that is our broadcast for a friday night and for this week. thank you so very much for being here with us. have a good weekend and good night for all of us here at nbc news headquarters in new york.. >> we've got some fresh reporting to add to a couple big stories of the day. first we can report tonight that in the trial of the president's campaign chairman paul manafort, lawyers for manafort, his defense lawyers and also lawyers for the prosecution today received from the judge who is going to be overseeing manafort's trial the list of potential jurors who are in the jury pool for that case. now, we have been expecting the manafort case to start in federal court in virginia on wednesday. this indicates that that is on track. according to our reporting from a source very close to the case, both sides now have this list of potential jurors. we expect the potential jurors

to show up at the courthouse on tuesday when the potential jurors get there on tuesday, they'll start filling out paperwork and answering questionnai questionnaires, the initial steps in the jury selection process for the trial. but it's interesting, before those jurors go into court on tuesday, there's going to be one more hearing before the trial starts. that will be monday morning in judge ellis's courtroom in alexandria, virginia. this is the hearing that judge ellis delayed from earlier this week. that raised a lot of eyebrows because judge ellis never delays anything. that raised intriguing about whether or not there might be some meaningful change going on in the paul manafort case. maybe he was considering a potential plea deal. it now appears that that is not what's going on. again, according to a source very close to the case, we are told there are no signs of any sort of plea negotiations going on on the part of paul manafort. the trump campaign chairman. so we will see the jung on monday morning. he will hold that hearing at

that hearing, he will consider what we expect to be manafort's final pretrial motion to try to delay the start of the trial for several months. you know, the caution here is that anything can happen. we'll find out soon enough when all of these things start to unfold before our eyes. in federal court next week. but it now seems safe to surmise that judge ellis on monday will not be inclined to grant manafort's motion to delay the start of the trial, at least it doesn't seem that way with the judge sending out the list of potential jurors to both the prosecution and the defense today all those jurors have been told to turn up on time on tuesday morning. it does look like paul manafort is not going into plea negotiations. we are your mizing that it looks like his trial is not going to be delayed. jury selection is about to start and it looks like he's going to be on trial as of wednesday next week. and we've known this is coming for a long time, right in the

whole way we've been wondering if there's going to be some off-ramp if manafort might decide to stop fighting these charges. looks like we'll get right to the trial without that happening. so we've been expecting this. we've been watching this get closer. don't lose of the sight of the fact to recognize that this is a historic thing. this is a hick thing and it potentially has big contemporary consequences. i mean, this is the sitting president's campaign chairman being tried on multiple felony counts in open federal court just outside washington, d.c. it's a trial that anybody can go see. we're expecting lots of drama na including witness who have been granted immunity in order to testify and we don't know who they are till they appear in court. there's also manafort's deputy, the president's deputy campaign chair who was previously charged alongside paul manafort but instead he flipped and went state's evidence. presumably we will hear from him at the trial, as well.

he was the deputy chairman of the donald trump for president campaign. and now trump is president and this trial is about to start. the spectacle is in gear. it is moving forward. and again, i believe we are exclusively reporting tonight that the list of potential jurors has been distributed today to the prosecution and to the defense in the paul manafort case and so that means it really looks like we're on track. also, late last night, another 1,452 documents, files and other items were handed over to prosecutes in if the southern district of new york. these are not special counsel robert mueller's prosecutors, these are federal prosecutors from the u.s. attorney's office in manhattan. these 1400 some odd items were handed over to prosecutes by the special master who is reviewing evidence in the criminal investigation of michael cohen. the president's long-time personal attorney and a long-time executive at the president's business, trump

organization. these 1400 plus documents are items that michael cohen's lawyers and or president trump's lawyers had actually singled out and said these documents were privileges and they should not be given to prosecutes. late last night, the special master who is dealing with the evidence in that case disagreed. she rejected that claim these items were privileged and instead said nope, these items are not privileged. they are going to prosecutors despite your objections. now, no criminal charges have been brought against cohen. but he is the subject of an active criminal investigation which gave rise to the search warrants which were used to obtain all of these millions of documents from his home and his office and his safety deposit box even from a hotel room in which he was living. we've had weeks and weeks now of back and forth in court over whether federal prosecutors would actually get to see the stuff that was seized, whether they would get to see and use these documents and files taken from cohen under those search

