happy to have you here. it is now officially 51 hours until the federal government shuts down. the republican party controls the house and the senate and the white house, so it is a little hard to believe that they, amongst themselves cannot come up with a way to keep the lights on, but not for the first time in the past year. we are once again on the brink of the shutdown of the federal government. because, even though they mathematically don't need a single vote from a single democrat to do it, republicans appear to, at least at this point, they appear to not be able to agree amongst themselves on a plan to keep the government funded past friday. again. so we are on the brink of that again. in weirder news, today was the day the president announced he would hold some "i hate the

media" anti-awards ceremony. it had originally been scheduled for last week, then it was rescheduled today. in a white house press briefing they said maybe something will happen later. they did post something online, a pdf file, a document, this was the awards ceremony, i guess, whether or not you care about journalism the president likes versus journalism the president believes should be held up for public ridicule, the public suspense over whether he was really going to do this thing is a strange moment. it is a hallmark moment in the unprecedented weirdness of this administration. and of course the president's denouncing fake news and calling some journalism fake news, that comes at time when the real news is queasy making enough. despite every fiber in my being rebelling against this idea, tonight we will have some reporting on the new evidence

about cash payments allegedly being made to multiple women right before the presidential election to prevent those women from discussing extramarital affairs they allegedly had with the president or sexual activity they allegedly engaged in with the president or sexual advances they allege came from the president. you know, a year ago, barack obama was the president. the prospect to there being an opening to a national newscast like the one i just did would be so unthinkable, you'd check yourself into a doctor. but this is our life now. this is our nightly news now about the american presidency. you know, one of the things that used to happen in the news were those great sign-offs. remember? not all of them but a lot of the greats in american tv news had these little tag lines they would sign off with. >> that's the way it is. >> goodnight and good luck.

>> dan rather. courage. >> goodnight, david. >> i always wanted it to be goodnight, chet, goodnight, david. no, good night, chet, good night, david. i wanted them to compete about it. news anchors don't really do those sign-offs anymore. one of the ways i know i will never be one of the greats is because last night at the end of the show i think i got as close as i will ever get to my own sit -- signature news signoff. i didn't plan on it, didn't script it. it was absolutely an ad-lib based on breaking news happening at the end of the show. i think this is as close as i will ever get. >> his lawyer that he has retained for this russia stuff, who was with him today in the house intelligence, his lawyer is also the lawyer on russia matters, the person advising steve bannon not to talk to the committee today. having somebody on those two different sides of the story

both represented by the same attorney, that's weird. that does it for us tonight, we'll see you again tomorrow. >> that's my signoff. that's weird. with a cartoonish grimace. that's my signature good night for the trump era for tv news. that's my signoff. if somebody has already trademarked "that's weird", if they haven't, we'll do it. it ended up not just being a weird thing but being really important today in terms of what has just happened in the biggest scandal involving this presidency. i finished the show last night, exclaiming over the weirdness of this fact. today we figured out something that is not weird about it and what is really important about it. a lot of the people who worked on the trump campaign and in the white house have had to retain private counsel to represent them on the russia investigation. we noted i think a couple of months ago the unusual fact that

the current white house counsel, don mcgahn, and reince priebus retained the same lawyer to represent them on the russia scandal. that's notable for a couple reasons. it's plainly notable when the white house lawyer has to get a lawyer. also, it's not inconceivable that reince priebus, former white house official and don mcgahn, current white house official, might have different interests or have a different recollection about an important event. them sharing a lawyer was already notable before we learned this past week that the same lawyer representing both now also represents a third figure in the investigation. steve bannon, the former white house chief strategist, the man who ran the donald trump campaign after paul manafort was fire and after corey lewandowski was fired. from the outside looking in, it would seem rationally that there might be a conflict there, for the same lawyer to represent multiple people who represent different interests in this investigation.

