ey do nothing. join us and tell your member of congress that they have a moral responsibility to stop doing what's political and start doing what's right. our country depends on it. hey there. good morning, everyone. i'm alex witt here at msnbc world headquarters. president trump is preparing to head for the far east. he spent the night in hawaii after visiting pearl harbor yesterday. the president and first lady observed a solemn laying of the wreath at the "u.s.s. arizona" memorial. a bit later today they'll fly to japan. the first of seven countries. more trouble for embattled movie mogul harvey weinstein who an actress accuses of raping her twice. new york city police say they

find her story credible and they are gathering more evidence that could lead to an arrest. weinstein has unequivocally declined any allegations of nonconsensual sex. house speaker paul ryan is urging all members to complete sexual harassment training although it's not mandatory. jackie spear is requiring such training for all members and staff. first, new reaction from carter page on whether he knew about george papadopoulos's contacts with the russian campaign. >> he's someone i met and had a few brief conversations. >> did he ever mention about this meeting and the fact that the russians claimed they had dirt on hillary clinton. >> i don't remember any of that. >> in your time at the trump campaign, did you ever hear of anyone ever saying the russians have dirt on hillary, the russians have hillary's e-mails. >> not a word. >> not a word, never? >> no. >> now his comments come amid new details from his closed door

testimony from the house intel committee when he said he in fact met with russian government officials this during a july 2016 trip to moscow. now someone who may have known about popapadopoulopapadopoulos conversations, jeff sessions. sessions apparently shot down a proposal from paoppo done pa lo. it is another drip in mueller's wide net investigation that continues to cast a shadow on the trump administration. this week's thyme m"time magazi examination the investigation. haley edwards is joining us from "time magazine." good saturday morning to you. how did mueller's indictments and the guilty plea mark a turning point in this white house russia investigation? >> i think this is the first time that we've really seen the best evidence that we have so far of attempted collusion

between the campaign and russian officials, agents working for the russians. up until this point there's been a lot of discussion about what that could have looked like, but this is the first time that we actually see russians reaching out to trump administration officials and trump administration officials -- or i'm sorry, not administration, campaign officials. then returning those e-mails and phone calls and saying, great, you know, let's talk. let's sit down. >> so when you look at it, what do you think the prime danger is that the president's facing right now? >> so we get into this issue of collusion, and from a legal perspective that doesn't actually mean anything in this context outside of an economic context. so what the mueller investigation is looking for and, you know, the special counsel, all of these investigators, they're looking for when the trump campaign knew about these e-mails, whether there was a quid pro quo, you

know, about, well, campaign donations in -- and people hacking the democratic e-mails they're looking for, trump campaign officials receiving payment from a foreign power. they're looking for any sort of quid pro quo there and then lying, of course. you know, we've seen in past federal investigations the biggest problem is lying to federal investigators. >> so these new revelations and really the changing accounts from jeff sessions, that complicates the white house's statements that there's nothing there to see, right? >> absolutely. we've seen this time and again, and of trump campaign officials lying about what they knew and when they knew it. with george papadopoulos, that's what got him in trouble. he lied to federal officials in

lying about his conversations with russian officials. that's the problem with sessions. papadopoulos said it in front of sessions. sessions shot that down and later said there was never a discussion like that. >> so big picture here relative to papadopoulos, what you just said, that he offers to put a meeting together between the president and vladimir putin, is that the most egregious? is that the most interesting aspect to his level of involvement here? >> there's a couple things that are interesting about him. what we see from the very beginning, the moment he becomes a foreign policy adviser to the trump campaign in march 2016 is he sees his role as creating a close relationship between the campaign and russia. he then reaches out to or he is reached out to by russian agents. we know that he sat down with people acting on behalf of the russian government, people who

had very close relationships with moscow and who then offered him e-mails, offered him thousands of e-mails of dirt on hillary clinton in april of 2016, which is, you know, a couple of months before that became public knowledge. >> okay. haley edwards, thank you very much from "time magazine" for getting us going on this saturday morning. let's bring in caitlyn huey burns. caitlyn, apparently we're getting new video which shows papadopoulos representing the campaign. it happened during the rnc convention. what is the bar for what it means to represent the campaign? >> right. that's a great question because traditionally campaigns have robust foreign policy teams. it would be very hard for a lower level staffer, as they've been calling pop pa done pa louse to converse with the top campaign officials, let alone be at the same table with the president as we saw from that

