good night from nbc news headquarters here in new york. happy to have you here. do you remember when he was going to hire his personal pilot to be the head of the faa? sure, why not? trump air operations during the campaign includes one plane tearing off the runway and almost kareening on to a highway and almost shutting down the airport. and a pilot who nobody noticed was a fugitive from justice actively wanted on multiple felonies. but trump likes his guy that flew his planes and isn't there something in the federal government that has to do with airplanes? sure, why not. that idea came up just last month. who knows, maybe trump will put himself personal pilot in charge of the faa. today we got pretty close to

that idea and today it wasn't something just being floated. we learned about this as a fate accompli. when you heard it, admit it, when you heard the the president named his doctor head of the faa, you thought of this guy. he submitted a health report that was like a cross between refrigerator poetry and the north korean leader's poem on "dear birthday." his physical strength and stamina are extraordinary. if elected, i can state

unequivocally he will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency. that was a very strange iteration of the traditional doctor's note of a presidential's candidate's health. but then trump did get elected and that history meant with his private doctor meant there was a little more intrigue than usual around the president's physician. >> this is the president's unbiased 100% accurate health assessment. at the time of examination, the president of 71 years, 7 months young, his resting heart rate was a cool 68 bpm, his weight a very svelt 239 pounds. he has a gorgeous 44 inch coke bottle waist and his legs go on forever, size 12 shoes and you

can fill in the blanks there. it's my professional opinion that the president has a rockin bod, with the perfect cushion for the pushin. >> that was the "saturday night live" version of the white house physician because there had to be one. after the actual white house physician gave his press briefing on the president and his health and it was so excitedly positive, it left reporters who was also doctors like cnn's sanjay gupta, feeling like they had to retranslate for the american public the information that admiral jackson was providing because maybe somebody should take the hearts off the eyes. >> how would you characterize the president's house today, average 71-year-old american male? >> i'd say based on his cardiac assessment hands down there's no question that he is -- he is in the excellent range from a cardiac standpoint.

that's not me speaking, that's objective data. can you look at the data collected and he will definitely fall into that category. overall he has very, very good health. excellent health. >> dr. gupta. >> just to be clear, he is taking cholesterol lowering medication, has evidence of heart disease and he's borderline obese. can you characterize that as excellent health? >> his heart is very healthy. those are all things you're looking at with regard -- you're a neurosurgeon, there's stroke issues there, too, but you know -- >> president trump has just announced that white house physician admiral ronnie jackson will be his nominee to head the department of veterans affairs. department of veterans affairs is the second largest agency in the government. it's one of the largest organizations of any kind on earth. it serves 20 million veterans, serves health care needs of 9 million veterans. dr. jackson is beloved as a white house physician, not just by the trump administration, but by previous white house

occupants as well. he was white house physician for george w. bush and barack obama as well. people loved him in that role. he has never run any large organization of any kind before. honestly, though, i want to stress, people do really like him. people say he's a great white house doctor and he's really nice. we know for sure he definitely likes the president. so there's that. we'll have excellent advice as to whether or not this new appointment seems like a good idea. for now it seems we have to add another name to the departure board. the first cabinet secretary to go was tom price at health and human services. then it was rex tillerson at the state department. now we can add -- i don't even know which way to look. this way? this way? three, two, one -- there it is,

secretary of state of veterans affairs, david shulkin. like lots of trump cabinet secretaries, including tom price and ben carson and ryan zinke and, and, and, david shulkin, the now fired secretary of veterans affairs, he had lots of embarrassing troubles like taxpayer spending, for example, what looked like a long taxpayer-paid vacation for he and his wife. but there are lots of people who had that particular problem, even worse than he does but now he's the one who's out. part of this may be just another instance of the president seeming to enjoy doing his shopping on tv. it may be that when everybody else saw over the top, hyper on

s hyperobsequiousness, the president saw, hey, i like the way that guy talks on tv. we do know from weeks of reporting and multiple outlets that the president really wanted to hire for this job one of the hosts of fox and friends. there was a guy at fox named pete hegseth who the president wanted to put in the v.a. job. there's a number of reasons why that couldn't and didn't work out. we'll have that in a few minutes. but the president isn't hiding his light under a bushel for his preference for hiring people off tv. he likes the way they talk about those jobs on tv. larry kudlow, just hired to be white house chief economic adviser, whether or not you liked gary cohn, he at least had been president of goldman sachs. mr. kudlow comes from a tv show.