that said, we can report tonight because nbc news has learned that the special counsel's office, robert mueller, they have now advised that lawyer, whose name is william burck, that as far as the special counsel investigation is concerned, it's fine for him to represent steve bannon and those other trump officials. now that we now that bannon will soon be meeting with mueller and his prosecutors, it's not clear that he'll use that same lawyer to represent him through his interactions with the special counsel. but if he wants to keep that same lawyer, mueller's office has apparently okayed that in terms of conflicts of interest. that's new tonight reported by nbc. that's interesting. today in congress, the house intelligence committee, the first man to run the donald trump for president campaign, corey lewandowski and rick dearborn both testified on the

russia scandal, and like steve bannon yesterday, corey lewandowski, reportedly refused to answer some of the committee's questions today. that's part of how we know that something really important and something really different is going on when it comes to steve bannon and the mueller investigation and the russia scandal overall. yesterday, the big news we were trying to sort out last night is the fact that steve bannon went into that house intelligence committee, refused to answer questions and was hit with a subpoena to try to compel him to answer their questions. that's an unusual occurrence, and part of the reason we know how unusual that is is because corey lewandowski walked into that same committee. he also apparently refused to answer their questions, but they didn't subpoena him. the way they subpoenaed steve bannon. there wasn't word that the committee demanded to have him back in to ask him the questions

in a harsher tone. like previous officials who have refused to answer questions for a variety of reasons, yes, there were complaints from the democrats on the committee about that but the republicans didn't seem so particularly bothered. why was steve bannon treated so differently. a lot of people refused to answer questions. he's the only one that got subpoenaed by the committee. something with steve bannon is very different than the way everybody else is being treated in this scandal. everybody in trump's orbit, from trump campaign workers to trump administration officials both current and former. we know a great long list of them who have been brought in to speak to robert mueller and his investigators in a voluntary context. we now know that steve bannon was never asked to come in and meet with robert mueller in a voluntary context, before he was hit with a subpoena from the mueller office. the subpoena that was first reported yesterday, a subpoena to bannon that he must come in

and testify before a grand jury. bannon was treated very differently by robert mueller than everybody else in the trump campaign. bannon was also treated very differently by congress. just in that house intelligence committee. attorney general jeff sessions was interviewed behind closed doors and said he wanted to not answer their questions on the basis that the president may someday want to assert executive privilege to stop him from giving that testimony in the future hypothetically. that was a strange argument from the attorney general. corey lewandowski hasn't given any reason for why he refused to answer questions today from the house intelligence committee. when the president's son, donald jr. refused to answer questions about conversations he had with his father he said on the basis of attorney/client privilege.

neither donald jr. nor donald senior is an attorney, and which one of you is the client? but in all of those instances, the republican-led committees in congress, the republican-led intelligence committee said no problem with those bull pucky, i mean dubious, even laughable attempts to avoid answering questions, to assert some pseudo legal rationale for not answering the committee's questions. everybody else has weaseled out of answering questions and they have not cared at all. democrats have complained, republicans have not cared. then steve bannon shows up, he tries the same thing, boom, here's your subpoena. why is he being treated so differently? i think we've figured it out. last july, july 25th. paul manafort, surprise, appeared on capitol hill, and his spokesman announced that paul manafort, surprise, had just testified to the intelligence committee on the russia matter. nobody had known that was going to happen before manafort turned

up and his spokesman sprung it on everybody. it had been kept secret. that was july 25th. well, that night after midnight, on the 26th, paul manafort got his house raided in the predawn hours by the fbi. remember the no-knock warrant? taking pictures of the labels of his suits and all that stuff. he had been in communication, handing over documents, he and his lawyers thought they were in a constructive or voluntary dialog with robert mueller's office. that dialogue apparently did not extend to the special counsel's office knowing that paul manafort was about to go to congress to give them testimony and to give them documents. when manafort turned up on july 25th on capitol hill, surprise, it appears that the special

counsel's office obtained their no-knock search warrant for paul manafort's office that day and executed it that night. his congressional testimony, his surprise congressional testimony and that raid on his house that night were apparently not unconnected events. after paul manafort appeared before the senate intelligence committee that day, surprising the robert mueller team, "washington post" reported that was just the start of it. manafort and his lawyers expected to continue to cooperate with the intelligence committee's investigation. quote, manafort's lawyers have agreed to make him available to speak with senate committee staffers and members in the future to discuss other issues. manafort turns over notes from trump tower meeting with russian lawyer. so he surprised everybody by testifying once, he handed over documents, he was continuing to give them stuff, continuing to meet with them. he was scheduled to testify to a whole different committee the