earlier picture this week. what's really interesting, it doesn't matter how involved -- how high up or how low level pop done louse is because he was in communication with top officials and we see from those court documents those interactions and he hears that he is cooperating with the special counsel, which has a lot of people wondering what could come next. so the white house is trying to distance itself, distance trump from papa done poe louse. this foreign policy team was assembled pretty quickly at a time that the then candidate trump was under fire for not really having a foreign policy team and infrastructure and he assembled this group and this is the group that is, you know, getting them in trouble. you saw carter page, of course, was part of that group as well and george papadopoulos who is

cooperating with special counsel. >> all of this comes at a time when an abc poll shows they approve of the investigation. is there a sense of how long this will go on and if there are any new inindictments? >> legal experts were saying the indictments and guilty plea are kind of the start of all of this, right? especially given the cooperation with papadopoulos and potentially manafort and gates. what's really interesting about that poll is that we've seen the president time and time again trying to discredit the russia probe in terms of mueller's investigation and in terms of the congressional investigation. the polling from abc washington post suggests that the public isn't buying that attempt to discredit this probe. they have confidence in mueller and that suggests that they will have confidence in the outcome, and also interesting about that poll, too, there's a significant

number of people, i think 49%, who thought that -- like, you know, half the voters thought that trump was involved in criminal activity. and so there's a lot of attempts to kind of muddy the waters here and this was a very interesting poll in terms of how the public is absorbing all of this information this week. >> caitlyn huey burns from real politics. officials in new york, ahead of the city's marathon tomorrow. are they going far enough after this week's terror attack? then in our next hour, what does the circumstantial evidence add up to and how far it might reach. some answers ahead.

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looks like. >> reporter: that's right, alex. in fact, these concrete blocks were designed to prevent future attacks, but the reality is they're a physical reminder of the attack that happened just this week. but others are saying the emotional aftermath is simply as powerful, especially after a series of threats have been called in against the local muslim community. this morning a community on edge after threats were reported by a new jersey islamic center near the home of sayfullo saipov. >> he was saying a lot of like, you know, we're going to kill you. what he wanted to do to us. he said a lot of vulgar things. i was very much taken aback by it. >> we haven't had anything like this before. >> reporter: paterson, new jersey, is home to one of the largest muslim populations in the country. it's where two of the september 11th hijackers rented an apartment. now they feel unwarranted retaliation. >> enough is enough. we cannot be seen going out one

community because of an action of another. >> reporter: survivors of this week's attack speaking out. noah salz was taken to the hospital. >> a really loud banging sound on the bus. i started to cry. >> reporter: of the eight who died, five were from argentina. meanwhile, federal law enforcement officials are combing through the suspect's iphone for clues and even looking into a wedding he attended. while police in new york are setting up hundreds of concrete barriers to prevent future attacks and metal barricades for sunday's marathon. >> you will see a lot of police presence. i think more and more people are not alarmed by that. they understand it means they're safe. >> reporter: but as runners gear up for the road ahead, another community is also trying to move forward. >> going to stay strong to my faith and, you know, stay strong in my belief in humanity and with that surpass everything

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she's now the director of progressive programming for sirius xm. joe watkins, republican strategist for president george h.w. bush and rick tyler. cruz campaign spokesman. he is an msnbc political analyst. as always, glad to see all three of you. let's get to this report, guys. you just saw it was about the changing stories about what really happened here. who met with whom? who had contact with russia? who did not have contact? so where do you see this story taking us, joe? >> well, no place good, of course. just lends itself to the fact that there are more questions about what jeff sessions knew and when he knew it. carter page's revelation this week doesn't help him. certainly papadopoulos as well. papadopoulos is probably the biggest bombshell of all this week. i don't think anybody knew he had already pleaded guilty to misleading the fbi and that he was cooperating with the special prosecutor. those are big bombshells. certainly for jeff sessions,

this has not been a good week. there are more questions. i wouldn't be surprised if he was called in before congress to testify and to clarify what he knew and when he knew it. >> i'm curious, rick, what your sense is of george papadopoulos. was he really a nobody as the he may have been trying to impress with his credentials, setting up a meeting. jeff sessions heard him say in that meetling, according to one witness who attended the meeting that he was trying to set up a meeting with a senior russian officials and perhaps even putin, trump seemed to be impressed with that. sessions said not to speak of it again, so what's interesting now is called in front of the

