>> the russian meddling probe hits close to home for president trump. i'm robert costa. why the president's son-in-law is being considered a person of interest. plus, how trump's america first agenda played out on the world stage. tonight on "washington week." >> the f.b.i.'s russia election investigation takes them inside the white house, directly to jared kushner. but unlike former national security advisor michael flynn and former trump advisor paul manafort, kushner is not considered a subject in any federal probe. still, the russia questions are only mounting. and the former head of the c.i.a. tells congress he saw evidence last year of russian officials interacting with people involved in the trump campaign but stopped short of calling it collusion.

>> these are contacts that might have totally, totally innocent and benign. >> meanwhile, overseas, the president walks a diplomatic tightrope, pushing his america first agenda and taking nato to task on military spending. >> 23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they're supposed to be paying for their defense. this is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the united states. >> plus, a new probe into u.s. intelligence leaks surrounding the manchester attack. we tackle it all, with peter baker of the new york times, vivian salama of the associated press, adam entous of the washington post, and erica werner of the associated press. >> celebrating 50 years, this is "washington week." funding is provided by...

aragon. midway. normandy. medina ridge. these are places history will never forget. but more important are the faces we will always remember. >> additional funding is provided by... newman's own foundation. donating all profits from newman's own products to charity and nourishing the common good. the yuen foundation. committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you! >> once again, moderator, robert costa. >> good evening.

president trump winds down his first trip abroad. the ongoing investigations into russia election meddling continue to cast a shadow over the administration. we learned this week that jared kushner, the president's son-in-law, and white house advisor, is under f.b.i. scrutiny for a series of meetings he held with russian officials last year. kushner, one of the president's closest confidants, reportedly met in december with the russian amanda anambassador and a bankem moscow. kushner is not considered a target of any federal probe, we want to be clear on that. but investigators do believe he may have information critical to the federal investigations, into possible collusion with the kremlin. joining the table from the post newsroom is adam entous, one of the reporters who broke the story. adam, everyone is wondering, why did the federal probe now turn to kushner? >> well, in many ways, it's very logical. what's happening here is the

f.b.i. is monitoring russian communications along with the national security agency. and the russians are talking about their contacts with members of the trump team during the campaign and later with members of the transition, including jared. and so they're picking up in those communications, basically the russians talking about jared. they're talking about their contacts with him. they're describing, you know -- they're describing what those contacts are. it's raising alarm bells. so it's natural that the f.b.i. would want to figure out, what were the nature of those contacts that jared was having with the russians, to try to figure out if there's any connection, any coordination, which is a focus of the f.b.i., between the russians who were meddling in the election and members of trump's team during the campaign. >> one of the most important lines, i think, in your story is the federal investigations are supposedly looking now into broadly seeing if there are financial crimes committed. were there financial crimes committed by jared kushner?

is that really a serious target for the investigators? >> well, one has to understand the way these investigations work. this starts off as a counterintelligence investigation. basically the americans are listening to these conversations to try to figure out, basically spy craft, and how are the russians trying to influence people in the united states, get information, that sort of thing. but when you're digging into a counterintelligence investigation, you look through financial records. you look through tax returns. you do those sorts of things. and you listen to communications. and if you -- as part of that investigation, if you hear things that point to financial crimes, you then can pursue those things. so often what happens in these kinds of investigations is the actual espionage piece of it is not necessarily what the f.b.i. pursues, but it's actually things that come from that that they find out about as part of that investigation. >> peter, we saw that -- in these reports that kushner met

with sergey gorkov, a russian banker, as well as meeting with sergey kislyak, the russian ambassador. how much hot water do you think he's in in terms of the probe but also politically? >> we don't really know, as adam says. the investigators are really trying to figure it out. and we're trying to figure out what they know. but meeting with the head of a bank, the russian bank, which is under sanctions at that time, is curious. what was that about? it's not surprising that investigators would try to figure out what was behind it. does that mean he did anything wrong? not necessarily at all. but, you know, we're in this very awkward position with russia where these contacts were happening at a time when we were very much at loggerheads over ukraine. we were imposing more sanctions, cutting off ties, not building ties. so anybody doing the opposite, of course, is going to draw attention. >> vivian, the white house seems to be in bunker mode right now, thinking about building a war room inside of the west wing. what's their plan to respond to

this new information about kushner? >> well, this is definitely the closest to home that anything that has struck. they're probably taking this very seriously and proceeding in a way that would, you know, protect themselves legally, especially. i mean, everyone is talking act, are there crimes committed? certainly we're far off from knowing whether that's the case, but they want to be ready for any accusations that may come. so far the trump administration has been able to distance themselves from a lot of the accusations, saying that the surrogates are associates whose names have come up, they served for a short time on the campaign or they, you know, were at a distance. they've always managed to do that. kushner is close to home. it really hits close to home. it's not only someone who is a top advisor in the administration, it's also a family member of trump's. they want to make sure they are protected. going off something that adam said, it was kushner's job to meet with these officials in a way, and that is something they have maintained up until now, at least with the ambassador, is that he is someone that was supposed to be sort of a liaison

