eastern. consider joining me for it. thanks to chris hayes for letting me sit in tonight. it's been a lot of fun. that's the end of my time. very happy to toss to rachel maddow. how are you rachel? >> great ari. thank you my friend. much appreciated. thanks to you at home for joining us as well. these guys, whatever you think of them, it's undoubtedly true they can't catch a break. donald trump for president campaign chairman and deputy campaign chairman, paul manafort and bill gates. both under federal indictment on multiple felony charges. sometimes they keep you in jail until your trial. maybe it's a break that neither gates nor manafort is in jail but both essentially under house arrest. had to surrender passports and some family members had to. wearing monitoring devices, need permission from the court go

anywhere, trial set for may of this year. both had to put up millions of dollars to secure a bond. $10 million for manafort, $5 million for gates. manafort went so far last week to sue the government to try to get them to drop charges against him and basically disempanel the special counsel robert mueller, saying he wasn't appointed properly. nobody thinks that lawsuit for manafort is going anywhere. raised question why he did it. why did manafort and lawyers go through the time and expense of filing that lawsuit when it was nothing anybody was going to take seriously? looked like a desperate move. what is paul manafort feeling so desperate about? today paul manafort and rick gates got sued by a putin-linked russian oligarch they used to do business with.

oleg deripaska is his name. backer of work in soviet union. manafort and gates and their company tried to do deals together. seems like one went wrong. looks like deripaska gave manafort and company millions of dollars to try to buy a cable company in ukraine. don't seem to have bought the cable company and deripaska thinks his money went walkies, siphoned off at least in part by manafort and gates. we know that because he previously sued to try to get the money back in 2014. one of the intriguing story lines around paul manafort and his cash flow around the time running trump campaign and why he wanted to run it in first place. and mysterious communications during the campaign where he

offered deripaska private briefings about the campaign and e-mailed whether campaign was something he could use to get whole when it came to deripaska. one of the intriguing parts of this, even though he sued paul manafort for business deal gone wrong and missing money, that 2014 lawsuit mysteriously went away with no evident resolution right around the time donald trump started running for president and paul manafort started running his campaign. that's -- i don't know what any of that means. but been interesting, open question here. given paul manafort's extensive and somewhat secretive business dealings in the former soviet union and how those dealings interlocked with former political work there, was he trying to do the same thing here. was there something about multimillion dollar business dispute with putin-linked

oligarch he saw overlapping somehow with political work for donald trump? don't know. but why did the lawsuit go away when paul manafort took the trump gig? we still don't know but today the lawsuit is back. deripaska filing in new york state court against manafort and gates, seeks $25 million in punitive damages and other compensatory damages as well. while under house arrest awaiting trial on multiple felony counts brought against them by bob mueller and special counsel's office, also a suit by putin-connected powerful russian oligarch trying to soak them for more money than they've seen in the past and probably in the future. and complaint makes clear that

the source of this information that he is using to bring this new lawsuit against manafort and gates is the indictment. the robert mueller indictment against manafort and gates. remember when the manafort indictment came out, pages and pages showing inflow and outflow of cash from bank accounts, how manafort was paying landscapers and buying rugs and bank accounts in cyprus and stuff. apparently that financial information was of sufficient granular detail as of today to become basis for another potentially financially crippling civil case against those guys from the trump campaign. tough night for those guys. oleg deripaska, trips off the tongue now. one of those names long and foreign and unfamiliar and therefore hard to remember not that long ago. now first time in u.s. history in order to follow current events related to the american

president sirks you have to learn a lot of russian names. lot of them hard to remember a year ago we just got now. also guccifer 2.0, think you're supposed to say guch ifer. i think i'll stick with goose. had to learn that name. d.c. leaks and guccifer 2.0 took credit for hacking into democratic party and clinton campaign and releasing documents to public and feeding to wikileaks to release to the public. both configured online to seem like people, personalities, individual hackers. but that was fairly thin disguise. director of national intelligence report on the russian attack on our election released this week last year, dni said the u.s. intelligence

community had assessed with high confidence that guccifer 2.0 was not an individual or small group of independent hackers, instead online persona created and used by russian military intelligence, the gru. that's why it was potentially legally significant when we found out that man named roger stone from the trump campaign had been in contact with guccifer 2.0, with russian military intelligence during the campaign, including while stone was giving public advanced notice about forthcoming leaks targeting john podesta. in touch with russian military intelligence and stone was given advanced notice of next targets among american political figures and he bragged about it weeks before these leaks were public notice. even though guccifer 2.0 was

fake name, false front by russian military intelligence, it was not meaningless, a shoutout to famous figure in criminal hacking. original guccifer, 1.0, a name drawn up by this man, marcel lezar. he used online name guccifer when in 2012 he started hacking into personal e-mail accounts for famous people all over the world, including u.s. political figures and celebrities. colin powell, lisa murkowski, jim nance, football announcer from -- george w. bush's sister. hacking her i think is how we got first public lack at george w. bush's oil paintings. they're not that bad.