warrants. cohen has been arguing some of these documents can't go to prosecutes because he's an attorney and some of the documents that were seized by the government represent confidential communications between him and his clients. and therefore, they should not be handed over to prosecutes, prosecutors should not receive them. we've had weeks of wrangling over whether this stuff is privileged. you might remember at the very start of this right after cohen was raided his legal team started off in court claiming that millions of the documents that were seized would turn out to be printed. they had turn out to be covered by attorney/client predge and so prosecutors wouldn't be allowed to see them. that's what they said right off the bat in court. it hasn't worked out that way at all. almost everything that was seized from michael cohen has been reviewed by this special master overseeing the evidence in this case and upon her review, ultimately, almost nothing has been found to be covered by attorney/client privilege. as a consequence of that, almost everything seized from mike cohen has been handed over to

prosecutes who as we speak are using that evidence and anything else they've turned up in their investigation to decide whether or not they are going to bring federal criminal charges against michael cohen. now, that said, are you about to hear some new reporting right here right now that says that one very, very news worthy item that was seized from michael cohen as part of the process, it actually is one of the few items in this case that was marked privileged. that was considered to be an attorney/client privileged communication that prosecutors could not get. again, in the grand scheme of things, almost nothing was labeled by the special master as okay, yeah, that's printed, prosecutors can't get it. but this item that you have heard so much about today actually was labeled printed. this is the tape that you have heard so much about today. in which michael cohen is said to have recorded himself talking in person with donald trump in september 2016 two months before

the election. they're talking reportedly about $150,000 payment that was made to a woman named karen mcdougal. karen mcdougal says she didn't have a one off sexual encounter with donald trump nor is this one of his sexual harassment or sexual abuse allegations. ms. mcdougal says she had a long consensual affair with donald trump shortly after he married the woman who is now first lady, melania trump. the president's friend -- and that payment from the "national enquirer" to karen mcdougal in august 2016 appears to have been sort of a hush money variation kind of a riff on the hush money theme it was a payment that quite clearly that publication made to benefit then presidential candidate donald trump, but the question is

exactly how? they paid karen mcdougal for exclusive rights to the story of her alleged long affair with candidate trump. they then didn't publish that story. right? so bottom line it's hush money. she gets paid and the story goes away. then a few weeks later trump gets elected president. ta-da. but there's open questions as to the nature of that payment and potential criminal liability that may attend to that payment. and now that "new york times" has broken the story today that a tape exists of michael cohen and the president talking about that payment. and there's one part of this story that is really important now to understanding why we've all learned about there today and and whether it might mean and who might conceivably be in trouble because of it. deep into their story today, the "times" noted this. "mr. cohen's lawyers discovered the recording as part of their review of the materials seized from cohen's home and office. and cohen's lawyers then shared it with mr. trump's lawyers.

the "times" cites three people briefed on the mater in order to make this claim. there's this open criminal investigation into michael cohen. the fbi seizes stuff from him. among the things that were seized was this recording that cohen apparently made of himself talking with candidate trump about this payment. over this week's long now months long back and forth process we've been able to watch where this court has been reviewing all the stuff seized from cohen to figure out which should be considered attorney/client privilege, cohen's attorneys apparently came across this recording as one of the items seized, reviewed it, they shared with donald trump's attorneys. if this new rorring that we've got tonight from emily jane fox at "vanity fair" is true that this tape was marked printed, that means a very specific thing. that means prosecutors would never have gotten it. so that means the only people

who would have had access to this thing are michael cohen's lawyers and donald trump's lawyers. michael cohen's lawyers didn't leak this thing today which means president trump's lawyers did. so there's been all this sort of breathless reporting today, oh, look what they got on trump. oh, this looks so bad for trump. don't get your chabe yanked on there one. what appears to have happened is president trump's lawyers found out this tape existed for obvious reasons, they apparently realized it might be a potentially pretty ugly thing for the president to have exposed or have brought up in court as a surprise. and so today, the president's lawyers themselves appeared to have leaked the existence of this tape to get out ha aheahea this story. yeah, the story appears to be real. today is the day in american history where we get the headline of the fbi seizing a tape of the president discussing a secret payment to a playboy model right before the election. you should know the reason we

