take pictures of sunrises, but with my back pain i couldn't sleep and get up in time. then i found aleve pm. aleve pm is the only one to combine a safe sleep aid plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve. i'm back. aleve pm for a better am. directv has been rated #1 in customer satisfaction over cable for 17 years running. but some people still like cable. just like some people like banging their head on a low ceiling.

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( ♪ ) (grunting) today is your day. crush it. angie's boom chicka pop whole grain popcorn. boom! more now on our breaking news. "the new york times" is reporting this evening that president trump's lawyers want him to refuse any interview request in the russia investigation, and that could set up a long court fight. back with maggie haber man. also with us, jeff tubin, anne

milgram and carl bernstein. maggie, at what point does there have to be a formal decision by the president and his attorneys about whether or not he's going to testify? >> i'm not certain about what the precise drop dead is, but i think we're coming up on it pretti pretty soon. mueller has been conscious of the fact there are elections coming up. after a certain point, everything is going to be viewed through a political lens, but he would rather have it done sooner rather than later. i think he's going to go through the opportunity to exhaust all possibilities for getting this interview to happen until he goes ahead and files a subpoena. >> carl, it does -- i mean if it continues on and on, it does then start to impact the 2018 elections even more than it might already. >> that's certainly possible, but i think we need to look at the possibility that trump is getting what he wants these days. and that is he is making this investigation and particularly the arguments surrounding the two memos into a partisan

political football in the view of many americans and especially in conveying that message to his base. so that we now are setting up a kind of false equivalency about the dueling memos and as if this is the most important thing going on right now when in fact the real issue is the conduct of donald trump as the president of the united states. and that's getting lost in this, and he's the beneficiary, i think, of both the press, members of congress getting down in the weeds and fighting out every single little paragraph about how the fisa application came to be. that's exactly where he wants the issue to be. >> so, anne, just in terms of what mueller already knows, and again, as you pointed out rightly, we have no idea. we just know a little tiny tip of the iceberg. would people who have already been called in -- would they be able to claim executive privilege in talking to robert mueller about conversations they had with the president and would the president himself then be able to claim that?

>> so before we even get to executive privilege, remember that the one thing the president can invoke that any american can invoke is the fifth amendment. i don't expect that would happen here politically but remember there is one way for him to avoid testifying, which is to say i'm going to take the fifth amendment, which allows me not to incriminate myself. in terms of executive privilege, the issue here -- and presidents have tried to invoke it before. the issue here is this is a criminal case, and donald trump is an actual witness to potential crimes. if there's obstruction of justice being investigated, if his campaign is alleged to have colluded and the standard that the courts have used, i believe it was united states versus nixon, it's very different when you're an actual witness to a crime. there's nobody else that can provide the information that donald trump can provide in this case. so courts, i believe they would pierce the privilege on that. and that would also truly be a legal battle as well. you know, they could invoke that and they could go to the mat on that. >> the other disadvantage the president has in talking to mueller is the president does not know what all the other

people from the white house who have already been called in have already told miller. >> that's true. but i have to say one of the these terms that i've always objected to is perjury trap. it's like, oh, maybe they're setting a perjury trap for him. you know what? there's a simple way to avoid that problem. just tell the truth. the idea that it's some sort of trap to ask the president or anyone else questions about events that occurred in the world, it's absurd to suggest that there's something unfair about that as you have, you know, the president's defenders have been saying, oh, they're trying to trap him. they may have documents that he doesn't know about. too bad. just tell the truth. it's not a crime to make a mistake. it's not a crime not to remember things. but if you lie, that's not a perjury trap. that's just lying. >> maggie, when the president's attorneys argued that mueller doesn't have standing to interview the president on these things, that's something that ultimately would be decided by

the court? >> right. and i think that it's a difficult case to make. i'm not surprised they're making it again. jeffrey would know more than i do. it's not an argument that seems likely to succeed. i think you are reaching the stage of this in terms of what trump's lawyers are looking at, which is essentially playing for time for lack of a better way of putting it, which is just kicking the can down the road and daring mueller essentially to subpoena them and then see what happens. and after that, i don't think they have a whole lot of legal argument to make. again, we are, as jeffrey said, in uncharted waters. but i can't see how they can make the argument. >> i want to continue this discussion. stay with us. much more on this discussion on the breaking news when we return. for my constipation, my doctor recommended i switch to miralax.

