an accident also in tempe. thanks for joining us this morning. that's it for this morning, at least. "new day" starts right now. we'll see you back here at 9 to 11:00 a.m. we're witnessing a very public justice of. trump is nixon on steroids. >> the special counsel's side had a meeting last week. >> 14 months into this presidency there isn't evidence of collusion. let's wrap this up and moving on. >> firing the special prosecutor? that's a red line you cannot cross. >> they plotted to destroy him as a president. >> president clearly wants to start punching. a whistle blower says that firm linked to the trump campaign tried to brainwash the american electorate. >> facebook made no effort to go out and tell people. >> do you think the information influenced the 2016 election? >> i think absolutely it played

a role. >> announcer: this is "new day" with chris cuomo and allison come rat toe. >> this is "new day" tuesday march 20th, 6:00 a.m. in new york. chris and alison are off. here is our starting line. so now we know what launched the president into new darkness over the russia probe. news and signs that he is getting nervous about where it is all headed. sources tell cnn the president's lawyers met face to face with special counsel investigators last week to outline the topics that mueller's team would like to ask the president about. cnn has learned that the president is getting agitated as he realized that the russia investigation is far from over. president shake up his legal team, hiring a lawyer who has argued on tv that the president is a target of an elaborate fbi conspiracy. "the new york times" reports that the president is now considering firing one lawyer while another considers leaving. >> all of this as republicans

are largely silent on president trump's attacks on robert mueller and his attempts to undermine the russia investigation. why hasn't mitch mcconnell said anything? two bruising editorials calling on congress to pass legislation to protect the counsel from being fired. cambridge an lit ka -- facebook data was misused by the trump-linked firm. now korcongress wants to speak h mark zuckerberg. >> reporter: good morning, erica. sources tell cnn that the president could be scheduling interview with robert mueller's lawyers in the next few weeks. amid these delicate negotiations, the president is shaking up his own legal team. >> reporter: cnn has learned that president trump's lawyers and robert mueller's

investigators sat down for a rare face-to-face meeting last week. the two sides hashing out the details about the topics mueller's team wishes to discuss with the president, including the role attorney general jeff sessions played in the firing of fbi director james comey and what trump knew about michael flynn's phone calls with sergey kislyak in december, 2016. president trump's legal team provided the special counsel with written descriptions of these events and others in hopes of limiting the scope of a potential future interview. a source tells cnn that president trump wavered behind the scenes about whether to agree with an interview with mueller, despite publicly boasting that he's eager for a sit-down. >> are you going to talk to mueller? >> i'm looking forward to it actually. >> you want to? >> just so you understand, there's been no collusion whatsoever. there's no obstruction whatsoever.

i'm looking forward to it. >>reporter: as it becomes clear that mueller's probe is far from over, sources say president trump is lashing out at the special counsel and blasting the russia probe as a witch hunt. president trump also hiring long-term washington lawyer and tv pundit joseph who has repeatedly panelled a conspiracy theory that fbi they fabricated the russia story to frame mr. trump. >> there was a brazen plot to illegally exonerate hillary clinton and if she didn't win the election to frame toig with a falsely created crime. it wasn't the russians who corrupted the presidential election. it was the american officials at the department of justice and the fbi. >> reporter: but as one lawyer joins trump's legal team, others may be on their way out. "the new york times" reports that the president is weighing dismissing ty cobb who argued with cooperation with mueller's team. and the times reporting that

john dowd has contemplated leaving because he's concluded he has no control over the behavior of the president. both lawyers deny that they are going anywhere and mr. trump insisted last week that he is very happy with his lawyers. the president's escalating attacks on mueller drawing a rebuke from some republicans on the hill. >> it would be the stupidest thing the president could do. >> how would republicans react if the fired mueller? >> i think it would be total upheaval in the senate. >> others like mitch mcconnell have remained silent about the president's attacks. >> so in the midst of all of this, the president's advisers say he is not contemplating firing mueller. and on his schedule today, he's got a meeting with the crown prince of saudi arabia where notably a senior administration official says they're planning on discussing ways to make russia pay for its involvement in iran and syria. the president also has a meeting about sanctuary cities today

