that's why booking.com makes finding the right hotel for the right price easy. visit booking.com now to find out why we're booking.yeah! very good sunday to you, i'm richard lui. welcome to "pulse of america." here are the stories we want to get your pulse on today. attorney general jeff sessions less than 48 hours away from testifying before the intelligence committee. sessions' testimony could be behind closed doors but should bit public? >> i have seen the tweet about tapes, lordy, i hope there are tapes. >> tapes. comey wants to thaerm if they exist. all on his conversations with president trump.

we're asking if you believe the president does have secret recordings. another battle between comey and president trump. each has accused the other of lying. so following his testimony, how much credibility does comey have now? and bill cosby's sexual assault trial. there's rumors he could take the stand. the pros and cons on that risky strategy. now to voice your opinions throughout the hour, just grab your digital device, phone, laptop, whatever you've got, go to pulse.msnbc.com/america where you can participate by selecting your response. vote as often as you'd like. of course, we'll be sharing the results throughout the show. okay, now to the big headline this sunday, attorney general jeff sessions and tuesday. he just announced he's giving testimony to the senate intelligence committee. expect to hear the word russia a lot and specifically a potential third undisclosed meeting that sessions had with the russian

ambassador. it was mentioned in the closed door hearing that comey had on thursday. he confirm tad intelligence suggesting the undisclosed meeting with russian ambassador kislyak and jeff sessions in 2016. the doj is disputing that a third meeting took place. sessions recused himself from any investigation into the election. after he said in his senate confirmation hearing he had no contact with russian officials. in fact, during the confirmation hearings senator al franken asked if there was any evidence that anyone affiliated with the trump campaign communicated with the russian government in the course of this 2016 campaign what would you do? then senator sessions respond saying, quote, i'm not aware of those activities i. been called a surrogate at a time or two and i did not have meetings with the

russians but he did, at least two. it caused a lot of tension between him and president trump. "wall street journal" said it led to sessions offering to resign. all of this raises the question of what will sessions say when he testifies tuesday and how it could affect his relationship with the president. senator dianne feinstein said this morning that sessions' testimony should not be exclusive to the intelligence committee. >> i challenge the jurisdiction to some extent. i'm on both committees as you know. >> judiciary and intelligence. >> yes. i believe that the judiciary committee has the oversight responsibility for the justice department and therefore it is very fitting for the attorney general to appear there. i have written two letters to senator grassley suggesting that and sessions ought to come back before the judiciary committee. >> that brings us to our first pulse question of the day.

agree or disagree, attorney general jeff sessions should testify publicly before congress, not behind closed doors. kelly o'donnell has more. do we know how jeff sessions may have coordinated with the president on this decision, if at all? the four sources saying that trump was upset when sessions recused himself back in march. >> reporter: well, i can tell you what the white house is saying that the president has confidence in his full cabinet now. what is missing from that is an overwhelming sort of expression of support for jeff sessions. and clearly, jeff sessions is in some political hot water over his involvement with recusing himself in this case, at least that's the appearance of the frustrating the president. but then also frustrating lawmakers who used to be his colleagues in the senate by not being precisely accurate in his confirmation hearing. some would say he misled. others say he just made a mistake. that's part of what needs to be sorted out so he did recuse

himself from the russian investigation, but a couple of things from comey's public testimony, he raised the idea that there was more that the agencies investigating this would have known about why sessions would recuse himself. he explained that in the introduction and in a decision to fire james comey as fbi director, it appeared that jeff sessions was a part of that. even though he had recused himself from the russian investigation and clearly comey had a role to play in that. so that comes up to the question on the mind of rhode island democrat jack reed. he wants to talk to sessions about this and sessions has agreed to go talk with the senate intelligence committee on tuesday. but don't expect that to be on camera or in public. all the sources we're talking to say expect that that would be more behind the scenes. here's a senator who has a question to ask the attorney general. >> there's a question of his

