over to my friend nicole wallace with "deadline white house." ♪ it's 4:00 in new york. big huge giant scoop in today's "new york times," a story that offers us the widest view yet of what special counsel robert mueller wants to know if and when he interviewed the president of the united states as part of his investigation into collusion with russia and whether the president has obstructed justice since he's been in office. the questions for the president shared with "new york times" reporter mike schmitt run the gamut from what the president knew about discussions during the campaign about easing russian sanctions to what he knew about his son-in-law's efforts to establish a back channel to russia. first, the reaction this morning from the president after the times story first broke. it was swift and it was familiar.

cue the no collusion tweet. quote, so disgraceful that the questions concerning the russian witch hunt were leaked to the media. no questions on collusion. oh, i see, you have a made up, phony crime, collusion, that never existed and an investigation begun with el li l illegalillega illegally leaked classified information. quote, it would seem very hard to obstruct justice for a crime that never happened. witch hunt. one thing the times report makes clear, the questions that were shared with the president's legal team were shared when attorney john dowd was still on that team. dowd resigned from the team at least in part over a dispute with the president about the wisdom of his participation in an interview with mueller. and after making the determination that the lines of questioning for mueller's investigators were potentially too perilous for trump.

giuliani has his first meeting with bob mueller's team last week and it appears rudy may have reached a similar conclusion. it may be where the rubber hits the road. the times writing, quote, mr. mueller has sought for months to question the president, who has in turn expressed a desire at times to be interviewed, viewing it as an avenue to end the investigation more quickly. his lawyers have concern that their client, whose exaggerations, half truths and outright falsehoods are well documented, could provide false statements or easily become distracted. joining us jeremy bash, former u.s. attorney general joyce vance, chuck rosenberg, former

federal prosecutor paul butler and elise jordan, former aide in the george w. bush white house. mike, take us through -- we tried to chunk this story up into bite sized pieces for you. but take us through what these questions say about where the mueller investigation stood at the time that they were shared with mr. trump's legal team. >> if you look at all the 49 questions, you take a step back from it, you see that an investigation that started two years ago looking at russia, questions of election meddling, ties between trump's campaign and russia, is now with the president mainly focused on the questions of obstruction. more than half of the questions they want to ask are related to things the president has done

when he was in office. what were his motivations for the firing of comey? what was truly behind these decisions? why is it that the president was so upset when jeff sessions recused himself? what was the president doing to try and influence the investigation? why was loyalty so important? when you step back, you look at this and there's even things in the questions that relate to actions the president took as recently as january. you see this sort of obstruction cloud that has been cast over the president and the difficulty he'll have answering some of those questions. >> i was struck that he sent out two tweets responding to your story. i was struck by the second one where he seems to come back and say, oh yeah, i'm innocent of obstruction too. someone obviously said to him, you know, your knee jerk "i didn't collude with the russians" tweet isn't going to cut it this morning.

does that suggest that the president's lawyers, even with the addition of rudy giuliani are still having a hard time getting through to this president about the degree of peril he faces if he's to go into a room with bob mueller's investigators? >> i still think the president believes he's his best spokesman, his best lawyer, his best strategist. he thinks he can explain anything to anyone and make them see his argument, whether that's in an interview or anything. the problem is the president meanders. he talks about a lot of different things and he has a difficult time concentrating. he will go off on tangents. in an interview with bob mueller, you can't do that. at one point when the president's lawyers were negotiated with mueller, they were going to have the president go in and meet with mueller and just read from a script in front of mueller. mueller said that would not be acceptable because mueller needed to question the president, look at him and say what was your intent, did you

have criminal intent in these different actions you have taken about the investigation. >> jeremy bash, mike's reporting also puts the special counsel's questions about collusion in the clearest light i've seen so far. so they fall into four basic categories, the trump tower meeting, efforts to build a trump tower in moscow, changes to the republican platform on russia, something you and i have talked about at length, and russia's digital efforts to help the trump campaign. we could be looking at some more basic crimes like bribery or quid pro quo. just speak to the broad picture about the scope of bob mueller's questions about donald trump and russia. >> i think, nicole, the bucket of questions that pertain to the campaign and pertain to what did donald trump know about, did he know about the trump tower