which is something he discussed yesterday during a visit to new hampshire on the opioid crisis. >> abby, thanks so much. want to bring in cnn legal analyst who worked with the special counsel michael zelden and michael burns. i think if you combine the cnn report and "the new york times" report about what's going on inside the white house with the president thinking about his legal team, all of a sudden we understand why the president was so ticked off this weekend. he thinks he knows where this is headed and he doesn't like it, michael. his attorneys sat down with the special counsel last week and they were given information about what kind of questions the special counsel wants to ask. it has to do with the firing of james comey and michael flynn and the specifics about jeff sessions and michael flynn here. what does this tell you about where the investigation is going and why it might so upset the president? >> well, so why it may upset the president is because his lawyers have been telling him probably

because this is what he wanted to hear that this investigation would be over thanksgiving then at christmas and then who knows what, st. patrick's day. now we're in the middle of march and mueller's investigation seems to be gaining steam rather than winding down. so that has to upset him quite a lot. then to the exact point you raised, john, the issues that mueller has in his sights for interview questions involve the full scope of his mandate, counterintelligence, coordination, obstruction of justice. what we haven't heard yet, though, is whether mueller is interested in speaking to the president at this time about the financial information related to the trump organization. because remember just last week we read that there were subpoenas issued with respect to the financial crime. so i expect that this is a much broader scope investigation than the president was led together or wanted to believe. and he's grown more and more

furious over it which led to the tweet storms. >> the tweet storms and the changes we've seen in terms of president's legal team which are certainly nothing to ignore. we could see people leaving ty cobb, john dowd. what's fascinating is not just what we heard from him over the last several months about views he shares with the president about where they believe the fbi is on a number of issues related to the president, but what's fascinating is what he said in the past and certainly when we were dealing with former president clinton which you covered extensively, john. he was talking about degenova. a president should be able to be indicted. this should happen. saying no one is above the law and this could be an important civics lesson for the country. is there a sense, alex, one would wonder whether that may still be his thinking here? and if so, why the president would bring him in. >> that's a question i suspect

he's going to have to answer. look, i think you have to see that other pieces basic inconsistencies on matters what could be presented as matters of principle when it comes to the investigation. the president shouldn't have to sit for an interview. he waffled on a number of these important procedural matters where it's now going to be very hard for the president politically at least not to sit for an interview. he said in the past that he's looking forward to it. so what changed, right? if it does get to the point of us having a debate about whether a president can be indicted, how can you say you're above the law when your own lawyer said x, y and z. this is of piece with how the president handles virtually all matters of policy. i use that term loosely to include personal behavior and sort of government ethics, right? he is entirely opportunistic and entirely inconsistent based on his mood and what he considers to be useful and when you're in

a legal situation that's highly dangerous. >> these lawyers are arguing for different things, michael. in your vast experience, what does it tell you that this deep into the investigation the president is adding a bomb-throwing lawyer. let's be clear about this his role seems to be so say what he's saying outloud on fox news, maybe to the courts or to keep on saying it on behalf of the president. what does it tell you about how stable this operation is? >> well, it does point to different legal theories within the team how to approach mueller. ty cobb and john dowd seem to be conciliatory and want to work with mueller to put an end to this thing as quickly as possible. then you have others surrounding them who are like joe, more aggressive about this. i have to say just by way of sort of full disclosure, joe and i worked together for a long time. joe was the independent counsel and i was his deputy on the

janet mullens, george herbert walker bush. joe was very aggressive in acquiring the testimony of herbert walker bush and was aggressive in asserting that president clinton in his impeachment process had to testify and there was no standing down in face of the grand jury's interest in his information. joe has a very hard time as a matter of consistency to say otherwise. joe i like him, i respect him and i think what we'll see from joe is a lot of time on television trying to press the president's claim that mueller's investigation is tainted without firing mueller but trying to undermine the value of whatever mueller may put forth whether an indictment or final report. >> that's something we've seen for some time, too. the president trying to put forth that message whether it's coming from himself or others.