right after he hired gary kudlow, we learned about the national security adviser whom he liked watching on tv. there may be trouble ahead for that national security adviser appointment. it does not require senate confirmation, but we learned from trump's first national security adviser mike flynn that there still can be trouble if you try to keep somebody in that job who's caught up in active fbi investigations, technically if they're active counter intelligence investigations. so stay tuned for that. we have that story coming up. shopping off your tv set isn't always a great way to vet candidates for senior administration positions. it can also be trouble for the president's efforts to put together a legal team to represent him in the russia scandal, in the mueller investigation. one of the more remarkable things that happened just in the last week, god, it feels like years ago now, but just in the last week, the president's lead lawyer on the russia scandal quit, when it emerged that the president had picked out two new

russia lawyers whom he liked the look of on tv. joe digenova and victoria teonsing from fox tv. so john dowd took himself out. that all happened, though, before the president had actually met these two new lawyers anywhere other than through his tv screen. and when they finally arrived at the white house on thursday night, turns out the president didn't like them as much as he had on tv. a white house official described them as dishevelled in their appearances when they arrived at the white house. the president was not as impressed with them in person as he had been when they had the tv makeup on and the underlighting and you can't see their pants. anyway, that is how we have arrived at the president not really having a legal team on the russia scandal anymore.

jay sekulow is his one outside attorney now. he's also a fox news guy. he has spent this week trying to calm everybody down by saying it's not just him, he's got other people working with him from his conservative, activist legal group. that includes, we learned today, the author of this book "byzantine rome and the greek popes". he has a ph.d in medieval history, which he pursued, quote, following a mid-life crisis. he wrote his book on the greek popes and eventually went back to practicing law, mostly working as a contract prosecutor for local d.a.s in georgia. back in the '80s, he was involved in a jews for jesus case with jay sekulow, the fox news guy. but that's pretty much it. in terms of big cases. it's great for this guy, right? look at the headline in reuters

today -- "spurned by top lawyers, trump's defense elevates washington outsider." you're burned out in georgia, having a mid-life crisis, you end up trying to get your monograph published on the byzantine era of popes and the next day you're representing the president and you have no experience whatsoever in anything like this. i mean, well done for him. but for the presidency, it's a weird situation, right? especially since things do seem to be taking a bit of a serious turn in this big national security investigation that is swirling around the president. lawyers for the special counsel's office and for attorney alex van der zwaan have now exchanged court filings in advance of what's expected to be mr. van der zwaan's sentencing next week for lying to investigators.

his lawyers in this filing today literally argue, i'm quoting here, his days are empty and lonely. they provided testimonial from his mother, including the all-caps statement, alex is the only support and joy of my life. testimony from his mother saying how much she loves him. there's a lot of detail from his pregnant wife and how much she loves him as well. her soul mate. he's said to be very sorry, quote, alex has learned his lesson, and there is no risk that he will re-offend. those are the kinds of arguments

that alex van der zwaan's lawyers were making to the court. in response to those arguments, the special counsel filed their own document with the court, in which they tore mr. van der zwaan's head off. the fact that your wife is having a baby isn't reason for you to get leniency from the court. the fact that you stopped lying and pled guilty after we caught you isn't cause for leniency either. he does not deserve credit for adhering to the law. the special counsel's filing literally ends, the last sentence with suggesting that if he really wants to get home for the birth of his first child, maybe he should hurry up and get to prison to start his time. the special counsel's office is not messing around. it's important to remember that even though alex van der zwaan has pled guilty, he's not cooperating. he has not agreed to cooperate with the mueller investigation. he pled, and he wants them to be lenient, because he pled, but he's not cooperating with them. so presumably, this very hardball effort is to get him to change his mind about cooperating. this is important, while they are ripping van der zwaan's head off in in filing, they also make explicit something that i think ought to be unnerving to this white house, even if the president doesn't necessarily