meeting, for example, and what did he do, what did he do vis-a-vis the trump tower plan to build in moscow, those are factual questions. the special counsel doesn't need a lot of factual development there because he's going to get those facts from documents, from witnesses, from records, from phone logs. he just wants to check whether the president is going to tell him the truth about those facts. the questions about obstruction require more questions, because they really are about state of mind. they're about intent. they're almost a question of law, which is what were you basing your authority upon when you fired jim comey, when you said that jeff sessions should not have recused himself. what is your attitude toward law enforcement. the special counsel needs to probe the intent, the state of mind of the president of the united states. that's why so many of the questions are focusing on that period of time. >> let me dive into the questions. i'm going to start with the one that you and your colleague describe as one of the most intriguing questions on the list. it's this one.

what knowledge did you have of any outreach by your campaign including by paul manafort to russia about potential assistance to the campaign? let me show everybody how paul manafort answered a question about ties between himself and donald trump and the campaign back at the republican convention in cleveland. >> are there any ties between mr. trump, you or your campaign and putin and his regime? >> no, there are not. that's absurd. there's no base to it. >> so you write it's not clear whether mr. mueller knows something new, but there's no publicly available investigation linking manafort to such ouout reach. we looked up the date he pleaded guilty. it was at the end of february. i believe you reported these questions were shared sometime in march. could that be something that the mueller investigators learned from mr. gates? >> yeah.

like always, we have to assume that mueller knows a lot more than we do. the surprising thing, i guess, about the questions, there were only a few things that really weren't publicly known that were in the questions, which sort of leads you to believe are there other questions that mueller's investigators were planning on asking. to understand the question, you have to answer that mueller really wants trump to sit down for an interview. they brought trump's lawyers in in march. we will tell you the topics we want to ask about. the president's lawyers have maintained it's very, very difficult for the president to prepare for such an interview. they said, look, let us help you. this is how this document was created, the president's lawyers writing down topics and putting them into these 49 questions. they looked at it and said, this

is no good, this is a lose-lose situation for the president. >> are you surprised that rudy giuliani so far is coming to the same conclusion that john dowd did, that an interview with bob mueller is no bueno for his client, donald trump? >> the president has long looked for a silver bullet to try and bring an end to this. there have been some thinking amongst trump's lawyers that if he did an interview, he could bring an end to the investigation and it would be over. now, the question is when the president is told that rudy giuliani doesn't want him to do, does the president go along with it or does he look for other people to go along with his view of the world? would he stay with giuliani and listen to him or would he try and find another lawyer who would encourage him to do the interview? >> there was only one question about jared kushner. let me read that one. what did you know during the transition about an attempt to

establish back-channel communications to russia and jared kushner's efforts. let's watch jared kushner explaining -- i think this was the day he testified on capitol hill his ties to russia or lack thereof. >> let me be very clear. i did not collude with russia, nor do i know of anyone else in the campaign who did so. i had no improper contacts. i have not relied on russian funds for my businesses. and i have been fully transparent in providing all requested information. >> joyce vance, i've. following you on twitter all day as i always do. you've got some thoughts about what mike is reporting about jared kushner and jared kushner's possible status may be. >> well, kushner said what he had to say when he was up on the hill. there was no doubt he wouldn't have been able to continue in the white house at that point in

time had the answers been any different. but as the information that's publicly available -- nicole, you're always good to point out that what we know is just the tip of the iceberg. but just that tip of the iceberg points heavily in a direction that's not good for jared kushner. now we have these questions that are either mueller's questions or notes taken by trump's legal team, reflecting mueller's questions. and they indicate an assumption that kushner was involved in setting up a back channel, that kushner was in some ways a part of this collusion package that the special counsel's office is looking at almost as though it's a foregone conclusion that kushner is guilty. then we mary that knowledge up with the fact that kushner has not been recalled but for his brief one-hour stint of testimony with the special counsel. it really looks like things are on a bad track for him. >> do you agree? >> maybe. i mean, i think joyce's