i think we got to see them because guccifer hacked into his sister's personal e-mail account. that's how he got them, posted them online and we all first saw them. what guccifer did went on for several years, 2012, 2013. released a lot of people's personal information, medical, contact information, incidentally, by publishing some stolen e-mails that other famous people had sent to hillary clinton at private e-mail address, it was guccifer hacks that accidentally exposed that hillary clinton was using private e-mail server while she was secretary of state. and you know how that ended. important thing to know about that hacker from 2012, 2013 and beyond, guccifer, marcel lezar. he got caught. what he did, unauthorized access and stealing and redistributing data he stole from people's

online accounts is illegal. u.s. justice department went after him. 40 something-year-old guy in romania, got him, brought him to united states, convicted him. september of 2016 sent away to prison for more than four years. often is the case with conviction in high profile case, department of justice sends out press release. romanian hacker guccifer sentenced to prison for computer hacking crimes. but check out press release, see who led the case. in fine print, senior counsel ryan k. dickey. ryan k. dickey, led the prosecution of the original guccifer, inspiration and tribute of guccifer 2.0,

cybercrime specialist, prosecutor from the department of justice. we have just learned he has a new gig. "washington post" reports he's the latest specialist prosecutor brought on to robert mueller's team, the special counsel team operating under the leadership of robert mueller on the russian vaechlgts accordiinvestigation. according to the reporting from the "post," not just added right now, brought on the team in november, just this is first time anybody could report it. still learning about the appointment now tells us a couple of things. first of all, think that means at least 17 prosecutors working on mueller's team now. number two, we know now that the very month the president's russia lawyer was publicly proclaiming that the mueller investigation was coming to a close, would be over by thanksgiving, not only was

robert mueller not wrapping up in november, he was still adding new prosecutors to his team at that time. and because of what we know about ryan dickey's professional area of specialization, what he's an expert at, can at least ask better questions about where mueller is going with his team. on cyber or computer relate issues, we know that they've sought data from cambridge analytica. and rnc staffers were questioned about the party digital operation that worked with the trump campaign to target voters in key states. seeking to determine if the joint effort was related to the activities of russian trolls and bots aimed at influencing the american electorate. we know from reporting this past

fall robert mueller obtained significant data about russian efforts to influence the vote on american social media. got a ton of data from facebook. congress was complaining they gave more information to mueller than to congress. we know he's pursued all those lines of inquiry, potential witnesses, documentation and content for computer-related stuff in the russia attack and question of collusion. so given he's been pursuing all that stuff, and given the fact that russian online interference in our election was known very early on, why at this late date is mueller still bringing on new prosecutors who are specializing in this, none of the others are thought to be cyberspecialists, why did he wait so long? and what caused him to bring one

on in november of last year? we don't know. one other piece about russia and trump campaign, specifically the trump organization, related to computer stuff and data and nobody has had any idea what to do with it. issue of alpha bank. before the election slate.com and "new york times" reported on unusual phenomenon noticed online. computer serve part of the trump organization started communicating with unusual frequency, almost exclusively with a server that was associated with big russian bank called alpha bank. we have no idea what was going on with that communication between the trump server and russian alpha bank server during the campaign, never adequately explained. we do know that fbi apparently took that communication quite seriously. contact between the servers

happened in early 2016, first reported in slate.com in october of 2016, but cnn reported in march 2017 that the fbi still had the matter under investigation. federal investigators and computer scientists continue to examine whether there was a computer server connection between the trump organization and russian bank. investigation is open, in the hands of the counterintelligence team, same team looking into russian interference in the 2016 election. if that report is accurate, fbi looked into the alpha bank/trump server matter, for months, counterintelligence issue. likely still going on when robert mueller was appointed special counsel to take over entirety of the russian investigation a couple of months later. as part of the controversy over

