350 fbi special agents have arrived in austin. 500 total working on the case. they believe this is the work of a serial bomber who is now emboldened using a trip wire on this last bombing. the reward for information standing at $100,000. that's our broadcast for this monday as we start off a new week. thank you so very much for being here with us. good night from nbc news headquarters here in new york. in watergate, it's still not totally clear looking back why the nixon white house didn't just destroy all the oval office tapes. they knew what was on them. why didn't they just barbecue them? frankly, looking back, it's still not clear why they made those tapes in the first place, but they made them. and by the time the special prosecutor was closing in, nixon and the white house knew if those tapes became public, that would be the end. so they fought to keep the tapes secret, the existence of the

tape secret. and then once the public knew the tapes existed, they fought to keep them private and never release them. ultimately, the nixon white house came up with a ridiculous offer that would make it look like they were releasing the tapes without them ever actually having to do so. we've talked about this on the show before. it was called the stennis compromise. to avoid releasing the tapes, nixon offered the special prosecutor in watergate a deal. the white house would not hand over the tapes but they would listen to the tapes themselves, type up written summaries of what they said was on the tapes and then they would cross your heart, pinky swear that those tapes were absolutely accurate and there was nothing else damning on the tapes at all. and in case you were a cold-hearted scenical jerk and wouldn't take president nixon's word for it, well, for you cynics there would be a a verification process, a pro-nixon dixiecrat senator

named john stennis would personally individually listen to the tapes. he would compare the tapes with the written summaries that have been drawn up by the nixon white house and senator stennis would personally sign off attributing, right? he would listen to them. you could use his own integrity to tell whether those written summaries were accurate. he would attest to their accuracy. and that was an absolutely ridiculous offer from the nixon white house. not only was it a rude goldberg contraption of the tapes being made and the tapes being played and then transcribed and summarized and listened to again and verified and signed off on by this other dude. but in addition to all of that, senator john stennis, the key validator for this whole process, he was famously deaf. so he was not going to be able to validate the auditory accuracy of any of those tapes.

so the "stennis" compromise was offered. the special prosecutor said yeah, no. and nixon respond by firing the special prosecutor. that was the saturday night massacre. he couldn't fire him directly so he ordered the attorney general to fire the special prosecutor. the attorney general said no. so he fired his attorney general. he gave same order to the deputy attorney general. the deputy attorney general said no and fired the deputy attorney general. ultimately it was bourque. nixon believed his own sales pitch. he really believed that the "stennis" compromise was such a reasonable, generous offer from him that the entire country would be absolutely on his side in this standoff. look what i've offered. how can they say no to that? that is not how the country received it. instead, the saturday night massacre got the whole country up in arms. the whole thing really blew up, both sides of the aisle. ultimately a new special

prosecutor was elected. and that was all she wrote for the nixon administration. new special prosecutor maintained the insistence on getting the actual tapes. the courts agreed. nixon had to hand them over and that was the end. in "the washington post" tonight, reporter carol leonnig has the scoop that president trump's lawyers in the russia investigation have just sent over to special counsel robert mueller's office some written summaries of their own. quote, president trump's attorneys have provided the special counsel's office with written descriptions that chronicle key moments under investigation by the special counsel. quote, the written materials provided to mueller's office provide summaries of internal white house memos and contemporaneous condolence mueller is investigating about mike flynn and fbi director james comey. quote, the records do not include trump's personal version of events, but they provide a narrative of the white house view.

trump's lawyers hope this evidence eliminates the need to ask the president about some of these episodes. raise your hand if you think this will make the whole problem for the white house go away. raise your hand if you think robert mueller and his prosecutors will not just be delighted, they'll be absolutely satisfied to receive written narrative vignettes from the white house russia lawyers providing their perspective on these matters that are under investigation. i mean, give him credit. how many other options do they have? the reason the president's lawyers are trying to do this is obvious to the point of being emphatic. as carol leonnig puts it in her scoop tonight at the post, quote, trump's legal team shared the documents in an effort to limit any session between the president and the special counsel. the decision to share with mueller's team is part of an effort by trump's lawyers to minimize his exposure to the special counsel. this latest gambit to write some

stuff up for the special counsel's prosecutors is, quote, in hopes of curtailing the scoop of a presidential interview. i bet. the president's lawyers are clearly paddling as fast as they can here, but they're only going to be able to steer this thing for so long. you will recall the president's lawyers previously assured him that the mueller investigation would be wrapped up by thanksgiving, as in thanksgiving last year. when we rolled straight through thanksgiving and that wasn't true, they patiently it would definitely be done by christmas. then they said it would be done by the now year. when that didn't happen either, january 8th is when the president's lawyers first floated the idea that instead of answering questions by the special prosecutor, the president would instead sign an affidavit affirming that he is innocent of all charges. see, the legal part of that is he would sign it. he would put his name on it. so therefore, that's all you need, right? that's an assurance of innocence.