got those headlines is because the president's legal team decided you should see this story today. they did it themselves. you can think of a few rational reasons why they might have done that. i mean, number one, i have have no idea if this was in their mind. this does put something else on the front page after five straight days of hey, is the president actively working as an agent of the russian government? this has been treason week. the subordination of the president to the russian government has been the story of the week which has not gotten better over the course of this week. today, it did get supplanted a little bit by reports about this lurid tape. and yeah, these reports today are about a new trump scandal too but it's a different scandal than whether or not he's controlled by russia. that's one effect of this action today. also, by releasing the story themselves today, the president's lawyers i think

hoped to share -- to shape the narrative about this tape. and there be lessen its impact if it had arrived later on as a surprise. one of the president's lawyers rudy giuliani literally tried to sell reporters today that the whole point of this tape was "in the big scheme of things, well, it's pretty powerful exculpatory evidence." actually, it's the president on tape talking about paying off a playboy model who he says he previously definitely didn't have at affair with and had no idea she was paid. this is a lot of things, not us culper to. >> the president's alerts are assuming if they could put their own kind of spin on it however ridiculous, maybe somebody will be dumb enough to believe it. so it's their story and no one else's. here's another dynamic at work here though which makes this is new reporting really important. special master who has been review the evidence in the cohen

criminal investigation has processed millions of documents already. she's handed almost all of them over to the prosecutors in the southern district of new york. those prosecutors have been weighing that evidence while they decide whether or not they're going to bring criminal charges against michael cohen. that process has been going on for a long time. it will not go on indefinitely. it will come to a close and then if prosecutors are going to bring charges, mr. cohen and his lawyers have to start talking to those prosecutors about the kinds of charges he might face and the prospect that he might try to get a break from the government, might try to leanience from the government in exchange for his cooperation. that doesn't mean he agrees to be nice. it means he agrees that he'll give them some information information that would be of greater value to those prosecutors than whatever value they might see in putting him in jail. if they've got the goods on you and you're facing serious charges, you've got to have a

something really good to give them in order to persuade those prosecutors to accept that information you're giving them in exchange for not nailing you to the wall. right? the worst trouble you're in, the better story you've got to be able to give prosecutors about something esthat already matters to them. well, if one of the things that michael cohen had was a recording of the president two months before the election discussing a secret payment to a playboy model to avoid the discloosh of his alleged affair with her after he publicly denied the affair and any such knowledge of a payment to her, that might be seen by prosecutors as a vital thing mike cohen could testify about. he could talk to them about. remember, if this recovereding was in fact marked privileged, that means prosecutors didn't have it. michael cohen had it. michael cohen was in a position to tensionally make that available to them. but instead, the president's

lawyers leaked the existence of this tape and made it public anyway. in doing so, trump's lawyers have essentially taken this away as something michael cohen might have otherwise been exclusively able to offer prosecutors for their pursuit of any other charges and people they might be interested in. michael cohen would need to be able to give prosecutors something valuable that only he could give them in order to get a already good deal from prosecutors. this presumably reduces his chances of getting any at the sort of great deal to the extent it hinged on this piece of evidence that he could give them about the president. now, obviously, the president right before the election talking about a secret payout to a playboy model, it's potentially -- it's definitely of lurid interest. it's potentially of political importance. would it be of interest legally to prosecutes? we don't know for sure. we probably won't know till we see if this comes up in court or