because i'm back to the senate committee. they should have been calling for his head. he's essentially now been caught three times not telling the truth and may have even perjured himself. >> you have senator al franken wanting to talk to him again. selena, carter page what is the impact of his testimony? >> i think you have to think of carter page's testimony in conjunction with the pop top lus statement of his defense in the plea agreement on monday. he admitted in his testimony and an interview with another network yesterday that he was on the e-mail thread that is referenced in those court document, so bob mueller filed a statement of the offense and plea agreement, surprisingly 80 minutes after the first two ooimt zooimt indictments came out. i think by design, essentially referred to accepting a low level staffer to russia to have these meetings. and i believe that was referring to carter page. he admitted he was on that

e-mail thread. so i think there are a lot of facts that we know today that we didn't know last week that put together a really compelling time line that essentially show a road map that shows a conspiracy going on here. i don't think we have a smokeing fun. there is definitely a lot of information that ho the trump campaign was absolutely willing to collude and conspire with members of the russian government there was more and more information coming out that showed that's what they were trying to do. >> with no smoking gun, with everything that we have learned this week, what do you think is the most potentially damaging aspect with respect to impeachment? >> you know, i don't think they're goingco come up with anything substantial or conclusive on collusion. but that's all beside the point now. everybody is focused on collusion which is not even a legal term. it doesn't -- you can't convict

collusion. you can certainly convict conspiracy, look at what's happened, robert mueller has shown he's willing to look at the finance, he looked at the finances of gates and manafort and has a 13-count indictment with no collusion. trump has the same vulnerability. we know trump wasn't getting lending from main streamings banks, it appears from his son he may have been getting lending from oligarchs. it may well be in hess purview to look at trump's finances, that is where he is vulnerable. >> trump repeatedly said he does not want him to do that. joe there is a long-time body guard for the president expected to face questions from congressional investigators next week about the 2013 moscow trip. >> that is at the center of the dossier. it contains unverified charges the president certainly disputed. how big a deal is the body guard's testimony? >> well, it's a big deal, okay,

i mate shed more light on the dossier, right now, i mean, this has just been, i agree with both rick and zerlina, there has been no good news for president trump in the administration, in all the things that came up this week, not only with regards to the possibility of collusion, but as rick pointed out, the financial dealings of manafort and gates could be troubling as well for the president going forward. there's lots here and none of it is good or helpful. i think that the president would likely wish to change the subject right now, but that being said, everybody is going to be listening to what this body guard has to say. it's going to shed a lot of light on what may have happenedly want to pick up with this aspect of thing the criticism by the president of the justice department. here is some of that. >> all i can tell you is this, there was no collusion, there was no nothing. it's a disgrace, frankly, that they continue. you want to look at hillary clinton.

i'm really fought involved with the justice department. i'd like to let it run itself. but honestly they should be looking at the democrats, they should be looking at podesta and that dishonesty. they should be looking at a lot of things. a lot of people are disappointed in the justice department, including me. >> and, joe, in another interview the president said it's the saddest thing that he's not supposed to be involved with the justice department. bergdahl's sentence got lighter because of the president's comment. so what does the president's criticism buy him? >> well, it doesn't buy him much. i think that it has always been with presidents a wall between themselves and the justice delaware because justice is supposed to be blind and not supposed to be a prejudices ditional. not in favor of the president or supporting the president. it's supposed to be blind. that's what serves america an americans best. but i think in the president's remarks, he again is putting

jeff sessions on notice and he's not pleased at all jeff sessions recuse himself, that led to the special prosecutor bob mueller. i think this is a very difficult time right now for donald trump. >> what about the new charge from donna brazile that hillary clinton basically bought the dnc, took the election from bernie sanders, which reenforces a perception among some democrats. i know you worked for the clinton campaign. so what is the counter to this? >> the counter is look at the facts. i think donna brazile is an idol of mine, a personal he. >> reporter: she is wrong about the facts here, there were two joint agreements, one in 2016, one in 2016, i think that there was a mistake made in terms of conplateing those two agreements. nbc news reported last night that the memo that was attached to this particular agreement says, explicitly that it was about the general election. i would also note, though, that what's really important as the

democrats look forward, not just to the elections in new jersey and virginia that we have on tuesday, but also towards 2018 and avoid relit gaiting last year's primary, because that's not going to help the democratic party at all. and there is no power in the dnc to the extent that they can rig 50 individual primaries and caucuses and i would remind people that the fundraising that hillary did for the joint fundraising agreement with the dnc went to fund caucuses which she lost. and so i think that the argue that she somehow fixed the primary is a little bit laughable and is just not true. >> guy, unfortunately, i'm out of time. lots to talk about today. thank you as alls, appreciate it stories of sexual harassment on capitol hill, what former congress woman mary bono said how she was treated in office. she's not the only one. she joins me in our next hour.