of course for the first time mentioning mueller in his tweets over the weekend to somehow try to undermine this investigation and his credibility. yet it keeps coming back up against him. he's hitting a wall against it. >> that is an area if the president were more restrained it would be entirely in keeping with how other presidents have handled special counsels. the clinton administration did everything to undermine and attack ken starr short of going as far as the president has having the current president -- president clinton never went on television and said this is a witch hunt. it never happened. >> the president says outloud, he reads the sub text outloud. >> right. exactly. i do think the clips that we saw of mono on the hill talking to republican senators, you are hearing language who are typically white house allies around this mueller issue that you have not heard on any other

subject. you get a lot of eye rolling from people, the senate republicans will never stand up to the president. you never heard orrin hatch on any matter of policy use the kind of language he is using on this investigation. >> i want to come back to that in just a moment. one final legal matter i want to mop up, michael, it was interesting to me in the meetings cnn is reporting that the president's team and special counsel's team, the subject of jeff sessions came up. what was jeff session's role in the firing of james comey. my eyebrows raised there. what could the special counsel be after jeff sessions? what could his legal jeopardy be. he recused himself from the investigation. unaccusing yourself unofficially, that wouldn't be illegally, necessarily, that would be professionally unethical, right? >> yeah. i don't know that sessions himself is necessarily in the crosshairs of special counsel mueller as much as it is possible that he wants to know how did it come to pass actually

that comey was fired? how did it come to pass actually that there was this loyalty request? how did it come actually that they had a private meeting, the president and director comey, in which the president is said to have asked that the flynn investigation be let go. i think he wants to know what did sessions really know about that in an effort to understand what the president's true thinking was because that relates to whether he had a corrupt intent and whether or not he obstructed justice in taking any of those acts. so i think sessions is more likely a witness into what the president was doing and thinking than being a target or subject of mueller directly. >> of course they have complicated relationship, don't they, the president and jeff session? stand by. we have breaking news we are following out of texas. a new explosion has hit this state. this one at a fedex, facility south of austin. coming as police and hundreds of agents look for a possible

serial bomber. ed lavandera in austin with the breaking details. what have you learned, ed? >> reporter: good morning, john. this is very much a developing situation so it's not clear at all at this point whether or not the explosion that is being investigated at this fedex delivery facility in the town of shirts, texas, about an hour's drive south of austin. it's basically a suburb of northern san antonio, but we understand that officials are at the scene at this fedex facility and investigating this possible explosion there. so, this is a situation that is very much developing here in these early morning hours and it's not entirely clear if it's connected to the four explosions that authorities in austin texas believe are connected. we'll continue to monitor that throughout the day. right now we are in the neighborhood where that fourth explosion sunday night occurred. this is the area where it went off. the only remnants left here is the divot in the ground here on

this patch of grass where the explosion occurred sunday night, injuring two young men in their early 20s. those young men expected to survive with non-life threatening injuries, but authorities here have been really talking about what could be interesting if this information in shirts, texas, that we were talking about does, indeed, become related to these explosions is the changing method of how these explosions have been carried out. the first three explosions earlier this month were packages left on people's doorsteps. this particular explosion used a wire -- a trip wire and that's one of the things that authorities are concerned about is the changing dynamic of how these explosions have occurred and that's one of the things they're worried about. john and erica. >> ed, appreciate. it thank you. we'll check in with you throughout the morning. republicans largely silent of president trump's repeated attacks on robert mueller and the russia information. will congress pass any legislation to protect robert mueller? we'll tackle that next. ♪

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members of president trump's own party warning him to leave the special counsel alone after he attacked robert mueller on twitter. >> it would be the stupidest thing the president could do to fire him. >> i think he needs to leave him alone. >> how would republicans react if he fired mueller? >> i think it would be a total upheaval in the senate. >> you think it would be a total upheaval in the senate? >> yeah, no question.

>> total upheaval in the senate. republicans turned those words into action a push to introduce a bill to keep mueller from being fired. alex, you made the point a short time ago that we haven't heard such strong words from republican lawmakers, pointing out everything we just heard in the reporting from manu red. there is the question, where is mitch mcconnell on this. paul ryan a lukewarm statement that was sent out. so are we really hearing from republicans here? new york times editorial board saying it's time. >> we're hearing from important republicans. we're not hearing from the most important republicans mitch mcconnell and paul ryan decided not to engage on this subject, but you are hearing from the republican conference in the senate, like john cornyn and orrin hatch who are not the usual suspects. we can point to a couple republican senators who are upset but we're talking about folks who are basically friends and orrin hatch's case personal friends with the president who are just putting up a really, really unmistakable neon sign.