between the campaign and transition team and foreign dignitaries. he was meeting with many, not just the russians, but others as well. this was just part of his job, seeing how they could proceed diplomatically. they maintain that. obviously the issues of meeting bankers and especially a sanctioned bank, that raises concerns, because there was a lot of speculation going into the start of this administration that they may want to ease sanctions. and so that was something that a lot of, you know -- this was what michael flynn -- a lot of questions came up with general michael flynn, the initial national security advisor, that he was talking to people about maybe easing sanctions or that that came up in some of the conversations. and so that is obviously a major concern. >> indeed. we should note the kushner attorney said mr. kushner previously volunteered to share with congress what he knows about these meetings. he will do the same if he is contacted in connection with another inquiry. what is the congressional

response? there are ongoing inquiries on capitol hill. we have the former f.b.i. director scheduled to testify, though that's not clear yet. >> yes. james comey is expected to be on the hill, not this coming week, which is a recess week, but the week after that. as you say, it's not scheduled. but that is the expectation at this time from the senate intelligence committee. so the kushner knees news -- kushner news, which as vivian said, brings this much closer to the white house, broke last night after members had left town for the memorial day recess. so we haven't heard reaction specifically to that. but what the line is, from senator mcconnell, paul ryan and the rest, is that there are ongoing investigations. the senate intelligence committee being the primary one, also now the special prosecutor, and that's pretty much what they point to, when asked about kind of any area of this. they say we're investigating. the investigation will reach its

conclusion. and mcconnell in particular, as you know, very disciplined, won't say anything else. it's, we're investigating, it will reach its conclusion. one other point i would make about all of this that i've heard from several lawmakers of both parties is that they do not hear about this issue in town halls from their voters when they go home. they don't hear about russia. they hear about health care. they hear about jobs. so they aren't getting pressure from constituents. even democrats, on this issue. >> but the issue is certainly picking up in some of these places around the country. adam, when you look at the intelligence community, what's next? we've had reports that the president asked the dni director, dan coots, mike roger, the head of the n.s.a., to perhaps back off on the investigation. is the intelligence community alarmed at the president's conduct and how is that going to play out? >> we're all trying to figure out, what is the f.b.i. looking at? who are they looking at? what kind of charges might they

be considering? the other line is, if you will, obstruction. this concept of obstruction. you know, is trump, who is obsessed with narrative, is he reaching out to people in the intelligence community, trying to put pressure on the f.b.i. in order to, at a minimum, change the narrative and basically, you know, muddy the waters, if you will? convince people that there is nothing there really to look at that involves him or involves those that are around him? or is he doing this in order to relieve pressure? obviously we saw the appointment of a special counsel, which was a result of pressure. and so the efforts that i think trump was making in march in particular, and then in april, of basically trying to get coates, trying to get rogers, the n.s.a. director, to basically go out there and say what james clapper had said earlier on, which is that he had seen no evidence of collusion. he -- i think what trump was trying to do was to get these other people to say something

like that in order to reduce the pressure so that, again, his allies in congress and the white house can sort of push back at those calls for the special counsel. but as we saw, once he fired comey, you know, the pressure just built and the decision was made and now that there is a special counsel, the ability of the white house to kind of control the narrative and control events is going to be more limited. >> but peter, the white house is not just responding to questions about collusion. democrats are now charging that the president, through some of his actions, is maybe obstructing justice. how is that going to affect the white house as it moves forward, trying to get so much done in washington? >> you just heard it on friday, from nobody other than hillary clinton herself, who gave a commencement address at wellesley college where she made the allusion between president trump and richard nixon in the middle of watergate and noted that he got pushed out largely on obstruction of justice allegations. in some ways, there are parallels, what nixon did, the

smoking gun tape that finally pushed him out the door. it was ordering his chief of staff to tell the c.i.a. to tell the f.b.i. to back off, to not pursue an investigation into the burglar. into the burglary and its connections. whether this counts as the same thing, i don't know. what gerald ford once said is impeachment is what the house of representatives died it is. right now, you don't see any move towards that. it's a talking point but so far hasn't resulted in anything beyond that. >> is there really no move from congress on the obstruction of justice front? >> well, the leadership in the house and democrats in the senate don't want to be talking about impeachment. they don't think that's good politics right now. for the republicans, it's completely off the table. i mean, it's not even -- >> are they privately concerned? >> yes, they are privately concerned about what's going on. clearly. i mean, you know, on many levels.