the president's lawyer suggested the sworn affidavit from the president asserting innocence should be enough to satisfy the special counsel. if that wouldn't be satisfying enough that. >> also suggested, well, how about the special counsel could submit questions in writing, and then the president's lawyers could write-up some answers and send those back? that unsurprisingly also did not make the special counsel go away. just a week and a half ago, they came up with another gambit to have the president do a very limited interview with mueller's team where he wouldn't have to answer any detailed questions at all. he could just speak to any general questions they might have. okay. and in exchange for that generous offer from the president's lawyers, the special counsel would agree for his part that he would give up the whole thing in 60 days. he would end the whole investigation within 60 days. so that gambit week and a half ago, that apparently did not go

anywhere either. so tonight the president's lawyers have apparently tried this written vignette gambit. we'll see how that goes. it does seem like they are running out of options and ridiculous compromises to offer. one white house adviser concedes to carol leonnig tonight they believe they are running into crunchtime. "the new york times" reported that the trump organization, president trump's business has received a subpoena from the mueller investigation. the president himself already betrayed to reporters that he would -- well, that this is a sensitive subject for him. he had previously said to "the times" that any investigation into his business and his business finances is something he would see as a violation by the special counsel. we also now know that mueller's investigators sent to the president's russia lawyers the first round of topics and questions they intend to discuss with the president in his interview. and you know maybe the president's lawyers are right and mueller's prosecutors will

be fully satisfied with just getting written descriptions of events from the perspective of white house lawyers in response to those queries. but that would be a surprise if they were okay with that. last week, "the new york times" was also first to report a new lawyer would be joining the president's roster in the russia scandal at this late date. "the times" reported that veteran washington lawyer emmett t. flood was in discussions to join the president's team. the president himself vehemently denied that report saying not just that he wasn't hiring emmett t. flood, but that he wasn't hiring anybody. the president said, quote, the failing "new york times" purposely wrote a false story stating that i'm unhappy with my legal team on the russia case and i'm going to add another lawyer to help out. wrong! i am very happy with my lawyer, john dowd, ty cobb and jay sekulow. they are doing a great job.

today the white house confirmed that in fact the president is adding a new lawyer to his russia team. we're actually going to have a little more on him coming up later on in the show tonight. so this does sort of feel like crunch time. at least it feels like cages are being rattled all at once. i mean, the president last week fired secretary of state rex tillerson. and coincidentally or not, that firing came tuesday morning, just hours after tillerson made his first ever sharply critical comments about russia. the white house has pushed a false timeline of tillerson's firing to make it appear that he was fired sometime before his russia comments going so far as to also fire the number four official at the state department who put out an accurate statement about when in fact tillerson was fired, which was hours after his russia remarks. cnn also reports that embassies around the world and other state department officials were ordered explicitly to not retweet or acknowledge that true statement about when exactly tillerson was fired. so something rattled them there. then late on friday night, just

after i got off the air like 30 seconds after i got off the air, the deputy director of the fbi was fired, andrew mccabe. now, if there was any doubt whether that firing was related to the russia scandal, the president's lawyer, john dowd cleared that up the following morn, saturday morning when he released a statement to the daily beast saying that deputy attorney general rod rosenstein should follow the example set by the mccabe firing. and he should, quote, bring an end to the alleged russia collusion investigation. so mccabe's own statement about his firing on friday night certainly contended that this is related to russia. he contends in the lengthy statement that he issued friday night that his ouster is an effort to discredit him as a witness to the firing of fbi director james comey, which all sides agree is one of the key areas of focus in the investigation by mueller's team. so i mean, it does sort of feel like we're in crunch time. it feels like the white house is

