reports show the russian social media campaign to help elect donald trump was much bigger than previously known. and continues to this very day. the number of federal investigations into the president and businesses grow. >> now, the president has wanted to draw a red line to say, you can't look at my business but if the president's business is trying to curry favor with the kremlin, we can't ignore that. crossing the line. the family of a 7-year-old girl who died in border patrol challenges the government's account of how she died. acknowledging the government cannot handle this crisis. >> our infrastructure is incompatible with this reality. our stations and ports of entry were built to handle mostly male single adults in custody, not children. a potential government shutdown by the end of the week. the ranks of his own cabinet. while allegations of scandal and

mismanagement force out the embattled interior secretary. >> thank you all, merry christmas, happy hanukkah, have a great new year, we're going to have an incredible new year for our country, most importantly. >> and good day, i'm andrea mitchell in washington where the massive scope and depth of russia's social media interference on behalf of the trump campaign in 2016, a covert effort continuing to this day is now revealed in two new investigative reports commissioned by the senate intelligence committee and embraced by both parties. the scale of the operation to hurt hillary clinton in the campaign is staggering. according to these new analyses. the u.s. cyber security called new knowledge showed on facebook alone, the russians reached 126 million people with 20 million more connections on their social media subsidiary, instagram.

facebook has not responded to a request for comment on how it polices all of this. the oxford report zeros in on the russian goal saying all of the messaging clearly sought to benefit the republican party and specifically, donald trump. the main groups that could challenge trump with then provided messaging that sought to discourage members from voting. the u.s. cyber firm digs deeper into the disinformation and attacks on major democratic figures like barack obama and clinton, coming with more than 263 million online engagements with content originating from the st. petersburg based internet research agency, a russian farm connected with vladimir putin. a major suppress to distort clinton's record with a dozen russian web sites disguised as being african-american. joining me now, nbc white house correspondent kristen welker, ken delaney and peter baker, and michael carpenter.

welcome all, kristen, you're working on this today for msnbc and nbc news tonight. tell us how extensive this is. i mean, these were referenced in indictments from the mueller team early on but this goes so deeply into what was happening in 2016. >> reporter: this really maps out, andrea, the fact by the attempts with the russians to meddle in the election by using as many forms of social media as they could was far more extensive than we originally understood and tried to promote tribalism but targeted african-americans. you mapped out some of the numbers, andrea. here's more. the russians set up 30 facebook pages targeting african-americans and ten youtube channels and 571 videos related to police violence against african-americans. as you said, some of these posts

distorted the record of hillary clinton and former president barack obama. now, the white house hasn't responded to these reports that this was more extensive than originally thought. but there's no doubt that this is one more data point as this set of the intelligence committee and various lawmakers and the intelligence community tries to get to the bottom of exactly how extensive this was. president trump, of course, on defense about all of this, particularly, with the russian investigation advancing every day, andrea. >> peter baker, one of the things that's so striking is how sophisticated the russian interference was. they were targeting, and i remember campaigning in philadelphia when the black lives matter group came and protested against clinton, against bill clinton. became a big deal. that dominated the campaign for a couple of days. if not longer. and as it turns out, the black

vote was suppressed in philadelphia. that's one of the reasons she lost pennsylvania. so that was constant. you can go state by state, how sophisticated it was. did the russians know enough to do this without u.s. help? >> that's a great question. they seem to have been very expert at finding our wedges, finding the seams within our society and then prodding into them to further our divide. we're divided as it is. we don't necessarily need outside help to polarize and the russians did everything they could in 2016 to further that gap, to further disrupt our society. the one goal, of course, was to help donald trump and hurt hillary clinton but to disrupt our society and that, they really seemed to have been remarkably successful. we are at a point now where our divisions are so wide and skepticism, our institutions including the fbi, as an example, is so deep, you know,