following day, the judiciary committee, but you know what? none of that happened. those further rounds of testimony, those further documents did not happen, because in a dramatic fashion in a predawn raid on his home, robert mueller and the special counsel jumped in there, that fbi raid with its speed, its swarm of officers, no-knock provisions, all that drama, that may have been because of a fear that mr. manafort would destroy some important evidence the special counsel wanted but also because mr. manafort was starting to give that evidence away to congress. paul manafort, eventually, was charged with a dozen felonies in october. so we got a look at the special counsel's evidence they put together. given the seriousness of the charges, that the charges came alongside another trump campaign official, equal number of felony charges and two other trump campaign officials pleading guilty to felonies, it now seems clear in hindsight that the special counsel's office may not have found it helpful in their inquiries had all the evidence

they collected from paul manafort been spread all over capitol hill, possibly even provided to the white house by the president's republican allies in congress. maybe even leaked to the public. until the special counsel wraps up its investigation, we won't know if other evidence collected from manafort ended up being in another case against another person who may be charged in this russia investigation, but robert mueller's investigation is very obviously going full steam. they've got multiple charges against two senior campaign officials, guilty pleas and cooperation agreements from two other campaign officials. they obtained a grand jury subpoena for steve bannon's testimony last week that they are still actively working with a grand jury. alongside their ongoing negotiations to get the president himself interviewed by mueller's prosecutors. i just have to say, in an alternate universe on earth one where things retain their

rational size and shape, it is a huge deal that the national security adviser is quietly cooperating with the special counsel and has been for months, the special counsel that has been working with the grand jury, which has already handed down dozens of accounts against the president's top officials. that's happening right now, that mike flynn cooperation. while him and at least one more cooperating witness are looming over this presidency, think about the president's defense team and what they need to strategize. president's defense obviously needs all the intel they can get on what they are up against. what mueller has, what they need to mitigate or investigate themselves. to the extent that the evidence and the testimony is going to come from other white house officials, other trump campaign officials, you know, a lot of those folks are people who the white house has direct access to. there's no question for example that the white house is going to

have ongoing access to and communications with people like hope hicks or jared kushner or donald trump jr., people like that are not going to tell investigators anything that's going to surprise the white house, because those folks are in the white house every day. but then there's steve bannon. who ran the president's campaign. he's in a position to know a lot of really high-level insider information about a number of things we believe the mueller investigation is looking at. the white house doesn't know that what steve bannon's going to say. they don't necessarily know what he knows, what he's inclined to talk about, what he would like to talk about. >> former white house chief strategist steve bannon testified yesterday. didn't answer a lot of questions. refused to answer some before the house intel committee. did the white house tell him to invoke executive privilege? >> no. >> no.

>> steve has had very little contact with the white house since he left. i know steve a little bit. not very well. he left the white house and has certainly never returned to the white house, with the exception of a few phone calls here and there, very, very little contact with the white house. and i certainly have never spoke to him since he left. >> that's white house chief of staff john kelly speaking with brett baier on fox news tonight. who's telling investigators what about the russia matter. for all the other senior and even semi-senior people who are in a position to know a lot of what happened during the campaign and the transition. the white house has access to all those people. not necessarily steve bannon, though, not anymore. especially not now after the president denounced him publicly and fragrantly and repeated -- repeatedly, right?

steve bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency. when he was fired he not only lost his job he lost his mind. he had very little to do with our historic victory. he doesn't represent our base. he represents himself. he wants to make himself seem far more important than he really is. steve was rarely in a one on one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence. the president threatened a civil lawsuit against steve bannon after michael wolff's book came out. in which bannon was quoted as saying disparaging things about the president and his family and administration. then the president, after threatening to sue him, gave mr. bannon a derogatory nickname. sloppy steve has been dumped like a dog. i don't think the president understands dogs. the president kept pouring it on. said publicly that steve bannon cried. he cried when he got fired from the white house and begged for his job. and the white house press sent from the white house briefing room said bannon's employer should consider firing him. and then in fact, breitbart.com did fire mr. bannon. and his benefactors publicly

disparaged him and cut him off at, again, what appears to be the insistence of the white house. and then he got a subpoena to talk to robert mueller, which is good timing in terms of getting a guy at a time when he's most inclined to talk, right? but he also got that subpoena right before mr. bannon was summoned to go to capitol hill. like everybody else to tell tales, the white house must be very eager to know what bannon has to say. but unlike every other senior person who is in that kind of position, or even charged with a crime, the white house is probably not in a position to find that stuff out on the downlow from steve bannon, because they're not talking with him. they're fighting him tooth and nail. he's not going to tell them what he's saying. i mean, plausibly. this time last night, we had no idea why bannon was getting subpoenaed twice, once bit