the mysterious interactions between the bank and trump server, alpha bank hired american lawyers to look into this matter, starting to get bad and weird press about, basically investigated it internally and to help convince anybody investigating the matter it was innocuous communication, nothing weird going on there. alpha bank wanted to get ahead of that story and defend themselves against implicit allegations of collusion with the trump campaign. one of the lawyers that alpha bank hired to do that, working on trump transition team. brian bench could youski, he led the transition, left it to go work for alpha bank to help try to clear their name on this allegation they colluded with the trump campaign. very soon after, trump named him

as nominee to head the criminal investigation unit at department of justice. that's a really big deal at department of justice. to put the guy defending the alpha bank in that position in trump justice department, controversial. this is how it went when he tried on that nomination. >> you're asked to in private practice to look into whether this big russian bank, owned about one of the top oligarchs in russia, who was -- what is been accused -- you've read the report -- that by then there was interference by the russians

into trump campaign. i mean into the election. and that there may have been collaboration with the trump campaign. you still would have done that? knowing that you were going to get this -- >> if you're asking me the question senator, would i do it differently now knowing in advance i'd be nominated to head the criminal division? of course. >> that's what i asked you. why did it take so long for you to come up with obvious answer? >> i apologize. >> no i really want to know that. asked you an easy question, knowing what you know now, would you have done it differently? took us a long time to get there. and that makes me wonder about your honesty.

it does. it was a simple question. and at first you said you wouldn't have done it differently. then you say you would have done it differently. >> senator, again i apologize. i didn't understand the premise of your question. if i misunderstood it, i apologize. i now understand you to be asking me, with perfect sort of hindsight, would i do it differently. answer is yes. i wouldn't have undertaken the representation, had i known at time i would be nominee to head the criminal division. >> yeah, obviously. it's a little weird that you would be running criminal division of the justice department right after representing the russian bank accused of colluding with the trump campaign at this particular time in our nation's governance and justice department, it would be weird. so paubecause of what that guy

between the trump transition and getting nominated to run the criminal division, it didn't work when trump tried to put him forward to be head of the criminal division at doj. now trump has renominated the same guy. alpha bank guy. on the subject, another piece of news broke today on very related matter. that's next. and you don't have time for a cracked windshield. that's why at safelite, we'll show you exactly when we'll be there. with a replacement you can trust. all done sir. >> grandpa: looks great! >> tech: thanks for choosing safelite. >> grandpa: thank you! >> child: bye! >> tech: bye! saving you time... so you can keep saving the world. >> kids: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace ♪ these are the specialists we're proud to call our own. experts from all over the world, working closely together to deliver truly personalized cancer care. expert medicine works here.

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i think democrats may have just scored a big, unexpected win. or maybe about to score a big, unexpected win on an important legal matter related to the trump -- the trump -- well maybe related to trump organization

rgs definitely related to the trump presidency. we've spent a bunch of time on this show talking about otherwise sort of forgotten early legal scandal of the trump presidency. last march suddenly fired all u.s. attorneys across the country. presidents get to replace all the u.s. attorneys if they want to. but nobody done it way trump did. no warning, no time to plan for transition. and at least one u.s. attorney was told he could definitely stay was instead just yanked without explanation. strangeness and still unexplained rushed nature of that mass surprise firing was made all the more acute because the one u.s. attorney told personally he could definitely stay in his jurisdiction was the prosecutor in southern district of new york in manhattan, preet

ba braugherra. includes every major financial institution in the united states because so many banking transactions are routed through wall street in new york city. but this jurisdiction is also where the president spent entire working life and headquarters his business. last week the administration made another sudden no warning move for federal prosecutors. all on one day announced 17 new u.s. attorneys for districts across the country, including the crucial district in southern district of new york, so near and dear to the president's wallet -- i mean heart. questions raised again about the timing. sudden move, no notice. further questions and concerns raised by reports that indicate that president may have personally interviewed some of the candidates for u.s. attorney jobs before naming them,

including the eventual nominee he picked for southern district of new york. now bloomberg reports that u.s. attorney appointed for all important job in manhattan, not just law partner of close friend rudy giuliani, but history of doing work for deutsche bank. he owes them far more than anybody else. it's frequently bailed out his company and him personally after no one else would touch him. even after he sued them and wouldn't repay loan. also made a loan a month before the election to jared kushner, which jared kushner didn't report on the financial disclosure forms. also the subject of massive justice department investigation into russian money laundering,