this is exactly what moscow would have wanted. obviously, they would have also liked policy changes and sanctions to be lifted, things like that but the other goal they would have had is exactly this. to pit white against black, republican against democrat, conservative against liberal, outside the coasts against the coast, this is what they want in our society. >> let's talk about some of the imagery that was released and we want to put this all in context. this is all fraudulent and give more credence and further confuse people and these are examples of the visuals they use to try to really diminish hillary clinton. obviously, all very negative. >> that's one aspect of it, andrea. we have these amazing, this amazing social media technology invented by americans and what these reports show is that the russians insidiously turn that technology against us and they use it to undermine our institutions, to undermine

confidence in hillary clinton in particular to help donald trump. they also posed, for example, andr andrea, as local news organizations because they knew that americans tend to trust local news and so they've spouted fake stories in thousands of twitter accounts that impersonated local news organizations even as they cede to discredit reputable news media and all this happened under the noses of the u.s. intelligence community and the social media companies. neither of those entities were able to prevent it and it continued after the election. the most shared post about donald trump happened after he was elected president. it got 300,000 shares on facebook. the total numbers are astounding, andrea, more than 265 million engagements with this propaganda on facebook and that doesn't mean people but engagements. clearly in the hundreds of millions of people, potentially, and it's hard to imagine in an election this close, that it didn't make a difference. >> remind people that in three

states, the total number of votes that made the difference were 77,000 votes. michael carpenter, how does the u.s. government engage in this and protect against it? how did the social media companies get pressured when frankly, congress has not taken steps to really step up to the plate and the administration keeps trying to undermine, you know, by throwing out words like collusion, collusion, witch hunt and branding the mueller investigation. mueller did indict these but this is the sort of raw details we haven't seen before. >> i think the administration has no interest in really taking action in this sphere but i think congress has a role to play. threatening regulation and implementing regulation on social media companies. they clearly had a disincentive to reveal the extent of this information and propaganda and it's because they don't want to reveal how many fake users they have on various platforms. it goes against their business model but they have to get serious about this and then now with this report, we really see, as you've highlighted, both scale and in terms of the reach

but also the sophistication of these efforts. i mean, they really microtargeted certain demographics in the american population to suppress votes or get them to turn out in favor of donald trump or other candidates. >> and while they were working on it, over the last few months, graphica is one of the kpa companies. we had the ceo, john kelly, to talk about these fake posts. he was on our air this summer. >> this is more of a contract shop that from what we're learning was actually set up originally and for many years was conditioning the russian republic and most was russian language output for domestic consumption and then got the contract to boot up the american influence operations. if you can definitively attribute these actions to a foreign government, you have to have the normal kind of carrots and sticks of the foreign policy environment kind of take up to deal with that. >> which we don't have right now. so he was saying that this international research agency in

st. petersburg is basically a kremlin shop. >> absolutely. it's financed by evgeny, putin's chef. linked closely to the kremlin, in catering, in construction of military facilities and other endeavors. he's the proxy that's used to do this disinformation campaign. but i think it's important for your viewers also to understand that these two new reports focus on the data set accumulated from the internet research agency which is one institution we know about in russia. i suspect there's many other trolls that operate either dark web financing or other means that supplement the activities of the ira as it's called. >> just as with last week, the whole plea of maria butina. an extra agent and told by

experts at the time there were probably many butinas throughout the system. >> this is how the russians operate. and by the way, in terms of the disinformation, we see them putting out all kinds of different efforts. some laughable. throwing stuff up on the wall, but they checked very carefully to see what would stick and they did their research this terms of how computational propaganda and sophisticated platforms on pinterest, instagram and we previously didn't understand were infiltrated by the russians. >> "the wall street journal" poll came out over the weekend. kristen welker, 62% of the polls say president trump has not been honest and truthful on the investigation into russian interference. this poll taken during a pretty consequential week or so when a lot of activity on all fronts,

michael cohen. >> reporter: he directed him to make the hush money payments in the two days leading up to the 2016 campaign. president trump responding to all of these developments by essentially going on a tweetstorm over the weekend lashing out at just about everyone from the special counsel to michael cohen in one calling the inquiry a witch hunt/hoax and the other, nothing to do with collusion, it's a democrat scam. calling cohen a rat on twitter. and so it's clear that this is getting to the president. his strategy for dealing with it is to ramp up his attacks. he also, of course, put his personal attorney, rudy giuliani, out on the air waves over the weekend and seeking to discredit michael cohen as well saying he can't be believed. the challenge with that argument, of course, is that based on court documents, there is corroborating evidence and something cohen said when we heard him speak out publicly