rattled and it feels like they are taking increasingly erratic action. and now in the midst of that, the president's lawyers and mueller's lawyers going head to head, the firings in at least one of those cases, a false cover story about the firing being advanced by the white house, this hard turn by the president and his lead russia lawyer this weekend to start attacking robert mueller and the special counsel's office directly. in the cacophony of this crunch time, now today there is a new thing that is going crunch. >> what we want to know is what is the expertise of the deep digging you can do to make sure that the people know the true identity and secrets of these people. >> we do a lot more than that. i mean, deep digging is interesting. to be effective can be just to go and speak to the incumbents and to offer them a deal that's too good to be true and make

sure it's video recorded. these sorts of tactics are very effective instantly having video evidence of corruption being on the internet. >> right. >> and the operative you would use, this is who? >> somebody new to us. >> so it is somebody. you won't use a sri lankan person. >> we'll have a wealthy development come in, someone posing as a wealthy developer. i am a master at disguise. >> yes. >> they will offer a large amount of money to the candidate to finance his campaign in which exchange for land, for instance. we'll have the whole thing recorded on cameras. the face of our guy and post it on the internet. >> so on facebook or youtube or something like this? >> sending girls around to the candidate's house. we have lots of history. >> for example, many are using the girls to introduce to the media and using the girls for this seduction?

they are not local girls? not sri lankan girls? >> i wouldn't have thought so. just an idea. i'm just saying. we bring them in on holiday with us. you know what i'm saying? >> yes. they are very beautiful, ukrainian girls. >> they are beautiful. i find that works very well. >> they are very beautiful. i find the ukrainian girls trick works very, very well. the english gentleman on the right side of your screen for most of the tape explaining that tactic is the ceo of cambridge analytica. cambridge analytica is famous for being the data firm for trump campaign. they're basically a british firm that opened up a u.s. shell company with money from republican mega donor robert mercer. one of the easiest things to forget about the presidential election cycle is who was affiliated with who before trump started winning everything. in this past presidential election cycle, robert mercer

and his web of companies and don't nations, they didn't initially support trump. he initially supported ted cruz in the primary. that's why there are funny clips you can still get on youtube of kellyanne conway criticizing trump in the 2016 race. that's because kellyanne conway was associated with the mercer family and their web of entities and donations, and they were not initially for trump. they were for ted cruz. when it became clear ted cruz would lose to donald trump, the whole mercer operation switched allegiance. this happened around the time when it came time for paul manafort to fade book into the background because of his shady seeming relationships with pro-russian oligarchs and political factions in the former soviet union. at that time, ted cruz took his fight to the convention but then trump was triumphant. manafort gets ousted. the mercers stepped in to the campaign. they installed kellyanne conway and steve bannon at the top of the trump campaign. they also brought on board cambridge analytica, which the

merciers funded, which steve bannon helped found, and where he served as vice president. it's interesting, though. just a few months before that happened in december 2015, the guardian newspaper in britain had reported that cambridge analytica's work for the ted cruz campaign appeared to have something sort of rotten at the center of it. cambridge analytica was supporting ted cruz, and they appeared to be using millions of facebook profiles that had effectively been stolen off of facebook without the users' consent. it was a minor campaign controversy at the time. facebook wasn't too bothered by the reporting or its implications. they took quite a few months until late 2016 before they even bothered anybody about it. a new whistle blower who is the former research director has at cambridge analytica, he has now come forward to "the new york times," to t"the guardian" newspapers in britain and britain's channel 4 saying he was contacted in august 2016. august 2016, so right before the 2016 election. contacted august 2016 by

facebook when they sent him a notification telling him that he and cambridge analytica needed to delete all that data. he and other cambridge analytica sources now say that cambridge analytica didn't delete that data and it didn't much matter, because facebook never checked to see if they did. >> what cambridge analytica does is works on creating a web of disinformation online so that people start going down the rabbit hole of clicking on blogs, websites, et cetera, that make them think that certain things are happening that may not be. cambridge analytica was meeting with corey lewandowski in 2015 before trump had even announced, and offering the services that i'm talking about right now. cambridge analytica was founded on misappropriated data of at least 50 million facebook users. and i want to bring attention to that so that people understand that their data is being used improperly by this company that has also been, you know, in talks with russian oil companies

that was using a psychologist who is going back and forth between london and russia who is also working on projects that were funded by russian funds in russia on profiling people and their personalities. so i think it's really important for americans to know what this company has been doing with their data. and it's really important i think to find out was this data used to help elect donald trump. >> that's the former research director at cambridge analytica. his name is chris wiley, speaking on the "today" show this morning. he made a reference to a russian oil company. that's about this company, l lukoil. that turned up in the past russian influence operations overseas. one famous example is the czech republic with a pro-russian president in the czech republic found himself in financial trouble and this random russian oil company stepped into rescue him and pay legal fees.