in an indictment but there's a number of ways in which this reported discussion of a payment to mcdougal might end up being legally consequential for the president. and this is just, right, this is in the abstract given what we know of the described conversation. i mean, starting with the least serious, this may impact the president's financial disclosure forms. president's lawyer today rudy giuliani suggested that this conversation on the tape was about whether or not trump should reimburse the national inquirer for that payment that the publication made to karen mcdougal. that might indicate that $150,000 payment was made to her on donald trump's behalf and he had always intended on paying it back. in that case, it was a loan to him. any such loan should have been disclosed on his financial disclosure forms. there's that. moving up the ladner terms of seriousness, the payment could potentially put the president on the hook in terms of campaign finance violations if it was

made to influence the outcome of the election by protecting him from the disclosure of this affair right before voters went to the polls that payment would in effect be a campaign donation and not processing that kind of donation properly, accepting a donation that large in contravention of federal election laws is the sort of thing that most of the time gets you a slap on the wrist and a fine. but if it was a knowing willful violation that could be a criminal matter for the president for which a person could go to jail. stick a pin in that for a moment. we'll come back to that. i mean, further up the chain in terms of more serious consequences, depending on the exact nature of that payment, and the so-called contract that karen mcdougal entered into with the "national enquirer" on the president's behalf, there's also the possibility that fraud could be a relevant consideration here. if that contract was fraudulently drawn up, fraud, criminal fraud could potentially be implicated here.

as a close cousin to that, there's the possibility there could be money laundering concerns here, if the source of the funds was disguised or the ultimate recipient was disguised so it looks like somebody else's money is going somewhere else that could potentially be money laundering. now, if any of those potential charges were going to be pursued around this hush money payment for a number of them, particularly that campaign finance possibility, prosecutors would also likely need testimony or some other kind of evidence that would show the mind-set of the people involved in this alleged crime. when these violations were committed. if and when this tape turns up at a criminal trial you might expect michael cohen would end up on the stand testifying as to the authenticity of this tape and the context of this discussion. if there are criminal liabilities associated with this conversation, you might expect that mr. cohen and the other person in this conversation might both end up being called to testify as to what is this

conversation was about, what they understood it to be about, what they meant, whether they acted on what was described in the conversation. michael cohen was one of the two pares in this conversation, the president was the other person. i mean, learning about the exist conditions of this tape was good for 1,001 headlines today, right? the american people actually hearing this tape will presumably result in a larger impact packet if that happens. imagine how the white house must feel about the prospect of president trump having to testify in front of a court or a grand jury as to that payment, the meaning of that conversation whether or not it incriminates him in criminal behavior. because of the privilege issues here, because of who had access to this thing, it looks like it's the president's own legal team ta put this out today in order to try to get ahead of this story. and maybe in so doing, they have reduced the chances that michael cohen will flip against the president. but the prospect that the president will end up in legal wrangling about these types of

payments and cover-ups has to be an uncomfortable prospect for this white house. this isn't the russia scandal at all but for all the reporting that we've seen that the white house in some ways is more scared about the michael cohen case than they are about the russia case, this is why, right? we know there's at least one tape of trump and cohen talking about stuff the president has publicly denied. and apparently the president didn't know that tape recording existed till it turned up in what was seized by the fbi. and that brings us to just one last point. the only way this is not a great source offagetant in the white house tonight is if the president is pretty sure he won't ever get questioned about this stuff. if the president has some reason to believe if push comes to shove, we'll litigate this to the end. in the end i know i'm not going to be bothered or touched in any way by this, by any civil inquiry criminal inquire on this while i'm president. if the president an assured of that being the final word

whether or not this stuff is going to get to him as president, that would be a great load off the white house's mind at a time like this. well, there is a magic wand that the president is trying to wave in order to get that for his presidency. that magic wand is named brett kavanaugh. he's the president's supreme court nominee. mr. trump's choice for the court judge brett kavanaugh has expressed strong support for executive power is, hostility to administrative offices, religious freedom. these are all conventional positions among conservative lawyers and judges. but there's one stand that sets him apart and it could not be more timely. his deep skepticism of the wisdom of forcing a sitting president to answer questions in criminal wayses "it is not fall far teched to think that the question of whether president trump must respond to a subpoena should come to the supreme court shortly after the confirmation for the supreme court.