have lawyers anymore who can explain this to him. quote, among the topics about which the defendant lied were his communications with trump deputy campaign chair rick gates, his communications with a ukrainian business associate of manafort and gates, person a, and his failure to produce an e-mail between himself and the ukrainian business associate. all important matters in the investigation. hmm. the lies and withholding of documents were material to the special counsel office's investigation that gates and person a were directly communicating in september and october of 2016 was pertinent to the investigation, special agents assess that person a has ties to a russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016. quote, during his first interview with the special counsel's office, he admitted he knew of that connection, stating that rick gates told him person

a was a former russian intelligence officer with the gru. that's all in the alex van der zwaan sentencing stuff that's going back and forth. part of the story is van der zwaan pleading for leniency and the special counsel not at all indicating that they are down with that. but the other part of it is the special counsel's office showing their hand as to something they've got. dear mr. president with no legal team. these filings from the special counsel's office now spell out explicitly that during your presidential campaign, your campaign manager and your deputy campaign manager were in frequent contact with, what's the phrase? with a person the fbi assesses to have had current ties to a russian intelligence service. and they couldn't have been unwittingly duped into doing this, because your deputy campaign manager is on record, telling other people at the time, hey, call this guy. he's gru. he's russian military intelligence. and that's not us guessing at

what the special counsel office is looking at, that's them telling us what they've got in court filings, where they are also going super aggressively at a guy they've already got to plead guilty. they're still trying to get the court to throw him in prison even after his guilty plea. so the president likes turnover. he likes watching tv. he likes maybe hiring people from tv. he likes firing really senior people all the time and keeping everybody on their toes. the president not having a russia legal team anymore doesn't even make this list. but the investigation is getting explicit and aggressive. and it seems like it very well may be about collusion with russia, directly. we've also now got the first report that the president may have been offering pardons to at least two of the people who ultimately got charged. there's chaos in this young administration, sure, and that is interesting for all sorts of

reasons. i don't think, though, that you can separate that from the fact that there is also now a legal hurricane swirling around a basically unreinforced, undefended president. ♪ directv now gives you more for your thing. your letting go thing. your sorry not sorry thing. your out with the old in with the new, onto bigger and better thing. get the live tv you love. no bulky hardware. no satellite. no annual contract. try directv now for $10/mo for 3 months. more for your thing. that's our thing. visit directvnow dot com aww thanks for loading, sweet... oops. oh burnt-on gravy? gotta rinse that. nope. no way. nada. really? dish issues? throw it all in. cascade platinum powers through even burnt-on gravy. nice. cascade.

he gets the best deal on the perfect hotel by using. tripadvisor! that's because tripadvisor lets you start your trip on the right foot... by comparing prices from over 200 booking sites to find the right hotel for you at the lowest price. saving you up to 30%! you'll be bathing in savings! tripadvisor. check the latest reviews and lowest prices. ♪ come to my window ♪ ohh ♪ crawl inside ♪ wait by the light of the moon ♪ applebee's to go. order online and get $10 off $30. now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood.

you know what's not awesome? gig-speed internet. when only certain people can get it. let's fix that. let's give this guy gig- really? and these kids, and these guys, him, ah. oh hello. that lady, these houses! yes, yes and yes. and don't forget about them. uh huh, sure. still yes! xfinity delivers gig speed to more homes than anyone. now you can get it, too. welcome to the party.

the "new york times" is first to report today that president trump's lead russia lawyer until recently, john dowd, the times reports that last year he raised the prospect last year with discussions with manafort and flynn's lawyers. according to the times, john dowd raised that prospect last year in discussions with

manafort and flynn's lawyers. quote, the discussions came at special counsel was building cases against both men, and they raise questions about whether the lawyer, john dowd, was offering pardons to influence manafort and flynn's decisions about whether to plead guilty and cooperate in the investigation. of course manafort and flynn made very different decisions on that score. manafort pled not guilty and is fighting more than 20 felony counts from the special counsel, looking at life in prison if convicted. flynn pled guilty, and he's now cooperating. if the president's lawyer was talking pardons with them last year before they made those decisions, then why did neither of them end up with a pardon? and is the president or his lawyer potentially in trouble for doing this? if the pardons were offered as a way to try to dissuade these guys from cooperating with mueller's investigators, is that a big deal? and is that potentially criminal? obviously, the president has the power to pardon, it's in the constitution, but if he offered it that way, to try to dissuade someone for cooperating or testifying in an investigation, might that be looked at as potential obstruction of justice. joining us is bob bauer. am i asking the right questions here? it seems as a matter of strategy that it's interesting if these conversations happened that neither flynn nor manafort got a pardon.