already paid hundreds of thousands of dollars of fines to other regulators. ties to trump and kushner and from robert mueller's office. idea in trump's home district in manhattan, the federal prosecutor's office will be run by lawyer who has done lots of legal work for deutsche bank, that's news. two days after trump apointed this particular lawyer to run that office, interim u.s. attorney. two days after that, he picked his new deputy. lots of prosecutors offices deputy rolls over and stays on. sort of career position as person at top is replaced every few years. this guy decided not to do that. two days after named to run that office, announced bringing in his own deputy. the former general counsel of

deutsche bank. last big piece of news on that. kirsten jild beforehand previously expressed concern about this. based on the fact that trump met personally with and personally interviewed this potential prosecutor before giving him the job that could potentially have so much bearing on the president himself. tonight the "new york times" reports that the senator will make objection a formal thing. use the blue slip process to formally oppose appointment. over the last few months republicans started to make noise they night not respect the blue slip process anymore, let home state senators have a say anymore. but in this case, chuck grassley says through a spokesman tonight, he quote, intends to honor the blue slip courtesy.

okay. if that's true, and if you add to that the weight from new york's other senator, democratic leader chuck schumer who has reportedly told the white house he also is not supportive of this crucial nominee. i think that means even though democrats in minority and don't control anything in washington this is one case in which they might actually stop what trump is trying to do. be stopping this nominee trump is trying to install in his home jurisdiction. guy with close links to his biggest financial backer and very close links to one of his best friends. not saying for sure this thing is cooked, but looks like senator jild abrand in particular may have shut this down. but night is young, anything could happen. watch this space. patrick woke up with back pain.

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strongest bear. star of swedish cartoon show, "bamse the bear and his friends" and part of a campaign in sweden to teach swedish kids to help spot fake news. i read it on the internet? you did, have you verified the source? may be we can't stop russia from fake news and trolls and bots but some countries are trying to counter it. dutch moved to start hand counting votes to head off hacking efforts that try to interfere with the vote count. multicountry european website debunking disinformation, cute cartoon in sweden teaching school kids to check the source

before believing what they read online. countries across the west targeted by russians have been developing strategies to stop russian attempts to mess with their democracies and their populations. here in the united states our top law enforcement official tells congress he has no particular ideas for protecting the next election here after what russia did to the last one. here told russia not to worry about the sanctions, then lied about it to the fbi. new administration, trump staffers started putting together plans to unilaterally roll back sanctions against russia. veto-proof majority in congress blocked that and approved more sanctions but new president has slow walked them and closed office in charge of sanctions. we learned that trump national

security appointee immediately proposed from removing u.s. troops from countries on russia's border as quote a gesture to the kremlin. and same adviser proposed lifting sanctions affecting the russian oil industry. would make putin happy. would you like us to monogram our white flag? swedes are reporting great success with cartoon bear campaign against disinformation. meanwhile our government is closing the sanctions office and thinking what else to stick in goody bag for vladimir putin. top democrat on the foreign relations committee issued report on what doing in europe. ben carden commissioned this exhaustive look at threat posed

by putin and action taken across the world to defend against it. with some positive results even though comparative inaction from our government in u.s., not seen spending money that congress said should be spent to counter the disinformation. if you have seen coverage, pull quote is that no president ever before has ignored a national security threat like this one. but think, having read the report, it's worth noting that not only is our president not leading us to do the kinds of things other countries have been trying to do to put out the fire, in some ways our government has been pouring on gasoline and helping this thing burn. joining us, senator ben cardin. nice of you to be here tonight. thanks for your time. >> good to be with you rachel. thanks. >> you look at 19 different

european countries. readable case studies on how russia has tried to interfere with our allies and lot of nations, particularly in what they like to think of as their geographical sphere of influence. other countries have come up with strategies to try to fend them off. do they seem like things that could work in the united states, we should steal aand dopt for our own snuse? >> absolutely. we need a game plan and recognize that russia is trying to bring down our democratic institutions. after the 2016 election europeans took steps to protect their systems. in france took actions recognizing that russia would be active if their campaign and were successful in blocking impact of mr. putin's attempts in that election. same thing in germany. russia attempted a coup in