i do not know of any judge who has stakes out as strong a position on presidential immunity even every questioning as judge kavanaugh has. and i know this is different parts of the universe crashing into each other, but this is where these things overlap. the russia scandal, and the michael cohen mishigas, the pending supreme court nomination. sally yates was on air last night saying the white house absolutely was aware that flynn was the subject after open investigation when the president went to the fbi director and pressured the fbi to end that investigation. can the president be questioned whether or not that was obstruction of justice? i mean, salary yates said last night he was trying to influence that open fbi investigation. was that actually criminal obstruction? when does the president get asked about that? on the michael cohen case, if on this tape the president is heard planning to reimburse this publication that paid off his alleged mistress because they wanted to keep her story out of

the press before election, was that a criminal campaign finance violation of the kind that could put a guy in jail? could that hush money payment which the president said he didn't know about further criminally ipply indicate him in terms of fraud or anything more serious. >> reporter: completely separate and part from whether or not he and his campaign were involved in the russia attack, the other big story this week, these other things are absolutely live active criminal inquiries at this moment. and here's the president's nominee for the supreme court in this environment. here he is in his own words "we should not burden a sitting president with civil suits, criminal investigations or criminal prosecutions. i believe that the president should be excused from some of the burdens of ordinary citizenship highway serving in office." congress should enact a law "providing any personal civil suits against presidents be deferred while the president is in office." congress should consider doing the same with respect 0 criminal

investigations and prosecutions of the president. a president while in office should be "exempt from criminal prosecution and investigation," including being exempt from questioning by criminal prosecutors or defense counsel. "even a lesser burdens of a criminal investigation including preparing for questioning by criminal investigators those things are time consuming and distracting." like civil suits, criminal investigations take the president's focus away from his or her responsibilities to the people, moreover the indictment and trial of a sitting president would cripple the federal government such an outcome would ill serve the public interest." how did you pick that guy. >> with the russia investigation, with the obstruction of justice investigation, related to the russia investigation, with the michael cohen investigation. with the president's lawyers now learning the hard way in the michael cohen investigation, lordy, there are tapes of the president. how do you think president trump

alighted on brett kavanaugh of all people to be his nominee to the supreme court? emily jane fox from "vanity fair" joins us next. ♪ you know how painful heartburn can be. for fast-acting, long-lasting relief, try doctor recommended gaviscon. it quickly neutralizes stomach acid and helps keep acid down for hours. relieve heartburn with fast- acting, long-lasting gaviscon. sharper vision, without limits. days that go from sun up to sun down.

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the fbi searched the apartment office and hotel room of the president's personal lawyer michael cohen on monday, april 9th. four days later this story appeared in the "washington post." trumps allies worry that federal investigators may have seized recordings made by his attorney. gulp. that very same day, four days after the raid "the new york times" reported "mr. trump called mr. cohen to check in." now today, the "times" is first to report one of the many items seized in that early morning raid was a recording of the president and michael cohen discussing payments made to a former playboy model two months before the presidential election. a woman who says she had an affair with the president, the president has denied both the affair and having any knowledge of any such payment made to her. joining us now is emily jane fox, senior reporter at "vanity fair" who just reported an important new piece of the story and author of "born trump."

much appreciate it. >> thank you for having me. >> the piece you have reported that i think seems important to me in terms of my understanding here is that this tape which is described today in the "new york times" was deemed privileges, was deemed covered by attorney/client privilege by the special master who is reviewing evidence seized from cohen? >> one person told me this evening that this was deemed privileged by the special master. but that the president's attorneys waived the privilege. i just spoke with rudy giuliani, the president's attorney who said he wasn't sure if the special master deemed it privileged or not but effectively they waived privilege today by peeking about what was on the tape. >> that's how you waive privilege. you just start talking about the thing. >> detail the transcript of the tape. what is interesting though is that the transcript as described by rudy giuliani says one thing and people who are close to michael cohen have said well, that's not how we hear the