and also are those proper conversations to be had? did those seem to be the right questions to be asking? >> i think it's very clear they were improper conversations to be had. there's no way that the president of the united states's lawyer, acting on his behalf should be exploring a pardon with individuals who have testimony that touch directly on his personal legal affairs. that either was, a, an exceptionally foolish thing thing for mr. dowd to do, as reported or, b, it was part and parcel of an ongoing plan the president had to try to dissuade them that giving testimony. >> when a president lawfully and normally exercises the pardon power, are there sort of firewalls set up, communication firewalls, or is the president isolated in the amount of communication he's able to receive and from the right people in terms of respectfully and legally considering somebody's pardon in the right way? >> very much so. over time, pardons have been prepared in the first instance in the particular office of the

department of justice, and there's a real attempt for the white house to articulate the standards for granting pardons and for the department of justice to use those standards to prepare recommendations for the president of potential beneficiaries of pardons. all of this is coordinated, and is meant precisely to lend the appropriate sobriety and regularity to the president's consideration of pardons. for a president's counsel in a legal case to discuss pardons with potential witnesses is extraordinary. >> we should say that john dowd denies this in a pretty blunt way. he told the "times" that their story is not true. the "times" is standing by their story and by their reporting. but dowd, for his part, says there were no discussions

period. as far as i know, no discussions. it doesn't sound like an overlawyered careful denial. it seems like a blunt denial. we should be clear that's how he's talking about that. i don't know what to make of that blunt denial. i'm not inclined to believe that he would blatantly lie about something this serious. >> i don't have any information to suggest that. but i would point out first of all, that he said if one wanted to parse his comments that there were no discussion of pardons. he may have raised it, and then there was no ensuing discussion because the lawyers for mr. flynn decided not to pursue it further. so there may have been no discussions, but it may have been raised with them. then secondly, there's the odd suggestion that as far as he knows there were no discussions. well, he was directly involved in the discussions. either he knows he was involved in them or he doesn't. so it sounds a little bit like a variant on the "as far as i can recall", although it's not stated that way. >> it's hard for me to separate controversies in reporting and the ongoing troubles the president is having assembling a stable and talented legal team to defend him and represent him

in this scandal and related matters. what do you make of the fact that the president's legal team has been so in flux and doesn't appear to involve anybody who has relevant experience. >> the president has had difficulty attracting the people who have the most experience. he's also lost some of the lawyers that he started with. mr. kasowitz left, although he apparently is consulting with mr. trump by phone, mr. dowd has left. and one wonders, maybe having lawyers of that experience is not all that important. he'll have the lawyers he wants to work with, he'll direct them in how he wants them to behave. worse comes to worse, he will take the position that mr. sekulow has articulated, that the president cannot in fact be prosecuted for obstruction of justice and he'll offer pardons and he can't be questioned about

the issuance of pardons. and if you have that regal view of your office, who needs lawyers? >> i am reading into the tone of your comments that you think that that regal view of his office would be mistaken. >> i think it's entirely mistaken. i think mr. sekulow believes it. he's articulated -- mr. trump's lawyers have articulated that view from time to time. i think it's extremely ill-advised for them to count on that. we have seen over time that when those arguments are brought before the courts by presidents looking for special exemptions from legal liability, the courts have typically ruled against them. >> bob ballparkebauer, former we counsel, thank you for your time and clarity. >> not to put too fine a point on it. essentially saying try that. go ahead. try it. we'll be right back. stay with us.

