person put it, "the hollywood sign is being loved to death." and that's it for our broadcast tonight. good night from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. so as you know, we are on shutdown watch. we'll have the latest on this over the course of this hour, but right now as far as we know, we are headed toward a shutdown of the federal government as of 27 hours from right now, midnight tomorrow night. a bill, even a very, very short-term bill to keep the government funded for a little while longer, that needs to pass both the house and senate to avoid a shutdown. a short-term spending bill has already passed the house late tonight, but it's starting to become clear that was the easier of the two chambers. we're expecting maybe procedural votes in the senate but the

senate, yeah, there is -- if you need something from your government after midnight tomorrow night, start making other plans. again, we'll have a full update in the course of the hour. it's been a big day in the news today. in addition to the shutdown countdown, there was a big, big story about the most powerful interest group in conservative politics over the past several decades. the n.r.a., there has always been something unexplained and intriguing about the huge spike in spending the n.r.a. had for the 2016 presidential race. they massively increased their political spending in the donald trump presidential race in 2016. it came from a very specific part of their organization. there is always a little -- there has always been a little intrigue around that. mcclatchy breaks news the fbi is

looking into that financial spike that benefitted the trump for president campaign, the fbi is reportedly investigating whether that may be linked to russia. the reporter who broke that story will join us here live tonight. also, over the last few days, we have been somewhat uncomfortably rounding up the new flurry of reporting happening around women who claim to have had sexual relationships with president donald trump during his current marriage. the women that said they had affairs or sexual contact with him during his marriage. several of these women were reportedly paid significant sums of money right before the 2016 presidential election in an of the to stop them from talking about those alleged sexual relationships. now, whether or not you care about the president's sexual behavior or marital fidelity, once people are being paid off immediately before elections to keep quiet about specific

stories so as to not have those stories influence the election, that can be potentially a whole new type of legal scandal, separate and apart from any alleged sexual behavior. if these payments were made, what is particularly important is to know the source of those funds, where did the money come from? well, tonight, there has been a breakthrough on that part of this otherwise story we've been watching very closely, the question of who paid. tonight we have a lot more information about that and the reporter who broke the story, as well. >> last night we lead the show with former top white house visor steve bannon and reported the controversy over what he was willing to tell congressional investigators on what basis he was refusing to answer questions. we reported that controversy might be a side show because new nbc reporting indicated that people familiar with the matter believe that special counsel robert mueller essentially

stepped in to claim territory here, to stop steve bannon from testifying to congress on russia matters before robert mueller can obtain that testimony from bannon first. the theory of the case here is that the special counsel robert mueller is basically trying to protect the secrecy and therefore the integrity of important evidence in his investigation. nobody except steve bannon and maybe his counsel know exactly what bannon has to say to investigators about russia involving the trump campaign or administration, but robert mueller and his prosecutors appear to have stepped in to make sure that they are the ones that will get access to that information before it ends up with members of congress. who presumably would then either leak it to the press or maybe even back to the white house to help the president's legal team prepare their defense for the president if steve bannon has anything important. so that was our reporting last night. special counsel effectively taking action to block steve bannon's congressional testimony.

that was our reporting last night. well, then today steve bannon's congressional testimony in fact was called off. we don't know when exactly he will be called back to testify to congress. they do still want to speak with him but it appears to be a good bet at this point that steve bannon will end up speaking with robert mueller and his investigators and the special counsel's office before he is back on capitol hill talking to any members of congress. now the mueller interview does not have any announced date but we're told to expect it soon. you know, in all of that news, which unfolded over the course of the day today, that's all obviously enough for a whole tv show tonight and more but then boom, happened again. last week on tuesday, which is incidentally the same date we now know steve bannon got his subpoena from robert mueller, on tuesday diane feinstein dropped

a proverbial bomb in washington. back in august, the founder of the firm that commissioned the trump, russia dossier, glenn simpson, the founder of fusion gps testified for about ten hours at the senate judiciary committee about that dossier and origins and his firm's role in paying for that, how that information made its way to the fbi, et cetera. although senate republicans had initially said they would vote to release the transcript of those ten hours of testimony, they then changed their minds over a period of a few months when congressional republicans were starting to change course a little bit on the russia investigations. in the last few months of last year, republicans in congress increasingly started to see the various russia investigations not as a means of figuring out what russia did to influence the election and whether or not they had help from the trump

campaign, over the last few months of last year, republicans in congress changed course. and they increasingly started to see those congressional investigations as just a way they could help the white house develop their events on this scandal. they started increasingly to use the russia investigations in congress as ways to create new anti--hillary clinton story lines to try to, you know, excite republicans about alternate scandals they might enjoy hearing about more than the real russia scandal. well, over that period of time, republicans on the judiciary committee appeared to change their mind about releasing the transcript of those ten hours of testimony from the head of fusion gps. last week, diane feinstein, top democrat on that committee just threw her hands in the air like she just didn't care. forget it, this should be out there. the witness wants it out there.

