mueller's russia probe and an alleged hush money payment to porn star stormy daniels are today converging on one man. michael cohen, trump's personal attorney and as vanity fair styles him a real life ray donovan. last night trump through cohen under the bus blaming him for hush money payment to porn star stormy daniels. the stormy saga may be the least of cohen's legal worries. it now appears bob mueller's russia probe may be zeroing in on him. mcclatchy reporting mueller's investigators are particularly interested in interactions involving michael d. cohen, trump's long-time personal attorney and trump former organization employee. among other things, cohen was involved in business deals secured or sought by the trump organization in georgia, kazakhstan and, wait for it, russia. unpacking the trump/cohen relationship and their shared legal woes brings a village and we brought one to the table. joining us are favorite friends

and reporters from "the new york times," michael schmidt, jennifer r jennifer ruben. phil rucker. we were both up at 11:00. we can ask for slack at the top. joyce vance, former us attorney now msnbc contributor and frank figliuzzi, former fbi assistant director for counter intelligence now an msnbc analyst. so glad you're all here. as you can see i'm having a battle with the teleprompter already. let me start with you, joyce, and a man, a moment and a whole lot of legal bills. michael cohen, take it away. >> michael cohen is looking like the focal point for this investigation or at least one of the focal points right now. and the reason for that, nicolle, i think is because he brings together a lot of the disparate threads in this investigation that all lead back toward the trump campaign's relationship with russia. cohen was around in 2013 when

trump first commissioned reports on how he pullolled in all 50 states. at that point cohen said he hadn't spent a million so books could sit on his shelf and gather dust. they will go that far back perhaps earlier to see if the threads chase that far back and if they then play out in the 2016 meetings or in other parts of the campaign. >> and make sure we know from your reporting that bob mueller has subpoenaed the records of trump organizations. so, they could very well include an obvious overlap of many of michael cohen's business interactions with russians and anyone else. >> i think what we see here is the problem with the special counsel for the president. it creates an apparatus that can look at all these different things. they're going to scrutinize everything. they're going to look under every rock, every deal, every little thing, and that's the

problem. the special counsel has to turnover all the rocks. when you do that you often find unsavory things. i think we'll continue to see a churn hereof these different sort of oh, mueller is looking at this, looking at that. it's because he has more than a dozen prosecutors and more than a dozen fbi agents looking at everything in donald trump's life. >> donald trump described to you and your colleagues maggie haberman and peter baker a red line around his personal finances and businesses. it is abundantly clear from mcclatchy reporting and your reporting where part of the mueller investigation is heading. you talked about the possibility of unsavory findings. it's a pretty well known fact in trump's own circle that there were a whole lot of unsavory characters. i think felix saider was on capitol hill testifying in front the senate intel committee. can you talk about some of the figures in the mueller probe we now know who have been through -- into meetings with his investigators and the other dots they may be trying to

connect around trump organization? >> well, the thing is george nader, this person who has lobbied for the uae that had kudled ku cuddled up to the trump administration -- brodie, the republican fund-raiser. mueller starts looking at all these different aspects to try and put the pieces together. you have someone like george nader emerge as this cooperator with mueller. why is he cooperating? what is mueller interested in with him? why is the uae -- my colleague had a piece in the times just yesterday about how nader's ties to russia are greater than we thought they were. as we try and knit all these things together, you have all of these different things and mueller is just pulling on all these strands. at the very least he's going to find some sort of unsavory -- it may have nothing to do with the president, but it may have to do

with access in washington. we're learning more about fara, how you register as a foreign agent in washington. >> or not. we are also learning some people who were supposed to register as foreign agents may not have done so. >> the problem with manafort and that's the issue with manafort. >> frank figliuzzi, i love when you take me inside the investigator's mind, inside these rooms. what crimes are they looking for in everything that mike schmidt just laid out? >> well, before we talk about crimes, let's not forget how this special counsel inquiry started and what's at the heart of it. it started as a russian counter intelligence investigation. so, one of the questions that mueller has to answer is not whether there are criminal violations, but rather how, when and why a foreign power may have compromised our president. that question needs to be answered and it's paramount. now, wrapped up in that, nicolle, are clearly the possibility of criminal violations and that could be violations of the emoluments clause which prohibits foreign