conversation. >> they've described the content of the tape differently. >> as slightly differently. >> what's the important difference in the way they're describing it? mr. giuliani says it's completely us kulpatory. >> that's the difference. the people around cohen say it is not. and actually some of the details about that were reported today by mr. giuliani or described by him are in direct contrast with what people around mr. cohen have said. in fact, the issue of who brought up paying for something in cash versus who brought up paying for something with a collect is directly opposite in the two views. >> so giuliani is saying part of the reason this is exdluptory is the president wanted to pay by check rather than cash. >> because it's transparent. >> people close to cohen are saying it was me who wanted to pay by check. the president wanted to pay gash. >> mr. giuliani said he saw the transcript and the transcript

which he said was created by three different lawyers. clearly identified this as mr. trump having said that this was the check. >> we will find out presumably. >> possibly. >> that's why this sounds like we're talking around the edges of had story and obviously there is the big lurid centerpiece here which is the alleged affair and the woman not paid to talk about it. when it comes down to criminal liability, the reason that privilege point seeps important to me is if the special master said yeah, this is prings. what she's saying is this can't go to prosecutes. the fact that can this came into the public domain today with the president's lawyers describing it means that the prosecutors now have access to it, that means that if michael cohen had been planning on delivering this to prosecutes when they otherwise couldn't get it as part of his plea degrees, employee deal, plea negotiations with the government, that opportunity no locker exists for

him. this would seem to me to be something that the president's lawyers have done to make it harder for michael cohen to do a deal with prosecutors. >> michael cohen has been worried for weeks if not months that there was going to be an onslaught from people around the president, people close to the white house from rudy giuliani that would either defame him, that would make his legal case more difficult. >> this makes his legal case more difficult. >> this is exactly the moment he has been waiting for. this is why he hired lanny davis to begin with because he was worried about this kind of onslaught and wanted to be able to be have someone who could defend him from this. the problem with his legal situation right now is he can't defend this. he cannot comment about what is on the tapes right now. even lanny davis issued a statement tonight essentially saying when people hear the tape, we'll see the real truth. because there is the ongoing investigation and he is the subject of this investigation, they can't comment on this the way that rudy giuliani can. rudy giuliani was able to set the narrative knowing full well

that michael cohen was not going to respond to that. we may find out that this tape is exactly the way that giuliani said it was. and we may find out otherwise. we may never find out. >> and honestly, what we may experience over the course of the next week or two is the president's lee team systematically releasing all the embarrassing things that have turned up in the cohen seizure to the president there be undercutting the potential power of their use in court and there be completely cutting michael cohen's legs out from under him. >> it's a great narrative change. wouldn't you rather be talking about this than what happened this week in helsinki. >> emily jane fox, i really, really appreciate it. keep letting us know what you find. much more ahead. lots to come. stay with us. we had a vacation early in our marriage that kinda put us in a hole. go someplace exotic? yeah, bermuda. a hospital in bermuda. a hospital in bermuda. what? what happened? i got a little over-confident on a moped. even with insurance, we had to dip into our 401(k) so it set us back a little bit.

sometimes you don't have a choice. but it doesn't mean you can't get back on track. great. yeah, great. i'd like to go back to bermuda. i hear it's nice. yeah, i'd like to see it. no judgment. just guidance. td ameritrade. >> it's a great narrative stay with us. paying too much for insurance you don't even understand? well, esurance makes it simple and affordable.

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from the indictment of russian military intelligence officers that was released a week ago today, there is something sticking in my craw. this is the part of the indictment that i'm talking about, it says in or around september 2016, the conspirators meaning russian military intelligence successfully gain the access to dnc computers hosted on a third party cloud computing service that is contained test applications related to the democratic party's analytics. now, the indictment says that the russians military intelligence the gru officers is took snapshots that have data, stole that data from the party. but if the russians did that, if they were able to be steal beak the math from the democrats

campaign, the analytics the strategy as democrats planned it out, that late in the game in september 2016, once they had it, that would put russian intelligence in a position to deploy that information directly themselves to help trump win or conceivably they could hand that over to the trump campaign so the trump campaign could you know, make its plans accordingly alter their own plans to account for having the democrats game plan stolen for them by russian military intelligence. this is what's sticking in my craw. from the indictment again we know that particular hack of the analytics dnc2016 what happened right after that? well, in early october, the trump campaign surprisingly announced a radical change in its campaign strategy. campaign spokesman saying "you see the date october 7th, our data driven campaign is shifting resources from overperforming marks to new battlegrounds