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the question tonight, the new question, will he or won't he talk to the mueller investigation? new reporting in "the new york times" says the president's lawyers are telling him no. back with the panel. carl, we should mention that when president nixon refused to turn over tapes to the watergate special prosecutor, the supreme court ruled against him. i guess the president would be rolling the dice if it did go to the supreme court, they could rule similarly again. >> and one would presume that they would and that he would have to testify in a criminal matter. and what we're seeing here is the willingness of donald trump to provoke a constitutional crisis to keep from having to reveal the real facts that mueller is uncovering in his investigation. he does not want this to go forward, and one way is to not testify. and that indeed could provoke this constitutional crisis. trump does not want a report on

whether or not there was collusion, whether or not there was an obstruction of justice, whether or not, indeed, the president of the united states has sought to cover up and undermine all of this investigation, which he has from beginning to end. he doesn't want that report made, and he's willing from everything we know, from those who talk to him regularly, he's willing to provoke a constitutional crisis. and at that point, perhaps, republicans might finally have to say, you know, we may have to leave this president's side. we need to find out what happened with the russians. >> maggie, based on your reporting, is it possible this is just another bargaining chip. >> yeah. >> that this is a tough stance, that they're publicly letting people know about so they can kind of game mueller? >> this was not some authorized leak, number one. number two, i think everybody has been pretty consistent in their reporting across news organizations that there have been concerns about trump appearing before mueller. i do think that some of this is

posturing, but i also think it is the added benefit of being what they actually think, which is that it's a huge problem if the president goes and speaks to mueller, one that also his white house advisers, who are not his legal team, share. almost all of them think this is a really risky, dangerous idea. >> the more intransgent he looks now, the better his negotiating posture is with mueller. for example, i mean one issue that is very much outstanding is if you have an interview, how long is it? >> right. >> and if -- you know, he's saying, no, no, no interview at all, and he winds up saying, well, i'll give you one hour, that looks like a bigger concession if you've been saying no all along. >> right. >> a one-hour interview, donald trump could eat up an hour answering one question. so i mean i think there's a lot of negotiating going on here that, you know, i think trump has a lot of cards. and, you know, if it turns into

one hour, he could eat up that time on his own very easily and with relatively little risk to himself. >> do ah agree he holds a lot of cards? >> i agree he will try to negotiate all these pieces, particularly the timing piece. for the prosecutors and the investigators, they will want to methodically go through with the president every fact they have, every piece of information, and that will take, even with a witness who doesn't take an hour, that would take, i think, a considerable amount of time. so i think the prosecutors will not agree to a time limit, and that does set up this kind of conflict. so i think the president has some cards. i do think, you know, it's obviously not going to be something that bob mueller wants to do to subpoena a sitting president. >> i think for people watching, i mean why not? why would he not want to subpoena the president? because it looks badly for him that he's forcing the president? >> no. i think the president is an extraordinary constitutional figure. he's different than other people in a certain way, and i think mueller -- what we're seeing now

is he's trying every way he can to get the president in the door short of issuing the subpoena. but i do think that bob mueller will issue the subpoena if he has to. i mean if you ask me, you know, if push comes to shove, do i think he'd issue. >> it's also in mueller's interest to be able to say, if this goes to court, we tried everything. we offered every possible accommodation. >> that's right. >> so both sides are doing a certain amount of posturing here for good reason. >> that's right. >> thank you, everybody. maggie, again, incredible reporting as always. up next, the stock market suffers a historic loss. at one point in a very wild day, down more than 1,500 points on a day president trump traveled to ohio to talk about his successful economic record. more on that ahead. on at schwab.somethingg oh really? thank you clients? well jd power did just rank them highest in investor satisfaction with full service brokerage firms... again. and online equity trades are only $4.95... i mean you can't have low cost and be full service. it's impossible. it's like having your cake and eating it too.