montenegro to block it entering nato. they've taken steps to protect themselves because they recognize that russia is trying to bring down their democratic institutions. in the united states our president has not taken this seriously. basically said he's not sure that russia was involved in our elections when we know for sure they were. we don't have presidential leadership, a national game plan that recognizes the risk that russia presents to our national security. >> one of the things that i found distressing on institutional level, you highlight the state department's global engagement center as a key part of the state department that congress has identified as a place, a resource within our government that could be very helpful, useful in terms of combatting russian influence operations. and you say that congress identified that office, basically ordered that office be

used for that purpose, particularly given what russia did in the 2016 election. but under rex tillerson at state department and under president trump, despite the instructions from congress, that hasn't happened, they haven't done it. makes me worry it's not lackadaisical unwillingness to recognize the scope of the problem. it seems like active defiance. >> this problem has been identified by congress, by the senate. we've appropriated resources to work with europeans to protect us against cyberattacks. we know that mr. putin uses criminal elements to try to carry out his designs. we provided a game plan to work with european friends in order to develop the defense mechanisms. the administration was very slow to even try to get that started. to this date they still have not fully engaged with the tools

provided by congress. there has been -- i use the term negligence. president has been negligent and this is high security concern. russia is trying to compromise our institutions. not just elections, they want to bring down the government and have choose reign. that's how he's accumulated wealth. we have to follow through. >> this is a big report. 200 page report. minority staff report from the committee on foreign relations. means it's the democrats. did you approach senator corker and others on the committee about working on this with you and not want to do it? or did you democrats set out to do it on your own? >> january, early in 2017, i made a decision on behalf of the

democratic members of the foreign relations committee this story had to be told. american people had to understand what russia, what mr. putin is doing in our elections. it's not isolated, it's broader to compromise democratic institutions in europe and the united states. i went over it with senator corker. he was fully aware of what we've been doing. our priority to get it started. worked with republicans on our committee throughout the year, but we wanted to make sure report could be released in timely way. we believe it's not partisan report. we believe the recommendations we make will be embraced because of the need for national security. this is not partisan report, but this was priority that democrats brought in 2017. >> senator ben cardin, top democrat on the foreign relations committee, thanks for the heads up and being with us tonight. >> thank you. >> i much appreciate it.

we'll post a link to the report. worth looking at summary and case studies for individual countries and their game plans for counteracting it. very readable report. stick with us.

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acknowledged he created 16 memos, june 2016 and october 2016. accurate? >> to the best of my knowledge that's accurate. >> show you exhibit three. it's a document produced to the committee by your lawyers. explained to us this was document originally boasted by buzzfeed in january 2017. question, if you could just take a look at that, is that what we were just discussing? >> yes it is. >> can you explain for us just what does this represent? 16 memos that would have occurred between june and october 2016 that mr. steele created? >> these are the memos that he created under the engagement. >> follow-up question. does this represent the entire universe of memos mr. steele created? to the best of my knowledge as part of this engagement, this is

it. he didn't say these are all the christopher steele memos about russia, period, full stop. these are all the memos he created for us as part of this particular engagement. is there another engagement? might there be more trump russia memos other than what we saw in the dossier? that little exchange, halfway through and barely noticed in the glen simpson transcript lines up with a piece of reporting from the "new york times." if you look, not kidding, 26 paragraphs down. profile of glen simpson from earlier this week, this nugget, quote, the work has not stopped. fusion continues to look into ties between mr. trump and russia, according to several people briefed on the research. specific areas of focus and information about current ben factors, who is paying for the work, closely guarded.

work still not stopped, still investigating trump and russia. publication of the original memos by buzzfeed, happened a year ago tonight, apparently not the end of this work by fusion gps and christopher steele. but start of a new odyssey for buzzfeed itself. since fending off lawsuits and attac attacks from all sides. but ben smith says he's proud to have published the dossier. he joins us next.