the question whether they're act on legislation, that's unlikely. it would have to be signed by the president. he wants to get rid of the special counsel, why would he engage on that? >> it strikes me that orrin hatch and bob corker and trey gowdy yesterday and heard from jeff flake on this and what's the one thing they all have on common, they're retiring. they're leaving. yes, you mentioned john cornyn and paul ryan put out a paper statement. the strongest language is from those leaving. i'm curious what the political cost might be? >> there's no question. there has been a proposal going back to last summer to pass legislation protecting the special counsel, making it difficult for the president to fire him. that proposal gained essentially no traction. it was introduced at a moment when the president was privately calling republican senators, telling them you have to shut down the senate intelligence committee investigation, privately calling them, giving them every reason to think it was important to protect the

special counsel. it's not a place they've been willing to go so far and comes down to not wanting to antagonize this guy. they don't know how the president will respond. >> michael, when we look if something were to pass and alex makes the point the president has to sign it, even if it were to pass, who does it benefit beyond robert mueller in this case? is it really a win or is this simply that democrats can say, hey, look what we did? >> i don't know about the politics of it. i think, though, from a legal jeopardy standpoint for the president to cause mueller to be fired, that would trigger a whole host of other obstruction and abuse of office inquiries with respect to that act. those who are counselling him not to do that are protecting him or trying to protect him legally from taking an action that will potentially lead to further complications for him. and i think that ultimately

mueller will not be fired because i think that cooler heads will prevail. there's a story once during the watergate period, nixon is speaking with barry goldwater. nixon is seeing whether he could be removed. says to goldwater, how many votes do we have? will i survive the 67 votes i need to survive removal? and gold dlt water says to him, mr. president, you don't have my vote. and that led to nixon's ultimate resignation. i think here the principle of these republican senators saying to the president you don't have my vote. if you fire mueller, you don't have my vote. we will come back and appoint somebody new if not mueller himself and you'll have to face the consequences of that act. i think that's what's going on here most. >> i tend to agree that the cost of doing this is incredibly high. before we discounted the notion that the president would do it, we have to remember he tried once to do it.

he asked don mcgahn to fire robert mueller according to "the new york times" and he wouldn't do that. it is out there as a possibility. another big story that's taking place before our very eyes is this facebook thing which gets bigger and more complicated as days go on here. we know that cambridge analytica had access to the 50 million voter information and now we're seeing from britain these stories about cambridge analytica and what they're trying to do to pick up clients here. and i think biggest of big pictures, alex burns here, you see what looks like the shady operations in this shady world of political consulting. what jumps out to you? >> look, i think in any other administration we would be talking about cambridge analytica as a colossal explosive scandal. if you had a political consulting firm tied to

president bush or tied to president obama involved in saying on hidden camera that they were setting up foreign politicians in sexually compromising situations, that would be politically devastating. the bar is clearly different in president trumps in terms of what the public can absorb. this opens the door first a couple things involving president trump which is enormous scrutiny to his relationship with this firm that clearly did a lot of international business and we'll see who else they did international business for. i think people have been imagining collusion as a secret line from the kremlin to the white house. and in reality, a lot of conflict of interest issues just arise when you have one person working for multiple bosses at the same time. i think in a secondary way but maybe long-term and more important way, this is going to draw a lot of public attention to the way campaigns actually harvest their private information and how they use them in ways that are legal, but i think objectively pretty

creepy. >> i would throw in shady, too. you bring up a good point when you use obviously campaigns that this is not just going to end up being the trump campaign. michael, as we know, are there potential legal ramifications that you see at this point moving forward? >> well, it appears from the reporting and it's still early and we have to be careful about that, it appears that there were data privacy breaches here. that is, even if it's true that facebook said that this professor received permission of 270,000 people to sign up for his app and take a psycho metric test, they then use that data in a link analysis way to acquire others who did not sign up and receive permission. you have this potential -- facebook is not calling it a data breach, but it's pretty close to a data breach. it's a misapplication of data