monies being targeted into u.s. presidential campaigns or any campaigns for that matter. don't forget that there could be computer fraud and abuse in the sense that any hacking that occurred, the social media propaganda, the theft of data could be a computer -- federal computer hacking violation and conspiracy to commit that if that was part of what was in the circle of knowledge for the campaign. so, that's what they're looking at. but it's helpful to think of the mueller team almost as epidemiologists tracking the origin of an infection. increasingly with this reporting, we are seeing that cohen and certainly manafort may be the vectors for the russian infection. how did that happen? you know, when you get a cold or the flu, i start thinking back how i got it. was it the guy sneezing behind me on the airplane? >> i always think about the guy sneezing behind me on the airplane. >> it's always that guy. >> let me stop you on the infection analogy.

one, i'm reaching for emergency, and two, i want to know is donald trump the host body? in this analogy, is donald trump the one infected with conflicts of interest on the russia side, would that be one of your theories? >> so, this is the question. did i have the cold when i got on the airplane or did i get the cold after the guy behind me started sneezing and that's the question that mueller is trying to answer. my theory, it's all of the above. i think we're looking at a president who was tainted early on with russian business, although he keeps denying he had any russian business, doesn't have any russian friends. then i think his circle of friends propagated that virus and that infection. >> let me just keep up with the infection in two people who had the cold were his sons, don junior at a real estate conference said russians makeup a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. we see a lot of money pouring in from russia. in 2017, eric trump said, i guess he was talking to a golf

writer -- i guess he plays golf. he said we have all the funding we need out of russia. he later he denied saying that, i'm not sure why a golf writer would lie. again, the contact and coordination is hiding in plain sight. i think what we're getting at is the motive and whether or not there was a conspiracy to impact the outcome of the election. is that an accurate description of where we are? >> i think that's right, nicolle and it's been publicly documented the trump organization, the business had tried for years to develop a front in russia, to develop a business there to create profit from that part of the world. and one thing that's important to keep in mind is that donald trump revealed so little about his business when he was running for president. usually presidential candidates release years of their tax returns. they release other documentation about their business. there is sort of a public vetting that goes on to show where the money comes from. we don't know the answers to these questions because he didn't release that documentation back when he was running for president. so now the mueller investigation is trying to find some of those

answers. >> and one of the keys to that would be, in fact, michael cohen. take us back to the 1990s to 2000s. donald trump had run out of lenders in the united states. meanwhile a lot of oligarchs in russia make a huge killing in the transition to noncommunist government. what did they do? they came to the united states with sacks of money and they started investing and they started investing in trump properties and they started financing. so, part of that, part of the origin of how trump got so involved with the russians really goes back very far. and that's just the sort of thing michael cohen would be able to get into. >> talk more about that. you wrote a great piece today, basically the view from the under belly of the bus he's been thrown under. talk more about michael cohen because it seems like he answers what donald trump laid out in an interview with you about exactly the kind of lawyer he wants. he wants a fixer. he's jealous. he sees eric holder as having

protecting owe bhbama while he t the justice department. michael cohen may seem like a less than stellar legal mind, but he is exactly what donald trump wants. >> that's right. and he has this kind of hybrid role which by the way is going to come up in the mueller investigation if they try to invoke attorney/client privilege. he's a lawyer but he's really kind of more than that. phil credit. he fixes things before the client knows about it. that's kind of the inference in the stormy daniels. how many other people, did he have a stash of money he used to settle things so that donald trump wouldn't be implicated? donald trump didn't have to know about these things. what else was he doing? we know he was involved in the trump tower deal in russia. that he was preparing -- had prepared a letter of intent. so, there's lots of ways in we he operated in a business context, in a legal context. and a lot of this is not confidential. it's not private. wasn't involved in a conversation.