lukoil is a private company but has been deployed as an instrument of the kremlin, and they are sanctioned by u.s. law because of it. one of the things that the cambridge analytica's former research director christopher wiley is saying and is providing documentation now is in 2014 and 2015 they met with executives from lukoil specifically to give them detailed briefings on how data was used to target american voters. quote, christopher wiley who helped develop the company's voter profiling technology said lukoil showed interest how they used date to that target their messaging to american voters. quote, i remember being super confused, said mr. wiley, who took part in one of the lukoil meetings. i kept asking alexander nix can you explain to me what they want? i don't understand why lukoil wants to know about political targeting in american. we're sending them stuff about political targeting. they come and ask more about political targeting.

as to the way that cambridge analytica got access to their core data, the personal and private data of at least 50 million facebook users, which is what this whistle-blower says their whole political operation was based on, well, according to the guardian and observer, they obtained that information by partnering with a professor at cambridge university in england. he was able to obtain that kind of data from facebook, supposedly for academic purposes. but he then apparently made a business deal with cambridge analytica where he handed it on to them, for them to use it in their business. according to the guardian, quote, while that professor was helping turn facebook profiles into a political tool, he was also an associate professor at st. petersburg state university in russia, taking russian government grants to fund other research into social media. online posts showed professor kogan lecturing in russia. one talk was called new methods of communication as an effective political instrument. so cambridge analytica does

presentations in 2014 and 2015 for a russian oil company that has been known to do political work for the kremlin around the world. they give that oil company information about how to target and influence american voters and how that works. why does a russian oil company need that kind of information? we then learned that cambridge analytica obtains the core data that was the basis of all their political work from a russian researcher who was working at cambridge, but is also simultaneously doing work for the russian government. we know from separate reporting that during the campaign while the trump campaign was paying cambridge analytica nearly $6 million for its data service, cambridge analytica was in touch with wikileaks. wikileaks was busy distributing e-mails that had been stolen by russian hackers to try to inflict maximum political harm on hillary clinton. cambridge analytica contacted them to see if they could basically help them out with that. now, a whistle blower is deeply involved in the data operations of that company has come forward and handed over to britain's crime agency cybercrime unit a

dossier of e-mails, invoices, contract, and bank transfers from his time at the company. he says he's basically driven by guilt. the british prime minister says she supports an investigation into the company. the information commissioner, which is sort of the prosecutor on privacy issues says she is seeking a warrant to get their databases and their servers. the european union also says they are interested in starting an investigation here. at least one state attorney democrat maura healey in massachusetts says she too is potentially looking at this as a criminal matter here in the united states. the president and his legal team have thus far come up with one legal argument to prove there was no conspiracy or collaboration between the russia effort to help elect donald trump and donald trump's campaign effort trying to do the same thing. so far their legal argument is them saying in all capital letters with exclamation points at the end, no collusion, no collusion, no collusion. and i know it feels like everything is sort of happening

all at once, but we are about to find out if that complex legal argument from them has met its match. crunch time indeed. senator amy klobuchar joins us next. stay with us. e... and your approval rating... goes here. test drive the ztrak z540r at your john deere dealer and learn why it's not how fast you mow, it's how well you mow fast. nothing runs like a deere. save 250 dollars when you test drive and buy a john deere residential z540r ztrak mower. these are the specialists we're proud to call our own. experts from all over the world, working closely

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we put information into the bloodstream of the internet, and then watch it grow. it has to happen without anyone thinking that's propaganda because the moment you think that's propaganda, the next question is put that out. >> we started today with the deluge of reports about the trump campaign's data firm. cambridge analytica that got $6 million from the campaign while donald trump was running for president. in 2014, cambridge analytica used a purported academic research scheme to harvest complicated extensive personal data from tens of millions of americans who didn't know they were handing that kind of information over. according to a new whistle-blower who was head of research at the company, that stolen data on 50 million americans was basically the core of their data business. a pair of senators on the

