porn star stormy daniels are today converging on one man -- michael cohen, trump's personal attorney and, as "vanity fair" describes him, a self-styled real life radon van. trump last night threw cohen under the bus, blaming him for an alleged hush money payment to porn star stormy daniels, but we're learning today 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 special counsel the bob mueller's investigators are particularly interested in actions involving michael d. cohen, trump's personal employee and a former trump 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 take a village. joining us, our favorite friends and reporters from the "new york times," michael schmid, jennifer

rubin, opinion writer for the "washington post," phillip rutger, white house -- we were both up at 11:00. we can ask for slap at the top. white house bureau chief for the "washington post," joyce vance, a former u.s. attorney, now an msnbc contributor and frank figluzzi, former fbi assistant director for counterintelligence. 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 threats in this investigation that all lead back toward the trump campaign's relationship with russia. cohen was around in 2015 when

and at that time cohen said he had not spent a million dollars on polling reports just to let them sit on his bookshelf and gather dust so special counsel will scrutinize russian relationships, that far back or earlier to see if these threads chase that far back and if they play out in the 2016 meetings or in other parts of the campaign. >> we know from your reporting that bob mueller has subpoenaed the records of trump organizations so there 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. that's the problem is that these special counsels have to turn over all the rocks and when you

that, you often find unsavory things. so i think we'll continue to see a churn here of these different sort of, oh, mueller is looking at this, looking at that, because he's got 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 redline around his personal finances and businesses. it's clear from your body of reporting, from the mcclatchy report, that that's where part of the mueller investigation is heading. do you -- and you talked about the possibility of unsavory findings. it's a pretty well-known fact in trump's own circle that there were a lot of unsavory characters. i think felix seder was on capitol hill today testifying in front of the senate intel committee. can you talk about the other figures in mueller probe who we know to have been through that, into meets 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 cuddled up to the trump administration now cooperating with -- >> sold access, basically. >> correct. with elliot brodie, the republican fund-raiser. so what happens here is that mueller starts looking at all these different little aspects to try and put the pieces together and 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 -- is there a tie to russia? my colleagues had a piece in the "times" yesterday about how nader's ties to russia are greater than we thought they were. so it's -- we try and knit all these things together you have all of these different things and mueller's just pulling out all these strands and at the very least he's going to find some sort of unsavory thing, it may have nothing to do with the president but it may have to do with access in washington, we're

learning more about how you register as a foreign agent in washington. >> or not. i mean, we're also learning, some people who were supposed to register may not have done so. >> the problem with manafort. and that's the issue manafort is looking at. >> i love when you take me inside these rooms. what crimes are they looking for in everything mike schmidt laid out? >> well, before we talk about crimes, let's not forget how this special counsel inquiry started. it started as a russian counterintelligence 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 a u.s. presidential campaign or

any campaign for that matter. don't forget 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 and increasingly now with this reporting we're 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 to how i got it. was it the guy sneezing behind me on the airplane in the row behind me? >> i always think it's the guy on the airplane behind me. >> it's always that guy. >> let me stop you on the infection analogy because one