mueller investigation and once behind closed doors at the intelligence committee, well, they're trying to force him to talk. nbc news reports tonight that the people directly involved are operating on a belief that steve bannon's subpoena to testify to a grand jury and the subpoena to testify in congress are not unrelated matters. they're operating on the belief that the mueller subpoena to steve bannon was designed essentially to preserve for mueller the first crack at bannon's testimony on the russia scandal. what happened last night with bannon being in that congressional committee for ten hours was not the republicans suddenly being outraged that a witness was not being forthcoming with them about the trump administration. they haven't cared about any other witness. what happened last night with steve bannon in there for ten hours was not a principled fight over steve bannon and the white

house over how much the white house could block by exerting executive privilege. the very idea of that is absurd. steve bannon and the white house counsel have the same lawyer. what would that mean? the lawyer's picking up his phone, i represent the white house, tell bannon he can't talk. then he moves the phone to the other ear, i represent steve bannon, i say not to talk. it's the same lawyer. there was no principled fight going on between two sides over executive privilege. if so, the same lawyer would not be representing both of those entities. and in the iran-contra investigation, they gave immunity to some involved in that and it ended up screwing up the prosecution. in this russia investigation, it

is led by a trump transition member who has been openly working with the white house to advance the president's defense on the russia investigation. that kind of thing has consequences. it appears that the mueller subpoena is at least believed by people involved in this to have been designed to stop steve bannon from talking to congress so his evidence goes to mueller instead, to preserve and present his evidence for the criminal part of this investigation. right now the consequences of there being trump partisans leading at least some of the congressional investigations into the russia matter, the consequence of that right now, what it appears to mean about this whole steve ban non

misagoss, they're jumping in to make sure congress doesn't mess up what mueller is doing. that's what's going on. and now is the part where i look soberly at the camera and intone with fake gravitas, that's weird.

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this next little tape is going to sound very calm, but i'm quite sure this is the sound of a leading congressman who has had it! who is sounding an alarm for his colleagues and the country and who in his own incredibly, indelibly calm way is putting down his foot. >> we as an investigative committee cannot allow that to become the routine, to allow witnesses to decide when and where they're willing to answer questions. but moreover, given that another executive branch official today

was fully willing to answer all these questions, it does tell us the white house is treating steve bannon differently than others who served in the administration. and this committee is treating witnesses differently than they treated mr. bannon. >> congressman adam schiff today, the top democrat on the intelligence committee in the house where they have tried to get answers this week from three figures in the orbit of the president, current white house deputy chief of staff rick dearborn who we're told did answer questions today. corey lewandowski who showed up and said apparently, maybe he'll answer questions sometime later and former trump senior adviser and campaign ceo, steve bannon, who would not answer questions yesterday but did get a nifty subpoena from the special

counsel, robert mueller, in addition to the on-site subpoena he got yesterday. he was expected to come back tomorrow, his lawyer tonight is casting doubt on that. a source close to the situation says mr. bannon will cooperate fully and answer all questions from the special counsel, from robert mueller's investigation. the initial subpoena has now given way to mr. bannon agreeing to meet voluntarily with mueller's investigators, a meeting that is expected to happen soon, and, again, one where sources familiar with the matter say bannon intends to answer all questions and cooperating completely. joining us now is congressman adam schiff. it's really nice to have you back with us tonight, particularly this evening. thank you for being here.

>> good to be with you. >> if a person is subpoenaed to testify to a grand jury on a criminal or counter intelligence matter and then they are subpoenaed to testify to congress on the same matter, do those things potentially conflict? and if so, does the criminal or counter intelligence matter take precedence over congress's subpoena? >> they don't necessarily conflict, and one doesn't necessarily take precedence over the other. i can't tell you anything about the timing of the special counsel's subpoena or whether it was a reaction to our inviting mr. bannon to appear before our committee, but there's nothing that would preclude him from testifying completely before our committee and also fully cooperating with the special counsel. what makes this so bewildering, is the position the white house has taken with steve bannon was directly contradicted by the other executive branch witness that we had testify today. and that is, that witness, a current member of the administration answered all of our questions, questions during the campaign, questions during