in fact they're denying they had any conversations at all at one point. so he's in a lot of trouble because, of course, the investigation now into the stormy daniels, to divert back for a moment, has left him holding the bag on things like violation of campaign finance reform, campaign finance laws, a whole panoply of other issues. >> let me put up from that interview with you what the president said he wanted. he expected his top law enforcement official to protect him the way robert f. kennedy had done for his brother and eric holder did for barack obama. mr. trump asked where's my roy cohn? this idea he wants fixers, it's a delusional sense of what the justice department can do for him. seems to be laid bare in his treatment of michael cohen aboard air force one. you have to call michael cohen. that's what he would like to say about jeff session ands rod rosenstein, isn't it? >> he sees roy cohn about this

model. he developed this relationship with him back in the -- when he was a young up and coming businessman here in new york. cohn taught him the ways of the road, helped as a fixer and he's had these in his life since then. that's why a lot of reasons lawyers in washington don't want to work for him. he's having such a difficult time. lawyers dream of representing someone like the president and he can't find a real lawyer. >> that's what he said. that's what he said when your colleague wrote about what a hard time he's having. joyce, take us inside where the rubber meets the road if you want roy cohn to represent you, but your problems do sort of present some real legal jeopardy. why is he having such a hard time? >> he's a tough client to manage. the statement that he made about stormy daniels yesterday just exemplifies that because -- >> tell us why.

>> your advice is don't talk about it. if you're asked a question, ignore it and keep moving. but he can't resist. so, we know he doesn't take advice from his lawyers very well. he often gives the impression that he believes that he's better at strategy or better at legal process than they are. and oftentimes he is his own worst enemy and the kind of client that no lawyer really wants to voluntarily take on because it's really the opposite of his alleged midas touch. he's not turning lawyers into golden boys. he's really ruining careers at this point by associating lawyers who he then either drags through the mud, doesn't pay their bills, or potentially exposes them to the need to hire their own legal counsel. >> do you think that's a possibility with john dowd who now it's been reported by even your colleagues reported, dangled pardons in front of witnesses who later pleaded guilty to crimes? do you think it's a possibility that someone like john dowd

could become a subject and need a lawyer himself, joyce? >> so, i don't think that we can rule that out. the timing of his departure on the heels of the news that he had dangled those pardons is certainly one piece of evidence from which you could conclude he had been told that there were problems coming down the road. the origin of that problem is that the pardon process is something -- and, nicolle, i'm sure you know this. you expect to see that process initiated someplace along the spectrum between the justice department and the counsel's office issuing pardons. you don't expect to see that happening with a lawyer in private practice who represents the president. it looks like the quintessential bribe. and i'm sure that mueller's team will take a good hard look at dowd, whether or not he becomes a subject in the investigation, it's really not even possible to speculate. >> frank figliuzzi, our viewers can't see you nodding, but i can. go ahead. >> there is some irony developing here which is that

mueller is going to key in right on this notion of the fixer. it's the nature of a fixer to do things that are questionable. we see a predisposition in cohen in paying off stormy daniels, using fake names. he's in that gray world as an attorney/fixer and that's what mueller is going to focus on and that's what exposes cohen to the likely possibility that mueller is going to try to flip him. mueller is going to approach him, look, i don't want to hear about attorney/client privilege when you're talking about the potential for illegal acts and all these foreign transactions that might involve money laundering or possibly tax violations so it's his bar membership on the line, his reputation on the line and i think mueller is going to take that approach. >> now you're the one nod being. >> listen, we were just talking about how trump envisions the justice department. he thinks that the presidential pardon power, like the power to fire executive branch people, is absolute, that he can do it for any reason, even to protect

himself. somewhere along the line, either his lawyers didn't tell him or they told him and he didn't believe them, yes, he can have obstructed justice. yes, he cannot use the pardon power if it is for the purpose of, in essence, a bribe. he thinks whatever he can do, whatever is put in the constitution, he can do to protect himself. and the justice department should be acting to protect himself, he's somehow above and beyond the scope of the criminal justice system. that's wrong. and unfortunately he's got the worst lawyer who is going to encourage that, someone like michael cohen who would go out and make these deals. he would tell his attorneys to go out and dangle pardons. he said, hey, i've got this pardon power. i pardoned joe arpaio. i can do whatever i want. i can do whatever i want with the justice department. that was his line. and that's a very problematic attitude. and i think mueller is going to go right to the heart of that and use these issues as part of the obstruction of justice argument. >> last word, is that your sense of where mueller is sitting?