i'm reaching for emergen-c. is donald trump the one that's infected with conflicts of interest with russia on the business 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 i -- the guy behind me started sneezing? and that's the question 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 denies he had any russian business, doesn't have russian friends. and then i think his circle of friends propagated that virus and that infection. >> well, let me keep up with the infection in two people who have the cold were his sons, don jr. in an article in 2008 said russians make up a disproportionate cross section 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 denied saying that but i'm not sure why a golf writer would lie. so again the contact and the coordination is hiding in plain sight. what we're getting at it 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? >> that's right, nicolle. 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's sort of a public vetting that goes on the show where that 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 and the 2000s, donald trump had run out of lenders in the united states. meanwhile, a lot of oligarchs in russia had made a huge killing in the transition to non-communist governments. 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 that michael cohen would be able to get into. >> talk more about this. you read a great piece today, basically the view from the underbelly of the bus he's been thrown under, talk about michael cohen. 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 protected obama while he was at the justice department. he -- 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 more than that. i'll give phil credit for the analogy but he's like the mob lawyer. here's the guy who fixes things even 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 that he used to settle things so donald trump wouldn't be implicated? donald trump didn't even have to know about these things. what else? 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 which he operated in a business context, in a legal context and a lot of this is not confidential, it's not private, it 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, just 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 bag of -- >> a whole panoply of other issues. >> let me put up from that interview what the president said he wanted. mr. trump said he expected his top law enforcement officials safeguarded him the way he believed robert f. kennedy as attorney general had done for his brother and eric holder had done for barack obama. mr. trump asked where's my roy cohn? this idea that he wants fixers, that he has this completely -- it's really a delusional sense of what the justice department can do for him. it seems to be laid bare in his treatment of michael cohen aboard air force one yet when he said i don't know, you have to call michael cohen. that's what he would like to say about jeff sessions and rod rosenstein, isn't it? >> and he sees roy cohn as the model. he developed this relationship with him back in the -- when he

was a young up-and-coming businessman here in new york, cohn sort of taught him the ways of the road, helped work as a fixer for him and he has had these folks in his life since then. that's probably one of the reasons why a lot of lawyers in washington do not want to work for him and why he's having such a difficult time. >> real lawyers. >> 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 you and 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 really 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 he made about stormy daniels yesterday just exemplifies that. >> tell us why. >> your advice is don't talk about it.

if you're asked a question, just 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 he's better at strategy or better at legal process than they are and often times he's 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 associated 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 -- you and your colleagues have reported they 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 that 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 some place along the spectrum between the justice department and the white house 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 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 our viewers can't see you nodding but i can. go ahead. >> mueller is going to key in on

this notion of attorney as fixer because it's the nature of a fixer to do things that are questionable so we see a predisposition in cohen paying off stormy daniels, using fake names, he's in that gray world as an attorney/fixer and that's what mueller will focus on and that's what exposes cohen to the likely possibility that mueller will try to flip him. mueller will approach him and go, 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 laun laundering or tax payments. it's his bar reputation on the line. i think mueller will take that approach. >> now you're the one nodding. >> yeah. listen, we were just talking about how trump envisions the justice department. he thinks 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 them or they told him and he didn't believe them that, 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 him and he is somehow above and beyond the scope of the criminal justice system. that's wrong. and unfortunately he's got the worst lawyer who's going to encourage that, someone like michael cohen who would 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 heading? >> just back on the lawyer

issue. the reason john dowd left is that the president wouldn't listen to his advice. >> to not talk to mueller, right? >> and john dowd said i've had enough. i've got a client that will not listen to what i am telling him. trump went out and said, yeah, i want to sit down with mueller and then dowd tried to put out a statement saying no, no, no, that's not going to happen, i will be the one doing the negotiations here. that's why he left. he couldn't control his client. >> you want to get in on this? >> no, that's -- mike's exactly right. i would just point out one thing when we're talking about cohen and whether mueller can flip him, he's a different -- >> don't you have to have some value to be flipped? what would he flipped for? just talking about the trump organization and the dirty business? >> my point is he's different than other people who are entangled in this investigation, flint, manafort. cohen has been with trump for years and years and years, he knows a lot. >> all right, when we come back, how the fate of embattled epa

director scott pruitt has become a proxy war inside the west wing between donald trump's sense of loyalty and john kelly's code of conduct. also ahead, how one of the russian oligarchs sanctioned by the trump administration today went from insider status with the trump campaign to sanctioned crony. also ahead, we'll show you one of the last places where donald trump can still get legal advice in the high stakes mueller investigation.