without consent. that's going to be haunting the facebook and its potentially be legal jeopardy for cambridge analytica who if they acquired this data in breach of uk privacy laws and potentially u.s. privacy laws may subject them to civil lawsuit. >> michael, alex, thanks so much for the whole range of questions. we'll talk to some of the reporters who have been breaking this news about cambridge analytica in great britain later this hour. in the meantime, the fourth nor'easter in less than three weeks. i've lost count. targeting millions from washington, d.c. to boston. we are watching this system very closely. we'll give you your forecast next. what would our founding fathers

want us to do about this president? i'm tom steyer, and when those patriots wrote the constitution here in philadelphia,

they created the commander in chief to protect us from enemy attack the justice department just indicted 13 russians for an electronic attack on america. so what did this president do? nothing. he's failed his most important responsibility - to protect our country. the question is: why is he still president? ♪ ♪ keep your most valuable insights hidden from your competitors. the ibm cloud. the cloud for smarter business. the ibm cloud. kevin, meet yourkeviner. kevin kevin kevin kevin kevin kevin kevin kevin kevin trusted advice for life.

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the new maps were unveiled last month by the state supreme court which ruled previous maps had been jerrymandered by the gop in violation of the constitution. president trump is urging pennsylvania republicans to appeal. spring officially arrives in a matter of hours but winter not letting go easy. the northeast the bracing for its fourth nor'easter. this violent storm system expecting to threaten the northeast next as we said. chad meyers has our forecast, chad, lay it out for us. >> tell you what, john, yesterday was an ugly day, hail bigger than baseballs, three tornadoes confirmed. now the storm is going to turn to the left and head up to the northeast. there's the storm over the carolinas. it will turn into a coastal storm, a coastal nor'easter on the south side there will be severe weather. on the north side, there will be significant snow. now for big cities, d.c., philadelphia, new york and boston, it's a slop. it's a 33 degree snow when it

comes down a lot will melt. if you have 300 feet of elevation above sea level, you'll get all snow. so what could turn into just a mess in manhattan could be ten or 12 inches in franklin lake or waterbury because of your elevation difference will be just enough to make one or two degrees colder as the storm goes by. now, tomorrow night, it's still snowing 8:00 p.m. this is when it's really wrapping up. boston doesn't get as much this time, but certainly even philadelphia and south jersey will get snow. then it finally does move away. every progressive snow event so far is getting warmer and warmer, erica, so we're not seeing the amount of snow that we would have seen say back in january, but still somewhere around 8 inches possible around new york city. both the american and the european model agreeing on that. more in the mountains. hagerstown just west of temonium. that's where the snow will be the heaviest. >> the fact that these storms

getting warmer supposed to be our silver lining? >> that means they go away faster. >> thank you. we are closely following this breaking news out of texas. another explosion this time at a fedex facility south of austin. is it connected to a series of bombings? we have the breaking details next. we're about to move. karate helps... relieve some of the house-buying... stress. at least you don't have to worry about homeowners insurance. call geico. geico... helps with... homeowners insurance? been doing it for years. i'm calling geico right now. good idea! get to know geico. and see how easy homeowners and renters insurance can be. but mania, such as unusualrder can changes in your mood,able.

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a fifth explosion rocks texas. this time a package inside a fedex facility about an hour south of austin. they suspect it is connected to the other four bombings in the area this month. let's discuss with retired fbi supersizer agent, james. so as we look at this, as you were just pointing out to me in the break, this is the first time we had acknowledgment from law enforcement of shrapnel. >> the le thalty of a bomb is based on three things. most people who are hurt, injured casualties from the bomb are from the overpressure. that's the most dangerous aspect of a bomb. the second piece of that is the

shrapnel that's introduced. that means somebody that puts nails, nuts, bolts, debris, rocks whatever they want to. that's where people have things that penetrate their body, the fragmentation. the third is the thermal effect, erica. when people get injured, smoke inhalation they could get burned. the fact that they're now acknowledging there was sclab nel, this was an additional component, that's a further detail. >> this was also in a fedex facility. when there's a bomb, there is not a lot left. each bomb maker has a signature. they can put certain things together. but the fact that this was shipped from somewhere, was set to go to somewhere, those are important clues now. >> crime scenes for bombings are so difficult. the post blast analysis is hampered by this. when the explosion happens, it destroys a lot of the evidence. any kind of fingerprints, dna evidence, anything you would