committee, amy klobuchar and john kennedy now say they want facebook, including mark zuckerberg up on capitol hill answering questions directly about this stuff. the republican chair of the judiciary committee wrote back to senators klobuchar and kennedy saying he would take their requests under advisement. which i think means maybe. it possibly even means perhaps. joining us now is senator amy klobuchar of minnesota. senator klobuchar, thank you for your time tonight. >> thanks, rachel. >> so what concerns you most in these revelations about facebook and cambridge analytica? >> well, of course, it's the sanctity of our elections and our democracy. we actually have an election less than 300 days away. we have to make sure our election infrastructure is safe. i think we're going get some money for the states in this budget. i've been working really hard on that so they can get backup paper ballot, things like that. and the second is what you've been talking about so well the first few minutes of this show, and that is this propaganda and

things that are coming in to people's facebook pages and their data where in fact we've learned now things that they thought were safe weren't safe. 50 million people in america have now had their databasecally breached. i know they don't like that word breached, but the last time i checked if someone broke into my apartment with a crowbar, it would be the same as if the apartment manager gave them the key and let them in and let them take stuff. in this case they've taken their facebook friends. they've taken their addresses, things like that. and then we find out that they gave it basically, we believe, to a campaign. and there are all kinds of potential violations here. the first and foremost is cambridge analytica itself and how that works with the trump campaign, and is that truly the value, a couple million dollars compared to what i think someone has said maybe $100 million in value. that's a potential major election violation.

then you have facebook itself in 2011 signed a consent decree with the ftc because of privacy issues and said they would pay $40,000 for each individual violation. so this is just the beginning of what i consider a focus and what we need to focus on. and that is the sanctity of the privacy of this data. and that means new rules of the road. and they better be ready for it, because they can't operator like the wild west. and then the second thing is how we protect our elections and make sure that the people that did this are held responsible. >> do you feel like the tech companies here are more the scene of the crime or more the get away driver? i feel like they want to show posit themselves here not necessarily as innocent bystanders, but people who comported themselves with according to the rules that they set forth for their users, and certainly according with the law. and if people use their platform

for nefarious purposes, that's too bad, but it doesn't have anything to do with them. >> you know, these are some of the most brilliant companies in america run by brilliant people with really smart things they have done. we love putting up the clips from your shows, recipes you name it. but it's gotten so much more than that. i think someone once said they basically built a product with no alarm system and no locks on the windows and big surprise, the bad guys have gotten in. when you have a company that's worth like 500 billion, i think you have to take some of that money, they're going to have to put it big-time into protecting the security of the data. and i think some rules have to be set in place by congress. we have to stop pretending that this is just about cat videos. this got to the core of our democracy with a foreign country actually buying ads in rubles and then also sending out propaganda and targeting innocent americans who didn't know that their profiles and their data and their friends had been stolen.

>> senator amy klobuchar, a member of the senate judiciary committee. i live in hope with that little note you got from senator grassley today saying he was taking this under vieadvisement. please let us know. >> we want to get it done. >> i appreciate it. what the senator said about value gets people's attention. the ceos of facebook and google and twitter to come forward and answer this stuff in the stock market today. in the stock market today, the hit in light of the scandal was massive. facebook lost 10s of billions of dollars in valuation today with the head their stock took on this scandal. stay with us. ♪ next chapter ♪

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when james comey was director of the fbi, and he believed that the president of the united states was directing him to shut down the russia investigation into the president's own campaign, mr. comey documented the president's behavior and his requests in their conversations. after he was fired, comey testified to congress that he wrote down what happened between him and the president in detail, and crucially, he also told other senior leadership at the fbi exactly what had happened. he listed several senior officials he told at the time about what was happening. those are therefore people who can provide corroborating evidence of what the president did in his conversations with james comey. ever since james comey listed those officials, we've been watching one by one as those corroborating witnesses have been attacked and sidelined by

the president and his allies there was jim rybicki who was chief of staff both under comey and his successor chris wray. earlier this year, chris wray announced that rybicki was out. that followed republicans in congress taking shots at rybicki, trying to construe him as a partisan. also the general counsel of the fbi, james baker who remains at the fbi for now, but he has mysteriously been reassigned to a job nobody can describe with responsibilities no one can name. the president has also been taking shots at jim baker publicly. and of course there is andrew mccabe, deputy director of the fbi who the president publicly denounced for months and who is getting retired out of the fbi at the ripe old age of 49 until attorney general jeff sessions fired him, 26 hours short of his retirement. for months, we've been reporting this, that the clearing out of comey's inner circle really looks like a coordinated concert aid tempt to discredit not just james comey, but also the