you know, we have a president that's at 40% approval ratings, sometimes less in some polls. where does that come from? partly because of the russia stuff. it manifests in various different ways. when he submitted his budget this week, republicans had almost nothing good to say about it. is that partly because of his low approval ratings, the lack of deference? certainly republicans are not going to be impeaching this guy. and some liberal democrats want to talk impeachment. pelpelosi tries to tamp that do. >> and republicans are slow walking, seeing how it all plays out. the president is looking to have an outside legal team. the white house is taking it seriously, in terms of how they're going to bring attorneys into the process. adam, i want to thank you for coming on. welcome to "washington week." >> thank you. >> thank you. let's talk about the president's foreign trip, which was supposed to be the major story for the white house this week. overall, no major incidents. except for mr. trump's rather blunt address to nato allies. as nato leaders gathered in

brussels, much of the spotlight was on president trump. the president scolded leaders who stood just a few feet away and acknowledged america's commitment to article five, which states that an attack on one ally is an attack on all. but he would not endorse it. peter, the president seems to be implying that the u.s. won't abide by article five unless some of these countries pay more in dues. >> yeah. look, we do normally have to have a president make an affirmative commitment to article five. it should be without saying. it's not without saying in this case, because he raised that very question last year during the campaign. he gave an interview to my colleagues at the times and said he would defend those allies who paid up, who contributed enough financially. well, that's not a full defense, especially given, as he said, the 23, the 18 -- the 28 that haven't paid off. but he's mischaracterizing. he says this as if the united states was somehow owed money

and they hadn't paid dues. that's not the way it works. what we're talking about is a commitment that nato members made in 2006, renewed in 2014, to spend about 2% of their g.d.p. on defense. all right? about five countries do that. united states does that, a few others. the rest don't. but there's no dues they owe. they haven't lived up to that goal. it's not a legally binding requirement. he makes it sound like somehow the united states has been shafted and that fits into his america first kind of message to his own people back home. didn't go over well for the europeans. what they wanted to hear were the words, i support article five. the president knew that. he chose not to say that. >> it wasn't just about the policy, vivian. the images coming out of this summit in europe are striking. the thing that went viral online was when the president seemed to push prime minister of mont montenegro on thursday. then he had this white knuckle hand shake with the new french president. what did that tell us about this outsider president making his way abroad? >> they're not going to embrace

him the way that maybe he received a warm welcome in saad or israel on -- in saudi or in israel on the first part of his trip. even though they are our closest allies, they're not going to allow him to carry on with his insults and criticism the way that he has been. one of the most striking moments to me was during the speech that peter was just talking about, at the end, where he jabbed them for not asking how much the new nato center costs. he said, i won't even ask how much that costs. world leaders started snikering, because it was such a bold statement he made. there were so many incidents. >> and he's not lining up with them on the climate as well. they're pushing for the paris agreement. the pope even gave the president an -- encouraging climate action. >> he's going to face a tough crowd. they're going to push back on him. i think president trump here has been used to maybe criticism but

he's been such an outspoken voice that i think it's -- he feels like maybe he can dominate the world stage also with regards to theresa may being there. i think he thought she was going to be a close ally, someone who was against, you know -- wanted to withdraw from the european union and really had a lot of similarities in terms of policy views. but she made it clear she is going to take a tough stance on russia, that she supports nato, all these other things that he thought they would be kind of in line with. >> we saw with the british prime minister, there was some real anger across the pond about how intelligence was shared with the u.s., about the tragedy in manchester. and we saw a public division. and then a makeup between the u.s. and britain. >> we did. in fact, the british cut off intelligence sharing with us and a few hours later, resumed it. it was fortunately short-lived. but it did sort of sawyer the relationship -- sour the relationship. remember, the white house basically gave voice to this

conspiracy theory that they had somehow helped president obama wire-tap president trump. this doesn't go over well, but it plays into president trump's conviction that there are too many leaks going on in washington. this is an example where it could have hurt our foreign policy, in his way, therefore he calls for a justice department investigation. that's not -- you know, that's probably not going to stop people from talking to adam here, who is going to tell us what's really going on behind closed doors in some of these investigations. but it will create a bit of a chill at this point when he comes back and presumably tries to do something about that. >> erica, what was the view on capitol hill? you saw the president didn't tweet much when he was abroad. he had a speech in saudi arabia about religion and islam. didn't talk about the muslim ban, which he heralded during the campaign. did they see a more traditional republican, or is it still president trump? >> well, i think it's still president trump. and for that reason, actually a