we said before that we would put it out there, this is a great public interest here. she just released it on her own without permission from the rest of the committee. a transcript, that's how we learned why fusion gps felt it was necessary and fusion hadn't just started looking at trump and latin america and that's how we learned the origin started. so that testimony was fascinating. it was released very controversially last tuesday by dianne feinstein. but that testimony was one of three appearances and what fusion knew about the validity.

the first time he testified was senate judiciary. his second round was before the house intelligence committee in november. as of today, we've got that one, too. this one represents about seven hours of testimony. it didn't get leaked by anybody or released by anybody without permission. the intelligence community took a vote and decided to release it. and whether or not you actually ended up going through the transcript that dianne feinstein released last week, there are two things you need to know about this new one that just came out this afternoon. first thing you should know is honestly, reads like a spy novel. i read it in one sitting. you should totally read it. it's going to be cold this weekend. there is only football games on one day of the weekend, spend the other day reading this. it's totally worth it. the other interesting thing about this transcript or the

hearing that resulted in this transcript is that the republicans on this committee mostly appeared to have not been there. they are definitely there at the beginning. after that, it sort of seems like the republicans got board -- bored and bailed. just what seems like a couple hours into the testimony, the republicans just don't show up anymore. there is a republican staffer here and there that pops up to ask tiny bursts of questions about hillary clinton but other than that, this is the democrats eliciting information from fusion, from the firm that had the dossier and because democrats don't have a mission here, they're not distracted by trying to make this into an alternate reality scandal that somehow involves hillary clinton and, you know, uranium or something, because democrats want to talk about russia, glen

simpson actually gets a ton of room to just explain his research, explain what christopher steele found, what his firm found, what they think it meant, why they felt it was true and why they felt it necessary to give it to the fbi. if you're looking for an overall theme, you get it, the best statement at the end of the transcript. the second to last page at which point glen simpson is exhausted. it's after 8:00 at night and because he's tired, he blurts out the big picture of how his little research firm ended up in the middle of the story. second to last page of the transcript he says quote, you know, we threw a line in the water. we just threw a line in the water and moby dick came back. we didn't know what to do with it. in other words, they were not expecting to find out what they found out when they started this

investigation into donald trump. page 7 question, what were you asked to do? answer, it was an open-ended look at the donald trump's business career, how much he was worth, how he ran his casinos. it was a very broad, unfocused look, which is the way we do our business. page 23, at the very beginning of this project, one of the first things i focused on was his relationship with felix sater alleged to have ties to organized crime, an organized crime, russian organized crime background. over the first phase we had information the company he was associated with was engaged in illicit financial business

activity and had organized crime connections. we sort of more broadly learned that mr. trump had long-time associations and seemed as if during the early part of his career he had connections to italian mafia but during the '90s became associated with the russian mafia. that developed to the point it wasn't a speculative piece of research. it was well-established. page 35. question, so during the period of time you were working for free beacon, the initial fusion be gps work was paid for by free beacon and the later stages by a law firm associated with the dnc, right? question, during the period of time you were working for the free beacon, so the initial republican funded part of your research, you came across some of the first information about candidate trump's business ties in russia, including felix

sater. >> answer, sater, that's correct and lots of issues came up whether trump has connections with russia. among other things, paul manafort was connected. i wrote about the pro-russia party and another. i wrote a story whether he should have registered as a foreign agent. a matter that appears later in paul manafort's indictment. when he suddenly surfaced in the trump campaign, i was struck by that. this is congressman adam schiff questioning glen simpson at this point. he says quote, if you would, go through with us some of the russia related things that concerned you that you learned in the first phase of your research doing work for the free beacon. answer, the funding of bayrock was much of what we were officially clernd about and focused on. the company seemed to have some sort of funding source that was

opaque. we spent a lot of time looking sends at the people around that and their backgrounds and why trump would be in business with them. that was one of the major issues. bayrock developed the trump soho with donald trump and his business. another issue was the amazing number of people from the former soviet union that purchased properties including dmitry