witnesses who could corroborate comey's account of his interactions with president trump. all the time that we've been reporting this, none of those witnesses themselves has ever spoken publicly about this. none of them has ever confirmed that what this looks like from the outside is also what it looks like and feels like from the inside. until now. there is this blistering statement that was just released by andrew mccabe after he was fired on friday night. it says in part, quote, here is the reality. i am being singled out and treated this way because of the role i played, the actions i took and the events i witnessed in the aftermath of the firing of james comey. the release of this report was accelerated only after my testimony to the house intelligence committee revealed that i would corroborate former director comey's account of his discussions with the president. helpfully underscoring that point, president trump responded to that statement by unleashing an avalanche of tweets attacking andrew mccabe and james comey and robert mueller, and then his

russia lawyer john dowd called for the special counsel investigation to be shut down. and you know the litany of unfortunate career events that have followed people who are witnesses to comey's side of the firing of the fbi director story, it's a sobering thing. all sides agree that the special counsel is focused on this question of why the fbi director was fired, and was that a potential obstruction of justice? we're getting new details about that tonight, and we have somebody very, very smart here to talk with us about that. that is next.

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fired. what is your top-line reaction to that firing, and how important do you think it is? >> horrible decision by the president of the united states. presidents are always tempted to weigh in on criminal investigations or disciplinary procedures. but they don't. there is a red line that they don't want to cross. and for a very simple reason there is a process in place to discipline. and, you know, that requires extensive review, thoroughness, investigation and secrecy. and the president has none of those fax. yet months ago he called for mccabe's firing. and it's no surprise that someone like sessions, who is not exactly someone with a spine, you know, is going to listen to that and then say oh, i'm going to fire mccabe. >> on the investigation of session heof session, though it's colored by the fact that the president not only called for mccabe to be fired, but singled out the fact that he was going to qualify for his pension by a specific date. but then there is the matter of the attorney general's recusal. the attorney general is reportedly recused not just from

the russia investigation, but from all matters related to any investigations stemming from the 2016 campaign or related to hillary clinton's e-mails or the clinton foundation. >> exactly. >> the basis of this action against andrew mccabe was reportedly related to investigations that pertained to hillary clinton. so how can the attorney general have taken this action? >> it's astounding to me. it's a bogus recusal then. the fundamental idea when you recuse at the justice department, you know, i worked on those rules, is that you have some conflict of interest. something that says you can't investigate. there is an appearance of impropriety. if you can discipline the folks who are investigating, that is effectively doing the same thing. remember who mccabe. mccabe is the deputy director of the fbi whose running part of the investigation. he is also a witness in the investigation on trump. if you ask yourself in my fair city of washington, d.c. who had the most to gain from the firing of andrew mccabe, there is one person who would come to your mind, and that is donald trump. >> when you mentioned mccabe as

a witness to the comey firing, that has been some of the -- that's sort of the original drama here on and laying off mike flynn. if he fired james comey because he wanted relief of the pressure of the investigation, there is evidence for, there is this matter of how comey documented those interactions with the president. andrew mccabe is one of the people privy to those contemporaneous remarks by james comey showing him the memo and talk about what happened. other season your fbi officials appear to have fallen off cliffs in terms of their career. is there reason to worry that systematically the corroborating witnesses are being taken out? >> totally. we're talking about not joust collaborating witnesses but an investigation into the president of the united states and what he's doing is systematically trying to pick them off, you

know -- >> you think he is. >> i don't think there is any doubt that's what is going on when you have a president who months ahead of time calls for mccabe's firing. this isn't like he waited for the report, read it thoroughly and investigated and asked questions the way any normal president would. this is someone that rushed to judgment and you have to ask yourself is there self-interest going on or something else? >> this is a legal matter there is an obvious answer to, i just don't know it because i'm not a lawyer. that is about interviewing with an investigation, intimidating or tampering with witnesses. if these fbi officials including andrew mccabe are important witnesses for the question of obstruction of justice that may potentially be pursued as a criminal matter by the special counsel. when the president picks public fights with those witnesses, he doesn't just potentially maneuver to have them fired by insults them, berates them, makes sure they are publicly huh humiliated.

it is a mean thing to do but doesn't that establish there ought to be reasonably some personal animosity between the witnesses and president under cutting their ability in a court of law to testify against the president. >> that's exactly right which is why in general as a criminal defense lawyer you would tell one of your clients please don't talk to any witness under any circumstance, don't fire them, don't talk to them, move out of their orbit to avoid the accusations. donald trump has done it openly. >> comey, mccabe, baker, all of them. >> doing it in secret or public doesn't matter. obstruction of justice is obstruction of justice and what we have is a scary record of the president engaging in what looks like obstruction of justice. >> how does that get policed? is that effort to clear the testimony of a witness to under cut a witness's credibility. is that itself obstruction of justice? is that itself a criminal act?

