adviser, in court today, where he pleaded not guilty to seven counts including obstruction, witness tampering, and lying. the president's former fixer, michael cohen, also expected to take the stand. he'll be on capitol hill where he's scheduled to testify under oath in a closed session of the house intel committee next friday after canceling public testimony because of public threats against his family from donald trump. as the felons and accused criminals in trump's orbit get ready to explain or defend their lies to law enforcement officials about their contacts with russians, former cia director john brennan warns mueller is likely closing in on others in donald trump's inner circle. >> i do think that the next series of indictments, or indictments that are going to be coming out, are going to give us, in fact, those final clues in maybe that final -- >> now, you referred to the next series of indictments. why do you believe there will be a next series of indictments? >> whether it's one indictment

that's going to include the dooichlt indictments of many people or going to come out together. i do think robert mueller is going to try to bring this to some type of closure in the coming months and i would find it very hard to believe that other indictments are not going to come down. >> the successor, gina haspel, and her counterparts, the men and women who run the nation's top intel agencies went public today with inconvenient truths about the nature of vladimir putin's regime stating under oath today that russia remains committed to meddling in our democracy and undermining democratic institutions. >> we expect russia will continue to wage its information war against democracies and to use social media to attempt to divide our societies. >> is it the i.c.'s assessment that this country's adversaries continue to use u.s. social media platforms as a vehicle for weaponizing disinformation and spreading foreign influence in the united states? director wray? >> yes, that's certainly the fbi's assessment, not only the

russians continue to do it in 2018, but we've seen indication that they're continuing to adapt their model and that other countries are taking a very interested eye in that approach. >> today's testimony comes as the white house rolls back sanctions imposed on russia for meddling on trump's behalf. just another tuesday, folks. here to sort through the day's developments, some of our favorite reporters and friends. former u.s. attorney, chuck rosenberg. frank figliuzzi is a former assistant director for counterintelligence at the fbi. with us at the table, nbc news national political reporter, carol lee. and donny deutsch joins us for the hour. let me start with you, chuck rosenberg. as roger stone was in court today, you have to fight the temptation to feel any sort of numbness around the event of another person who's been in donald trump's political arsenal for decades appearing before court to face his, you know, whatever his legal fate will be. >> it's becoming remarkably

reteer routine, isn't it? you'd think for any other president in any other time, it would be extraordinary. i think you're exactly right. i also think listening to john brennan during your introduction that there's more to come. there are other shoes to drop. not to be too cliched. i think there's lots of clues out there, nicolle, that mueller isn't quite done yet. >> well, you never say anything willy-nilly. what are those clues, chuck? >> i think there's a bunch. i mean, we know that the grand jury that mueller was using was extended for another six months. that's clue number one. we know, or at least i think we know, that the house permanent select committee on intelligence has not yet provided the mueller team with all the transcripts of the folks who testified before it. and we know that folks who testified before it have tended to lie. we've seen that before. including with mr. stone. we know that when mr. stone was arrested, the fbi also executed search warrants. that means that they had

probable cause to believe that crimes had been committed. other crimes had been committed. and that evidence of those crimes would be at the locations that they searched. i think there's a whole bunch of threads still to be pulled. >> let me ask you to pick up that thread, if you will, frank. just talk about -- it seems to me that the crime of lying to congress is the crime that knits together people who are entangled in the southern district of new york investigations and prosecutions and people who are entangled in the mueller probe. >> yeah, the line to congress is just particularly heinous in many terms of our system of government because you're essentially lying to the american people. you're lying to us. these are elected representatives. and the big question behind the lies, nicolle,ing about is why and is there central coordination and direction to this? we get a hint of some of that when we see section 12,

paragraph 12, of stone's indictment, and there's this reference by mueller to senior campaign officials being directed to deal with stone on the wikileaks. so, we've seen a hint of direction in the manafort indictment as well, and running testimony by people. we've seen cohen make reference to running his testimony by officials. so i'm developing a theory that there has been coordinated efforts to script, to direct falsehoods, and particularly to do so before congress. and when cohen shows up and does his thing next friday, he's got some explaining to do, as they say. he's lied to these people. and he's going to have to correct the record. >> i want to move on from qwhat you just said, what you're talking about. you're talking about words in the indictments and the sentencing documents from the mueller probe that allude to these individuals being directed, and i can't help but

think about individual 1 in the sentencing document from michael cohen in the southern district of new york turned out to be donald trump who directed, and, again, that's the language from the federal prosecutors, a hush money scheme. do you see that there's a person known to them, but not us yet, who possibly directed these actions? >> i do. i don't think -- and by the way, i'll happily defer to chuck who knows mueller far more closely than i do, but mueller is not given to creating intrigue, drama, to teasing us and setting a dramatic stage. if he puts in there that a senior official was directed to do something, if he makes references to this throughout various charging documents, he knows there's a person directing this. he's not -- this isn't conjecture and he likely knows who that is. >> chuck rosenberg, your name has been evoked. let me ask you to answer that

question from frank. let me also ask you a broader question. if robert mueller was still considering or contemplating charging a broader conspiracy, how do the indictments of the russian, the crimes that roger stone has already been charged with, and the fact that corsi and credico, stone associates around the wikileaks hack and dump, fit into what could be a larger conspiracy? >> sure. well, i actually think there is a larger conspiracy. it doesn't mean necessarily that he will charge it. he doesn't have to. it could be part of a report. it could also be part of a counterintelligence investigation. but with respect to the indictment of the russian military intelligence officials, you see their coordination with wikileaks with respect to the indictment of roger stone. you see his coordination with wikileaks. what you don't have is that larger conspiratorial circle drawing them all together. doesn't mean it doesn't exist. we just don't have it yet. may i also answer the first question, though? >> please.