participation in the firing of director comey. he had already recued himself and then -- recused himself and then he's recommending to the president that comey be fired and the president as he indicated suggested -- not suggested declared it was about the russian investigation. it was a real question of the propriety of the attorney general participating in that any way, shape or form. >> we don't have any details yet from the senate intelligence committee meaning they have not announced hearing. even a closed one with jeff sessions. so far our only indication is that sessions had said through a letter he will accept their invitation and will be willing to answer their questions saying that the senate intelligence committee is the appropriate forum. they have a knowledge of the investigation. they have access to classified information and that would be appropriate for him. he is not going to the typical hearing that would have been on camera about a budget for the department of justice. saying because he recused

himself he shouldn't be in public answering any questions related to the russia investigation. by not going on camera, as well in a public setting that turns down some of the political heat that the attorney general may be feeling right now, given all the circumstances. again, we expect a senate intelligence meeting to be behind closed doors but we're still waiting for official confirmation of a time, day, what the senators running the committee are expecting from jeff sessions. >> kelly, thank you so much. kelly odonnel with the president. with the very latest on this recent decision for -- again, jeff sessions to go and give testimony on tuesday. let's bring in reporter from bloomberg news and also from "newsweek." kevin, you're hearing as you just saw and heard from kelly that most likely behind closed doors, at least at this moment. but we are waiting for some confirmation. what do you know about this? >> hey, richard. the sources i'm talking with --

i'm hearing the same thing as kelly. it is likely that this testimony is going to be behind closed doors but that's only going to receive more criticism because i think the country is right now at a point they want to get this behind us. get all the facts out there. let everyone know what everybody knows. particularly if there was a previously undisclosed meeting with the russian ambassador. these facts need to emerge. i think there's a large appetite as we saw last week with now former fbi director james comey's testimony for everything to just be put on the table. put the memos out there. put the audio recordings throughout if there's audio out there. let all of this become public so that people can make up their own minds and oh, yeah, we can actually somehow address the big problem of the russians meddling in the election. senator lindsey graham has a sanctions bill up for debate tomorrow. let's see where that leads and

see that it doesn't happen again. >> emily, do you know how this came about this tuesday testimony? was it sudden, was it something they had planned on? it seems like we're just learning about it in the last 24 hours it was a recent move. >> it's certainly a surprise. in some ways it makes sense if sessions is feeling the pressure that he'd want to go from the open hearing to one that's likely to be closed which is why he would shift to the intelligence committee. but i know there's a lot of senators as you mentioned senator reed and senator leahy and democrats in the senate who want to hear from him in the open hearing and various committees have asked him to testify. the fact he's moving this to the closed session is going to raise more eyebrows. >> and the reporting on a potential third undisclosed meeting with sessions and another russian official could be kislyak again. >> right. >> this potentially coming out of that closed door testimony that comey had on thursday. what do you know about that,

emily? >> well, president trump at the time he was candidate trump gave a speech at the may flower in april of 2016. there was a reception before hand and reportedly both sessions and kislyak were in the room. now the justice department is denying that sessions had a conversation with kislyak there, but there's both the fbi and congressional investigators are looking into that particular reception and whether there was an interaction that wasn't disclosed. >> this might be seen as the rebuttal to the initial confirmation hearing with sessions and remember he put out that statement to correct some of his testimony. then there were all the questions out there. but they could never be asked and answered if you will because sessions was not going to go back in front of the senate. but this might be that rebuttal if you will. >> definitely. totally agreed. i think emily makes a great point as well. this was the person who had to recuse himself as a result of these meetings and now we're finding out there might have been another one. but again, i think it -- not to

continue hammering home this point, but you know, look, what is the government doing, what is congress doing, what is the white house doing? in order to stop the issue of russia hacking political institutions, what is going to happen when it's not a political institution, but it's a hospital, or it's a military institution. i mean, that is really what i think we have to get to the bottom of and senator graham speaking earlier today on the sunday shows hammering home that point saying that, you know, this needs to be addressed and this sanctions bill up for debate on the senate floor tomorrow, i think it's really going to be interesting to see where the white house falls in lie on this. just in the rose garden, we were shouting questions and trying to get again some more specifics out there. the president has to put this behind them. in terms of whether or not there's audio recordings. whether you agree with him or disagree with him, the facts have to come out and essentially everyone is in a holding pattern until the facts and the