inference is a fair one. it's never a good day for the fbi to be asking questions about what you did and why you did it. so i would not be happy right now to be jared kushner. completely agree with joyce on that. whether or not he actually conspired with russians to interfere in the election or set up a back channel and broke the law in some other way, don't know yet. and i think i hear joyce saying the same thing. but these are the types of questions investigators always ask. you ask questions typically that you know the answer to. but sometimes you also ask questions to which you do not know the answer. >> also on this list is a question for the president of the united states about whether he was aware of the platform change at the convention. if you've ever worked for someone who was nominated to represent the republican party, there has never, ever, ever, ever been a change in the platform to make it nicer to vladimir putin. >> no. and going back to the time when this actually happened, i

remember i was so struck by it that i looked into it and spoke to several party delegates who were involved in drafting the platform committee. i was told that indeed they tabled this one resolution for lethal said for ukraine. then they said the two staffers who were working for donald trump on his campaign said, we have to go to the campaign, we have to go to mr. trump. the delegate i spoke to wasn't sure whether that was bragging about their access to donald trump or whether they really did go to donald trump. i wonder if bob mueller is even going back to republican platform delegates involved in this drafting of the resolution. >> paul, i'm always reminded that i sometimes give donald trump too much credit for being too good of a crook if he is found to have been one, that these would have been low ranked crimes, that he simply could have been paid to do something nice for the russians. what do you think of the lines of questioning around russia and whether it looks like a quid pro

quo or a more elaborate scheme along the lines of the crimes for which bob mueller has indicted 13 russians. what do you make of the questions about the president's knowledge when it comes to russia and what his campaign chairman and son-in-law were mixed up in? >> so for robert mueller, collusion is still a thing. you know, it's been reported that -- >> collusion is still a thing. i'm going to get that trending. >> he's been focused on obstruction. to be sure, many of the questions are about obstruction. but he's talking about roger stone and wikileaks and whether president trump knew that mr. stone had these connections with the russians. again, trump is right. collusion by itself is not a crime. you know what is a crime? conspiracy to defraud the united states. mueller's already charged people with that. if trump knew about these wikileaks leaks and he used those to help his campaign, that's not a good look for him.

>> jeremy bash, let me give you the last word. what potential liabilities are there for the president in answering these questions about the president's knowledge of what paul manafort was up to, what jared kushner was up to, wikileaks and all these russia-related things under the bucket of the collusion investigation? >> well, he could acknowledge knowledge of a conspiracy to violate federal election law. that would be hugely problematic. or as his lawyers are concerned, he could try to deceive investigators. that would create another bucket of hot water for him to be in. >> he could lie. he could perjure himself. >> yes. >> all your lawyers have such a hard time with the l word. by far the vast majority of questions published by the "new york times" today are focused on the obstruction of justice investigation. we'll dive right into the deep end there when we come back.

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and it's "daditude". simple. easy. awesome. xfinity. the future of awesome. in a paragraph sure to send chills down the spine of any one of donald trump's attorneys, the times writes the open-ended queries appear to be an attempt to penetrate the president's thinking, to get at the motivation behind some of his most combative twitter posts. they deal chiefly with the president's high profile firings of the fbi director and his

first national security advisor. his treatment of attorney general jeff sessions and a 2016 trump tower meeting between campaign officials and russians offering dirt on hillary clinton. interestingly, the special counsel also wants to ask trump about an account reported in the "new york times" that he considered filing mueller himself. everyone's still here. mike, let's start with you. let me start with the flynn question. you report that one of the questions on the list, how was the decision made to fire mr. flynn on february 13th, 2017. here's sally yates offering her version of events. >> in the course of the meetings, both on the 26th and 27th, mr. mcgahn certainly demonstrated that he understood that this was serious. he did seem to be taking it seriously. i don't have anyway of knowing what, if anything, they did. if nothing was done, then certainly that would be concerning. >> so you don't know whether they took any steps to restrict his access to classified