>> just back on the lawyer issue, the reason john dowd left is the president wouldn't listen to his advice. >> to not talk to mueller, right? >> john said, i've had enough. i have a client that will not listen to what i'm telling him. trump went out and said, yeah, i want to sit down with mueller. dowd put out a statement saying, no, that's not going to hachlpp. i will be the one doing the negotiations. he couldn't control his client. >> do you want to get in? >> that is exactly right. i would point out one thing talking about cohen and whether mueller can flip him. he's a different -- >> do you have to have some value to be flipped? would he be flipped to sing about trump organization and the dirty business? >> my point is he's different than the people who became entangled in the investigation, flynn, manafort and others. he's not a new person from the campaign. he's not someone who showed up on the plane in the general

election. he's been by trump's side and he knows a lot. >> when we come back how the fate of embattled scott pruitt has become a sense of war between donald trump's trust and kelly. went from insider status with the trump campaign to sanctioned crone i. we'll show you one of the last places donald trump can still get legal advice in the high stakes mueller investigation.

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the president feels that the administrator has done a good

job at epa. he's restored it back to its original purpose of protecting the environment. it's gotten unnecessary regulations out of the way and we're continuing to review any of the concerns that we have and i'll keep you posted if there's anything further on that front. >> meaning she'll keep following the president on twitter. but for now the president is sticking by his man. here's how he defended the embattled epa administrator earlier today. quote, do you believe that the fake news media is pushing hard on a story that i'm going to replace a.g. sessions with epa chief scott pruitt who is doing a really great job but is totally under siege. do people really believe this stuff? so much of the media is dishonest and corrupt. according to "the wall street journal" and our own reporting chief of staff john kelly urged trump to remove pruitt. but mr. trump welcomes the deregulatory measures taken by mr. pruitt and values him as a strong advocate for the president's agenda.

proof of that even today, nbc news confirmed that trump and pruitt met earlier at the white house. so, pruitt's job may be safe, but that hasn't stopped the ridicule. these signs have been popping up around d.c. luxury condo on capitol hill, $50 a night. live like scott. there is a phone for the epa public affairs office. joyce and the table are still here. phil, you talked last night, this is not an epa story, this is a white house story because of the six people who are speaking out, "the new york times" reporting yesterday about all his ethical lapses. two of them are political appointees. one of them is his chief of staff who has a direct line to the white house. and i wonder how sustainable it is to have someone who -- even in the time of trump, his ethical lapses are note worthy. >> the ethical lapses are extraordinary and it's not just one case here, one case there. it's -- >> keep talking. we'll put them up.

he likes to travel with sirens. he likes -- he like bullet proof stuff. >> he likes jet lease. a bullet proof desk, bullet proof suv, a new desk like the president's desk. soundproof -- >> phone, not sure what that was for. first class travel. the private jets you're talking about. >> beefed up security patrol. >> right, for all the epa threats. >> and the issue here for pruitt is that the white house staff have really lost faith in him. they've turned on him. if it were up to chief of staff john kelly, pruitt would have been fired long ago. but it's not up to john kelly, it's up to trump. he's kept pruitt around because he views pruitt as an ideological person, rules and regulations governing environmental rules and he likes what pruitt is doing at the epa. and you know, this ethical stuff, it swirled around trump,

too. in all sorts of agencies in this government, it has to do with his family, too. there are so many unethical -- ethical problems for this president that i don't think he personally takes it seriously. >> this reminds me of the embrace of roy moore. he couldn't be against a credibly recused -- >> child molester. >> this seems like once again it's difficult for him to pull the rug out from someone accused of ethical misconduct when he is the most unethical president we've ever had. >> right. abusing the taxpayer's money, trump is the king of that. how many days has he spent at mar-a-lago and how many times has he hawked his own properties using the presidency? so, you're right. all of this for trump's perspective is just noise. it's just people trying to get him. and what makes -- >> is it exhibit 444 that the media is out to get him and his agenda? >> that's the way i think he