conclusions of these investigations are made public. >> should there be a subpoena here for the alleged tapes? >> well, that remains to be seen. i know that the house intelligence committee and house oversight are interested in whether or not those tapes exist. i mean, the president has been really coy about that, right? i think at a certain point peopling are going -- they're going to get fed up. if there are tapes even susan collins a republican senator said that the president needs to be up-front if there are tapes, just admit it. if there's not, clarify it and let's move on. >> kevin, do you expect -- then senator sessions was the first senator to endorse this president. might we see him crack a little bit here based on the rumblings that have been reported between the president and this attorney general. >> i can remember the rally on the campaign trail where they first appeared together. these two politicians have a very storied past and they reportedly had a bit -- some

friction between them. now they're saying that everything is okay. to emily's point she hit it on the head in saying that this is not a game. because, you know, let's be can did here. we'll have a midterm election in a couple of months and what are we doing to prevent russia from doing this again? i think all of those questions is ultimately going to turn to that. so again, i hate to keep hitting the same point here. but that i think with this russia sanctions bill is an opportunity for republicans and democrats and to see where the white house stands on that. does the white house believe in issuing these new sanctions, we don't know. we should try to find that out this week. >> and if the senate intel committee goes down the same road on the crucial question. thank you both. >> thank you, richard. for our first pulse question today, agree or disagree, attorney general jeff sessions should testify publicly before congress, not behind closed doors? first the overall number, bringing it down there.

5 -- 95% saying yes it should be in public. and all age groups, 18 to 24 less so in the disagree category. looking at the democrats, republicans, independents, all agreeing on this. final scoreboard for you, 96% agreeing, 4% disagreeing. thanks for participating in our first question there. next for you though, president trump promising to tell the american people if he's been secretly recording his white house conversations. james comey says he hopes it's true. we're asking you, do you believe president trump has tapes of his meetings with james comey? pulse.msnbc.com/america. garfunkel (instrumental) is that good? yeah it's perfect. bees! bees! go! go! go!

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do tapes exist of your conversations with him? >> i'll tell you about that in the near future. >> you seem to be hinting there are recordings of the conversations. >> i'm not hinting. i'll tell you about it in a short period of time. >> when it is? do you have a question here? >> when will you tell us -- >> fairly short period of time. >> tomorrow, now? are there tapes, sir? >> you're going to be very disappointed when you hear the answer. >> president trump playing coy with the tapes he may or may not have of james comey. it's been a month since he dangled that idea on twitter. do you believe president trump has tapes of his meetings with james comey? go to pulse.msnbc.com/america and let us know what you think. meanwhile, let's bring in david brees, manager of daily briefer. at the cia. he's the author of the president's book of secrets and

the history of politics in national security. and also with us is janey durkin. she is running for mayor of seattle. thank you for both for being here. let me start with you on this, david. what do you maybe here -- make here of what has been said? you wrote the book on the president's book of secrets and we may have a secret here, secret recordings. >> yeah, i tend to look at this as a trained intelligence officer. we are careful about separating out facts versus assumptions versus assertions. this is very clearly in the realm of an assertion. and what you do then is look at the credibility of the source. what kind of assertions has this person made before on similar topics to assess whether you should take that judgment as a fact or assuming there are facts behind it. and in this case we haven't seen the facts to back that up yet. we only have theses aer istions and then we have --s aer istions and then the cryptic references. of course we have the history

there are some tapes of white house conversations going back decades and everyone goes to watergate and we start thinking, what if they actually are there? >> jenny, i was asked earlier today to one senator, should these alleged tapes be subpoenaed by the investigations that are going on in congress right now? is that something that should happen and would that subpoena in the end determine whether there are tapes or are not? >> absolutely. i think what you're seeing now is what happens when tweet meets law. we already saw what happened to the muslim travel ban when it hit a federal judge and it stopped it and now i think that bob mueller make short order of whether in is or is not tapes. >> you know, when we look at this one of the other questions that -- would the fbi know if there are tapes? david, would that be something they know? >> probably not at this point because the fbi would not know what's going on inside the white house. the fbi does not have that kind of authority to search everything and know everything.