within the battlegrounds. they canceled more than $1.6 million of ad buys in eight traditional battleground states. instead they started buying campaign ads in places they'd never campaigned before like wisconsin increasing time and focus on michigan and ever since the trump campaign has bragged about the genius behind that late campaign shift behind that decision. >> i took every nickel and dime and i moved it to mishaan wisconsin and started buying advertising, digital tv. >> you began to make the decision, am i correct to send trump in there. >> i started getting people saying we need to go. >> maybe it was pure lightning bolt genius. part of that data driven strategy was digital ads aimed at shrinking rather than expanding the electorate, aimed at keeping hillary voters at home. a senior trump official told bloomberg we have three major

voter suppression operations under way aimed at three groups that clinton needs to win, idealistic young liberals, young women and african-americans. whether that strategy had anything to do with the fact that somebody had hacked the clinton campaigns and the democratic party's data and had all their analytics that obviously we don't know. but as top clinton campaign team members are now pointing out "if they had access to our data from the september analytics hack they would have a great road map for how to do that, how to suppress the hillary clinton vote she needed in ordered to win." so there's that fight playing out now on new terms given what we've learned from the big indictment. what i want to point out another never rattling portion of this last mueller indictment. that's next. what will you discover with a lens made by essilor?

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intelligence indictment contains one serious and sort of stand alone assertion that sticks out from everything else in the indictment. the indictment describes an unnamed candidate for the u.s. congress in the 2016 election who asked for and received stolen information on his or her congressional opponent from the same russian military hackers that had been attacking the democratic party. as laid out in the indictment, documents about democratic candidates were stolen from the democratic congressional campaign committee in april of 2016. those documents started being publicly leaked in june 2016. in august 2016, the house democratic leader nancy pelosi informed colleagues for the first time about the posting of those hacked materials on line and the potential fallout from their release. and that was news to democratic members of congress. except for one. nebraska democratic congressman brad ashford had been notified already in a private call the previous month in july that he had been a victim of that

hacking. we've obtained this internal democratic campaign document on mr. ashford that was among the items stolen by the russian hackers. congressman ashford would go on to lose his race for re-election in november by a fraction, by just over 3,000 votes. he was the first democrat washed that his material had been stolen in the russian hack. he ended up becoming the only democratic incumbent to lose his seat in 2016. former congressman brad ashford joins us here on set. thank you very much for being here into thanks for having me. >> what did you make of the indictment the description of this incident in the indictment and did you recognize your own experience? >> yes, i mean i think it was the dots were starting to be connected. we knew a little bit back in july of 2016. we knew obviously as you suggest there had been there hack. but after that, after august, it sort of went away.

i mean it was not an issue that came up in the campaign particularly. >> although would you know if it did? >> i don't know. i think it came up in our campaign. i'm saying that we weren't necessarily engaged with our party on the issue. it was just a normal -- we were busy doing our campaign. all of these other things were going on behind the scenes. we were not aware of. >> did your campaign take any, in terms of your campaign against your general election opponent did it take any weird twists and turns? >> we felt we were going to win the race. we had a significant lead going into the last three to four weeks of the campaign. high approval rating so forth and so on. yeah, i mean, i can't tell you if this hacking had anything to do with the eventual loss. by 1.1% but it slipped away pretty fast. >> and we don't again don't know and i don't mean to suggest by talking to you about this in this way that you were definitely the victim here, that

you were the one who is cited in this indictment. we don't know. have you ever been contacted by law enforcement about it. >> no, i have not. >> your opponent who defeated you in november 2016, he says that it definitely wasn't him. there have been a flub of other republican members of congress, serving members who have come out and said it wasn't me either. what do you think about this as an ongoing controversy? obviously it's got to exist sort of as a strange sort of parallel story alongside your own. >> nebraskans are trusting people, patriotic. this is a terrible tragedy what happened in 2016 and what's really a tragedy, it's continuing to go on. and it's critical that congress act. we have to be able to congress needs to pass the relevant laws to say that if a political party or a candidate is made aware of these things, that are they're required to turn that information over to congress. >> a must notify. >> you must notify. this is insane. a lot of what went on after