rybo rybolovlev at an extreme markup in florida. remember the fertilizer king? congressman jackie spear picks that up. she says thank you, mr. simpson, for being here. i would like to focus on the real estate. that was purchased for $41 million and sold for $95 million. since this have been few

improvements made by mr. trump, what's your opinion on the big hike in sales price? >> simpson, i never heard of that. it seems like an absurd accusation but the explanation for why he over spent is he was hiding money from his wife. the depiction is a reckless big spender, thoroughly developed in the press. this guy was spending money like a drunken sailor. people were ripping him off in art deals. that was my original take. later, i began to learn more and that changed my view. i hadn't known he was closely linked to igor sechin. he's very closely linked to vladimir putin and controls the biggest oil and gas company in the world. so simpson says i didn't know rybolovlev was accused of essentially destroying an entire city environmentally with his mining operations. he was criminally accused and managed to get out of and it walk out of russia with billions of dollars with the apparent assistance of sechin. we've seen a number have left. they like to have an image of the someone with kremlin but when you look closely, they are not. he was going to moscow all the time and his legal problems went away and questions whether he did get ripped off in the art deals or whether he just said he got ripped off as a way of accounting for the money that's missing. so i'm now of the view that this florida transaction with donald trump is suspicious.

congresswoman, the additional 50 plus million dollars that donald trump received was for what purpose? simpson, i don't know. i mean, you mean the profit from that? she says right. simpson says well, trump just claimed it was one of his great business deals. he just claimed he talked him into paying double, which was odd because the market was going south at this point. again, i mentioned that for this hearing and for most of this transcript, the republicans appear to have just left. i don't know if they had other important stuff to do or didn't want to participate but democrats get to run the table. they get to ask simpson about what fusion found in the research. what they thought was important, why they believed it was true. so for big swaths of this, simpson just gets to explain what he and his researchers found about trump's business career that led them to believe that it was a credible allegation when their subcontractor christopher steele reported that the russian government was involved in a years-long campaign and to make him blackmailable before the

lklk election. page 95 quote, by 2003, 2004 donald trump was not able to get bank credit. if you're a real estate developer and you can't get bank loans, you got a problem. there is a variety of alternative systems. one thing we know about how the condo projects were financed, you can get credit if you show you sold a certain number of units. this is true of the early overseas developments like toronto and panama. you can get credit if you can show you sold a certain percentage of the units. the real trick is to get people who say they have bought those units. and that's where the russians are to be found, is in some of those presales. that's how in panama they got the credit. they got sterns to issue a bond by selling bear sterns that they sold a bunch of units to a bunch of russian gangsters. and of course they didn't put that in the underwriting information.

they sold a bunch of units and that's how they got the credit. that's an example of the alternate financing. page 41, what's well-known and well established in criminology is the russian mafia is under the russian government and russian intelligence services. the russian mafia and u.s. is believed to be under the influence of the russian security services. if people who seem to be associated with the russian mafia are buying trump properties or arranging for people to buy trump properties, it raises the question whether they are doing it on behalf of the government. question, it would be known to the government if it was on any substantial scale? answer, certainly, yes. question, might that provide the russian government leverage now vis-a-vis president trump? answer, yes. question, so if as the president's son boasted they were getting lots of financing from russia and that financing we

were illicit, that would be known to the kremlin? answer, yes, i think that the true and the stuff about the nra. that's next. charmin ultra soft! it's softer than ever. charmin ultra soft is softer than ever so it's harder to resist. okay, this is getting a little weird enjoy the go with charmin

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this is my ork -- mallorca, a spanish island south of barcelona. it is obviously a very lovely place known for beaches, mountains, roman remains. i've never been.

someday i'll get fired from this job and i'll go travel. honey, it will happen, some day. back in the summer of 2013, this man who is the deputy governor of russia's central bank. a close ally of vladimir putin had plans to travel to the island of mallorca to attend a birthday party of a friend. at the time spanish prosecutors have been putting together a story about what they believed. they pieced tailgate a web of covert, financial and money laundering dealings about torshin and his friend. the spanish police knew torshin was planning on coming in for the birthday party and planned to arrest him on his arrival. he was apparently tipped off he would get arrested when he landed so he cancelled his trip. >> spanish judicial sources say they were investigating allegations in 2013 torchin was running a russian money laundering operation for the russian mob. they were ready to arrest him