want to piece together who did this, it makes it more difficult. it's not too daunting. they will get to the bottom of this. what this tells me is that this bomber is showing us the full portfolio. he started out with packages that were addressed to particular people in austin. and he dropped them off on their porch. they weren't shipped. now he knew people would be aware of this and looking at video cameras to see who is coming up to a porch and dropping a package off. he moves into the next realm a trip wire, a switch device that is a targeted opportunity. it's not addressed to a specific person and it creates fear and terror. if this is related to this same bomber and i think there's some suspicion that it is, he has now shown a different methodology, shipping something to a fedex facility. >> so the first time we heard this was just before that trip wire bomb was tripped, was triggered on sunday night. authorities saying, hey, talk to us. we want to hear from you. we want to know what your

message is. as we're looking at these, you're saying he is showing the full or she arsenal here. does this appear in any way random to you? is this part of the message, i can do it this way, this way and if so what does that tell you about the background of this person? could there be a military background, a law enforcement background? >> quite possibly. what law enforcement's biggest concern is the frequency and repetitive of these attacks. the longest investigation in fbi history, the unabomber case. ted kaczynski began in 1978 and continued until 199 r5 and arrested in 2006. 23 injured, 3 people killed. only 16 devices. we now have five gudevices in t span of two weeks and we have three different methods of delivery. that's concerning. >> but is there anything in there that has signs of the

possible background of this person? >> sure. and as bomb makers -- what we learned about bomb makers as this, as they move on and begin to do more and more, they get better at it. some of these folks start out with the anarchist cook book. he has ten fingers and ten toes, that's successful to them. the method and the delivery system and the different means he is having these things in place shows he's trying to show if it's the same person on all five of these a full different ways of doing this and that's frightening. >> james, thank you. >> thanks, erica. hidden camera report on british tv captures cambridge analytica executives bragging about dirty tricks and honey traps to catch politicians. one of the reporters behind the story joins us next just ahead. . and serve with confidence that it's safe. this is a diamond you can follow from mine to finger,

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>> he said he had chest pains, loss of sleep and other troubling symptoms throughout the system. despite having a bunch of tests, doctors still can't find out what's wrong with him, so he's going to step away for a while. lebron says he's been a warrior trying to fight through his issues, but his health is the most important thing right now. >> it's a tough loss. it's like losing one of your best players, obviously, a guy that's pretty much the captain of our ship. >> larry drew will coach the cavs in lue's absence. the team getting kevin love back night from injury and lebron scored 40 points to lead cleveland to a win over the bucks. the sentimental favorite left in this year's ncaa tournament is 11th seed loyola chicago and their secret weapon is sister jean. she leads the team in prayer before every game. sister jean, she picked the ramblers to make it to the sweet 16 in her bracket, but she has them losing the next game and

the team thinks she's going to get that pick wrong. >> you know, sister jean, she's been our biggest supporter and definitely going to be our biggest supporter, but we have to bust her bracket on this one. >> and erica, i'm assuming that sister jean will take a busted bracket if that means loyola will keep winning. >> i think she probably would. andy, thanks. cambridge analytical executives caught on hidden camera appearing to discuss ways to entrap politicians. we'll speak to a member of the team behind that reporting next. >> announcer: bleacher report update is brought to you by -- it's all pop-culture trivia, but it gets pretty intense.

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>> yes. a large amount of money to a candidate, finance his campaign in exchange for land, for instance. we'll have it on cameras. >> facebook or youtube or something like this? >> girls around to the candidate's house. we have lots of history. >> for example, you're saying many are using the girls to introduce to the locals? and you're using the girls for this seduction? they are not local girls? >> i wouldn't have thought so. >> it was just an idea. >> you know what i'm saying? >> yes. they are very beautiful. >> yes. >> in other parts of the video, the executives are seen talking about exploiting deep seeded and

underlying fears to motivate voters. cambridge analytica sent cnn a statement rejecting the allegations made in channel 4's reporting. it is ed itted to misrepresent. they say they entertained a series of ludacris, hypothetical scenarios. he is aware how this looks but it is not the case when the reporter turned the conversation to entrapment and corruption, the executives left with grave concerns and did not meet him again. nix added i must emphatically state that we do not engage honey traps and nor does it use untrue material for my purpose. i should have recognized where the prospective client was taking our conversations and ended the relationship sooner. joining me now to discuss all of this is kylie morris, washington correspondent for channel 4, a member of the team responsible for this reporting. i have to say, this reporting having quite an impact on both