interprets efrlg theverything tt goes awry. >> let's put that tweet back up. the most incredible thing from the tweet this morning, he talks about the report being phony. do you believe the fake news media is pushing hard on a story that i'm going to replace a.g. session was epa chief scott pruitt who is doing a great job? what stunned me is the second line was epa chief scott pruitt is doing a great job, not the story is wrong because jeff sessions is doing a great job. it's amazing that he's more eager to defend a guy who is more corrupt than, you know, we've talked about mob bosses early in the show. this guy basically functions as a mid-level mob guy and he uses his twitter feed to defend pruitt, not sessions. this story is wrong because i would never punish pruitt for being an unethical boob. it's wrong because i would never give him -- it's crazy. >> i saw it the other way. i said, wow, this is the greatest endorsement of

sessions -- this is the president who said i would not have made him attorney general if i knew he was going to recuse himself. >> if i knew he was going to follow the law i would never have put him there. >> sessions is going to be around a few more days. >> he doesn't have any competition, joyce. and this question of sort of corruption and misconduct seems to always bring us back to why he's under investigation in the first place. >> yeah, you know, pruitt is just such an anomaly. there are so many unanswered questions about his behavior, questions that would have sidelined any other cabinet secretary. and so i guess on the one hand jeff sessions should feel comfortable that pruitt is the one who is chasing his job, that it's not someone with higher ethical standards. pruitt's a little bit interesting, too, because so many of the items that he wants that he's willing to waste taxpayer money on seem to be elements that go along with the attorney general's position. he wants a private room for

secure conversations. the epa secretary doesn't need that. the attorney general does. he wants a 20-person security team which i think is even bigger than the attorney general's. >> yes. >> he has so much envy of that job it's almost like he's trying to dress for success before he gets the post to show everybody that he's worthwhile, but this is someone who can never be and should never be an attorney general nominee. >> i'm not even sure he should be the epa administrator. let me show you a man whose personal character was never in question, some questioned his conduct on behalf of donald trump. this is the outgoing national security advisor h.r. mcmaster. he was unsermon iously fired by the president who hired john bolton to replace him. i want to ask you, phil rucker, put you on the spot, how does the guy get the rare you're fired from donald trump, he usually likes to do that by twitter missive or john kelly should be noted, too, mcmaster was a close ally of kelly. another sign of kelly's waning

influence mcmaster is on his way out and pruitt is safe as can be for now. >> kelly had some disagreements with mcmaster and was eager for a change there, too. it's interesting that the white house staff are all lined up in the parking lot to cheer on mcmaster because the president was so sick of him. they did not like him personally. they never gelled. mcmaster was too much of an intellectual, a lecturer. trump wanted someone to get to the point, show him pictures, not words in intelligence briefings. it was like oil and water. it was only a matter of time before mcmaster walked out the door. the sign in the west wing is telling. it shows the staff was behind him. >> it's interesting how he went out this week. he gave that speech at the atlantic council earlier in the week. >> the anti-russia speech. >> used the word failure. >> used the word failure. today you have to think his good-bye gift to the country was relatively tough sanctions, by

far the toughest the trump administration has come up with which goes to putin's inner circle, the oligarchs. that had to be the product of mcmaster's work. he leaves with his head held high, that he did his job. you know, from his perspective it's probably a badge of honor or relief getting out -- >> let me ask you, frank figliuzzi, if you're mcmaster, do you want to know how russia policy was made inside the west wing? >> oh, indeed, indeed. and mcmaster is a likely interview soon if it hasn't happened already. and i think mcmaster would be someone who just wants to help and shed light on what was going on in the oval office. i think that's likely to happen. >> do you have a sense that the crafting of russia policy is at all of interest to bob mueller? >> i think that he'd want to understand why there is such a gap. if you're doing a counter intelligence investigation into russia's meddling in the election, you'd want to know why there is such a gap between the

president and his administration on the russia thing. why are they saying two different things constantly. >> every single day. my, how far they've fallen. the russian oligarchs sanked today includes one man offered a bird's eye view of the trump campaign's inner workings. that's next. [burke] vengeful vermin. seen it. covered it. we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪

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the trump administration today i am poedsing new sanctions on two dozen of vladimir putin's closest allies in russia. among them two named in christopher steele's trump dossier and three russians who keep coming up in bob mueller's russia investigation. most notably an oligarch who once had close ties to paul manafort, trump's one-time campaign chairman, as "the new york times" writes the sanctions come just as investigators working for robert mueller have begun to question oligarchs about possible finance links between those in putin's orbit

and mr. trump. frank figliuzzi you have predicted something that turned out to be true, so i'm going to start with you. is it your sense the people being sanctioned are also people who are on or could be on bob mueller's radar for crimes committed during the 2016 election? >> yeah, i think there are some overlapping people there. but i've got to tell you, while i applaud the sanctions today and they're making it painful to be a friend of putin and that's a good thing, i also think, you know, i'm a sin i ccynic. i'm looking for the back story. one unkind word being uttered by the president, i think we're seeing foreign policy as personal defense. we'll see the president using this as cover. i'm tough on russia, but he won't come out and actually say an unkind word about russia. it allows him to keep arms length distance and to defend himself by saying, see, i'm willing to approve sanctions

like this, but there is something not right about him personally not coming out and calling out russia on these sanctions. >> joyce vance, i heard a near identical, not quite as eloquent articulation of these sanctions from two former justice department officials today who said it feels like he's protecting himself from criticism that has been raining down on him really since the beginning as mike schmidt just said, he never has a harsh word to say about russia. and these two former justice department officials positive this had more to do with his personal -- the optics of his personal legal liability when it comes to all of the affinity he's expressed for russia than really punishing an american adversary. these two officials were not convinced he actually sees russia as an american adversary. >> yeah, and i would agree with all of that. you know, it's worth noting, nicolle, that bill broader who was the client actually of the lawyer magnitsky who died in

russian prisons and for whom the magnitsky act is name, broader came out saying the sanctions are dead on target, he felt like they would be meaningful and impose pain on the oligarchs even though they had been greatly delayed. these are essentially sanctions congress passed last summer ordering the president to impose by the end of january. and it's only just now today that we're seeing sanctions on the oligarchs and these sanctions, as you point out, the president didn't stand up at a podium, didn't announce them, didn't own this policy. so, he would appear to have some cover. he can tell bob mueller, i'm the strongest president ever when it comes to russian sanctions. but in reality it doesn't look that way. and something that i have to wonder about here, you know, we saw mueller's original indictment that involved the 13 russians and the russian companies. mueller's indictment happened. trump announced some sanctions, but those same sort of people, i wonder if perhaps the white house this time is a little bit

ahead of mueller announcing sanctions of people that mueller has now begun to put under the microscope. one aspect of u.s. law is that it's illegal for a foreign citizen to donate to a u.s. election to contribute. it's also illegal to use a straw person. so, for, say, a russian foreign donor who can't donate himself to work through an american citizen, just to funnel money through them into a presidential or other campaign. there is some indication mueller may be looking at conduct like that. so, i wonder if these sanctions will match up with a future mueller indictment. >> mueller has charged paul manafort with, i don't know, i think we're up to close to two dozen charges. paul manafort offered to give one of the indicted oligarchs today, darapaska behind the scenes in briefing during the republican convention, these were people that were extremely

close to the trump orbit. there has to be some awareness among someone around the president that they are getting pretty close to the intersection of the mueller probe in foreign policy. >> we saw in the filing from mueller just last week the fact that rick gates was in touch with a russian intelligence asset in the middle of the campaign as he was the deputy campaign chairman. right there -- >> is anyone else watching homeland? i worked on six campaigns. what does a deputy campaign manager need from a russian intelligence officer? >> the interesting thing is why did mueller put that in the filing? he's putting something through on the gates, filing something on gates. he's got a gates sentencing coming up. gates has pled. he puts that out there. >> why, what's your -- >> i don't know. if you look at all the different things mueller has filed, it begins to tell a story. we begin to see a story of sort

of what went on. the indictment of the 13 russians on the social media stuff. my guess is at some point we'll see something on the hacking. maybe we'll never see a 9/11-style commission report on this, but maybe in the end we can take the public documents and say, here is the story. >> you think that's what's happening? >> what's very interesting is that mueller loves i think to drop hints for those who are paying attention. this week we had the first -- >> i don't know he cares about hinting. i think he issues warnings to people. >> i think it's a warning to trump and his lawyers. what word did he use in the first conviction, the first proceedings -- actually sent someone to jail this week. this was the dutch lawyer. >> right. >> he used the word collusion. it doesn't have a legal meaning, but it sure has a political meaning in this context. so, yes, i think that is exactly what he's doing. he's weaving together the disparate elements. now, as far as the sanctions go,