we came with big appetites. with expedia, you could book a flight, hotel, car, and activity all in one place. ♪ sometimes you need an expert. i got it. and sometimes those experts need experts. on it. [ crash ] and sometimes the expert the expert needed needs insurance expertise. it's all good. steve, you're covered for general liability. and, paul, we got your back with workers' comp. wow, it's like a party in here. where are the hors d'oeuvres, right? [ clanking ] tartlets? we cover commercial vehicles, too.

i think there's something wrong with your sink.

we covergas, bloating,hicles, constipation and diarrhea can start in the colon and may be signs of an imbalance of good bacteria. only phillips' colon health has this unique combination of probiotics. it helps replenish good bacteria. get four-in-one symptom defense. we have one to two fires a day and when you respond together and you put your lives on the line, you do have to surround yourself with experts. and for us the expert in gas and electric is pg&e. we run about 2,500/2,800 fire calls a year and on almost every one of those calls pg&e is responding to that call as well. and so when we show up to a fire and pg&e shows up with us it makes a tremendous team during a moment of crisis. i rely on them, the firefighters in this department rely on them, and so we have to practice safety everyday. utilizing pg&e's talent and expertise in that area trains our firefighters on the gas or electric aspect of a fire and when we have an emergency situation

we are going to be much more skilled and prepared to mitigate that emergency for all concerned. the things we do every single day that puts ourselves in harm's way, and to have a partner that is so skilled at what they do is indispensable, and i couldn't ask for a better partner. there's a man named pete hegseth who's a host on the fox news channel. he's perhaps most well-known for the time he accidentally threw an ax at a west point drummer on live television. thankfully the drummer was able to walk away with nothing too serious. he is with a group called concerned veterans for america. they were funded lavishly by the koch brothers. the reason he came into the

position was to privatize the v.a., to essentially apolibolise v.a. it is the second largest agency in the government. it provides service to 20 million american veterans. and because the v.a. is essentially a single payer system, it is a conservative fantasy to kill it off. but the koch brothers picked it as a project and funded pete hegseth and his veterans group to make that radical policy position a mainstream option for republican politicians. a lot of republican candidates came out in support of privatizing the v.a., thanks in large part to intense lobbying by pete hegseth and his very well funded group. he soon became a very frequent face on fox news and a host on fox news, which is maybe why it should not have come as a total surprise when we started seeing multiple reports saying that donald trump wanted to get rid

of the current v.a. secretary and appoint that good-looking guy he liked from fox. as of this morning, he was still president trump's number one pick to take offer for david shulkin. the president had been telegraphing for weeks that he wanted shulkin gone and that he was going to replace him with pete hegseth. but this came in, pete hegseth's experience as a combat veteran and commentator on fox would seem to appeal to the president, but his appointment could extend two disruptive narratives playing out in the white house, marital infidelity and nepotism. seg -- hegseth engaged in two extra marital affairs and paid his brother $10le,000 to work with him while chief executive of a veterans nonprofit. and he spent a third of the

pac's monday on christmas the guy he found, given his public, stern, am. >> even before divorcing the second wife. today the president announced he is firing david shulkin but he announced a surprise replacement, dr. donnie jackson. if this president really does pick cabinet officials from the tv machine, he's a servicing. good afternoon, everyone.

so to start with, what i'm going to do is i'm going to read to you the summary of the president's physical. vitals as follows: age 71 years, 7 months at the time of the exam, height 79 inches, height and that he will remain so four the duration. >> tell me how a guy who eats mcdonald's and all those diet coax and never exercises is in as good a shape you say he's in? >> it's called genetics. i don't know. he's got excellent bad dreams. the on words he heard were "good jones o ".

>> today the president picked him 0 run the v.a., the second largest agency in the entire federal government. >> good jean. joins us now is the ount of before i bring him on television and he should not be sobt $ let me ask you about your reaction to his ouster and also the disappointment. >> let's take a bigger step back. the carnage and disrun shun in was it was also just brewing below the surface. there's been a battle going on all around the v.a. before this

presidency, no into the first year of the president and probably for the next ten years. the very soul of the d.a. is at stake. whether now here we are. he had had a couple of i.g. investigations and the d.a. is tough a look around in a purchase knows the president has a good relationship with him, is beloved in washington. nobody's got a strange pick. >> wasn't on the last year, this

year, any time. and as a doctor, in the hair i mean, this is where, you know, top leaders go to wale. we've had a rees nens, we had shinseki under obama and now we've got sul. >> going into this environment flrp. >> does he have strong political views on rivization this year. and swchlt new good, hard working people at the v.a., knowing it was going to happen for weeks and we don't know what

the future looks like. >> the reason i highlighted that stuff about this guy who might have been chosen had things not gone the way they did is because they've tried to have inkretible lying for the upd current going on around shul sfbl that he has to stake a claim for, at least show his faltity with. >> it the central issue. he's probably get con fourld. unless there were. >> just because of deference to miss military procedures? >> ne have the sfrp.