the second he stepped off plane. they had teams here at the airport and prosecutors were on stand by around the clock for days. torshin never showed. the commander francisco martinez says the case was closed. >> we hope that he come here, but at the end, no come here so -- >> can't do anything. >> i call in. >> in the end, no come here. turns out to have been a very valuable tip that guy got, right? aleksandr, whoin was a senator

and now deputy governor of russia's central bank. aleksandr, whoin was a senator and now deputy governor of russia's central bank. , whoin was a senator and now deputy governor of russia's central bank. he has substantial suspected ties to money laundering and considered to be a high-level russian organized crime figure. spain was ready to arrest him when he set foot in their country. he's a close ally of vladimir putin and a lifetime member of the nra and during the 2016 presidential campaign, he tried on multiple occasions to arrange back channel meetings between russia and donald trump. in may of 2016, a veteran operative who was a fundraiser

for the nra and ties to torshin reached out to deputy chief of staff offering to arrange a back channel between donald trump and vladimir putin with the subject line, kremlin. that did not work but then that same month torshin himself sought a meeting with donald trump at an nra convention that he would speak on behalf of vladimir putin. that one did not pan out, either but he did get to spend some quality time with the president's son, with donald trump junior at a private gala hosted by the nra in congestion. he did line up a meeting with president trump at the national prayer breakfast in washington. that meeting was reportedly only cancelled at the last minute. mr. torshin makes an appearance in the house intelligence fusion gps transcript just released this afternoon. towards the end on page 142 quote, there is a russian banker slash duma member/mafia leader named alexander torshin well-known to the ira and you probably seen the press articles. i think the spanish files on him should be available to you. he's one of the more important figures but another woman with whom he was working was also a big trump fan in russia. she suddenly showed up and started hanging around the trump transition and went to an apartment and enrolled herself at a.u. which i assume gets you a visa. question, she rented an

apartment here? answer, went to american university and rented an apartment up there. we just started seeing this when the russia stuff started bubbling up. and the thing i found absurd, vladimir putin is not in favor of universal gun ownership by russians. it's a big charade basically. that excerpt about torshin and money laundering and russian government and links to the nra got neatly knitted up today in a big scoop. here is the headline, fbi investigating whether russian money went to nra to help trump. quoting from the article, the fbi is investigating where a top russian banker illegally funneled money to help donald trump win the presidency.

quote, fbi counterintelligence investigators focused on deputy governor known for the close relationships with russian president vladimir putin and nra. he points out that the quote extent to which the fbi has evidence of money flowing to the nra or of the nra's participation in funds, could not be learned but to put things in perspective, the nra spent $30 million in this past presidential by that is real money triple what the nra spent on, say, the last presidential election before that when they tried to boost mitt romney in 2012. how come they tripled in 2012? most of this money was that funneled into the election was spent by an arm of the nra not

required to disclose the donors at all. what could possibly go wrong? mr. gordon, thank you for being with us. appreciate you being here to talk about your work. >> rachel, thank you for having me. i have to say peter is the lead author but i was part of it and peter did great sleuthing for us. >> peter stone and greg gordon, got it. let me ask you first of all in explaining the importance of the reporting, did i get that right? >> perfect. perfectly. >> why is this coming to light? i have heard a lot of interesting background, a lot of interesting stuff about mr. torshin and that background stuff in the past. the big [ through that i'm seeing in the reporting is the news that the

fbi is looking into this. do you know anything about the timing of the fbi's interest? >> not a lot. not a lot. it's a counterintelligence investigation. as you can imagine, it's really hard to find out about it. and it took us a long time. we've been trying to get to the bottom of this for quite some time to determine if there was a live investigation and the issue here is it goes to the whole question of how russia tried to influence our elections because we've seen it and it seems like at every turn when there is a revelation, take a step back and look at it again. you're very good at that, rachel. we watch and see how you peel back the layers. now we have the very first story that we wrote, which was the first u.s. story about this investigation about a year ago, and it said that there was a working group of government agencies that was trying to get evidence of russian money possibly moving to the trump campaign. we haven't heard much about

money movement since then. we've heard about approaches by russians to trump campaign advisors, papadopoulos and later to trump jr., donald trump jr., and we've also heard about bombardment of social media attacks on facebook, via facebook and twitter, fake news, harsh criticism of hillary clinton, but we hadn't heard too much about money. now we're hearing about this and i think that given the citizens united ruling in 2010 which created the flood of dark money, money that doesn't have to be reported, donors don't have to