>> the president feels that the administrator has done a good job at epa, he's restored it

back to his 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 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. "do you believe the fake news media is pushing hard on a story that i'm going to replace ag sessions with epa chief scott pruitt who's 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 also 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 luxuriously for cheap, just like scott." and there are tabs at the bottom with the phone number for the epa public affairs office. joyce frank and the table are still here. you and i talked last night. i wonder how sustainable it is to have someone who even in the time of trump his ethical lapses are noteworthy. >> well, the ethical lapses are extraordinary. and it's not just one case here one case there. >> let's put them out. keep talking. we'll put them up. he likes to travel with sirens.

he likes bulletproof stuff. >> he explored a private jet lease. he likes a bulletproof desk, a bulletproof suv. a new desk that looks like the president's desk. >> soundproof phone booth, not sure what that was for. first class travel. the private jet service. >> and the issue here. it's not up to john kelly, it's up to president trump. he likes what pruitt's doing at the epa. and you know this ethical stuff, it's swirled around trump, too. this is -- and all sorts of agencies in this government, it

has to do with his family. there are so many ethical problems for this president that i don't think he personally takes it all that seriously. >> this reminds me of the embrace of rick santoroy moore. >> abusing the taxpayers money. trump is the king of that. how many days has he spent at mar-a-lago? how many times has he hawk hiss own properties using the presidency? you're right, all of this from trump's perspective is noise. >> is it better than that, though? is it exhibit 444 that the media is out to get him and his agenda. we read the tweet from earlier

today. >> let's put that back up. what's the most incredible thing to me about this tweet from this morning is that 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 ag sessions. we talked about mob bosses. he says this story is wrong because i would never punish him for being an unethical boob. it's crazy. >> i said wow, this is the greatest endorsement of sessions i've seen so far.

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 never would have put him there he does have a lot of 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. >> pruitt is an anomaly. there's so many questions about hiss behavior that would have sidelined other cabinet secretaries. on the one hand, jeff sessions should feel comfortable that prui pruitt. so many of the items 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 doesn't need that, the attorney general does. he wants a 20 person security team which is even bigger than the attorney general's. he has so much envy of that job it's like he's trying to dress for success to get the post to show everybody 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 should never be in question. this is the outgoing national security adviser h.r. mcmaster. he was unceremoniously fired by the president who hired john bolton to replace him and i want to ask you phil rucker, i want to put you on the spot. how does a guy like that get a rare you're fired from donald trump who usually likes to do that by twitter missive or through kelly.

>> i think in the last few weeks kelly had disagreements with mcmaster and was eager for a change there, too. but it's interesting the white house staffer li are lined in t parking lot to cheer on mcmaster because the president was so sick of him. didn't like him personally. they never gelled. mcmaster was too much of a lecturer. trump wanted someone to get to the point, show him pictures, not words in those intelligence briefings and it was just -- it was like oil and water. so it was only a matter of time before mcmaster walked out the door but that sign in the parking lot of the west wing there is quite telling. it shows the staff is behind him. >> it's interesting how he went out. >> today you have to think that his good-bye gift to the country was a set of tough sankctions

which go to putin's inner circle. so he leaves with his head held high. a a and. >> if you're an investigator do you want to know how russia policy was made in the trump west wing? >> indeed and h.r. mcmaster is a likely interview soon if it hasn't happened already. and i think mcmaster would be someone who wants to shed light on what was going on in the oval office. that's likely to happen. >> do you have a sense the crafting of russia policy is at all of interest to bob mueller? >> i think you'd want to understand why there's such a gap. if you're doing a counterintelligence investigation into russia's meddling, i think you'd want to understand why there's such a gap between the president and his administration on the russia

think. why are they saying two different things constantly? >> every single day. my, how far they've fallen. the russian oligarch sanctions today include one man who was once offered a bird's eye view of the trump's campaign inner workings. that's next.

the trump administration today imposing new sanctions on two dozen of vladimir putin's closest allies in russia, among them two officials named in christopher steele's controversial trump dossier and three russians who keep coming up in bob mueller's russia investigation, most notably oleg deripaska, 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 russian oeligarchs about possibe financial links between those in mr. putin's orbit and those close to mr. trump.