sides of the atlantic today. so thank you so much for joining us. just walk us through how your team got into these meetings. how did this happen? >> sure. so we had a number of people who posed as operatives, political operatives from psychiatry lan ka, working for a wealthy family. they wanted advice on how they might be able to influence and make sure their candidates, the candidates they favored won in the next round of elections on sri lanka. we secretly filmed those meetings. there were four meetings in posh hotels in london across a period of about four months. it was only at the final meeting actually that alexander nix, the ceo who you saw in that clip, joined -- he did engage in those conversations. they say it was a tactic, but as you heard they explained in some detail how it might work if the

sri lankaens were looking for any dirt on their poiopponents. it's interesting the claim from alexander nix and cambridge analytica, they were teasing out the clients to see whether or not -- but even seven weeks after our final meeting. the final meeting in january, seven weeks beyond that we were still getting e-mails from the company wondering whether or not this deal was going to go ahead. >> oh. so when alexander nix says in the statement we just received they realized immediately something was amiss, you're saying that for seven weeks after that they were still trying to get the business. that's interesting. >> yes, it is. >> and it was these previous meetings, i understand, were fairly innocuous. three meetings that were sort of ordinary and it was this fourth one where this claim and these offers came out. his claim is that they were just discussing hypotheticals. these are the types of things

that occasionally happen in this business. did it read like that to you? >> i think the interesting thing is even before that meeting, there were other moments where mike turnbull, the managing director of the company rejected the idea that they would engage in any kind of dirty tricks. however, the mood did seem to change when alexander nix joined that conversation and he directly contradicted things that mark turns there bull said before. so there are inconsistencies. but when we say the earlier meetings were innocuous, we still learn a lot about the approach of cambridge analytica and the way they like to work. things saying they were advising these prospective clients that it's absolutely no good when it comes to political campaigning to fight on facts. that it's all about emotions. that it's digging into people's fears. they also talk about using the internet in a way where they are untrackable and untraceable and use front companies and send in

people who aren't directly linked to the company. so their work isn't easily monitored. >> kylie, huge interest in the united states is that cambridge analytica gets a huge chunk of its family from the mercer family, a big republican donor family here steve bannon and the trump campaign hired cambridge analytica. did you talk to anyone in the trump campaign in your reporting? >> no. we reached out to a number of people from the trump campaign to talk to them about the role that cambridge analytica played. we will have another film tonight talking more specifically about that. but i think that cambridge analytica has been very quick to say, look, the facebook data which of course they're in a lot of hot water over, that's not something that they used during the trump campaign. we do know that they were working very closely with brad piscal, the director of the digital campaign within the trump effort. and we know that in the final

few months of the campaign he was pushing out a lot of facebook ads. they were relying on cambridge analytica to help them with the micro targeting of that. that's what cambridge analytica does. it kind of identifies the kinds of voters who might be vulnerable to persuasion. some might say manipulation. and that's where those efforts were directed. >> very quickly because we're almost out of time here, i don't want you to scoop your own reports, but our american viewers won't be able to see it live the same way that people will in the uk, what do you think will surprise people most about what they learn between the trump team's ties to cambridge analytica? >> i think it's important to remember that this was cambridge analytica pitching for business. cambridge analytica made very strong statements and claims about the kind of work it did on the u.s. elections. that story will be available online from about 3:00 p.m. eastern. so i encourage people to look out for it. but it builds on the sense that we already have of the way they

operated which, of course, they deny. >> it's very interesting to see and of course you can see the trump campaign trying to distance itself as best it can from cambridge analytica which is trying to distance itself from facebook all at the same time. there's a whole lot of international distancing going on. thank you for being with us. terrific reporting. thank you to our international viewers for watching. u.s. viewers, breaking news in texas, so let's get to it. >> announcer: this is cnn breaking news -- >> good morning, everyone. chris and alison are off. we do have breaking news this morning. a new explosion has rocked texas. this time a package it blew up inside a fedex facility south of austin. >> this is now the fifth explosion in the area. police and hundreds of federal agents trying to find what they are now calling a serial bomber. we know that two people have been killed by