disclosed publicly, and nra has an arm that accepts dark money. we don't know too much about that obviously. so we're not saying that russian money, identifiable russian money, just flew into the nra's coffers, but this does raise the question about whether money was maybe laundered or maybe disguised in some way or some form of assistance that enabled them to shift money around or maybe it didn't happen at all. we don't know what we're going to find out about this outcome

because it's a counterintelligence investigation and they doesn doesn't -- don't always report the findings. it will be interesting to see. >> it will be interesting to see if at the end we find out what they found but you being able to figure out, you and peter stone figuring out this investigation is under way is a heck of a scoop. greg gordon, investigative reporter. thank you for helping us understand. >> thank you, rachel. good to be here. >> when the ex-cia director testified about the russia matter last year, one of the things he said that's been dangling out there since is part of the reason that u.s. intelligence agencies started a counter intelligence investigation during the summer before the presidential election in 2016 to figure out what russia was doing to influence the election, they saw evidence of russian money flowing into the u.s. election. we still don't know what he meant by that, which money they saw, where it was going, how they know it was russian.

that's a piece of it given to us at the very beginning of our public understanding of this scandal. we still don't have any explanation. this story is the first money piece of it we had in a very, very long time. hopefully we will learn this in the end. much more to come. busy news night for us. stay with us. people are fighting type 2 diabetes... with fitness... food... and the pill that starts with f. farxiga, along with diet and exercise, helps lower blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes. lowering a1c by up to 1.2 points. do not take if allergic to farxiga. if you experience symptoms of a serious allergic reaction such as rash, swelling, difficulty breathing or swallowing, stop taking and seek medical help right away.

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get covered today. at midnight tomorrow the government runs out of money and shuts down. if they don't pass a spending bill before midnight tomorrow, the government will shut down. the house passed a temporary bill to keep the lights on until mid february. passed by 33 votes. if that passes the senate and

the president signs it, this would kick this fight down the road for another 30 days where we have this happen again in 30 days. meet you back here, we can have this chat again in 30 days for the rest of our lives. tonight, that prospect of that passing the senate is a giant if. that's why everybody in the d.c. metro area is counting to 14 over and over and over again tonight. republicans control the white house, house and senate. that's why it's weird we might have a government shutdown, but to pass any spending bill, they need 60 votes. tonight senator john mccain is not there, he's in arizona recovering from cancer treatment so he can't vote. in addition, there are four republican senators that are a hard no. mike lee, lindsey graham.

rand paul and mike rounds. they have all told reporters they won't vote for this temporary spending bill. assuming those five republican missing votes stay spending, republicans need 14 democratic senators to cross over and vote for their bill if the government is going to stay open. they need 14. right now they have one. democratic yes vote senator joe manchin, west virginia. one. they won't vote for a bill that doesn't protect dreamers. the program of daca that president trump tried to kill. it is not inconceivable enough republicans agree with the democrats they could pass a

stand-alone bill, but mitch mcconnell isn't doing that. the d.r.e.a.m.e.r.s. issue is this mixed issues to keep the lights on. he's expecting democrats to cave and it really is not working. so let me tell you what is happening now. the senate is debating the short-term spending bill. there needs to be a vote to end that debate so the senate can vote on it. they have to end the debate and take the vote. that needs 60 votes. that's the vote we're pretty sure they can't get to. we don't know when exactly that 60-vote threshold cloture vote will happen. we'll watch throughout the course of the night. we'll keep you posted. never in the history of this country have we had a true shutdown when one controls the senate and the white house.

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this is 1209 north orange street in wilmington, delaware. not much to look at. maddow, why am i looking at this building with a green awning? 1209 north orange street in willington, delaware, i'm here to tell you it's home to 300,000 businesses. i know. how do they all fit? they must be tiny tiny businesses. 300,000 in that building. only one story.

delaware has a well-earned reputation to in-name only, to register your business. it's a good place to fake headquarter your business if what you want is secrecy. delaware is a great place to set up an anonymous shell corporation. here is another unlikely mega business hub in delaware, 160 green tree drive. dover, delaware. today the "wall street journal" reports in 2016 just a few weeks before the presidential election that building in dover, delaware became the home of a new private corporation established by donald trump's lawyer. that appears to be established for a very, very specific purpose and it's clear why he wanted to keep it secret. that bombshell story and the wall street journal reporter that broke it today, just ahead. '. traffic on the ponte vecchio on a monday. always late. oh! my wallet! un momento. card lock from capital one. instantly lock your card. in case your card goes...