i'd like to know what the contexts were. were these the least onerous sanctions? in other words, what was he presented with? we haven't seen sector-wide sanctions. you know what would really hurt? oil and gas sanctions. you know, that really hit the russian economy. right now these are for the most part surgical strikes against individuals and individual companies. maybe trump thought that this was the least he could get away with. >> doesn't hurt vladimir putin. it wouldn't hurt his political standing, weaken him. these sanctions don't do that. >> it's a victory for the foreign policy establishment that's wanted something. trump has opposed sanctions all through last year, wouldn't take any action, wouldn't allow his government to take action. >> angry it snuck into the spending bill. >> very angry about it. now we're actually seeing this is real >> when we come back, donald trump has struggled for weeks now to recruit top legal talent to defend him in the mueller probe. we'll show you where he's turning these days for advice.

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and he will take this wherever it leads. i just wish that we could let him do his job. >> there could be a domino effect that leads to the end of this presidency. and robert mueller's findings could be that first piece to fall. >> the way to best understand mueller's investigations is to look at it as bucket. there is a russia bucket, an obstruction bucket and a finance bucket. the bucket we know most about is obstruction one. these are things the president has done since he came into office. why did he fire james comey? why did he ask for comey to end the flynn investigation? why has he demanded so much loyalty of the folks running the investigation? >> that was a little bit from msnbc's headliners, a special about robert mueller, former federal prosecutor and trump ally said to me of rod

rosenstein's selection of mueller to head the special counsel today when they picked bob mueller, they picked a prosecutorial assassin. that may help explain why trump's favorite tv lawyers are advising him not to sit down with mueller ever. we don't have that, but if you watch any fox news, which i've been here for the late shift this week, you were last night, you could see anyone from joe digenova to alan dershowitz to judge napolitano to chris christie telling the president whatever you do, do not walk into an interview with bob mueller. here it is. >> stay away from that, mr. president. that interview environment is extremely dangerous. if he's a subject and not yet a target and they want him to become a target, they're going to ask him questions the answers to which will move him into that target category. >> the president should not agree to an interview. >> the president should, at the most, answer written questions in a very limited area and he

should never, ever be interviewed. >> the president absolutely should not sit down, he should not agree to do it. >> yeah, i mean, look, this is the same advice that trump's personal lawyer john dowd was giving him. he's no longer the lawyer because trump wouldn't listen to him. but we know the president watches a ton of tv. he consumes this. there is more credibility for him when it comes from somebody on television talking to him. and we also know he has tremendous faith in his own charisma and his own ability to spin his way out of a story. if he wants to face mueller, he thinks he can have the upper hand there. >> you're positively bursting. >> yes, this is nuts. it is not optional to sit down with the special prosecutor who has the power of subpoena. he can try to oppose the subpoena. he can try to tell a court that -- why he should be subpoenaed. he has two options. he will have two options. he can sit down for an interview voluntarily or get subpoenaed and go that way. there is no way for him to avoid this. and that is why this advice is so bizarre.

>> those are tv shows. >> yes, right. >> let's push this forward, though. we have the report at the beginning of the week that the president now has been told he's the subject. washington post also reported that mueller is preparing some sort of report that would go to rod rosenstein and potentially the chairs and ranking members the senate and house judiciary committees. there is a debate in legal circles whether he will or will not indict the president, whether he does or does not believe he may indict the president. what is your reporting suggest? does it suggest any sort of conclusion based on the public reporting at this point? >> no, but on the question of the interview, in this story we sort of feel this momentum building. they have interviewed everyone. they're waiting to interview the president. but if the president says no, what we'll see is a fight in court because then mueller will subpoena him and then it will probably go all the way up to the supreme court and that is not something that happens