the transition. questions during his tenure in the administration, so what sarah huckabee sanders said yesterday, not surprisingly, completely wrong. they didn't discuss on some long discourse with the committee about the parameters in which they would be allowed to testify. he answered all of our questions. they are treating steve bannon very differently for reasons we don't understand. it may be they're afraid of what he has to say, it may be that they don't know what he has to say. it may be that they've thrown him under the bus and they have their own reasons for this. but there's no denying the incredible contradiction between what they said to steve bannon, what they have said publicly and the treatment of the witness today. >> there is something strange and interesting going on about steve bannon. he's being treated differently by the special counsel's office

compared to other administration and campaign officials. he's being treated differently by the republican leadership of your committee than they have treated other senior campaign officials and he is being treated differently by the white house in terms of white house intervention in his potential testimony. do you believe, at least on the part of the way the white house is dealing with him, do you believe that this is because they're scared about what he is going to testify about? is there something about the scope of the questioning? the kinds of topics he could conceivably be asked about, that there's more reason for them to be more nervous about compared to the other people who have testified without any white house interference at all? >> that is a plausible explanation. many of the other witnesses are current members of the administration or are members of the president's family. there's no question about what they're going to say. with steve bannon, there's always a profound question about what he's going to say. and that book, "fire and fury" couldn't be further proof of that. the committee is treating him differently. the other witness that we had, corey lewandowski yesterday goes on fox news and says i'm going to answer every question of the committee. but then what happens between yesterday and today? we have steve bannon's

testimony, and steve bannon says i won't answer any questions after i left the campaign. what does corey lewandowski decide to do today in contrast to what he said he was going to do yesterday? he decides i'm not going to answer any questions after i left the campaign. he can't claim any executive privilege, just that i'm not prepared to do it. and what do the committee say? that's fine, come back when it's convenient to you. when we asked mr. lewandowski, did you speak with the president in the last 24 hours about your proposed testimony, he would not answer the question. so there is a lot more we're going to need to know. he says he's willing to come back, but the committee wasn't willing to insist on answers today, and we'll have to hope that they're as good as their commitment to bring him back in the near future. >> congressman, one last point i want to clear up with you. there's been a lot of discussion

today that the white house is asserting executive privilege in order to block testimony from bannon. it's my understanding that the white house is not formally doing that. the white house chief of staff john kelly today on fox news told brett baier they are not doing it. there is reporting that suggests this is happening. are they asserting executive privilege on behalf of the president? >> this is the exact kind of dodge. they send john kelly out to say we have not invoked executive privilege. technically, that's true. but what they have done is saying, telling witnesses don't answer the questions, but also don't tell the committee that we've invoked executive

privilege. we don't want to look like we're hiding something by invoking privilege, but we don't want you to answer the questions, so don't answer them. >> this is getting weirder and weirder. >> can i mention, too, rachel? this is an important point which you started out with, if we allow this, it will not only obviously impair our ability to get to the truth, it will impair the ability of any congress in the future to hold any administration accountable if we will simply take no for an answer when it's convenient to the white house. >> congressman adam schiff, the top democrat on the intelligence committee helping us sort some of this out. thank you for your clarity sir, thank you for being here. stay with us. if this was a real emergency, i'd be freaking out. but thanks to cigna, we can do more than just look heroic. we can help save lives by getting you to a real doctor for a check-up. nurse, this thing's defective. please don't touch that. we are the tv doctors of america. together with cigna reminding you... to go, know, and take control of your health. doctor poses! cigna. together, all the way. ayep, and my teeth are yellow.? time for whitestrips. crest glamorous white whitestrips are the only

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hey, how up are you on your celebrity news? how likely is it that you're coming to me to be updated on your celebrity news? i know, i know. but you do actually need to know about this. "in touch" magazine, stormy daniels, my affair with donald. she is a former adult actress, the details of her affair with our current president are available on your local newsstand, and whether or not you care about the president's alleged marital fidelity or lack thereof, you should actually know about this story and let me say why. ms. daniels alleged that this affair happened between her and mr. trump in 2006. the magazine says they heard the story from ms. daniels in 2011, but they're publishing it today. we do have the question as to why this magazine is choosing to publish it now, seven years down the road. they had it in 2011, we asked and they gave us no comment.