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joining us now is ben smith, the editor in chief of buzzfeed. thank you for copping and doing this. i really appreciate it. >> thank you for having me on. >> one year since you published the dossier. you have talked about the internal decisions, the internal process that you went through in terms of figuring out whether or not to do this. i have some very specific questions about the dossier and you can tell me to -- you won't answer them. >> i don't know if i have answers or not. >> seems like there's an indication in the glen simpson transcript that maybe these things were out of order. maybe the way you published them in the 35-page stack was not the chronological order in which those memos were written. is that true? >> each report most of them two or three pages is dated. >> most of them? >> yes. you can look at them. there's elements of the numbering not sequential and things in the transcript that are interesting and where there's more reporting to be done on the extent of, you know,

steele has a consulting firm, done a lot of work. is obviously a leading expert on the subject. what else deal. reported on. >> what do you mean? in terms of things that are noted in the dossier that -- i don't understand what you mean by this. >> i mean there's -- if you look at the pages of the dossier, they're not sequential and as you're referring to there -- i don't have a clear answer. >> you published you had? >> yes. >> who's highlighting on it? when you got it or buzzfeed highlighting? >> i don't want to talk about anything near sourcing. >> thought i'd try. tell me about how difficult it's been to deal with the legal fallout of publishing? you're dealing with a lot of lawsuits. >> yeah. you know, nobody would tell you that you welcome litigation but obviously we feel very confident then, we feel very confident now that it was -- this document was very, very much in the public interest. that -- and i think then it's

briefed to the president of the united states, top united states senators were fighting over it. the extent to which the fbi was looking at it and talking to steele we know even more now and this was -- i think when you think about was this thing in the public interest, i think it was very clear then, incredibly clear now and what happened even this week and imagine trying to tell the story of this hearing and this conflict of grassley and feinstein and everything else that happened. w the dossier as a piece of dark matter not allowed to talk about. >> projecting what must be in it, right. >> the notion that it was, you know, we heard a lot at the time to absolutely, this thing should be kept secret forever i guess. i don't hear anyone saying this. >> the terms of fallout of publishing it we learned a quote of glen simpson's lawyer saying someone was killed as a result of the publication of the dossier. >> i was troubled to hear that.

he said he was speculating and in fact there was a death some people linked to the dossier, a former kgb general who was found dead in a car in moscow but it was two weeks before we published. >> okay. >> i think there's sloppy reporting and doesn't make sense. >> in terms of the backlash that came your way, obviously, you knew you were making controversial decision. >> yeah. >> you had to weigh both legal risk and also the ethical issues and the responsibilities that you had in doing that. what did you make about the response you got from fellow journalists? >> you know, i think there was a very strarp and immediate backlash from a kind of traditionalistic journalistic impulse to be the gatekeeper. that i in some ways really stems back from a moment when the gates were broadcast towers and printing presses and if you didn't have one of those you can't get information out. and so, and so you had to make these decisions that really

aren't relevant anymore about, you know, what are we going to keep -- what are the whole categories of information, particularly about presidential health, presidential affairs in the old days to decide to keep from your audience. but, you know, that was part of -- i think that was part of the backlash. that wasn't so much part of the decision and thought this was just clearly in the public interest and if nbc had it they should have published it. >> now nobody saying it shouldn't have happened. >> probably changed when donald trump came out the next day and congratulated the mainstream media for sitting on it. >> ben smith, the editor in chief of buzzfeed, congratulations of making it a year after the difficult decision. i appreciate it. >> thank you, rachel. >> we'll be right back. stay with us. copd makes it hard to breathe.

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two medicines called bronchodilators, that work together to significantly improve lung function all day and all night. anoro is not for asthma . it contains a type of medicine that increases risk of death in people with asthma. the risk is unknown in copd. anoro won't replace rescue inhalers for sudden symptoms and should not be used more than once a day. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition, high blood pressure, glaucoma, prostate, bladder, or urinary problems. these may worsen with anoro. call your doctor if you have worsened breathing, chest pain, mouth or tongue swelling, problems urinating, vision changes, or eye pain while taking anoro. ask your doctor about anoro. ♪go your own way get your first prescription free at anoro.com. did you see the norm may news today? today the president held a news conference at the white house and norway and they described

her as the prime minister of norm may. i'm sure she didn't mind. at that press conference, reporters asked if the president would sit down for an interview with robert mueller. the president gave a long not particularly coherent answer about democrats being the ones who colluded with russia and then he said, quote, nobody's found any collusion at any level. it seems unlikely that you'd even have an interview. again, translating from the trump-ese, it sounded like he was saying maybe he won't have an interview with robert mueller. was that the news he made today? hard to figure out over the course of the day but an official familiar with the negotiations told nbc news that despite what the president mumbled his way through today with the president of norm may, quote, the scope of the interview with the president are still under discussion and being worked out so whatever you saw quoting the president of the contrary today, sounds like this thing is still on. that does it for us tonight. 'you again tomorrow. now it's time for