last week but no doubt all of this including the poll, getting under the president's skin, increasingly feeling boxed in, andrea. >> peter baker, from your reporting, what is the mood inside the white house about all of this? >> wiobviously, they've been through so much there's a certain amount of humor to it but they understand it's a perilous moment. they've been preparing so much of the russia collusion aspect of this and trying to discredit the mueller investigation, discredit the idea of collusion or obstruction of justice that the michael cohen thing, even though it was out there waiting, kind of came in from the side and slammed them. they're now trying to get back on their feet, and kristen mentioned, mayor giuliani on the air waves this weekend to say he's a liar. it's hard to portray someone who's been close to the president for so long as just somebody who is automatically an anti-trump person.

so this is not, you know, michael cohen isn't a democrat opponent who was for hillary clinton in 2016. he was the president's own fixer for all these years and not just his words. kristen mentioned, it's the american media folks, david pecker and so forth. a tough time in the white house. unhappy with these things coming at them from all sides. >> and michael flynn, he's going to be sentenced tomorrow and before the sentencing, there's sort of clearing the decks and showing one other aspect of how he cooperated with investigators. this is an investigation and these charges now against two of his associates connected to turkey and this comes from the eastern district of virginia. this is not from mueller. >> hear the, andrea. and this underlines the scheme from which mike flynn's company was paid to lobby for the government of turkey in an effort to discredit this who lives in the united states, an enemy of the turkish government and also shows that for all the talk that mike flynn was an

accomplished intelligence officer and he certainly was, these documents show that he was at least duped by a scheme to secretly lobby and conspire to violate the american foreign agent registration laws on behalf of the government of turkey and paid handsomely to do that. he's not charged in these documents because he cut a deal and pled guilty to lying to the fbi but the documents show these people representing, flynn was involved. >> there's a new plan afoot that they've been reporting on, you as well. julie ainslie from our team, there's a new move afoot from the president to try to intervene and potentially, we understand, with this state department's complicity, this cleric would be extradited potentially to south africa on the way to turkey and a lot of action on that. we've heard from the turkish foreign minister in recent days

as well. ken? >> absolutely right, andrea and because this is because the turkish government insists he was involved in the unsuccessful coup but not clear there's any evidence to back that up and we have laws in this country. there's an extradition process and for him to be extradited, there would have to be something in this crime. >> something by joe biden and barack obama and arguments back when they were in power. thank you very much. a lot to drill down on kristen welker, ken dillanie and peter baker. white house shayok-uke-up. stay with us on "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. bring all the gifts for under the tree and while you're at it... bring the tree. ford f-150 best-in-class payload. best-in-class towing. built for the holidays.

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more staff and cabinet shake-ups rocking the white house over the weekend. mick mulvaney in as the new acting chief of staff. what is acting chief of staff mean? ryan zinke is out as interior secretary. mulvaney will work in the west wing and the office of management and budget which in most administrations is more than a full-time job. this comes after weeks of speculation about who's going to replace john kelly. meanwhile, interior secretary ryan zinke is out, stepping down, if you will. amid 17 separate investigations into his conduct and widespread reports that the white house forced him out. msnbc political analyst mike

murphy, former senior venior stt and heidi, all of your reporting, first of all, who decided they wanted mick mulvaney to be acting? was that his choice? the president's choice? >> his choice. this is according to our sources close to mulvaney, not guiljust the west wing. he did not want this at this time. he sees all the rockets that are coming and this is something that he was lax to take on, so he said acting and the thing that's notable about this, andrea, a day ago or week ago, this is the same kind of arrangement the president rejected from nick ers, interim. right? he wanted to be there on a short-term basis. according to our reporting, he asked for a period of about six months. obviously, we could see that pushed, but he wanted to telegraph to everyone it was