>> nicolle. so prosecutors and agents pick the words in their indictments very carefully. frank is spot-on. every word, every sentence, every paragraph, is checked and double checked and triple checked. words are not in indictments haphazardly or recklessly. if there's something in there, they can prove it, either because they have a document or because they have sworn te testimony in the grand jury that but tresses exactly what they wrote. it these are not haphazard or reckless words in the document. these are words backed by evidence and proved to a jury. >> let me put you on the spot, chuck. you said on this program before that witnesses become subjects, subjects often become targets, targets often become defendants and defendants often become cooperating witnesses. not always the case with the president telegraphing sort of putting his finger on the scale talking about some witnesses, some convicted felons, being better than others, thinking of his comments of paul manafort as compared to michael cohen.

howprosecution? >> sure. you just used the word, "often." i think i used the word "often." not all convicted felons become cooperators. almost all do. stone seems to be cut from a different cloth. he's an odd guy, to put it nicely, nicolle. so it's not at all clear to me that he even understands the nature and seriousness of this. he seems to be -- excuse me, he seemed to be making a game out of it win he came out of the florida courthouse. we'll see if a conversation or two with his new defense counsel sobers him up a bit. in the end, the best choice for him would be to plead guilty and cooperate, but he has proven throughout his professional life he doesn't always make the best choices. >> but, frank, what would make him act so weird other than some sort of faith either in his innocence, which from his own statements to campaign officials and the media, doesn't seem like anything even he believes, or

the fact that he believes either implicitly or otherwise he has a pardon coming his way from donald trump? >> yeah, so i'm a strong advocate of the theory that stone is positioning himself for a pardon and that it's likely the only hope he has. i think that years from now, behavioral scientists will study roger stone. he's a different animal. and because he's driven -- he's driven by different motivators than the average human being. he seems driven and motivated merely by absolute publicity, absolutely being in the center of things, regardless of whether it's bad publicity or good publicity. he needs to be there and he seems to be shaded toward the negative. the -- >> dark. >> he wants to be infamous, not famous. and so when you've got that motivating factor for you, you can throw the rules out the book with regard to whether someone will cooperate or not.

the key to getting him to cooperate, if it ever happens, is going to be to press that button that says, roger, you are going to be talked about forever and you want it done in a way that preserves your legacy as doing what's right for you and for america. we can turn this around. that's going to be a very difficult sell for him. >> frank, he doesn't want that. let's talk about his legacy. you have to listen to this man's brand. he branded himself with richard nixon on his back. think about that for a second. he prides himself on being notorious, being part of this kind of underground, this deep-state conspiracy-type stuff. his entire legacy, his entire -- will go down the tubes if he flips. by the way, i think the federal guidelining sentence, he's looking at less than a year. i think this man would relish going to prison for six months as a martyr. coming out writing his books, having a tv show, being the guy that would not turn. it would be so off brand for him to do what anybody would traditionally do. now, if he was staring at ten years, that's a difference.

the stuff they have him on right now, which according to i think federal guidelines, i'd like to go back obviously to frank or chuck, is less than a year, he will do that time in a heartbeat versus flipping and celebrate it. >> it's such a craven sort of thing to assert. i don't disagree with you, but these are the closest political allies of the president of the united states. frank, you want to respond to that real quick? >> yeah, a couple things. we don't know yet whether there's superseding indictments coming with stone. more charges that might be hung over his head if he fails to cooperate or if mueller develops evidence in the interim that there is knowledge on his part about the role of russia, the role of wikileaks, and so this could get much worse for him in terms of prison time. the other part of this is, you know, it sounds good to say i can write books and go on tv, except, of course, if, perhaps, chuck can weigh in on this, the prosecution moves to bar personal profit after a conviction. and so this could get pretty

interesting for stone if things get worse in terms of prison time, and his inability to profit from this. >> carol, then chuck. >> well, yeah, i was going to say that, you know, all things being equal right now, i agree with donny, like, this is not a person who's inclined to flip in any way. this is someone who has said that hate is a stronger emotion than love. this is someone who has, you know, left his hearing today and talked to alex jones, where he said that this is a lynching and he talked about "they" being out to get them. i mean, his entire persona is built around this idea of being a victim, of being somebody who's under attack. we've seen, you know, him do this even on a much smaller scale of accusations. go back to when he was -- it came out he and his wife were trying to be swingers. he denied that and said the fbi was trying to get him. the whole theme of roger stone's entire life would have to completely upend and he would do an entire 180. >> today's act of mercy will be