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adds president trump was speaking this afternoon in ohio, and talking about his administration economy record. cable news net works cut away

and focussed on the stock market which was taking a huge dive. during a single trading day. here's some of the remarks the president made about the market since last summer. >> the stock market is at an all time high. >> our stock market is at an all time high. >> you look at the stock market all time high. >> the stock market is at an all time high. >> the stock market is way up. we're hitting a new high on the stock market again. >> the stock market smashes one record high after another. >> the stock market setting records. >> shattering one record after another. >> the stock market hit an all time record high today. >> the stock market is way up again today. and we're setting a record all the time. >> i told you, the stock market is hitting one all time record after another. >> with us now is former senior

economic advisor. and former economic advisor to the president obama. a professor at the university of chicago school of business. as we just heard president trump obviously takes full credit boasting the economies roaring under his presidency. particularly the stock mark not just the economy. on this day we saw the largest drop in mystery. he was sinl silent. isn't that one of the dangers of linking yourself to the stock market. >> it's not surprising he has been talking about up the stock market. since it has risen since he was elected. the dow was at 18,000. even with the big fall. there's no question we have seen 1,800 points up the dow in the last two trading days. that's a big decline. we're still way ahead of the game. $7 trillion it's not 5 trillion. i agree with the central premise. presidents probably shouldn't be watching the stock market day by

day. and get too carried away with the financial situation. because you live by the stock market and die by it. i will say this, to reassure the viewers chlts when you look at the real economy. jobs and investment. earnings by company. it looks really good. the economy looks hot. that's why it's surprising the stock market has gone through the tumble. >> what do you make of what you saw today and the president's silence on it? >> president was wrong. we set a new all time record. it was the biggest point drop in the history of the stock market. so, the thing that you have to know and as you know, the president is shameless about citing data, statistics or anything. in the republican primary he loved talking about his polling. then when the polling started to show him as lows in term of approval you have never heard

boo about this again except fake news. we have seen the same thing talking about climate change. he'll say if the climate is really changing even if 2017 is the hottest year ever. why was the super bowl so cold in minnesota. if you razz people because you taunt them because the patriots won the super bowl. what will they do when the patriots lose? the president will learn the message. >> one interesting thing about the decline. when we try to look at what triggered. we got very good news on the job market friday. and we had the federal reserve board saying they thought we could get the 5.5% growth. we haven't seen that in a long time. that spoorked the market because it seems to me wall street doesn't want pay raises for worker. we got a good number on the wage increase for workers and the last jobs report.

and i'm just flabbergasted. workers make more money it's good. >> steve, i guess i would have two questions about that. the first is if that's true why did we just give a $2 trillion tax cut to the same corporations on the grounds they were supposed to be passing it on in the form of wages? >> they are. >> what you see here is this is the flooutrump move. claim credit when something is good. if it starts to go wrong blame others. it wassed fed it was somebody else. what are we going to do. donald trump shouldn't have been getting up and saying that just as he shouldn't have been getting up saying the unemployment rate was 50%. and then a few days after he takes office he says now we have a record low unemployment rate. as i say the president has proven shameless as citing statistics. and he'll get bit by this.

they'll run footage of him saying look how the stock market is up. >> you're right about that. this is two or three days of bad stock market news. look, i think there's a lot of good buying opportunity right now. there's nothing wrong with the economy. >> the stock market almost tripled under obama. >> sound like you're boasting about the stock market sfwl none of the people trying to trump his stock performance were willing to say that when it was happening under obama. >> appreciate it. more on the new reporting the president trumps lawyers don't want him to answer questioning from robert mueller. the story broke half an hour ago. 45 minutes ago. questions in the russia probe could lead to one big legal battle. perhaps the supreme court. more details straight ahead. [ coughs and sneezes ]

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and only be for her. only at jared. welcome to the second hour of 360. a "new york times" story praeking in the past hour that trumps lawyers are advising he refused to sit down with any interview with robert mueller. will the president let it see the light of day. what about the claims the nunes memo vend kates him in the russia affair. he claims democrats were treasonous and un-american during the state of the union address. the first details of this last week. pam joins