something temporary. >> the chief of staff position does not need senate confirmation. so everyone serves at the pleasure of the president of course but if he chooses to leave, if he loses face with the president and goes back to the senate confirmed position as omb director, but again, i can't stress this enough. mike murphy, omb director is one of the most important jobs in any administration. it's not just the budget. it's rule making, it's all kinds of rules and regulations and decisions, consequential decisions for every agency in the government. >> it's one of the, it's not as famous but one of the more powerful positions in the american government and it is a whole load. i mean, i think nick is acting chief of staff because he's acting like he wants to be there. it's clear you need a bulldozer to push anybody in the job which in itself tells the story about the management culture in the

white house and the legal problems for exploding for the president and his political jeopardy. so, you know, it's easier to recruit somebody to volunteer for the kandahar bomb squad than the most powerful appointed job in government. that is a management crisis on its own level. even the president has to be seeing some tea leaves here, that he's not somebody that nib wants to work for. >> he tweeted everyone want this had job and in 2016 when running for congress in a debate, we have seen what mick mulvaney had to see about donald trump. let's watch. >> is he a role model for my sons? absolutely not. yes, i support donald trump. as enthusiastically as i can. i think he's a terrible human being, but the choice on the other side is just as bad. >> is there any angst inside the west wing that, of course,

heidi, we've seen and heard, he was not exactly, and we know people have been blackballed from big positions at the state department and in other agencies for saying less than that. >> and we will see, andrea, what kind of a position, how he holds this position too because based on our reporting, he wants to keep his head down and get through this acting period and yet, the reporting from our white house colleagues is that the part of the reason why the president wanted him in that position is because he knows this onslaught of investigations is coming and he wants mulvaney to be frontward facing. like a lot of people like kellyanne conway who go out and represent him on television. he has this experience with congress and managing investigations. that does not exactly square with the person who wants to keep his head down and keep through this period. he wants him to be very in the weeds of these investigations, for instance, on russia, my reporting also was that, you know, mulvaney is basically going to say, i'm coming in at a

period where all the lawyers are handling that, so therefore, you know, somebody else, take care of it. >> and lamar alexander, we've heard lamar alexander said he's not going to run for reelection. why is that important? he represents the tradition from tennessee that goes back to more moderate independent republicans, people like bob corker who's stepping down, people like, in the past, you know, going back to howard baker but now you have marshall blackburn, much more hard line, loyal, will salute to donald trump and a shift in tennessee republican politics. is there not? >> lamar is a good friend. i worked for him twice and a giant in tennessee politics. the only tennesseean ever been elected senator and a big deal in tennessee politics.

he used to say what they said where he grew up, my daddy fought with the union and i vote the way i shot. republican. so that is a tradition. as you say, going back to baker, that is no longer driving a majority of the republican party particularly in the sun belt. i know lamar is a very thoughtful legislature and works quietly behind the scenes in a bipartisan way and still got two years left to raise hell without a potential primary general election. so his tennessee day is not over and a positive impact going forward. interested in a conservative base but realistic solution to fix the aca. >> we should point out. also a former education secretary. a cabinet member in the bush administration. >> and presidential candidate. >> a great pianist. he can sit there at the piano and play anything. well, to be continued. we hope we can talk to him right

here. heidi and mike murphy. thank you to both of you. and face of the crisis, outrage growing over the death of a 7-year-old girl in border patrol custody. i'll talk to a democratic senator just back from the border. stay with us.