but we can look at the history here to figure out what they would do. yes, if there is a -- some evidence or even a hint that there are tapes, yes, a subpoena could be put out. bob mueller could investigate that i had the opportunity to work with bob mueller every day for a year and i'll tell you he's not going to miss the fact that the president tweeted about this and spoke out in a press conference about this. that's clearly in his investigatory purview. >> jenny, if the president did record these conversations secretly, would there be any laws he may have conflicted with? >> you know, there could be but i think you're exactly right that the -- that these tapes will have to be turned over. and i think the fact that michael dreeben one of the best legal minds in the department of justice is now working for mueller. they're preparing for any fight that the president may claim executive privilege. i think the tapes have to be turned over if they exist and if

they don't, they have to admit. >> some have said that dreeben with his help now, this says a lot about what mueller's doing. what does it tell you, jenny, since you're aware of dreeben? >> it tells me that they're getting ready to go the full length of the football field because michael dreeben is preparing for supreme court arguments so that there's any challenges to mueller's authority, they're willing to go forward. i think that the president trump's counsel is outmatched at this point and it's -- it bodes well for the rule of law. >> one of the thing, david, i want to get your thought on because you said you have worked with comey or you had worked with comey on a daily basis for a year. you know him in that context. you saw him obviously on thursday in a different context. how did you put those two together? >> well, it wasn't jim comey, but it was bob mueller that i worked with but watching the comey testimony it looked like a man who was prepared. he came knowing what he was going to say as his recollection

of the facts. when he went to things that were his interpretation of the facts, he was very clear about that. and he wanted to ensure that the members of the committee knew what he was saying, that he knew what he was and saying what he interpreted based on that i think that's good news for an investigation to give them some material to work. >> thanks for correcting me on that bob mueller, since you worked with him on the daily basis. where do you think he's at right now early on in this process? >> well, he's somebody who had a great mind for looking at intelligence information in two fronts. without getting into the specifics of the classified material, the way he looked at material was with two sides of his brain. one was the strategic. he had the ability to look at material and see how it fit into the bigger picture of what was going on in national security. but he also had a very precise tactical mind and i was universally impressed with how he treated the material in the presidents' daily brief and the kinds of questions he asked that showed how much he recognized

that the details mattered on the most sensitive issues. i have no doubt he'll apply that same two track mind to this serious investigation. >> one of the thoughts here that's clearly out there and it came after the testimony too, jenny, it will continue throughout bob mueller's investigation here is obstruction of justice. the white house seemed to feel that after the testimony they had cleared a hurdle there, at least from the testimony from james comey. preet bharara was on tv this morning and he said there's no obstruction and on this point if he has legal authority to fire or direct an investigation, i don't get it. he goes on to say, it's little silly to me. the fact that you have authority to remove someone from office doesn't immunize that act from criminal responsibility. jenny, did you agree with preet bharara? >> absolutely. i worked with both mueller and

preet bharara and briefly with james comey and there's a basis to investigative obstruction of justice and i think bob mueller knows how to build a case. he's going to mike sure he look -- make sure he looks at all the evidence. >> we have to remember the articles of impeachment brought up against nixon and clinton, they were a broader use of power. we don't have to get into whether this was obstruction of justice because you can have articles of impeachment like abuse of pow e. remember the impeachment and the trial take place in the house and the senate and as gerald ford said before nixon's hearings went forward, he said this is not anything but a political process. it is inherently a political act not necessarily a legal judgment. >> good point there. final quick point, jenny. >> i would say we know from

history that the president absolutely can be required to testify on these topics. and the question of who he could be indicted i think is still a very open question. they -- there's standing doj policy on that, but never been tested. >> the president is saying that 100% sure, i'll testify. if he's deposed is this a good move for him? >> look, he not only would be deposed but he may be required to appear before the grand jury like bill clinton did and it would be i think a very foolish move for him. >> all right. jenny durkin and david priest thank you both. again we're asking you, do you believe president trump has tapes of his meetings with janes comey? pulse.msnbc.com/america. let us know what you think.

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we have been asking you, do you believe president trump has tapes of his meetings with james comey? well, what you have been saying so far, overall numbers, 88% saying no.