august we now know was happening behind the scenes. i think leaders of both parties were trying to make some kind of an arrangement whereby they would not divulge this information. but nothing happened. >> the democrats asked republicans, democrats campaign committee asked ask the republicans campaign committee let us pledge to not use this information. >> the republican campaign committee said they weren't interested. >> we're not interested. but we can't leave it to that. this is so tragic for the country. it's tragic for nebraska. it's tragic for the entire country. this has to be resolved. it's going on now. without commenting on the trump piece of it, congress needsed to act irrespective of what the president does or doesn't do. for me, the reason i posted we had been hacked just a few days ago was primarily to set the record straight. i didn't say anything during the campaign because i didn't know what was happening particularly. i didn't say anything after the

election. i didn't want to be sour grapes about it. i didn't want to say we lost because of the russians but congress must act on some of the initiatives out there that would address it. so i -- it's very serious business, rachel. i appreciate you bringing it up. >> former congressman brad ashford, democrat of nebraska. i messenger it's been a little bit of a through the looking glass couple of weeks for you. thanks for helping us understand. appreciate it. thanks a lot. stay with us. e before prohibition took it all away. i promised our family i'd find your lost recipe. by tracing our history on ancestry, i found the one person who still had it. now, i'm brewing our legacy back to life. i'm david thieme, and this is my ancestry story. now with 100 million family trees, find your story. get started for free at ancestry.com.

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era of nightly protests across the street from the white house. this has been every night this week now ever since president trump returned from his meeting with putin in helsinki amid this national outcry of what felt to a lot of people like the president's conspicuous subordination to the russian president. there have been people out across the street from the white house every night. they're there tonight, as well. this is tonight. tonight's version as you can hear features a brass band. it's been loud on purpose. you see the treason sign there? all week long the protests are have been trying to be loud fluff for the president to hear them when he's home. tonight of course, they would have to get a lot louder to achieve that because the president went to his golf course in new jersey for the weekend. but there turns out some people there too who are hoping to catch his attention, a group called the people's motorcade say they plan to deck out their cars and drive in a loop in

front of the president's golf club this weekend. they also apparently do this pretty much every saturday. but soon they are expected to up their game significantly because they expect to receive a and start implementing operation baby trump blimp. they're getting a 20-foot tall baby trump balloon like the one that british protesters flew last week during the president's visit to the uk that the president said made him feel unwelcome. between the folks across the street from the white house and the folks circling the president's golf retreat, it's probably going to be a big loud summer increasingly so. we have a bunch of questions.

lots plor to get to tonight. stay with us. (vo) this is not a video game.

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♪ baby, baby, baby. all you can eat is back, baby. applebee's. if you thought this was a big news week we've just lived through, just wait. on monday that last exit before the freeway final pretrial hearing we have been talking about in the paul manafort case in virginia. on tuesday, maria butina is expected back in court and she's the russian citizen charged as acing as a secret foreign naeth an influence operation designed by the russian government to target the republican party. manafort's actual trial in virginia will start the following day on wednesday. hydrate this weekend, right? eat your fiber. rest up. take good care. i will be spending part of my weekend in my own very special happy place with my friend joy reid. i will be with joy reid on her

show tomorrow on am joy. i hope i will see you there. that does it for us tonight. i'll see you again tomorrow. then i'll see you on monday. now it's time for the last word". katy tur is in for lawrence lot, whatever you got to do to get through the weekend to prepare yourself for next week. >> because the craziness never ends. >> it does not. >> america! >> have fun with joy tomorrow. >> thanks so much. i'm in for lawrence tonight. in this hour we're taking a special look of what may have been donald trump's worst week as president. the week started with the high stakes summit with vladimir putin and questions whether the russian president was making a secret recording of the meeting and ending with secret recordings of a much different variety. news of the president's fixer secretly recorded at least one conversation with his boss.