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in june of this year, this country and the whole world rose up in horror when we saw that america was ripping children from their parents at our borders. and yet, today, just a few days before the christmas holiday, we have 15,000 children in this facility here in tornillo and around the country that are basically in child prisons. this is unacceptable for this great country. >> minnesota senator tina smith part of a delegation at the border this weekend. touring a detention center where thousands of migrant children are still being held. their mission is to highlight the young children at the center of the border crisis including 7-year-old jacqueline who died in federal custody earlier this month. dhs now said the little girl appeared to have died of sepsis

shock and disputing saying the girl had been taken on a dangerous journey with little food and water. in other words, blaming the family. and then tina smith joining me now. thank you for spending the weekend down there. you and other senators trying to highlight what is going on. so many people, you know, have ignored this. our own cal perry was down there pointing out that the children were having their, on the mexico side of the border, in agreement with our officials having numbers placed on their arms. >> on their wrists. it's just incredible. so we drove from el paso about an hour out to this facility in the desert right on the border and you approach it and it's just incredible. there's this large chain link fence covered with black plastic so that you can't see this and inside this facility, there are these giant tents that were designed to be used for disaster relief. they had been used, for example, for hurricane katrina and within

this prison, there are 2700 children between the ages of roughly 13 and 17. 500 girls that are living in these giant white tents and there are rows of bunk beds that are like 50 bunks on each side. >> what are the sanitary conditions like? >> this is a completely cut off from the rest of the world. so they are piping, they are trucking in water. they have generators for electricity and i saw this giant, you know, hundreds and hundreds of gallons that said gray water on it. so i want to be clear that i felt like the conditions, we all felt like the conditions were safe, but yet these children are in prison. the boys were walking ten at a time in single file and adults at the front and the minor at the back and we tried to talk with them. we were told no, you can't speak with them.

>> you're a united states senator. but i guess they cite privacy concerns or issues such as that? >> well, they said, you will be disruptive to the children if you speak to them, but my word, these kids, their lives are completely disrupted by being in this facility and how do we know? we are trying to ask, where are you from? how long have you been here? what is the food like? how is it working and we weren't able to answer those questions. >> cal perry was down there this weekend and shot a lot of this footage, he and his team. he also talked to beto o'rourke. >> he was with us. >> you at another catholic shelter on the mexican side. let's watch. >> what is the lesson of this? that democrats can use and apply in 2020 when challenging donald trump? >> i sure hope this doesn't become a democratic or republican party issue. this is a defining american issue. 242 years and counting, we are

the strongest most successful country on the face of the planet. precisely because we are a country of asylum seekers and refugees and immigrants. we lose that at our peril. >> steven miller was on "face the nation" and he is the hard liner inside the white house who's dictating a lot of this policy because they have actually shortchanged the asylum intake process, forcing people to go into this illegal situation. this is part of what steve miller had saved my colleague, margaret brennan. >> president trump took dramatic action, issued an executive order, directing illegal traffic to the ports of entry but a left wing activist judge issued a reckless nationwide injunction, the president's order, putting thousands of lives at risk and further enriching these grotesque. >> a record number continued to cross. i want to quickly get to this question of the border wall. >> we'll do whatever is necessary to build a border

wall, to stop this ongoing crisis of illegal immigration. this is a very, if it comes to it, absolutely. >> that's the face of the policy. >> and this is the end result of this zero tolerance policy that this administration put into place and now what they're doing is it's called metering. they are pushing people to wait to come in legally and to follow the law and present themselves as asylum seekers at the border, so then they go around and they try to come in any way that they can and it's really shocking what's happening. we have 15,000 children that are in these detention facilities, like prisons, really, like the ones we saw in tornillo. >> i want to thank you because while you were down there, the president was hosting congress in a congressional ball at the white house, a black tie ball and i think other senators and members should have been down there doing their job. >> we need to shine a light on

this. it is incredibly important. the people understand, and the americans understand what we're doing. >> thank you. senator smith, thank you very much. and coming up, bitter pill. the affordable care act unconstitutional even though it's been upheld twice by the u.s. supreme court. we'll talk about the fallout next. 'symptoms following you? for adults with moderately to severely active crohn's disease, stelara® works differently. studies showed relief and remission, with dosing every 8 weeks. stelara® may lower your ability to fight infections and may increase your risk of infections and cancer. some serious infections require hospitalization. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you have an infection or flu-like symptoms or sores, have had cancer, or develop new skin growths, or if anyone in your house needs or recently had a vaccine. alert your doctor of new or worsening problems, including headaches, seizures, confusion and vision problems. these may be signs of a rare, potentially fatal brain condition. some serious allergic reactions and lung inflammation can occur. talk to your doctor today, and learn how janssen can help you explore cost support options.