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last friday, ""the wall street journal"" broke this story alleging one before the election, the president's personal lawyer arranged for a payment of $130,000 to be made to a woman named stephanie clifford, she has a stage name in the adult entertainment industry, stormy daniels, they allege that payment was to buy stormy daniels's silence in an agreement she would not talk about her extramarital affair with donald trump. when that story broke on monday,

trump attorney michael cohen didn't deny the money part of it. he denied the affair part of it but not the money part of it. we have since tried to chase that down with michael cohen and found the same thing, denying the affair, but not the payment. that was interesting reporting on friday. left open a lot of questions, though. where did that money come from? who paid? and how did that money get from point a to point b? that was where we had the story as of friday. tonight that same reporting team from ""the wall street journal"" has started to figure it out. they started to find the money. the journal reports tonight this delaware registered company, essentials consultants llc is how that $130,000 moved from point a to point b. corporate documents show that michael cohen established that llc in october 2016, right before the election. cohen then used a bank account

linked to the entity to send the payment to the client trust account of a lawyer representing stormy daniels. registering the company in delaware offers, quote, privacy and complicity. the journal reports, quote, to further mask the identities of the people involved, the parties used pseudonyms with stormy daniels identified as peggy peterson. we once again asked michael cohen and also the white house for comment on the story. we haven't heard anything back. but joining us is one of the "wall street journal" reporters who broke the story on friday. i knew you would keep working on this where did the money come from thing. i didn't think we'd have you back so soon. you examined the corporate records that show cohen set up the llc right before the election and moved the money into stormy daniels' lawyer's

account. if you're able to set up companies that shield your identity, how did you figure that out. >> we thought michael cohen used an llc to pay stormy daniels before we wrote the first story. we had been looking for that llc for some time and through the reporting chain, we were able to learn he used this company, essential consultants. we looked at a lot of llcs and we pulled the papers for this one and lo and behold, his name was on there. >> you also found another llc and there was an interesting timing on the dissolution between one llc and the creation of this one. can you explain what that means? >> he likes to name companies according to what he's going to do with them, based on his past companies he created. so resolution consultants we believed was a company to resolve a problem with stormy daniels, and we found that he created that on september 30th. he had been talking to stormy

daniels, stephanie clifford, and her lawyer for some time and had been late in making the payment. so during that period of time, he apparently for some reason couldn't use resolution consultants. so on october 17th he creates this new one, essential consultants and two minutes later he dissolves resolution consultants. >> two minutes. >> correct. >> so essential consultants was the vehicle by which payment was made to stormy daniels. >> that's correct. >> so now following the money further back, you say you've identified the bank account associated with the company that made the payment. can you figure out who put the money in the bank account? >> not at this point. we'd certainly like to be able to do that and we're continuing to report on the story to figure out whether cohen used his own money or used someone else's money or was he reimbursed later on for that. those are questions we're still reporting on. >> for people to understand the

importance of the story, whether or not you care about donald trump's sex life, the concern here in part and we'll know once we know more, that money may have been an in-kind campaign contribution or some other improper source until we know who was paying for that kind of dispute or conflict resolution for trump right before the election, there's a legal implication in terms of where the money came from. >> there are some lawyers who speculate if you made an undisclosed contribution in kind, it could be a violation of campaign finance law. john edwards was prosecuted on a theory like that. he wasn't convicted. but you don't know what kind of case prosecutors could make. >> we've had communication with michael cohen about the story where he's given repeated denials about the underlying substance of the story. he hasn't denied anything about the payment. does that remain the same for you. >> same with us. >> michael rothfeld.

thank you for the story. congratulations on your story thus far. leave the sex part aside. i'm telling you, the money part, it's a big deal. we'll be right back. [ gasps, laughs ] you ever feel like... cliché foil characters scheming against a top insurer for no reason? nah. so, why don't we like flo? she has the name your price tool, and we want it. but why? why don't we actually do any work? why do you only own one suit? it's just the way it is, underdeveloped office character. you're right. thanks, bill.

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our government shoutdown watch is at 26 hours and a few seconds. what's going on, the house has passed a short-term funding bill to keep the lights on and the senate is still talking it out.

there continue to be discussions between the two sides. the democrats essentially have the cards here. the republicans need democrats to cross over and vote for this. if they're going to keep the lights on. the democrats said, among other things the d.r.e.a.m.ers need to be taken care of for them to do now it's time for "last word with lawrence o'donnell." >> do we know whether the