information, to investigate him further up and until the "washington post" published information that made it clear that he had been lying to the vice president? >> no. again, i was gone after the 30th. i wouldn't know if any steps had been communicated to the department of justice. i was not aware of any, no. >> you and your colleagues have reported that don mcgahn has been before mueller's investigators at least twice that we know of, also that don mcgahn's attorneys have funneled information back to the special counsel when they feel that the president has communicated with don mcgahn or other white house staffers about their testimony or about the russia investigation. talk about the flynn communication from sally yates to don mcgahn. talk about the flynn firing as the flash point that bob mueller wants to talk to the president about. and talk about what could be at risk for the president in the firing of mike flynn. >> that was sort of the

interesting thing about the document, is sort of how many big unanswered questions there still are in the public record's mind. why was there such a delay on firing flynn? they were warned this at the end of january. it wasn't until after the "washington post" reported that he had indeed discussed sanctions on the phone with the ambassador, that the president went forward and had flynn removed. we still don't know what the reason is for such a delay. why was it that they did not take it more seriously? also on comey, the president's side of the story, did the february 14th meeting happen? that's when comey says the president asked him to end the flynn investigation in the oval office in a one on one meeting. remember, that comes just a day after flynn was fired. here we are looking back at these events just like bob mueller is. and the president still haven't really addressed these things

publicly and he certainly hasn't laid out why he did the things he did and what motivated him. that is sort of at the heart of this investigation, is what was really driving the president, what were the motivations. as we were saying before, how did he view this investigation, how did he view law enforcement and loyalty in all of that. what mueller's trying to do is unpack that and understand all of these different events that have piled up over the past 15 months. >> another question, what was the purpose of your february 2017 meeting with mr. comey and what was said? here's comey's version of that interaction. >> there's 28 words there are in quotes. it says, quote, i hope -- this is the president speaking, i hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting flynn go. he is a good guy. i hope you can let this go. >> as i said in my statement, i could be wrong, but flynn had been forced to resign the day

before, and the controversy around general flynn at that point in time was centered on whether he had lied to the vice president about the nature of his conversations with the russians, whether he had been candid with others in the course of that. so that happens on the day before. on the 14th the president makes specific reference to that. so that's why i understood him to be saying that what he wanted me to do was drop any investigation connected to flynn's account of his conversations with the russians. >> you write that was a key moment. why is that so important to the mueller investigators? >> well, because that is really the event which is when it's disclosed -- that event was disclosed in may of 2017 -- that led rod rosenstein who was overseeing the russia investigation to appoint the special counsel. that event really brings into question the president trying to exert his influence over the fbi. why was it that the president wanted the flynn investigation to be over? did he think it was simply just

a distraction for the country and we needed to move forward? or was there something more concerning about what flynn knew? why was he going to such lengths to do that? if you remember, the president on february 14th is in the oval office with all of his national security officials, the vice president, the attorney general. it's a terrorism meeting. then the president clears the room of everyone to have the one on one discussion with comey. reince priebus interrupted it at one point. the president tells him he'll need more time and that is when he discusses this with comey. why did he clear the room? that's a question comey has repeatedly brought up. >> why would the prosecutor want to know the answer? >> because it goes to intent. >> intent to do what? >> to obstruct justice. >> what other explanation is there? >> i don't know that there is another explanation. let me tell you how i think about it. proving intent is always the hardest thing to do. one way we can prove it is to

ask the person who did it, what were you intending to do. >> why would you think donald trump would tell you the truth? >> you don't necessarily expect the truth from the person you ask that question of, but there's a whole bunch of other people who might know. who did donald trump talk to, who did he tell he was frustrated about comey, who did he tell he was disappointed in flynn? all the people around him -- and you worked in the white house. you know there's a lot of people around the president at various times -- might know the answer to those various questions. bob mueller, to do his due diligence, also has to ask the president. >> there's a subtext, i think, to these questions, which was why was the president so anxious to fire james comey and why was he so reluctant to fire michael flynn when obama told him flynn was dirty. >> chris christie told him too. >> this is my favorite question. what did you mean when you told