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struck down the entire landmark health care law friday night, the judge ruled that the individual mandate of the affordable care act is unconstitutional, even though the whole act has been unheld by the supreme court, but he ruled that now that there is no tax associated with it because the tax law is zeroed out in the republican tax bill, the whole law is unconstitutional. even some republicans say that the legal argument is a stretch, it could be rejected by higher courts or the supreme court. still injects more uncertainty into the health insurance marketplace. a big political issue, in fact, for democrats heading toward 2020. they used health care as a big wedge issue to help win back the house in 2018. joining me now, former democratic congresswoman, donna edwards, msnbc contributor jeremy peters. this health care issue, i mean,

this is deja vu all over again and donna, you're one of the people affected by it. you used to have congressional care and don't have it now. for a year or so. and you've got a preexisting condition. you've got a big medical issue, which is if i may say so because you've written about it, multiple sclerosis. >> i get my health care through the exchange, but i'm on essentially the private market. it's really expensive but i know my care is covered and here's my concern is that by striking down the entire law. i mean, he took the most ridiculous approach to interpret any kind of legislation by striking down the entire thing but here's what he did. he took away protections for preexisting conditions, lifetime limits. somebody like me $100,000 a year, i could go through a million dollars in health care and then be not able to get health care again. >> are your meds $77,000 now?

>> my medications and mris, those sort of things for my preexisting condition, there are people who live with chronic conditions, 133 million americans with chronic conditions that are preexisting who are going to be in jeopardy of not having their health care. now, look, right now, people should know that their health care is fine. they signed up and if they did through 2019, this is going to make its way through the courts. i believe that the supreme court is going to strike it down. i know that democrats in the house are planning to intervene as soon as they get into the majority and i think it's important to defend this law and i mean, people ran and lost races on health care, on protecting preexisting conditions, on making sure that prescription drugs get covered and now, one judge decides that rather than be a judge, he wants to be a legislator.

legislating from the bench to rip health care away from americans, i think it's completely unacceptable and i know that, i believe that the courts will hold it constitutional. >> 20 state attorneys general including josh holly who ran and won the senate seat to protect preexisting conditions but he was one of the litigants in this case that was decided by the federal judge in texas. >> exactly. i mean, andrea, this is a political process. from the very beginning, the attorney general paxton is somebody that republicans have been eyeing for a long time as somebody who has higher political aspirations. all sorts including in this district in texas engaging in a practice known as judge shopping. this is a well known conservative judge who's known for striking down all sorts of laws that liberals have fought for and what you have here is basically a political outcome that was sought through a very

politicized process. >> now, sabrina, the other thing that has just broken in this last hour is another aspect of the nbc news "wall street journal" poll which shows pretty shockingly that in 2018, right now, the people polled, only a third of americans feel that women have made gains, major gains in equality. gender equality is going backwards, according to a lot of people. this is a less significant result. it used to be 46%, so evenly divided, felt that women were making gains. >> let's take a look at the landscape for a moment. you have a president who has been accused by as many as 17 women of sexual assault. he was elected to the highest office in the land despite there being a tape in which he bragged about groping and kissing women without their consent. he's continued to speak in ways in which he's often used

demeaning language toward women with little ramifications and in addition to that, in terms of administration policy, the trump administration has worked to roll back a lot of obama era policy around reproductive rights. you look at the global gag roll around abortion or rescinding one of the obama administration's payrolls. and regression as we enter 2019 but the flip side of that is you've had a record number of women who are elected to congress last month and i think it was 92 women in the house and 10 women as senate, election night alone, some of the numbers went up in the leaks that followed. we are seeing at least women recognize it's important to have a seat at the table and instead of having to convince women to run for office, they are now voluntarily signing up in order to be part of the change to ensure that some of those gains are made in the years that come. >> looking forward towards 2020,

we have the results of the new iowa poll that shows a lot of name recognition. i think you all would agree, joe biden, bernie sanders, and beto o'rourke is the real standout. he lost in texas but in double digits. kamala harris, cory booker, michael bloomberg and amy klobuchar. interesting results. >> very interesting and as voters often do, say contradictory things here, right. while the democrats in congress, as sabrina was talking about, an influx of new blood, women, largest class in history. they seem to be saying, we want new leadership and fresh ideas but if you look at who's leading in the poll, it's two men in their 70s. >> may not not be, and a woman, elizabeth warren on there, also in her 70s. it may not be that significant this early but does show some interest in new blood, exactly.