frank figliuzzi, you have predicted twice something that turned out to be true so i'll 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'm a cynic, i also look for the back story and i think what we're seeing here, without one unkind word about russia being uttered by the president, i think we're seeing foreign policy as personal defense. i think 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. it allows him to keep an arm's length distance and to defend himself by saying see, i'm willing to approve sanctions

like this but there's nothing not right about him not coming out and calling out russia on these sanctions. >> joyce vance, i heard the 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 since the beginning as mike schmidt said he never has a harsh word to say about russia and these two former justice department officials posited this had more to do with his personal -- the optics of his personal legal liability when it comes to the affinity he's expressed for russia than punishing an american adversary. these two officials were not convinced he sees russia as an american adversary. >> yeah, and i would agree with all of that. it's worth noting nicolle that bill browder, who was the client, actually, of the lawyer magnitsky who died in russian prisons and for whom the magnitsky act is named, that

browder came out this morning saying that the sanctions were dead on target, that he feet like that would be meaningful and impose pain on the oligarchs even though they had been greatly delayed. these are essentially sanctions that congress passed last summer ordering the presidents to impose by the end of january and it's only just now today that we're seeing sanctions on the oligarchs and the 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 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 i have that to wonder about, we saw mueller's original indictment that involved the 13 russians and the russian companies, mueller's indictment happened, trump announced some sanctions that hit those same sort of people. i wonder if 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, to just funnel money into a presidential or other campaign. there's some indication mueller may be looking at conduct like that so i wonder if samnctions will match up with a future mueller indictment. >> mueller charged paul manafort with i think we're up to two dozen charges. paul manafort offered to give one of these indicted oligarchs today, oleg deripaska, a little behind-the-scenes briefing during the republican convention. these were people that were extremely close to the trump

orb orbit. there has to be some awareness around the president that they're getting close to the intersection of the mueller probe and 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 is n the middle of the campaign. as he was the deputy campaign chairman what does a deputy campaign manager need from a russian intelligence officer. he's got a gates sentencing coming up. he puts that out there. >> why? >> i don't know. but if you look at 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 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 to the -- hear re is the story. >> is that what's happening? >> what's interesting is that mueller loves to drop hints for those who are paying attention. this week we had the first -- >> see, i don't think 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, in the first proceedings, actually sent someone to jail this week. this was the dutch lawyer. >> van der zwaan. >> he used the word "collusion." it doesn't have a legal meaning but it has a political meaning in this context so yes i think that's what he is doing. he is weaving together the disparate elements. as far as these sanctions go, i'd like to know what the

context were. were these the least onerous sanctions? what was he presented with? we haven't seen sector-wide sanctions. you know what would really hurt? oil and gas sanctions. that really hit the russian economy. right now these are for the most parent part surgical strikes against individual and individual companies. maybe trump thought this was the least he could get away with. >> it's clear he doesn't hurt vladimir putin. doing something like jennifer was talking about would hurt his political standing. it could weaken him in the country. these sanctions don't do that. >> it's still significant. it's a victory for the foreign policy establishment within the administration that's wanted something. trump opposed sanctions through last year, wouldn't take action, wouldn't allow his government to take anxious. >>. >> was angry. >> very angry about it. >> when we come back, donald trump has struggled for weeks to recruit top legal talent to defend him in the mueller probe. we'll show you where he's turning these days for advice.

>> 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 buckets. there's a russia bucket, an obstruction bucket and a finance bucket. the bucket we know the most about is the obstruction one. these are questions about what 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 information? >> that was a little bit from msnbc's headliners, a special about robert mueller, a former federal prosecutor and trump ally said to me of rod rosenstein's selection of mueller to head the special