russian didnplomats that firing comey had taken the pressure off? there's no good answer to that. there's no way that trump answers that without starting himself on the road to the big house. >> joyce, steve bannon allegedly in the book fire and fury lays a lot of the blame for the decision making around firing comey at the feet of jared kushner. what do you make of the significance of sort of getting to what chuck rosenberg talked about, the fact pattern around the president's state of mind on the decision to fire comey? >> paul's point is really, i think, the biggest take away here, the idea that there's one case where you've got someone who really had to be fired and there's dillydallying.

and theimmediate firing of comey. discerning intent is something you can do in many cases by examining conversations that your target or your subject has with the people around them. we know the president doesn't e-mail himself, but perhaps there's other documentary evidence. so speaking with trump himself really in many ways fulfills mueller's obligation to test the truth. because one thing prosecutors don't want to do is to indict or to reach conclusions about someone who's innocent or who's not guilty, because they haven't spoken with them. perhaps the president has an explanation here and mueller should try to hear his point of view. as you say, it's very difficult to read just the questions themselves even without answers, just the information contained in the questions presents a

really damaging picture of what the president's intent was when it comes to these events that involve obstruction. >> jeremy, one thing we do have in the public space is donald trump's different explanations for why he fired comey. he told lester holt he was always going to fire him. i think the day before he waved around a memo he had rod rosenstein craft with five reasons why comey should be fired for his handling of the hillary clinton investigation. so the president himself, who we understand to be at least a subject in the investigation, has offered different answers for why he fired comey. >> well, the heavily orchestrated rationale was about comey's performance during the 2016 campaign. but the unscripted version that he gave to lester holt and privately to russians in the oval office was, of course, this was all about alleviating the pressure of the russia investigation. i think it's important this aspect of flynn and sally yates and don mcgahn is very

important, because what the special counsel wants to know is, mr. president, did you know that mike flynn had lied to the fbi. did don mcgahn report that to you? because if so and you kept him in the job, then it's evidence that you were okay with flynn's concealment of the matter to the vice president and concealment of the matter to the fbi. so it shows that the president, when he went to jim comey in the oval office, clearing the room and said i hope you can see your way through to clearing this guy, he knew a crime had been committed and he was trying to totally shut down that valid criminal inquiry. >> you're close to jumping out of your chair. go. >> you don't always get to talk to the person you want to talk to. federal prosecutors, you want to talk to the target or to the subject, but they don't always agree. it doesn't stop us from making

cases. how do we know what else was in the president's mind? even if we do talk to him, he might not tell you the truth. so how do you know what's in his mind? the people around him might know. priebus, mcgahn, hope hicks might know. there are dozens of people who might know. i can assure you that bob mueller will have talked to every one of them. donald trump has cabinet secretaries who have been had to resign after ethical scandals who have been treated better than his attorney general jeff sessions. could his blistering attacks on sessions be used against him in the mueller probe?

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and keep kids out of gangs, and on the right path. that's antonio villaraigosa. a governor for all of california. the president has made no secret of his disapproval of jeff sessions' decision to recuse himself from the russia probe and he's known to continue to grouse about it to this day.