and i think health care is a big issue in 2020. and especially after this ruling. sabrina, thank you. rudy giuliani signaling growing white house anger over the mueller probe. what's going on there? stay with us.

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two former associates of ex-national security adviser flynn charged with covertly and unlawful ri tryi unlawfully trying to influence u.s. politicians and as flynn was the primary foreign policy adviser to the trump campaign, at the same time working on behalf of foreign countries. this was laid out in his plea deal. joining me is daniel goldman, former district attorney in the new york southern district. the new indictments of flynn associates will, of course, be part of what they'll try to do when they have the sentencing tomorrow for michael flynn to try to say to the judge this is what he's cooperating on in addition to the russia stuff. >> right. i don't think it's a coincidence that these -- this indictment was unsealed today and the

arrest was made on michael flynn business partner but you're right we did vaguely have some idea that michael flynn was paid by the turkish government to advocate for their interests while he was donald trump's primary national security and foreign policy adviser on the campaign which is an egregious conflict of interest. he was trying to assist the turkish government to get the cleric extradited and that was rejected by the department of state and department of justice as a political ploy without sufficient evidence. so it's the revelation today in the indictment is quite stunning that you have someone at the highest echelons of the campaign who would ultimately become the national security adviser and

while the national security adviser was lying to the department of justice about these contacts and the cover-up is extensive, while he's getting paid to work at cross purposes with united states foreign policy, but this is certainly what michael flynn has been cooperating about. at least one thing that came out in the government's memo about a week and a half, two weeks ago and will be a factor in his sentencing tomorrow. >> and, dan, as well, his argument, his defense lawyers' arguments in the last couple of days he was trapped in perjury when the initial interview by andrew mccabe and peter strzok came to the white house and didn't warn him and the government's argument, mueller's argument this last week was he was the national security adviser and he knows not to lie to the fbi, he knows what the penalties for that are. but in any case, rudy giuliani

was pointing to that in an interview with chris wallace on fox news. >> is the special counsel want to interview the president? >> good luck. good luck. after they trapped him in perjury. i did better on traffic violations. >> you say no way, no interview? >> they're a joke. over my dead body. i could be dead. >> i guess that means that they're not going to do an interview with mueller unless there's a subpoena. >> yeah. that's probably, you know, the tenth worst thing that rudy giuliani said yesterday for donald trump. but his incorrect argument about a perjury trap seems to leaked into flynn's lawyers' heads. you don't need to warn someone if they lie to the fbi they can be charged with that and don't need to warn someone like

michael flynn. they need to understand that it's voluntary and they can leave if they don't want to be interviewed but i guess rudy giuliani is trying to prop up the michael flynn case in some way, shape or form as a reason why donald trump won't sit for an interview. but he's really grasping at straws here. there is no perjury trap. nothing close to a trap here. donald trump is a subject of a couple of investigations and any questions of him are completely legitimate. if he lies that is on his own volition and own choice so this is really to me just a political ploy to excuse the president from not agreeing to sit for an interview. >> understood. dan goldman, thank you very much. thank you for your legal analysis. we'll be right back. (boy) nooooooo... (grandma) nooooooo... (dad) nooooooo...

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thanks for watching. ali velshi takes over in new york. >> have a great afternoon. good afternoon, everyone. i'm ali velshi. stephanie is off. it's monday, december 17th. >> a new report by nbc news and msnbc shows the campaign run in the election. >> the thing jumping out to people is there's an amazing, sophisticated effort to target the african-american community. >> president trump is starting the week again on defense over the russia investigation. he