>> and this is about what the phoenix ga looks look. (and they're going to have to hold the line here and really illuminate all the heat around these positions. >> all right, i feel like never having you here on good news days, paul. it's always like something's crazy, help me through it! >> thank you, my friend. we'll be back, stay with us. almost think of the note prior to it

as being your most important note. so ave-ma. if you nail that then you're golden.

i look where the rim and the net meet. put that basketball right on those hooks, and that's what i lock in on. let's talk about the equation of cooking. ingredients and execution. ingredients are controlled by somebody else. execution is all about you. breathe freely fast wmy congestion's gone. i can breathe again! i can breathe again! vicks sinex... breathe on. if you have moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, little things can be a big deal. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not an injection or a cream. it's a pill that treats 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. otezla is associated with an increased risk of depression. tell your doctor if you have a history of depression or suicidal thoughts, or if these feelings develop. some people taking otezla reported weight loss. your doctor should monitor your weight and may stop treatment. other side effects include upper respiratory tract infection and headache. tell your doctor about all the medicines you take and if you're pregnant or planning to be. ♪ otezla. show more of you. mentioned at the top of the show that there's some new reporting that may be a problem with the president's appointment of yet another fox news personality. this one, his choice for national security adviser. that new reporting about john bolton, a potential problem for

his appointment as national security adviser, that's next. stay with us. you wouldn't accept an incomplete job

from any one else. why accept it from your allergy pills? flonase relieves your worst symptoms including nasal congestion, which most pills don't. flonase helps block 6 key inflammatory substances. most pills only block one. flonase.

here is the business website of a man named tim glister. he's british. he used to work for the british parent company of cambridge analytica, scl. you can see that this british guy touts his experience on this

web site working in the u.s. in the 2014 midterm elections, specifically working to elect tom tillis to be a republican senator from north carolina. he said he spent three months in north carolina with a consult antsy team create highly-targeted advertising that harnessed scl's national database of voter issue sentiment and psychographic profiles. and then he, on his website, he shows an ad from that election, to illustrate his work on behalf of thom tillis, during that election, which is weird, because from what we can see, this guy is not american. he's british. and american law says only american citizens are allowed to directly or indirectly participate in u.s. political campaigns at any sort of level that involves decision making about the campaign. you can hire non-americans to lick envelopes or whatever, but

hiring them to to help tom tillis' campaign create highly targeted advising, having somebody not american to do that, that might be a little much for american law. so, first of all, this raises the question of foreigners working on u.s. campaigns. second of all, this is about cambridge analytica, the data firm for the trump campaign. put that same quote up there again. this guy is bragging about the harnessing of the national database. according to whistle-blowers, that is what they obtained illicitly from facebook. they took private data from more than 50 million americans without permission thanks to a stealth software package who was -- by a professor who was jointly employed by cambridge

university and a university in russia. over the last week and a half, cambridge analytica has come under tough scrutiny, not only by british experiment but also by the european union. the british parliament held an emergency debate and took testimony on allegations that companies linked to cambridge analytica may have been used to dump tons of illegal money into the british brexit campaign to leave the european union. part of that allegation from a disgruntled co-founder of cam bridge analytica, part of that allegation is that those companies linked to robert mercer were systematically set

up and used as a way to hide money that was going into campaigns. >> it was mentioned almost as an aside, mentioned it a couple of times that you've seen one invoice or more than one invoice with the word on it? >> i don't have it. >> they famously have no monday whatsoever so i'm wondering what they are doing in terms to sort of pay for this particular -- >> part of the brilliance of cambridge analytica is it doesn't need to make money because it's robert mercer's project. robert mercer is a billionaire. he doesn't need to make money, right? so -- and further, if you -- if put money as a shareholder as an investor into that company, that's not classed as a political donation, right?