is it possible that his treatment of sessions maybe be under skrcrutiny as part of the obstruction of justice investigation? you have a question here, mike. on mueller's list of questions, as recorded by the president's lawyers, did you discuss whether mr. sessions would protect you and reference past attorney generals general? in an interview with you at mar-a-lago, the president says i don't want to get into loyalty, but i'll tell you this holder protected president obama. totally protected him. when you look at the irs scandal, when you look at the guns or whatever, the tremendous problems they had you look at the things they did and holder protected the president. i have great respect for that. bob mueller wants to know exactly what he was talking about. >> that's the sort of one of the themes that runs through these questions, certainly through the sessions section. i was actually a little struck

by how many sessions questions there were. how does the president view law enforcement? how does he view the folks that should be running the investigation? this has been one of his biggest obsessions from the beginning, sessions' decision to recuse. the president had his white house counsel don mcgahn lobby sessions not to reaccuse himself. the president lost it when he did. he actually was muttering so of those similar things, saying he needed an attorney general who could protect him like bobby kennedy had done for his brother and like eric holder had done for barack obama. this is a theme he has come back to several times, the idea that the person who was running the justice department should have loyalty to him, should be someone that will protect him. the interesting thing about this is that we spent a lot of time often looking at what donald trump has done behind the scenes and then he says them very openly in public. when we interviewed him in july,

he plainly said, i would not have made sessions my attorney general if i knew he was going to reaccuse himself. >> paul butler, there is no single thing that offended the sensibilities of right wing lunatic friends of mine who are form eer doj types who would be loathe to vote for anyone other than a republican. when donald trump tees off on the justice department, it drives them berserk. this seems to be something that has gone from being the o obliteration of a norm to something that may suggest or imply guilty of the president to now being at the heart of bob muell mueller's obstruction of justice investigation. he also appears to be investigating how mr. trump took steps last year to fire mueller himself. the president relented after white house counsel don mcgahn threatened to resign. >> this is about about special

counsel mueller and how he views the justice department. you know, when i was doing public corruption for the justice department, my friends said it's got to be political. i'm like it's actually not. we look at the facts. if we think we can bring the case, we bring it. i was proud of that. i don't know if donald trump's justice department believes that. we know that mueller has these questions because he already has a written narrative of trump's lie. they gave them written statements. so mueller wants these questions right from trump's mouth. when we look at how open ended the questions are, what did you think about, what efforts did you make, again, that's to t try -- not a perjury trap, but a trump trap. to get him do what trump does.

>> and lie. a former top intelligence official said to me today that we may be calling the president a subject because bob mueller may or may not have determined that he can or cannot charge him, a sitting president. does anything in this line of questioning suggest that if he weren't the president of the united states, he'd be a target of this investigation? >> it's so very hard to make that assessment. we see a lot of evidence and it certainly doesn't look good for the president. on the other hand, we don't know all the details. as chuck points out, it's very hard to prove intent. but i think one possible interpretation of what we see is that the president is a subject, not a target only because mueller intends to follow doj policy that says that you can't indict a sitting president. but i think your right wing former doj friends would be in total agreement with my left

wing doj friends and my middle of the road doj friends. >> we're united the world. >> we do. i mean, it is not the president's personal sword. it's not his personal shield. it's the department of justice. it has to stand for something larger than political goals. >> something else that's in here, special counsel wants to know a little bit more about another "new york times" report. john dowd raised the prospect of pardons for flynn and manafort. how does john dowd figure into this? >> in discussing who might be the source of these questions, of course, we can't pose that question directly to the witness here we have before us, mike schmidt. >> he'd shoot all of us before he'd tell us who any of his sources are. >> john dowd is someone who used to be part of the trump legal team, is now no longer. the "new york times" reported that this did not come from the

trump legal team. i think all of us believe it did not come from the tight-lipped special counsel's office. so i was speculating earlier with savannah guthrie on the today show that perhaps john dowd could be the source of this. at 10:16 a.m. i got a very stern e-mail from john dowd. he said i was not the source, i was not the leak. please correct the record on national television. so i'm just putting it out there that john dowd is saying emphatically on the record that he was not the source of this material. >> i can one up you. >> please. >> before i'd even gone on television, two people called me to tell me that rudy wasn't mike schmidt's source either. let me come back to you, mike, because this was your body of reporting and ask you -- these questions were communicated back in march. what's transpired since then has been the departure of dowd, the arrival of rudy and a lot of ongoing activity that people

suggest that obstruction of justice may not be something they're investigating as an event that took place in the past, but there could be behaviors that are ongoing. do you have any insight into that? >> the interesting thing was in the questions was something about an interaction the president had the don mcgahn in january. in january when we reported that trump had asked mcgahn last june to fire mueller, the president got very upset about this and confronted mcgahn about it and said, this did not happen and asked him to correct the record on it. there were some concerns about that, because why was the president talking to a witness about things the witness had said to the special counsel's office. this had been relayed back to the special counsel. whatever transpired there was certainly enough to get on mueller's radar to the point that they want to ask the president why was it that he was asking mcgahn about this.

mcgahn has been told by the white house official at the time that the president may get rid of him if he didn't put out a statement that corrected this. it's one of the things that has gone on as recently as january in response to a media report. >> the sessions recusal, the flynn firing, the comey firing, and the attempt that you just described at the mueller firing. what picture does this paint of mcgahn's day to day existence in the trump white house? >> he seems like he's been fighting for survival since he stepped into the door. he has a client who doesn't want to stay within the law. he wants to have a lawyer who helps him do whatever he wants to do. that's been the repeated pattern that we've seen with mcgahn throughout all of this. i really wonder who leaked these

questions because it certainly was not in donald trump's interest necessarily because it just remind you of how much there is in this timeline ranging from the party platform to eric prince in t. it doesn't necessarily do donald trump any favors except his advisors are clearly desperate to not have him sit down the bob mueller. >> it lays out for the president just how perilous an interview with someone like bob mueller who one of the president's allies describes as a prosecutorial assassin. >> they don't need mueller to tell them what the president's vulnerabilities are. we can all sort of divine what those problems are. in fact, i would assume that the folks here aren't terribly surprised by that list of topics, right? there might be a question or two here or there that strikes us as something we hadn't thought

about. but in the main, we know these firings and the president's anger about sessions' recusal and on and on are sort of in the main, the obstruction case, right? >> right. >> what are they trying to do? i'm not sure, but i would expect that a good lawyer would have had this conversation with the president. >> all right. mike schmidt congrats on the reporting. joyce vance, thank you for spending time with us. up next, president trump's long time doctor claims his office was raided, because he says he revealed something the president didn't want public.

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with the right steps, 80%of recurrent ischemicide. strokes could be prevented. a bayer aspirin regimen is one step to help prevent another stroke. so, i'm doing all i can to stay in his life. be sure to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen. before america ever met dr. ronnie jackson, there was this guy, harold bornstein. during the campaign he released a statement saying trump will be, quote, the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency. shortly after trump was

inaugur inaugurated he gave a series of interviews where he said he prescribed a hair growth medication former white house ad and trump's body guard keith shiller. here's bornstein describing the incident. >> i feel raped. that's how i feel. raped, frightened, and sad. i was completely surprised. the morning or two after the story about his hair ran. she said so you want to be the white house doctor? forget it. you're out. i couldn't believe anybody was making a big deal about a drug that's to grow his hair which seemed to be so important. and it certainly is not a breach of med sal to say someone takes

propecia to grow hair. that's wrong with that? >> what were they looking for? >> pictures, anything they could find, medical records. must have been in here 20 to 35 minutes. created a lot of chaos. never in 30 years have i talked with donald trump with anyone who didn't work in this facility, never. i was very ultra careful to lock the charts and lock the labs. >> it clearly sounds like illegal search and seizure, and he probably should have gone straight to the police after, but that said, he should not have been disclosing donald trump's prescription medications no matter if it is something cosmetic. i think that's still protected within the code of -- the hipaa violations they're supposed to keep. >> that's not what sarah huckabee sanders thought. >> why did keith shiller who was a white house employee at the time go and take medical records

from the president's personal doctor last year? >> as is standard operating procedure for a new president, the white house medical unit took possession of the president's medical records. >> it was characterized as a raid. is that your understanding of what happened? the doctor seemed to be pretty upset about it. >> that is not my understanding. >> i don't know a lot about much, at all, but that is not normal. jeremy bash, my mission is life is to get you off topic from the pentagon and the cia. your thoughts? >> i'm off topic. >> we all are. >> i think in 2018 you take possession of medical records by e-mail and say please transmit the records from the med sical office. >> you don't send your bouncer? this is such a weird -- let me make a serious point. as with all things trump, this didn't have to be a black eye. this could have been handled in a civilized manner without making your doctor feel in his words, raped. you could have knocked on the

doors, sent an e-mail, made an appointment and said we didn't think we were going to written, but now that we have, let's move his medical records to the white house system so they're in one place. it's at best something that was conducted in a terribly unprofessional manner. >> yeah. there's a character in the time show billions. wags. this is what wags would do. >> wags is wetter than that -- better than that. >> that's right and only in hollywood would they cross it out and say they can't send an e-mail. they have to muscle up and send three people and cause the doctor to fear for his life. >> ronnie jabsy jackson was th president's physician until he flamed out for the v.a. position. incapable of responding to allegations that we don't know if they're true or not. they pertain to his record as a physician. it includes overdescribing percocet and drugs gone missing,

drinking on the job and overprescribing sleep aids. now you have the president's doctor's office raided right after he reveals the president took propecia. one thing that ronny jackson did that earned him a lot of affection from the president was to stand in the briefing room and hold court for i believe, like, 64 minutes. it happened in the iv -- 4:00 hour, and said if he could, he'd live to 200 years. he gave a weight that didn't seem likely based on the president's appearance, and he testified to the president's mental acuity which we have no way of knowing the facts. he offered up things that seemed to be a stretch. and now you've got a doctor's office that's been raided. it certainly points to an area that the president wants to keep shielded. >> yeah. so the president uses the white house physician office like he loved to use the fbi or the justice department. like they're his personal

political agents. and again, thank goodness that so far rod rosenstein has not fallen for it. but what kind of doctor does this is the question that i have. and so nicole to your earlier point about if trump were a regular subject in a drug conspiracy, would he will implicated? when we look at the conduct, maybe strong manning someone to steal confidential material, pressuring witnesses, coordinating a story, pressuring the investigator and the prosecuter? if he were a normal round the way boy in bronx, he would be going down. >> do you agree? >> i haven't seen "billions". but i have a vision in my head of who wags is. and, yeah, this is -- >> you would for sure, like, bust wags for something. >> i think i would. >> i mean, you'd get axed. >> i'm going to have to watch the show. to paul's point, this is all of

a piece, right? all of this conduct is stuff you would expect, i guess, on show like "billions" from a character like wags, and i think paul is right. i mean, this is not the type of behavior we expect from the president of the united states. this is what we expect from wags. >> and how about the fact that it's just another indication that laws, that boundaries, that rule of law doesn't seem to be anything that concerns him? >> it may not concern him, but it concerns mueller and his team, and i'm with paul and rod rosenstein. i have had some concerns about things rod had done, but i think he's standsing for the rule of law as are the men and women of the fbi. >> we're all grateful for that. we have to sneak in our last break. we'll be right back. from paying too much on their car insurance. hey, there's cake in the breakroom... what are you doing? um...nothing?

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investigations, the parties do not believe this matter is ready to be scheduled for sentencing. jeremy bash, does that mean flynn is still being helpful? >> i think so. that's what it usually means, and chuck can tell you more specifically. >> that's what it usually means, absolutely. it's been fruitful and they need more time. >> maybe the president that ambien from somewhere. >> thank you all so much. it does it for our hour. mtb daily starts right now. >> hi. you had a little fun with the doctor. he's one of the great characters. i look forward to the spinoff. >> jeremy bash went there with "billions" not me. >> yeah. we need the hulu spinoff for that guy. if it's tuesday, mueller's making a list and we're checking it twice. tonight, questions and answers. robert mueller's list of questions for trump reveals the russia probe goes way beyond obstruction. plus case in power point. >> the nuclear deal is