counsel that when they pick 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 last week, you were last night, you could see anyone from joe digenova to alan dershowitz to judge nepalitano, stay away. here it is. >> stay away from that, mr. president. if he's a subject and not a target and they want him to become a target they'll ask him questions the answers to which will move him into the 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. >> this is the same advice that trump's personal lawyer john dowd was giving him. he's no longer the lawyer, but we know the president watches a ton of tv, he consumes this. there's more credibility when it comes from somebody on television talking to him and we know that he has tremendous faith in his own charisma and his own ability to spin his way out so he wants to face mueller, he thinks he can have the upper hand there. >> you're positively bursting. >> yes. this is nuts. it's not optional to sit down with the special prosecutor who has the power of subpoena. he can oppose a subpoena, he can try to tell a court that -- why he shouldn't be subpoenaed but he has two options, he will have two options. he can sit down for an interview voluntarily or he can get subpoenaed and go that way. there's no way for him to avoid this and that's why this advice is bizarre.

>> those are -- and those are tv shows. >> let's push this forward. we have the report at the beginning of the week that the president now has been told he's a subject. the "washington post" reported that mueller is preparing a report that would go to rod rosenstein and potentially the chairs and ranking members of the senate and house judiciary committees. there's a debate in legal circles over whether that means he will or will not indict the president. what does your reporting suggest? do you suggest any sort of conclusion based on the public reporting at this point? >> no, but on the question of the interview is that in this story we feel this momentum building, they've interviewed everyone, they're waiting to everyone 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 go up to the supreme court and that's not something that happens overnight so if you're

donald trump and you're afraid of a report going to congress and say, well, i have these midterms coming up, why don't i have mueller subpoena me? we'll go to the courts, let the courts decide it and in a year i'll sit down and talk to him. >> you'll be how fast an expedited appeal to the supreme court can get through. but i 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 he is filing is going to be about obstruction of justice. is going to be about his post-election -- his presidency so that means, it's fair to say, that he doesn't -- mueller doesn't buy this notion that what the president has been doing within his presidential powers is above the law. that's what his attorneys were telling him. that's not mueller's theory. he's going to use those facts, everything from the fire of james 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 will be hanging over donald trump ice head for as long as amounts to obstruction of justice and that's what's hanging over donald trump's head for as long as he's president. >> don't forget to join me for "headliners," it is an in-depth look of robert mueller and this sunday at 9:00 p.m. eastern time. we'll be right back. patrick woke up with back pain. but he has work to do. so he took aleve. if he'd taken tylenol,

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we waited patiently and low and be hold, 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 they don't know anything about the agreement? >> that story was breaking while we were on the air yesterday. does he have a stronger case today than 24 hours ago? >> boy, he's got a good case. it is tough for someone to enter into a contract that they don't know anything about. lawyers debated this upside and down, there is talk about whether trump could be a third party beneficiary who's entitled to force this contract. it looks like michael has gotten awfully good reason to get the federal judge to declare there is no contract. that means there is no

proceeding let them have the results outside of the public's eye. that's what he wants for this to go forward as a public p procedent. >> this is a real story and stormy daniels account. they know something here. they don't have full visibility until what actually happened. i don't think the president was truth fu truthful of his staff on this. >> maybe he was in on threatening her or maybe he was in on silencing her. there could be a violation of law there and he made a huge mistake by conceiving that he never heard about the pay off.

>> let me press you a little bit. what kind of crimes have been committed in silencing, in of itself is it illegal? >> stormy daniels says in a las vegas parking lot, someone approached her and attempted to silence her and threaten against her child. if that's linked to cohen and trump, there is a problem there. there is potential violations there. >> the better men have been brought down for less. we have to sneak in on our last break. don't go anywhere. we'll be right back.

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to do something that's going to get us in trouble. we want to congratulate two of our most favorite people. their teams at the pulse were recognized for their extraordinary work covering the connection between the trump campaign and the russians which led to the mueller investigation. grateful to have both of you as colleagues. my thanks to joy and frank. nicole wallace, i will see you back here on monday for " "deadline white house" at 4:00 p.m. let's play "hardball." >> good evening, i am chris matthew, back in washington, another of a wild week, it is 1600 pennsylvania avenue. the president ordered troops down the border.