but this tabloid account, published after a seven-year delay, that at any other time at any other president it would have blown the doors off whatever else was going on, right? "the wall street journal" one month before the election michael cohen paid stormy daniels $130,000 to purchase her silence over her claims of a 2006 affair with the president. and she was not, reportedly, the only one. in a story that got buried, because it came out four days before the presidential election, the same "wall street journal" reporting team reported that a different adult star karen mcdougal, had also been paid for her silence by mr. trump. she was reportedly paid $150,000

by the national enquirer, which bought her story after buying the exclusive rights to that story, exclusive being the important part of that, the trump-friendly national enquirer quashed that story and never ran it. the trump-supporting national enquirer denied quashing the story. the trump campaign denied any knowledge of what the enquirer said or did. or any knowledge of the alleged affair. the white house has been denying reports of affairs like this since the campaign. but in the story of stormy daniels, when donald trump's lawyer, michael cohen denied that there had been a stormy daniels/donald trump affair, notably, he did not address the alleged payment, the $130,000 payment to ms. daniels that was reported in the "wall street journal." we have been trying to track this down ourselves. we got basically the same response. we reached out to mr. cohen about that payment and where the money came from. he was very nice, but he told us, quote, how many more denials are needed? again, though, on the subject of

this alleged $130,000 payment, sir, crickets. nothing. no specific denial on that. so there is still this question of this alleged payment from trump world to the porn star for her silence about an affair that's now being described in a different context from an earlier time before this payment was allegedly made. so the question about this story about the idea of payment, that is the part that really matters in this story regardless of what you think about the president's pants or lack the thereof. that's why we plunked down $3.99 for a copy of the story. if people surrounding the president were making payments to women to silence them, where did the money come from? who paid?

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and even $400. for skin that looks younger than it should. fact check this ad in good housekeeping. olay regenerist. ageless. who paid? where'd the money come from? if money was paid to silence talk of alleged affairs with the president, as the wall street journal has reported in the case of stormy daniels, where did the money come from? who paid it? might there be more payments that we do not know about? former trump adviser steve bannon is quoted in "fire and fury" telling this story about

marc cakasowitz. kasowitz on the campaign, what did we have, 100 women? kasowitz took care of all of them. we called marc kasowitz about it and asked him. he was very nice. the spokesperson told us the statements attributed to mr. bannon are fiction. neither mr. kasowitz or his firm had or has any knowledge of or participation in any such payments during the campaign or otherwise, period. that statement from marc kasowitz about him and his firm knowing or doing anything about any payments to any girls, that is the closest we have come to getting any answer at all about these alleged payments, and it is not for lack of trying. since that "wall street journal" story, we've learned that no fewer than six media outlets were chasing this story prior to the election, including one publication run by this very impressive guy. joining me is jacob wiseburg. you're the editor of the slate group. slate has played an interesting

part in this story coming to light. can you explain that, your stormy daniels story. >> it's not my usual type of journalism. but i did get on to the story in the late summer of 2016 through the friend of a friend. i reached stormy daniels. she told me this story, and at that point, she was in the midst of negotiating, or so she said, with representatives of donald trump to not tell her story, but because she didn't believe they were going to pay, she knew donald trump pretty well. she thought they'd get past the election. of course nobody thought donald trump was going to win the election. and then she thought the market value of the story would drop to zero, they wouldn't pay and she'd be left high and dry, which is why she was trying to sell her story as an alternative. it's interesting. there's a market for everything. the market price for a porn star selling her silence about donald trump seems to range between $130,000 and $150,000 depending on the date in october or early november. but after november 8 it would

have dropped precipitously. >> so she's telling you she's in negotiations to get an nda, trying to get money out of trump in, chan exchange for her silen. she's talking to you and other media outlets to basically increase her leverage to get that and give herself another place that might potentially pay her for her story if the nda doesn't come through. >> she sent me a couple pages from this document. and they weren't signed and i didn't have independent verification, but this document is really interesting, and it didn't seem like the time this lawyer of hers, keith davidson in l.a., had worked on this type of agreement. there's a confidentiality agreement. it uses pseudonyms, and then there's a rider, a side letter published in slate that says here are the real names behind the pseudonyms. stormy daniels is peggy peterson