>> under cutting a criminal witness's credibility is not. you testify against me and i have reason to show that you had some credibility problem, no problem but if you're manufacturing that credibility gap on your own by firing someone, creating a conflict where one didn't exist before, that's starting to look really dubious and again, we're talking about not an ordinary individual but the president of the united states charged with taking care that constitution and laws be taken and looks like is nothing like that. >> former u.s. acting solicitor general. thank you for coming in. appreciate it. much more ahead tonight. stay with us. ♪

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here's a heads up on something that is sort of an uncomfortable subject but you should know this is going on. on march 6th, so a couple weeks ago we learned in the new york times that george nader was a new cooperating witness. the times reported that he was an adviser to the leader of the united air of emirates. and robert mueller was investigating the possible elicit flow of money from the united air of emirates. it was also present at a couple meetings that a couple of campaign folks tried to keep secret one in the seychelles islands.

so he was introduced as a new character in this soap opera we all live in. a couple days after that initial report in the "new york times," we learned from the atlantic magazine in 1985, this same george nader was indicted on obscene material featuring underage boys engaged in sexual acts. a 1985 indictment of child porn. a week later. the associated press reported that he also served time in prison in the czech republic for sexually abusing young boys. the next week it was reported that in 1991, so in between the '85 indictments and the 2003

jail, 1991 nader was convicted in virginia for transporting child porn into this country. now the documents related to this 1991 conviction had been under seal for years. but then suddenly, on thursday, those records were unsealed and that's how all those reporters were able to write stories about them. it's not unusual for prosecutors to have cooperating witnesses with a criminal history. if there was a rule against that prosecutors would have very few people to rely on to build their cases. but one of george nader's lawyers keeps saying there's something going on here -- something about trying to stop his client from continuing to cooperate with the special counsel, with robert mueller, nader's lawyer is calling it, quote, an orchestrated, disgusting scheme by those who are trying to intimidate mr. nader into silence. that is interesting.

but why is all the press coming out now? we can't know for sure where it's all coming from, including previously sealed court documents. there's one interesting thing here that's worth pointing out. it involves the 1985 indictment against george nader, these were charges later dropped. a court ruled that a search warrant was not properly attained. the prosecutor who tried and failed, who brought those charges and couldn't get a conviction his name was joseph di genova, he was the u.s. attorney for the district of columbia at the time. guess who just got hired as trump's new russia lawyer in the russia probe, joseph di genova the same guy. the guy who tried but ultimately failed to convict gorge nader on the charges. he's coming back into the eyes of the white house just as the public is learning all these

details about george nader's criminal past. george nader, robert mueller's cooperating witness. i don't know if it's coincidence both of these things are coming to light at the same time. while the president and his lawyers make a hard turn against robert mueller and the special counsel's office, it is a little bit weird these two things are happening that joseph di genova's life is coming into -- his life is coming to light in these two different ways at the same time. but pay attention if george nader's criminal history starts to become less of a weird side store of the cooperating witness instead fuel it is white house's new offense against the special counsel investigation you'll see these two data points as part of the explanation of why. stay with us. i saw the change in rich when we moved into the new house.

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in washington d.c. cherry blossoms are a huge deal when they bloom in the spring millions of tourists pour into the capital to see them. there's endless events to see them. so for organizers to change any part of the festivities is a major effort. this year that's what's happening. the official opening was scheduled for this saturday, saturday the 24th. saturday is also the march for our lives, the anti-gun violence rally organized by the survivors of the school shooting last month in parkland florida. this one is turning out to be a big one. organizers are expecting

hundreds of thousands of people to show up for that and with the cherry blossom festival, that would make too many people in the same place at the same time. so that was moved to sunday. the opening ceremony of the national cherry blossom festival was changed not to accommodate the march for our lives but rather because of concern that guests would have difficulty reaching the venue on pennsylvania avenue. half a million people massing will happen saturday and cherry blossoms sunday. now it's time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell."