to make sure that what happens is we find a solution. >> i might add something to that, chris. whether it is is not a deterrent or meant to be, it certainly is. but the real solution here is to deal with the problems in those countries from which they come. >> that is true. >> and that is something that the united states needs to pay attention to. >> congressmgoing to te you both back on the day you pass compromise legislation next week to end the practice. really serious than. i would love for you to take a collective victory lap here. mark meadows and john garamendi, thanks for being with me. >> thanks, chris. >> that is all for this evening. sh "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. it is a pleasure to watch you work and juggle those plates, man. nks. >> and thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. happy hump day. you know, we knew in advance that this was going to be a week with an impossible amount of news in it. that is definitely proving to be the case. but congratulations, you have reached the top of the mountain, or at least the top of the hump. it is wednesday.

it is all downhill from here. we're all going to be fine. president richard nixon had a personal attorney whose name was herbe herbercolmbach. went to prison in the watergate scandal. 44 years ago week, s personal lawyer was sentenced to 18 months in prison, but he only ended up doing about a third of that prison he only ended up having toerve about six months in prison because he plead guilty, and he agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in the watergate scandal as the president's personal lawyer. >> colmbach showed no emotion. he said i'd like you to know how deeply embarrassed i am and how sorry i am to be here the judge announced the sentence. not six months and not more than ths with a fine of $10,0 $10,000. he left the court and went straight to a waiting car without comment. he is the 14th person to be

sentenced for a crime related to watergate. >> a president richa nixon's personal attorney, herb kalmbach and his firm did a l run-of-the-mill personal legal tasks for the president. they, for example, signed the checks for president to make his mortgage payments. they made sure he kept up on his property taxes. they arranged the purchase of the mansion in san clemente, california, that the nixon administration liked to call the western white house before mar-a-lago there was san clemente. but as nixon's personal attorney, herb kalmbach also ended up up to his neck in a lot of different kinds of shady and ultimately illegal nixon stuff as well. everything from scott pruitt-style straight up nixon grifting to bribes and corruption and illegal campaign finance. ultimately, kalmbach ended up right in the heart of the watergate cover-up that brought down nixon as president.

before president trump's refusal to release his tax returns, the biggest example in presidential history of a president getting in trouble with regard to his taxes was nixon's tax scandal about his vice presidential papers. this is sort of become an obscure thing. it probably never would have been resurfaced in modern discussions about the presidency were it not for trurting controversy about his taxes, but that's what sort o b up again what nixon had done that t people so upsetut his taxes that led to the modern president of presidential candidates all releasing their tax returns. before richard nixon was elected president in 1968, of course, he had been vice president to eisenhower for two terms. separate and apart from the whole watergate scandal, the reason we ended up with this tradition of candidates releasing their tax returns is because nixon had a whole separate tax scandal. he cooked up this scheme where he declared that he was making a generous personal donation to

the national archives. what he was donating was his vice presidential papers from when he had been vice president to eisenhower. he then put an enormou financial valuation on that donation of his vice presidential papers. he ended up claiming like a half million tax deduction because of that self-proclaimed valuable gift to the country. and thatas bullpucky in terms of tax law, but nixon tried t get away with it. that nixon tax scandal back in the day, that was a herb kalmbach joint. that was nixon's personal that whole tax scheme.ed herb kalmbach also served as a prodigious fundraiser. he was involved in a scheme to take in what basically amounted to a $2 million bribe that paid to nixon's ection campaign f an association of milk producers. herb kalmbach arranged that bribe, that gigantic campaign donation in exchange for the

nixon administration changing its policy on milk prices. kalmbach then structured the illegal bribe, tha gantic wasn't just a $2 million bulk paymen when that started to become a scandal, herb kalmbach destroye nixon presidential campaign, which itself was against the law, even before we got all the post watergate campaign finance reforms. herbkalmbach was a very, very, very successful fundraiser in terms of the amount of money he raised for nixon, by hook or by crook. after the 68 presidential race when nixon won the presidency for the first time, the nixon campaign actually had money left over that year, more than a million and a half dollars of hat t raised for that campaign but they never g around to spending. and aer nixon got elected, nixon's personal lawyer, herb kalmbach essentially became custodian of that leftover campaign money. and that leftover campaign money basically became a slush fund

that the nixon white house tapped over and over again for all different sorts of watergate shenanigans and scandals, including the ones that brought nixon downas s personal lawyer who managed that leftover money. it was herb kalmbach who dolled out some of that money to donald segretti. segretti is somebody nixon put on the payroll secretly uses the slush fund. he would spy on the democratic party and play dirty tricks on the president's candidates. it was herb kalmbach who arranged the secret payments to segretti from the leftover campaign funds from '68. fun fact. they later ended up going to the same federal prison, aw. a lot of what happened in the watergate scandal was of course driven by richard nixon's paranoia about whether or not he was going to get reelected in '72. part of his election paranoia in '72 centered on the risk that h

segregationist governor wallace. nixon was worried that wallace was going to mount a national comeback and run for president again in 1972. nixon thought if that happened, if wallace ran again in '72, nixon thought for sure that would result in him losing the white house, because he thought that wallace would siphon off the hard-core racist vote. nixon needed that in order to get re-elected, at least as far as nixon' fish mind calculated when it came to '72. so nixon decided he needed to stop wallace's comeback. in order the stop that comeback, he decided he needed to stop wallace from getting elected governor ialabama again. wallace was running for governor of alabama again in 1970, and nixon decided in order to save his reelection campaign, he needed to put the kai bosch on wallace right then and there. in order to kibosh wallace in 1970, nixon sent his personal lawyer, herb kalmbach to deliver cash to wallace's opponent,

literally to deliver $100,000 in cash, in bills, money in a big bag that kalmbach handed over to that gubernatorial election in 1970. the way it worked is kalmbach showed up with $100,000 c a bag. he met a stranger, somebody he had never met before in the lobby of the sheri netherland hotel in new york city. the way he knew that that particular stranger was the right person to give the bag with the $100,000 in was when that stranger recognized the code words for that operation. those code words were herb kalmbach's personal lawyer introducing himself as mr. detr. heas not mr. jenson of detroit. he w herb kalmbach of newport beach, chasm. but that was the code word, and that's how they handed off the money. nixon's personal lawyer. he was never part of the nixon administration formally, but he ended up involved in all of this

shady nixon stuff. nixon's personal financial shady stuff, his tax stuff, his campaign fundraising, campaign financing shady stuff, nixon's dirty tricks and paying for illegal spying. nixon had his personal lawyer up to his neck and beyond in all it and so of course the guy ended up being right in the middle of the watergate burglary too. and the coverp of that burglary and all the rest of it that ultimately turfedon out of office. nixon actually used his personal lawyer, herb kalmbach to be the bag man when he decided to funnel hush money to the guys that had carriedut the watergate burglary. nixo gave the watergate burglars over $200,000 in secret cash so they'd keep their mouth shut about the burglary. herb kalmbach, assemble that money from a bunch of various sources, from the campaign to reelect the president, creep, where herb kalmbach was a deputy

finance chair. he also used some o that leftover slush fund money from the '68 election. he also added in some money from corporations that had started doing business with herb kalmbach's law firm, because after all, herb kalmbach was the president's personal lawyer. probably a good idea to ltivate some good relationship there's. probably a good idea to send that guy some business. sound familiar? even though herb kalmbach was the guy who delivered that hush money to the watergate burglars, it's interesting. he plead ignorance in terms of his own understanding of the scheme. kalmbach said yeah, he knew he was delivering secret cash, a lot of secret cash to those guys who had been caugh in the watergate break-in, but he said he assumed it f humanitarianpurposes. he says he thought it was to help the burglars' families. it was of course no such thing. it was stormy daniels style hush money to shut those guys up, to keep them from talking about the burglary and who had ordered it and why it had been ordered. herb kalmbach insisted even

under oath that although he the bagman and delivered all the money, honestly, he had no idea that's what the money was for. >> but for the secrecy of this whole assignment, getting these funds to these people for this purpose, could get into the press and be misinterpreted. and then i remember using the figure of speech, they would have our heads in their laps, which, again, would indicate to me that it would jeopardize the campaign. >>hat didn't suggest to you any imp you're >> no, it did not. >> why not? >> it suggested to me that the concern was that this would have a -- if it got into the press, misinterpreted. >> how could it be misinterpreted? >> misinrpreted in whatever way. that funds were being given to these people. >> now how could your pviding funds through either egis,

through the committee, toe burglars and wiretappers and conspirators be miscinted? >> misinterpretatio uld be this is done to silence these people. >> well could anybody have any other interpretation? >> i did. >> richa nixon's personal lawyer, herb kalmbach saying during the watergate hearings that he was under a different impression. when he delivered all that cash to the watergate burglars, he didn't know that it was for any nefarious purposes. he certainly didn't know that it was to silence those people. you could hear the room laughing, right, that anybody would not understand that that's obviously what that money was for. but he insisted, seriously, under oath, that he didn't know that's what the money was for. later, when the juvenile in the watergatecase, judge jerica confronted him with the fact that that was hush money, that's

what he had been the bag man for, when the judge confronted him on the stand, herb kalmbach actually broke down and cried on the stand in judge's courtroom. this is july 1st, 1974 when herb kalmbach was on the way to prison. pay attention to the date here. july 1, 1974. nixowas still president, but not for long, right? nixon ended upsigning in august ' '74. >> but when this was written, the president's personal lawyer was headed to prison and richard nixon was still president of the united states. quote, herbert kalmbach will go to prison tomorrow carrying a deep hurt over president nixon's deep displeasure because of mr. kalmbach's decision to cooperate in the government's prosecution of the watergate conspiracy. mr. kalmbac is said to have waited in vain for some worth of

sympathy or encouragement from the president or at least an expression of gratitude for his 12 yea of unquestioning loyalty. kalmbach traced the president attitude to when kalmbach initiated hisain wit government prosecutors with an offer of cooperation. just a few days later, on may 1, the white house announced that herb kalmbach was no longer the president's personal lawyer. while he had been nixo personalt is amazing how many different aspects of nis criminal liability herb kalmbach ended up personally involved in. i mean, he was the guy who actually paid the hush money to the watergate burglars. and kalmbach ended up cooperating and telling prosecutors and telling the watergate committee that tale. what he ultimately went to jail for was a fraction of what he was widely believed to be implicated in. kalmbach ultimately went to jail for an illegal campaign fund,

illegal and secret campaign fund that he'd set up with the nixon white house to help republicans win in the 1970 mid terms. he also went to jail for effectively selling an ambassadorship in exc for yet more campaign donations to republicans. but even with just those two counts that they prosecuted him on, it looked like herb kalmbach would serve potentially years in prison. at least a year and a half in prison. the judge eng him from federal prison after only six months, specifically because of kalmbach'srough cooperation with prose they continued to press o with the watergate investigation that led up to and including the president's resignation from office. and it was less than two months after kalmbach reported to prison that nixon was gone too, resigned in disgrace. right? and instantly pardoned for all his crimes by the vice president who took his seat. today when we got news that this president's personal attorney,

michael cohen, appears to be making his own preparations to start talking to prosecutors, we called nbc news presidential historian michael beschloss to ask him once again, has anything like this happened before? all through the trump scandals, all through the trump administration, we've been asking michael beschlo seemingly daily, has this ever happened before? and the answer has all of the sudden been nope. but in this case is there paralln u.s. presidential history, any time a president's rsonal attorney had ever been in this kind of jeopardy and in this kind of position with regard to serious accusations against a sitting president, for once, michael beschloss was able to tell us, actually, yeah, this has happened before. herb kalmbach went to prison, and that is something in american presidential history that ad of shadow that looks a little bit like what might be going on with michael cohen and president donald trump right now. he also told us that the herb kalmbach story has not just a

shadow, but also kind of a long tail that reaches directly to the trump presidency because the man who is widely believed to be president trump's best friend, the wealthy investor tom barrack, you might remember him speaking at the republican national convention, then came head of the trump inaugural committee. you might remember that the trump inaugural like nixon's presidential campaign apparently generated way more a slush fund thereafter left that has now come under scrutiny by federal investigators, tom rrick, you what his first job was after law school? you want to know where he got his start in buss? he worked for herb kalmbach, worked for herb kalmbach's law firm and directly for herb kalmbach. during thest nixon administration, when kalmbach was still nixon's personal lawyer, before he went to prison and lost his law license, during the time when he serving as nixon's bagman, carrying around a bag full of $100,000 in cash,

telling strangers in hotel lobbies that he was mr. jenson of detroit to see who he was supposed to give surreptitious cash for, that's when tom barrick was working for herb kalmbach. so once again, the scandals of this presidency prove that the past is never dead. it is not even really past. but right now, this week, over these next couple days and this incredible news week that we're having, we are about to find out the fate of the guy who was playing the role of herb kalmbach this time around in this iteration of presidential scandal and history. the reporting about the president's lawyer michael cohen today centers on the facthat reportedly los legal representation that he has had thus far in his legal troubles thus far while he has been fing this criminal investigation by federal prosecutors in the southern district of new york. that scrutiny by federal prosecutors reportedly started with a referral from the special

counsel's of robert mueller's office. that inquiry and that investigation by prosecutors in new york has thus far included a dramatic raid on michael cohen's home, his office, a hotel room where he was staying, and a safetyeposit box early in april. early in april is when we also learned that the donald trump reelection campaign had been paying michael cohen's legal bills for months. and i think when some people saw the headlines around that in trump campaign was paying e the michael cohen's legal fees for him to represent donald trump? no. the trump campaign was paying for cohen's own lawyers who are representing him, whis weird, because like herb kalmbach, michael cohen is not a member of the trump administration. and unlike herb kalmbach, michael cohen has never even technically been part of the trump campaign. so what is the trump campaign doing paying his legal bills all this time? it's never been exactly clear what michael cohe personal

legal liability is about, or what he could potentially tell prosecutors about if, like herb kalmbach he decides to go state's evidence and cooperate with psecutors in exchange for lenience in his own case. the single most worrying possibility for the white house is probably what was reported by buzzfeed several weeks ago concerning cohen's involvement in the secret pursuit of a trump tower moscow real estate project during the presidential campaign. during the campaign, you'll recall that candidate trump said that he had no dealings in russia. we later lrned that tt was a lie. in fact, in the midst of the campaign, he had secretly signed a letter of intent to build what would have been the largest real esct of his career, a trump tower in moscow, which would require not just significant russian financing, it would require high level approval and assistance from the russian government, if not from presidenir putin himself. well, several weeks ago when reporting that secret real estate venture during the campaign and federal

investigators' interest in that venture, buzzfeed news reported, quote, even before the appointment of robert mueller as special counsel in may 2017, fbi agents investigating russia's interference in the election learned that cohen was in frequent contact with foreign individuals about trump tower moscow. and that some ofse individuals had knowledge of or had played a role in russia's 2016 election meddling. that buzzfeed report cited two fbi agents as the source of that information. if, in fact, that is true, that means during the campaign, while secretly trying to arrange a major business deal for donald trump in russia, michael cohen was in repeated contact with people who were directly volv russia's election meddling at that time to try to elect donald trump. if that's true, that would obviously be a serious concern for the trump white house.

particularly if cohen is going to start cooperating with prosecutors and telling them what he knows about that. there is also the hush money payments themselves, which aren't a secret anymore. in michael cohen's case, the hush money payments are not to watergate burglars, they're instead to women who said they had sexual relationships with president trump. there is a number of ways in which those payments could be not just embarrassing but potentially illegal. the president himself has already radley changed his public story as to how much he knew about those payments. that in itself could potentially pose a significant criminal -- a significant element of criminal liability for the president. but then there is the matter of all the other people who have been paying michael cohen since trump was elected president. as part of a legal wrangling the stormy daniels hush money case, we learned about a number of corporate entities that mysteriously started paying michael cohen around the time that trump was elected or when he was sworn into office. among those entities is an investment fund closely related to a russian oligarch, an oligarch who cohen is known to have met with multiple times

since the election. we don't know why the oligarch's investment firm was paying michael cohen, but "the atlantic" magazine has since reported just a few days ago that thate oligarch was believed to be funng an effort get t u.s. government to drop sanctions again russia, an effort that cohen was reportedly involved in during the presidential transition, one that was only interrupted by the "new york times" exposing it. that's just the stuff that is off the top of my head in terms of what cohen's been involved in, terms of what liability and exposure the president might have if his personal attorney michael cohen is in fact dropping his legal team now because he now needs a different kind of expertise because he is now about to start cooperating with prosecutors. how do we know if that is what is going on here? and what's going on between the president and michael cohen as cohen makes this almost unbelievably feful decision? we've got answers to those questions, next. you don't even ? well, esurance makes it simple and affordable.

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if you're sensing a wave of craziness in the air, it's not you. it might be you. i don't know what kind of day you had. but there is a national wave of

craziness that you can sense in the air, and that is the anticipation paired with a lot of sort of woolly reporting about that anticipation that the president's personal attorney, michael cohen, is in the midst of dropping his legal representation because he is about to start negotiating with federal prosecutors to potentially cooperate with them in their inquiries. that anticipation, and again, the woolliness of the reporting around that issue is making everybody in national politics a little crazy. it's honestly a little hard to get a bead on how serious the risk is here for the president and how much of the anticipation around this issue and the reporting around this issue may actually be spin that is advantage us to to someone, and we don't k who yet. joining us to help sort this out is someone who is very, very sourced on this issue. emily jane fox is senior reporter at "nity fair." she has been covering michael cohen from the very beginning as well as jared kushner and ivanka trump. she has a brand-new book called

"born trump" which comes out next week. emily, thank you very much for being here. >> thank you for having me. >> i describe woolly reporting here because i feel like everybody wants an answer to the basic question of whether or not ent has reaso worry tha his personal attorney is going to start talking to prosecutors in a way that's going to pose a danger to the president. and i feel like everybody is leaning from the few facts that 've got into a potential answer to that question. but am i right that we really don't know if michael cohen is going to cooperate? >> i don't think that michael cohen is 100% sure if hes going to cooperate right now. and i think that's the honest truth. and i think there are a number of people who want this to go one way and some people who want this to go the other way there are a lot of steps that have to happen between where we are and what we learn today. and what we learned today was important, and it's a decision that according to people around him who i spoke with today, this decision to change attorneys and the attorney's decision to leave the case what will happen at the

on the other hand this week is something they have been talking about for weeks, if not a month. so that is a big development. but there are a number of step jesse to take to get to the next place if there is a step to tak to get to the next place. >> was it a mutual decision to part ? there. >> are a couple of reasons, like you ask and there are a nr s who of reasons why it didn't work out. the first reason is this case is entering a new phase. so the document collection phase and sorting through between what is privileged and what is not privileged, that ends on friday. the law firm that has been representing him had 15 lawyers on this case, which is expensive and time consuming. >> 15 lawyers around the clock. >> around the clock. >> working on the weekends, sleeping on couches in the law firm. they were very well equipped to handle this. >> and just to be clear about that, millions of pieces of information and documents were seized bederal agents from cohen's home and office and hotel room. and he and his attorneys asserted that many of those documents, thousands, if not millions of those documents

should be shielded from prosecutors because they were attorney-clienduct. it was confidential communications between mr. cohen who is an attorney and his clients. >> sure. >> there had to be a process adjudicating whether or not that was true. that process ends essentially on friday? >> it ends definitely on friday. that is the court decided deadline. >> and so far it has really not gone in michael cohen's direction,right? the court thus far, at least as far as we know has decided that less than 1% of the documents that were seized have any reference to his clients. >> there are very few that have to do with attorney-client privilege, almost all of them will go ov to the government. >> okay. so with that process, that very labor intensiv process ending, that's one reason why cohen and his attorneys might be breaking up. >> there is also a dispute over fees. so as we just discussed, this is a very expensive process, and who pays for that at the end of the day? and there has been a dispute between the lawyers who currently represent them,

lawyers who represent the trump organization, and michael cohen somehow falls in the middle. >> so what we know is that the trump campaign, the trump reelection campaign has been paying -- paid something around a quarter million between the end of last year and this spring to the firm that was representing michael cohen. we had a funny incident actually that i'll tell which is that initially when those payments came out of fec filings, the trump campaign wasn't telling us what those payments were for. that firm could have been representing people other than michael cohen. what kind of work was that? was it sometng completely unrelated to mr. cohen? was it just acoincidence? we then found in the fec filings they actually sent the check for those payments to the law firm to michael cohen's office in 30 rock, which to us gave away that any ambiguity there. they were not just paying that firm for some other reason. they really were paying for cohen that itself is a little

bit of a question, right? because cohen was never part of the campaign. >> he was absolutely left off of the trump campaign for the express reason, so that he could handle matters like this. but he was acting as in his capacity for the trump organization. >> okay. >> so the issue of why the trump organization may or may not have to pay for these legal fees right now has to do with the fact of if michael cohen is in trouble because of what he had ast of the trump organization or if he's under investigation because of his outside business activities. and i think from -- two people who i spoke with who were directly familiar with the search warrants, something that government was looking for were information related to the payments of stormy danie and to other women and anything having to do with communication to donald trump and the trump organization. >> okay. i have a follow-up question for you than, because that is sticking in my craw. can you stick with us for just one second? emily jane fox is a senior report at "vanity fair." she is not supposed to be staying for a segment second,

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joining us once again is emily jane fox. she is a senior reporter at "vanity fair." she has been covering michael cohen from the very beginning, and she is very, very well sourced on this story that has transfixed a lot of the political world today because of the prospect that the president's personal attorney, his long-time personal attorney michael cohen may be starting the process of cooperating with federal prosecutors. thanks for staying with us,

emily. we're talking about the trump organization, the president's business. if part of the reason that michael cohen is breaking up with his lawyers is because there is a dispute over whether or not he can pay his bills, his quite considerable legal bills, why wouldn't the trump organization be paying those bills? presumably some of the stuff that cohen is potentially on the hook for, the stormy daniels payment, maybe even some of the ukrainian peace plan stuff that there is reportedly interest in a lot of that stuff that he was involved in happened at a time when he was an executive of the trump organization, right? >> well, you're making michael cohen's argument, or anyone who would want the trump organization -- >> he and ire often in the same mset. >> i'm sure. that is someone who would want their legal bills paid by the trump organization would say, and it's a fair argument. i think the trump organization has reason to distance themselves from michael cohen right now. they don't necessarily want to

be tied to a legal defense for him, and also, the trump organization is not known for parting with its money very easily, and neither is the president. so i don't think they're in the business of just giving away tens and tens and tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars for what could happen in this ca >> you think back, though, to previous presidential scandals and the lengths that previous presidents, i'm thinking about richard nixon, gone to prevent people from being tempted to cooperate with prosecutors, being tempted to tell prosecutors what they know, in part because they lt hung out to dry or that they were the ones being left holding the bag when it was really the president on whose behalf they were acting. in this case, because michael cohen was a trump organization executive, the trump organization could legally pay him hush money. >> sure. >> could even have a rational argument for paying him h money by paying for hisal fees if they so desired because

of that business relationship, and yet they're choosing not to when his potential cooperation poses such a risk to the president. >> you are speaking like a rational actor here, but the president has done n in order to make michael cohen feel like he has michael cohen's back, and that has been a problem. you forget that the president went on fox news and basically barely know the guy. he's like a coffee boy. he did a very, very small percentage of my legal work. >> right. >> and then his attorney, rudy giuliani, has gone on television repeatedly making this harder for michael cohen. and the reaction for michael cohen, from everything i know from my reporting has been these 't have my back. and from the first time i interviewed him last august, the way that michael cohen spoke about the president was like you were talking about his father, his boss, his hero in life. he could barely walk by trump tower. he would get teary-eyed because he missed him bei there so much, to now a man who is frustrated, isolated, feeling

alone and feeling very, very angry at the trump family in general and at the president. >> last question for you. if mr. cohen either based on those feelings or any of these other dynamics we've been that he is going to cooperate de with prosecutors and tell them everything he knabout his interaction was president trump over the year, is that a potential serious risk for the president in terms of th president's own legal liability? >> yes. >> emily jane fox, senior reporter at "vanity f whose got a book coming out next week called "born trump." thank you so much for being here. really appreciate it. >> thank you. >> we have so much ground to cover tonight. we haven't even gotten to t cat video. cat video, very important cat video ahead. stay with us. a bachelor.

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of the surprising turns in the specsel investigation russiaeddling w our presidential election has been the revelation or at least the reporting that special counsel robert mueller is looking beyond russia to see if there were other countries who were also involved in that interference effort. last month the "new york times" reported on a previously unknown

meeting that happened in trump tower in august 2016 ahead of the election. in that meeting donald trump jr. reportedly med with somebody who's now a cooperating witness in the special counsel investigation, someone who's been granted immunity reported for his cooperation, that witness, a man named george nader told don junior in that meeting that saudi arabia and the united air of emirates were eager to help his father. and george nader was quickly embraced as a close ally by trump campaign advisers. we got that report not quite a month ago. the first indication that mueller was investigating efforts by foreign countri interfere in our election beyond russia. today we got another indication in that direction.

this centers on billionaire tom berrick. he made his fortune doing business in the middle east. today the times said he became the bridge between trump and the crown princes of saudi arabia and the united emirates. in teport the times spells something i've not seen put anywhere else with such certainly citing people with the matter, the special counsel is, quote, examining when the emrat tis and saudis helped sway the election in mr. trump's favor, potentially in coordination with the russians. really? not just russia but russia and thuae and saudi arabia potentially working together to do that. tell me more. joining us now is david kirk patrick. thank you for your time. i appreciate you being here tonight. >> my pleasure. >> i'm not going to guess how

you obtained these e-mails from tom barrick, but can you tell us about the process of putting these pieces together, figuring out that the mueller investigation is looking to other countries to see if there was potential cooperation with the russian interference effort? >> well, the reporting about mueller's interest in the uae and saudi arabia was prior to the tom barrick reporting. that's reporting centered on george nader, as you said. and it all comes together in the seychelles meeting which you discussed in the past. a meeting by the united arab of emirates where they brought together a representative of the trump administration, in their view, with a business man close to vladimir putin. i think we know for sure that that meeting has caught the

interest of the special prosecutor and that they're asking questions about nader, about nader's connections with russia, about efforts by the uae and possibly saudi arabia to try to help the trump campaign and whether or not there was some communication there. all of that, to my knowledge, does not involve tom barrick. he enters the picture earlier trying to build a bridge as you between the trump campaign and the arab leaders. when we were doing the nader reporting, i wondered how is it the uae and saudi arabia can feel so positive about trump that they would send this emissary to the trump campaign to offer their help. some of that is clear when you look at the communications that tom barrick had with the ambassador. >> he also had a relationship

with paul manafort, as you reported. he's credited with bringing paul manafort, a fringe figure in republican politics, onto the trump campaign where he became chairman. what role does p manafort play in this part of the invest >> i don't know any specific role. but there's an interesting part of this where tom ick tries to set up a meeting between paul manafort and then the deputy crown prince of saudi arabia, mohammed bin salman. it was discussed between the emirati ambassador and tom barrick as a prelude bringing mbs together. it's an advanced effort to took up the campaign with saudi arabia and specifically with mbs at a time he wasn't yet su

successor to the thrown. when he was still making his move. although it sounds like the meeting didn't come off, it sounded like it got as far as paul manafort saying let's do it friday, to avoid the press. even though the meeting didn't happen. the work that tom barrick t sell the campaign on the saudis and the saudis on the campaign, had some fit. we saw them change the platform to help the saudis. and we saw them saying look we're moderating this policy on a muslim ban, don't worry it's not as bad as it seems. >> david kirkpatrick, international correspondent for the "new york times." thank you for your time tonight helping us understand your reporting. >> you're welcome. >> i between the last commercial break, i got a telepathic message from my mother, who is from canada, and

in that telepathic message, my mom tells me that i said that canada has a president instead of a prime minister. apparently when i walking about justin trudeau and the trump adstration saying for him, i called him a hell president. i'm 45 years old and my mom just telepathically grounded me. i'm sorry.

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the show tonight that this is a big news week. one of the things that we know is going to happen tomorrow is

that at about noon, the justice department is going to brief members of congress and the ice department inspector ed general's report on various activities within the justice department and the fbi concerning the 2016 election. including the fbi and the justice department's handling of the clinton e-mail investigation. we are told that this report that's due out tomorrow is about 50pages long. it's on a number of ithat are incredibly contentious, including the e-mail investigation,he behavior james comey behind that, that rudy giuliani was getting leaks in a way that was designed to advantage the trump campaign on that subject. we're expecting a big hairy eyeball of an report on that tomorrow. it's likely to dominate the news. heads up. that does it for us tonight. we'l