that's an investment in a company you're the owner of, right? i'm improving r & d, expanding our teams, i'm doing -- but you can do that more pointedly and continue to invest purposely into a company so that it can also work for particular entities a the a subsidized rate or indeed in some cases for free. so one of the things that i'd also just point out is that just because there's, you know, a bill with a particular number on it, it doesn't mean that that's the genuine value of the work that was produced because part of the brilliance of the setup that robert mercer created was that it becomes very easy to actually get around campaign finance laws in terms of declarations because it's an investment. he's a shareholder, he can invest. >> so what's emerging out of

this investigation overseas into the workings of this company that went on to be the trump campaign's data firm is that the way that this data firm did is they did lots and lots of work for campaigns but they had the luxury of not charging very much for it. roger mercer, one of the richest men on earth, could afford to fund this company up the wazzu. presto change-o because robert mercer illegally funding a campaign without anyone on either side disclosing it. that's the allegation for the brexit campaign in the u.k. and by implications for the 2016

presidential race and that's a question about the 2016 election itself. wllt tr when the trump campaign paid cambridge analytica just under $6 million, senator klobuchar brought that up. >> how does that work with the trump campaign and is that truly the value, a couple million compared to what somebody said maybe a billion dollars, is that truly the value?

>> so that brings us back to tom tillis. this is the very end of that ad that he's been featuring there. >> you see the bottom part there? this is an ad that he dreamed up while he was working for cambridge analytica but according to the end, it's paid for by the john bolton super pac, also funded by robert mercer, who also funded cambridge analytica, and these connected companies and entities were set up as a way to funnel

mercer's money into campaigns without it being seen. john bolton's super pac appears to be have been one of the links in that alleged operation. and of course he has just been named national security adviser. since we first got a look at that british consultant's web site bragging about the 2014 election and tom tillis, he didn't answer our ee-mails, at least in the form of an e-mail reply, but after we asked him about the john bolton super pac ad, he changed his web site and just put up in its place a very exciting picture of tom tillis, which maybe the british guy also helped with, i don't know. now instead of saying he helps thom tillis's campaign, instead of all that, now that he's had the better part of four years to reflect on it and started asking questions about that last night,

he's changed it to say he was really helping a local political party, none of that psyc psychographic information anymore. here's bolton in a video. now here's bolton showing up and reporting about cambridge analyti analytica, which robert mueller is also reportedly investigating

over the election and now comes this watch dog complaint about bolton's pac. we are six days out for the announcing of bolton for this incredibly sensitive job. heck of a choice. heck of a way to get started. your letting go thing. your sorry not sorry thing. your out with the old in with the new, onto bigger and better thing. get the live tv you love. no bulky hardware. no satellite. no annual contract. try directv now for $10/mo for 3 months. more for your thing. that's our thing. visit directvnow dot com tripadvisor compares prices from over 200 booking sites to time to bask... in low prices! find the right hotel for you at the lowest price. refreshing, isn't it?. tripadvisor.

♪ tired of wrestling with seemingly impossible cleaning tasks? using wipes in the kitchen, and sprays in the bathroom can be ineffective. try mr. clean magic eraser. simply add water, and use in your kitchen for burnt on food, in your bathroom to remove soap scum, and on walls to remove scuffs and marks. it erases 4x more permanent marker per swipe. for an effective, multi-surface clean, use mr. clean magic eraser. brand power. helping you buy better. how'd i get this yard? behind pete's great looking yard, is his secret weapon... the scotts turf builder program.

all it takes is 4 feedings, with a scotts solution for every season. it's that easy. this is a scotts yard. ekonomou -- i'm not sure. >> i think of him as the author of the book about the popes. >> yes. and he's also, as of tonight, president trump's critical lawyer. as we recall at this hour last night the president did not have a criminal lawyer while the special prosecutor is investigating him for possible obstruction of justice. but now enter 69-year-old andrew ekonomou. and when the movie is made, this is the part you want.