12% say yes, there are tapes. breaking it down by political party, democrats, republicans and independents are all voting no. republicans a little bit less so. by education, all education levels are generally vote nochlgt -- voting no. and the final numbers for you, 87% saying no, there are no tapes of meetings with james comey and president trump. thank you for your participation in that. next, we have the most dramatic moments from james comey's testimony on capitol hill. >> it's my judgment that i was fired because of the russia investigation. i was fired in some way to change or the endeavor was to change the way the russia investigation was being conducted. that is a very big deal. >> okay, that brings us to our third question. agree or disagree -- former fbi director james comey told the truth during his testimony before the senate. put your vote on to pulse.msnbc.com/america.

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although the law required no reason at all to fire an fbi director, the administration then chose to defame me and more importantly the fbi by saying that the organization was in disarray, that it was poorly led, that the workforce had lost confidence in its leader. those were lies, plain and simple. >> james comey there you remember under oath accusing the president of lying and nearly 20 million people watched that. the fbi director was concerned about his conversations with president trump as well, so he took notes. he later leaked those notes to the media. donald trump jr. took to twitter to defend his father. knowing my father for 39 years when he orders or tells you to

do something, there is no ambiguity. you will know exactly what he means. this brings us to our third pulse question of the hour. agree or disagree -- former fbi director james comey told the truth before the senate. log on to pulse.msnbc.com/america and while you cast your votes we're going to play some highlights, more highlights from james comey's day on the hill. >> director comey, did the president at any time ask you to stop the fbi investigation into russian involvement in the 2016 u.s. elections? >> not to my understanding, no. >> did any individual working for this administration including the justice department ask you to stop the russian investigation? >> no. >> director, when the president requested that you -- and i quote let flynn go, general

flynn had an unreported contact with the russians which is an offense. and if press accounts are right, there might have been discrepancies between facts and his fbi testimony. in your estimation, was general flynn at that time in serious legal jeopardy and in addition to that, do you sense that the president was trying to obstruction justice or just seek for a way for mike flynn to save face given he had already been fired? >> general flynn was in legal jeopardy. there was an open investigation of his statements in connection with the russian contacts and the contacts themselves. that was my assessment at the time. i don't think it's for me to say whether the conversation i had with the president was an effort to obstruction. i took it as a very disturbing thing, very concerning. but that's a conclusion i'm sure

the special counsel will work towards to try to understand what the intention was there. >> in all your experience this was the only president that you felt you needed to document because at some point using your words he might put out a nontruthful representation of that meeting. >> senator, as i said in the written testimony, i interacted with president obama and i spoke only twice in three years and i didn't document it. i had one-on-one meeting with president bush. i didn't write a memo documenting that conversation either. i sent a quick e-mail to my staff to let them know something was going on, but i didn't feel with president bush the need to document it in that way. again, because of the combination of the factors it wasn't present with either president bush or president obama. >> i think that is very significant. i think others will probably question that. now, the chairman and i have requested though memos. it is our hope that the fbi will

get this committee access to the memos so that again we can read that contemporaneous rendition so that we have got your side of the story. i know members have said and press have said that if you were -- a great deal has been made over whether the president, you're asked -- indicate whether the president was the subject of any investigation. and my understanding is that prior to your meeting on january 6th, you discussed with your leadership team whether or not you should be prepared to assure then president-elect trump that the fbi was not investigation him personally. now, my understanding is your leadership team agreed with that, but was that a unanimous decision? any debate about that? >> was it unanimous, one of the members of the leadership team had a view that although it was technically true we did not have a counterintelligence file, case open on then president-elect

trump. his concern was because we're looking at the potential, again, that's the subject of the investigation, coordination between the campaign and russia because it was president trump -- president-elect trump's campaign this person's view was inevitably his behavior and his conduct will fall within the scope of that work. so he was reluctant to make the statement i made. i disagreed. i thought it was fair to say what was literally true. there is not a counterintelligence investigation of mr. trump and i decided in the moment to say it given the nature of or our conversation. >> at that moment in time did you ever revisit that in the subsequent sessions? >> with the fbi leadership team -- >> leadership team. >> sure. the leader had the view, it didn't change. his view was it was still -- although literally true it could be misleading because the nature of the investigation was such