overnight. so, if you're donald trump and you're afraid of a report going to congress in, say, july and you think, well, i have these midterms coming up, well, why don't i have mueller subpoena me, we'll go to the courts, we'll let the courts decide it and then maybe in a year i'll sit down and talk to him. >> you'd be surprised how fast an expedite can get through. i absolutely agree. he thinks he can play this out and play this out and play this out. but eventually he's going to have to go. the scary thing for him must be that this report that he's filing is going to be about obstruction of justice. it's going to be about his post-election, his presidency. so, that means, i think it's fair to say, that he doesn't. mueller doesn't buy this notion that what the president has been doing, because it's within his presidential powers, is above the law. that's what his attorneys were telling him. that's not mueller's theory because he's going to use all of those facts, everything from the firing of jim comey all the way

up to trying to intimidate witnesses, put out false spins, all kinds of actions and he's going to say, that amounts to obstruction of justice. and that's going to be i think what's going to be hanging over trump's head for as long as he's president. >> and don't forget to join me for headliners. frank figliuzzi is in it too. it is this sunday on msnbc at 9:00 eastern. we will be right back. we can't predict what tomorrow will bring. but our comprehensive approach to financial planning can help make sure you're prepared for what's expected and even what's not. and that kind of financial confidence can help you sleep better at night. with the right financial advisor, life can be brilliant.

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we waited patiently and lo and behold christmas has arrived. the president's comments on air force one are serious for him, serious for michael cohen. how can you have an agreement when one party claims that they don't know anything about the agreement. >> joyce, thattory was breaking while on the air yesterday. michael avenatti have a stronger case than 24 hours ago. >> boy, he has a good case. it is tough for someone to enter into a contract that they don't know anything about. and lawyers debating this one upside and down. there is talk about whether trump could be a third party beneficiary entitled to enforce this contract, but when you cut through all of the legal mumbo jumbo it looks like avenatti has a good reason to get a federal judge to declare that there is no contract. that means that there is no

proceeding that lets them have this resolved outside of the public eye. no kind of private arbitration and at the end of the day, that is exactly what avenatti wants, for this to go forward as a public proceeding. >> and at the end of the day, for the record, that is the white house's worst nightmare realized. >> it is. and you know they acknowledged privately, white house officials, this is a real story and stormy daniels has a pretty credible account. they're denying it sort of overall in public. but they notice there is something here. and it is a problem because they don't have full visibility into what exactly happened. i don't think the president is being truthful entirely with his own staff about this. >> frank figliuzzi, let me give you the last word. >> wouldn't it be something if what takes down the president is not the mueller inquiry but the stormy daniels affair because maybe he was in on threatening her and in on silencing here and there could be a violation of law there and he made a huge mistake by conceding he never

heard about the payoff. >> let me just press you a little bit. what kind of crimes could have been committed in silencing -- or nda illegal. >> absolutely not. but don't forget stormy daniels said in a las vegas parking lot someone approached her and attempted to silence her and implied a threat against her child. if that is linked to cohen an trump there is a problem and it could be interstate travel to make a threat. and there is potential implications there. >> and better men have been brought down for less. we have to sneak in a last break. don't go anywhere. we'll be right back. and don't worry i have everything handled. i already spoke to our allstate agent, and i know that we have accident forgiveness. which is so smart on your guy's part. like fact that they'll just... forgive you... four weeks without the car. okay, yup. good night. with accident forgiveness your rates won't go up just because of an accident. switching to allstate is worth it.

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my bladder leakage was making me feel like i couldn't spend time with my grandson. now depend fit-flex has their fastest absorbing material inside, so it keeps me dry and protected. go to depend.com - get a coupon and try them for yourself. before we go, we'll do something to get us in trouble with both of them because they didn't tell us, but we want to congratulate phil rucker and mike schmidt were honored of the george polk award and they were recognized for the extraordinary work in uncovering the connections between the trump

campaign and russians which of course led to the mueller investigation. very well deserved. we're grateful to have you as colleagues. congratulations to you. and my thanks to the panel. that does it for our hour. >> i'm nicole wallace. "mtp daily" starts on time. i'm on time for you for once. >> if you keep telling me you're on time -- never mind. happy friday. i'll see you tuesday. but if it is friday, is the political climate changing for the embattled epa chief? tonight what will it take to break the protective conservative bubble around scott pruitt. >> and the trump slump. the dow takes a drop as the threat of a trade war rises. >> this tariff thing is not a bluff. not at all. >> and