and blank to be filled in is david denison. only two people can keep the copies, keith davidson, stormy daniel's lawyer and the lawyer for the other party who we now know was michael cohen. >> michael cohen has not denied specifically that there was a payment made to stormy daniels. if there was, is that something that could be legally chased? is there a paper trail behind that that could be found? the reason it seems to even matter is because the source of the funds is potentially important. if this is something that ends up having a meaningful effect on the campaign, somebody who paid that for donald trump, for the trump campaign might conceivably been making a the campaign donation to donald trump by putting up that $130,000. what's the best way to find out where that money came from? >> whether there was an fec violation. if michael cohen paid for it with his own money, i doubt

that. karen mcdougal, who was paid by "national inquirer" to not tell her story, that looks maybe like a third party paid. in this case, i know donald trump doesn't like to pay for much himself, but this might be the rare case where he does pay with his own money. >> again, there was no denial on the record that the money was paid. >> which is why she was trying to sell her story as an alternative. it's interesting. there's a market for everything. the market price for a porn star selling her silence about donald trump seems to rage about 130 to $150,000 depending on the date in early october or november. but after november 8th it would have dropped. >> so she's telling you that she is in negotiations to try to get an mda, try to get money out of trump in exchange for her silence. she's talking to you and other media outlets to get her leverage.

it also sounded like it was written by donald trump. i don't think that, but somehow people take on this guy's lin go. >> we could all take take on his lin go. we could all write a donald trump statement. >> trust me, rachel. it's a pill that treats plaque psoriasis differently. with otezla, 75% clearer skin is achievable after just 4 months,... ...with reduced redness,... ...thickness, and scaliness of plaques. and the otezla prescribing information has... ...no requirement for routine lab monitoring. don't use if you're allergic to otezla. otezla may cause severe diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting. tell your doctor if these occur.

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it's not just a meeting, it's a business meeting. meeting, colon, business meeting, colon, consideration of a public release of a committee transcript. tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. the intelligence committee in the house will hold a business meeting in room 304 at the u.s. capitol. at that they will vote whether the committee should release the transcript from the meeting with glen simpson, a transcript they've had in the vault for months. he's the head of gps fusion. he testified behind closed doors at the house intel committee back in november, kept him for almost seven hours. cnn reported at the time that in that hearing simpson told the committee that the sources of

the dossier weren't paid. none of the sources were given money for the information. but other than that cnn reporting we have no idea what simpson told house intel. we have one transcript from him already from when he talked to the senate. that 312 page transcript that had lots of good stuff in it. this is a whole different transcript from a different seven-hour interview. fusion also wants this one released just like the other one. and the committee will take a vote whether or not they'll release it. there are 13 republicans, 9 democrats. they need a simple majority to release the transcript to the world. we asked the leadership how they thought vote would go, nobody got back to us. they never do. we don't know when the transcript will come out, if they indeed vote to release it tomorrow. when glen simpson testified in the senate, it lasted ten hours and generated 300 pages of testimony. you should watch this vote tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. transcript watch round two.

we are advised that it's not impossible that the republicans will join democrats in voting to let this out. that's the rumor, that's what we're hearing. we'll find out tomorrow. seven hours worth of testimony. if they release it tomorrow, you will wish you got a better night's sleep than you are about to get. all right! let's teach these freaks some manners! good luck out there, captain! thanks! but i don't need luck, i have skills... i don't have my keys. (on intercom) all hands. we are looking for the captain's keys again. they are on a silver carabiner. oh, this is bad. as long as people misplace their keys, you can count on geico saving folks money. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance.

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by now you might have heard about a special election that had a surprise positive result for democrats last night in wisconsin. this was a senate district where every county in that district had gone for trump in a state where trump won by 17 points. he won by 17 points in that district. it had been held by a republican incumbent for 17 years. last night there was a special election for that state senate race. it was won by a democrat, and she won by a lot, double digits. that story today freaked out a lot of republicans including what is supposed to be trump

countries, wisconsin. we got news trump will be traveling to pennsylvania there's a special election held in pennsylvania that's been held by a republican for a very long time. >> i've been thinking about the president and the porn star story but haven't mentioned it on this show. and then, listening to your analysis of it, you raised a point that i hadn't considered, which is this important point about who paid the money. who paid the $130,000 that's reported as a kind of hush money, buying the