that it might well touch obviously it would touch the campaign and the person of the head of the campaign would be the candidate. but my common sense told me either he had concluded or someone had told him that you have already asked comey to stay and you didn't get anything for it. and that the dinner was an effort to build the relationship -- in fact, he asked specifically of loyalty in the context of asking me to stay. as i said, what was odd about that, we had already talked twice about it at that point. he said i very much hope you'll stay. i hope you'll stay. i just remembered a third one. when you have seen the picture of me walking across the blue room and what the president whispered in my ear was i look forward to working with you. so after those encounters -- >> that was a few days -- >> yeah, that was on the sunday after the inauguration. the next friday i had dinner and the president begins by wanting to talk about my job. and so i'm sitting there

thinking wait a minute, three times -- you have asked me to stay or talked about me staying. an i -- i could be wrong, but my common sense told me what's going on here, is that he's looking to get something in exchange for granting my request to stay in the job. my sense knew that the attorney general knew, he was lingering and i don't know mr. kushner well, but he picked up on the same thing and something happened that i needed to pay attention to. >> there are words in quotes, i hope -- i hope you can say your way clear to letting this go to letting flynn go. he is a good guy. i hope you can let this go. now, those are his exact words. is that correct? >> correct. >> you wrote them here and put them in quotes? >> correct. >> okay. thank you for that. he did not direct you to let it go. >> not in his words, no. >> he did not order you to let it go. >> again, those words are not in order. >> no.

he said, i hope. now, like me you probably did hundreds of cases, maybe thousands of cases charging people with criminal offenses and of course you have knowledge of the thousands of cases out there that -- where people have been charged. do you know of any case where a person has been charged for obstruction of justice or for that matter of any other criminal offense where this -- they said or thought they hoped for an outcome? >> i don't know well enough to answer. and the reason i keep saying his words is i took it as a direction. i mean, this is the president of the united states. with me alone saying i hope this. i took it as this is what he wants me to do. >> all right. just some excerpts from james comey's testimony from thursday that we were showing you. we were asking you agree or disagree former fbi director james comey told the truth during that testimony you just saw a sample of.

first the overall tug of war. 95% of you agree that former fbi director james comey was telling the truth. break it down by gender, male and women agree that comey told the truth. women more so. and the republicans, democrats and independents, agree that he told the truth, although republicans less so. the final scoreboard, 97% of you agree with that statement. thanks for participating in that. next, the defense set to begin its case in bill cosby's sexual assault trial. we're asking our final question, agree or disagree, bill cosby would help his case by taking the stand. let us know, pulse.msnbc.com/america.

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case in the criminal trial and the question is will the 79-year-old testify on his on behalf? just last month, cosby said he would not take the stand but after prosecutors rested their case friday, his publicist said that may be a possible. andrea constand accuses cosby of drugging and assaulting her in his home in 2004. the team has repeatedly denied these and all allegations of sexual assault but he is charged with three felony counts of aggravated assault. agree or disagree, bill cosby would help his case by taking the stand in his sexual assault trial. all right, to get more perspective let's bring in nbc legal analyst karen desoto. great to see you. will it help his case? >> so the general rule of thumb you never ever let your client take the stand and one of the reasons for they're not trained professionals and especially with somebody like cosby when you have 60 other people in the

accusations they may say something, not knowing they're saying it and then it opens the flood gates to all types of questions. i don't think they'll allow him to testify because first of all he's a 79-year-old man and there's way too many accusations out there. it's way too risky. >> we have a person well known in the public, well liked up to the certain point and he's facing the jury here of 12 individuals, right, might it work on his behalf though because of that? you're saying no. >> no, a good trained attorney can trip you up and do you want to allow the risk of getting other information in that would impact negatively on you. >> why are they floating the idea then? >> well, the only thing that the jurors think in their head in my experience is when somebody doesn't testify they think why aren't they testifying, what are they trying to hide? however, there's very detailed

jury instruction questions that the judge says he has a right not to testify. so they admonish the jury and they understand after they hear that. but in the back of your heads you're wondering why isn't he testifying? he should get up and tell you himself. >> how does the case look now? >> it's interesting because this case is actually an older case. so it's 2017. this happened in 2005. but there was also another alleged accuser that was allowed to take the stand. so that really had some devastating impacts because you now have two people making accusations even though this is the trial of constand. and not the other accuser. but i think that that has tremendous impact on the jury. now, of course the standard is you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. the jury has to have the -- you know, firmly convinced that he did it. and i think that there's a lot of questions here. even though ms. constand did very well on the stand.