lot of them were pretty happy that he was out of the country for a while and kind of a little more peace and breathing room on the hill, although there was plenty of other stuff going on. frankly, especially among some of the senior republicans that have been doing politics for a long time, they've kind of lowered their standards as to what they expect from president trump. so if he goes over there and things go fairly smoothly, that's good news. i heard from a couple of people who were not happy with the nato speech, the article five thing, but they said, well, you know, it wasn't as bad, if you look at it, as how it's being portrayed. the montenegro thing -- i even heard a suggestion from someone that maybe there should be someone over there to mend relations. >> we don't want to overread too many of those moments. it's interesting when you look at the policy coming out of this trip, the president, in many ways, didn't make any huge

strides. he was articulating a lot of his own views. when you think about the trip itself, you were on the trip. all the russian issues still lingered back here at home. was this a reset for the administration or not? >> i was on air force one. we were taking off from the air force base. the wheels were actually in the -- had lifted off the tarmac. i got a phone call from my editor back in washington, saying, by the way, just so you know, we're about to post a story saying that the president had told the russian foreign minister that james comey was a nut job and that firing him would relieve some of the pressure on him. and so wasn't much i could do at that point. within about half an hour of the flight, heading to riyadh, fox news is on the channels in air force one. and they come on. new york times reports. very quickly afterwards, washington post is reporting a white house official, then unnamed, is a person of person o --person of interest in the ra

investigation. you guys reported that it was jared kushner. even as he's leaving the country, this is literally shadowing him, heading overseas. you can understand why he was happy to leave the country for a little while. it did allow him to reset. he did look for -- he didn't do a lot of sort of anger tweeting during the trip. at one point, we felt like asking him, who are you and what have you done with our president? >> ha ha! >> he was very restrained for a lot of that early part of the trip before he got to europe and ran into the more skeptical audience. >> speaking of jared, the family was everywhere on that trip. >> they were. ivanka was with him. went to the western wall. melania obviously got a lot of attention for her outfits and her elegance and one little flick of her hand when she seemed not to want to hold his. it was a very much a family trip. jared kushner is the one who negotiated the arms sale. $110 billion to saudi arabia.

he's supposed to be in charge of middle east peace making with the palestinians and raistles. so it's a -- and israelis. so it's a family business. >> one of the takeaways is that he had an icy relationship with leaders in western europe and he seemed to be so embraced when he was in saudi arabia, did not speak out extensively about human rights. saudi arabia. >> the saudis were elated by him, exactly for the reasons you say. he was giving them money. one of the largest arms deals to the saudis that came close to record-setting deals by the obama administration and bush administration. and he would overlook domestic issues like human rights, like aggression on neighboring yemen. that, for the saudi, was great. they're also very happy he's taken a tougher stance on iran. however, both the saudis and israelis are approaching that with caution. both governments assume that the trump administration will come in and tear up the nuclear deal that obama signed with the

iranians. they haven't happened. they even scaled back their language on that, saying it may not be torn up but may be revised, just make sure the iranians comply with it. until that happens, there's going to be skepticism. >> and a lot of questions still remain about the u.s.-russia relationship and will some of these sanctions continue. people on capitol hill said that's at the top of their list. what's the president's plan there? and congress doesn't want to see -- the republicans in congress don't want to see them rescinded. >> right. there is talk about sanctions, legislation that could be on the floor sometime after memorial day. so we'll see about that. definitely the story will continue. and with james comey expected to testify on the hill potentially that week after memorial day, that will be an opportunity to revive a lot of this and there is potential there for damaging revelations to come out. we know that comey has been -- has kept memos of various conversations that he's had with trump and other white house

officials. in some cases, you know, it's anyone's guess what could be in there and what might emerge. so that could be very interesting. >> so much to keep an eye on. when i was at the white house on thursday night, meeting with sources, seems like a staff shake-up or some kind of movement within the staff could be in the works. the white house really seems to be prepared that this russia matter is going to last for perhaps months if not years, not only building an outside legal team but building something inside the white house to try to channel all of the different questions. thanks, everybody, for coming out tonight. our conversation continues online on the washington week extra. we will talk about a newly elected congressman who delivered an apology in his acceptance speech. you can find that later tonight, all week long, at pbs.org/washingtonweek. while you're online, read my personal note about a fallen hero who died too young. on this memorial day weekend, please try to take time to remember and honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice in

defense of our country. and the families they left behind. we salute them. thanks so much. i'm robert costa. we'll see you next week. ♪[music] >> funding for "washington week" is provided by... boeing. newman's own foundation. donating all profits from newman's own products to charity and nourishing the common good. the yuen foundation. committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you! >> you're watching pbs.

announcer: americacan umpire s made possible by a grant from stanford university's hoover institution. we seek to improve the human condition by advancing ideas that define a free society. and by melbern and susanne glasscock. san diego state university and los lobos foundation. jim lehrer: since world war ii, the united states of america has been involved in more foreign conflicts than any other nation. presidents of both political parties have told us that the united states must umpire the world's conflicts. and that if the u.s. does not do this job, the world will not be safe.