she was composed. she was up there for two days. seven hours of questions and she held her ground. but there were a lot of inconsistencies and there are things in rape trials or sexual assault trials that jurors don't like, like the contact afterwards. and other inconsistencies in her testimony. >> what will be his legal team's strategy do you think? what will they be doing? >> i think they're really going to concentrate on false memories as far as the timing and how long it took. and inconsistent statements and also the contact she had with him. i think there was evidence there were 73 phone calls afterwards that she saw him afterwards and gave him a gift and jurors and sexual assault cases they don't -- they're thinking to themselves, well if that were true, why are you having contact? there are negative things they'll concentrate on the inconsistencies. they're going play the fact that this was from a very long time ago. >> right. >> but then you have that extra added element of having another

accuser take the stand. >> you have been watching this case. bill clinton pretty much expressionless. for those who watched bill cosby over the years this is not the person i know. what are you taking away from the accused? >> well, when you have a client in the courtroom you tell them how to react. not react facially no emotion. no matter what emotion you show it may be depicted to the jury, you know, in a way you don't want. don't react to things, but outside the courtroom it's my understanding that he is actually talking to fans and made a couple -- >> we have some pictures of him outside. >> making some funny comments outside of the courtroom. but you know let's be clear. attorneys tell their clients to always be very reserved in the courtroom. >> you're used to high profile cases here, karen. he's got -- he and his legal team really have two courts, right? they have got the legal court and the court of public opinion. >> right. >> are they focused on both right now, how is that

comparison -- >> in a problem in this high profile case, you don't know how much the jury has been impacted. we know this had been 60, 60 accusers, how does anyone get around that? the jurors have seen media. they have seen this on tv. >> over 100 different cameras in there. >> they may say they're not biased but how can you be unbiased when you know there are dozens and dozens of being women being accused. will that impact the trial? it depends on each individual juror. they may think there's a reasonable doubt, but i saw all that media coverage, i'm going to go with my gut. >> his wife has not been in court, might it have worked to his advantage? >> i think the jurors are not focused on who's in court, who's not. there are people supporting him. but what goes on in person's personal lives and a wife not being there or being there, there's been lots of

accusations. if you have the option as an attorney you will say come to court, sit behind him and really stand by him. how much of that actually has an effect on the jury remains to be seen. it's each individual juror. >> great to have you so much, karen desoto. still time to cast your vote. agree or disagree, bill cosby would help his case by taking the stand in his sexual assault trial. go to pulse.msnbc.com/america. we'll have your results next. isaac hou has mastered gravity defying moves to amaze his audience. great show. here you go. now he's added a new routine. making depositing a check seem so effortless. easy to use chase technology, for whatever you're trying to master. isaac, are you ready? yeah. chase. so you can. to real teeth. dentures are very different they're about 10 times softer and may have surface pores

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welcome back. we have been asking you agree or disagree bill cosby would help his case by taking the stand in his sexual assault trial? first of all, 84% of you disagree with that statement, that bill cosby would help his case by taking the stand in sexual assault trial. when we look at the break down, first off we look at age groups and you can see here that those

who are younger as you can see agreeing. 25 years or older though again bill cosby would help his case would be disagreeing on that. then when we break it down by gender, pretty much equal, male and female. disagreeing that bill cosby would be able to help his case by taking the stand. overall, 81% of you agreeing, 19% of you agreeing, 81% disagreeing with that. we'll have much more at the top of the hour. thanks for participating in "pulse of america." now less than 48 hours away from jeff sessions appearing on the house sgregs committee, and his response to james comey's testimony last week. we'll have the latest on what the white house is saying about that. stick around. toglass, you get time for more life. this family wanted to keep the game going. son: hey mom, one more game? tech: with safelite, you get a text when we're on our way. you can see exactly when we'll arrive.

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