i'm not going to make chuck rosenberg weigh in on roger stone's swinger phase. i want to ask you one more question, carol lee, about the news today of these close, close, close associates to donald trump. at the end of the day, the stone story and cohen story are trump stories. these are the people, with all due respect, i know he's your friend, these were dirty bad guysirty bad things to the president. they're heading to congress to face the people and the body to whom he lied. the other one in court today facing seven felonies. these are the president's closest political fixers. >> we've seen already him try to distance himself from some. he hasn't necessarily done that with roger stone. it will be interesting to see how that plays out and how the president treats him. but, you know, the question, nicolle, has always been, when does this -- does donald trump pay a price for that? people kind of knew this about him to a certain extent. we're seeing more detail about it. this was built in. he's also, you know, created a picture to say, where he can say, you know, these are people who are working for me, you know, they were doing this and

nothing that he said prior to that, like, i hire the best people, seems to matter to the people who are most staunchly in support of him. >> that's to his brand, but criminally, if someone is putting together a conspiracy case, and it involves the president, these people are now one of them a convicted felon, the other one charged with felonies. >> well, too, i want to throw a question to chuck. we keep talking about these senior campaign official and as you know when you build a case, you're building up, you're building down. is there anybody other than donald trump junior or jared who can fit that description? as far as where we're really rounding out all the president's men. >> that's a great question. it seems like that circle is relatively small, donny. i want to point out one other thing. should the president pardon, let's say, roger stone, and i think it carries at least political, if not legal jeopardy for the president. roger stone would no longer have a 5th amendment privilege to refuse to testify. he could be put in the grand jury and he can be compelled.

something they can't do right now while he's pending indictment. so not every avenue that seems to be immediately appealing for the president is really all that appealing. i mean, roger stone would benefit from a pardon, but the government would then have unfettered access to his testimony. >> i want to just end on this idea of how the goalposts constantly move. we're now all sitting here, even -- we talk about this every day, it's not that bad, you know, roger stone's brand, it's not bad for roger stone's brand. >> i'm not saying it's not bad. i'm trying to analyze what he's going to do. >> this is the president of the united states. he sits atop the justice department which runs the fbi. the president still coming down firmly on the side of felons, liars and idiots. >> well, i mean, but roger stone was somebody who was part of the president's campaign. i mean, he was -- he was -- he left early, but he was still always an adviser. i mean, he's someone who's been tied closely to the president. he was at the republican convention. i mean, he's -- he's not an unknown entity, so, you know, again, i think that people who

are very strong supporters of the president don't see him -- don't see this like that, necessarily. they see this as part of what's been built into donald trump and who he is and the question, though, is where it goes. and that's something that none of us really know for sure and will depend -- and how this all unfolds will depend on how his support -- >> really quick. go ahead. >> speaking of criminal enterpri enterprises, i really believe this ends with a recode charge from the southern district. there can always be these gray areas with the mueller investigation unless literally he's on the phone with putin. when they start picking the enterprise apart and have a sitting president sitting atop a weak old criminal enterprise, i think that's where this goes. >> something politically -- >> go ahead. >> -- the president hasn't necessarily guarded against. he's guarded against russia, collusion, witch hunt, but the business portion of his company and things like that, he's not -- that is not as primed for

people sticking with him through that. >> really quick, chuck, 20 second. i don't know that matt whitaker meant to say what he said yesterday about mueller being almost done. i've heard other justice department officials caution against putting a timeline or an end-by date on the mueller probe. your thoughts? >> yeah, i agree with that, nicolle. by the way, donny hit on a really important point. even if mueller is done, even if he files a report, there's still a southern district of new york investigation. whatever they may end up charging, that's ongoing and that's important. we ought to watch that very carefully. >> chuck rosenberg, frank figliuzzi, carol lee, thank you starting us off. after the break, as nbc reports on the intelligence community's concerns about jared kushner's security clearance, our next guest describes him as vindicti vindictive, inexperienced, and a backstabber. chris christie on his hot war with the president's son-in-law. also ahead, he told him so. chris christie also took convicted felon mike flynn off of every list for jobs in a future donald trump administration.

but he ended up on top of the national security agencies. how'd that happen? and why did he think -- why did the president think firing him would end the russia probe? and at odds with intel again. donald trump's intelligence chiefs break with the president on iran, north korea, and isis. all those stories coming up. what do you have there? p3 it's meat, cheese and nuts. i keep my protein interesting. oh yea, me too. i have cheese and uh these herbs. p3 snacks. the more interesting way to get your protein. one hougot it.p order? ran out of ink and i have a big meeting today. and 2 boxes of twizzlers... yeah, uh...for the team... the team? gooo team.... order online pickup in an hour. hurry and get 20% off with coupon at office depot officemax if your moderate to severeor crohn's symptoms are holding you back, and your current treatment hasn't worked well enough it may be time for a change.

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our next guest writes that jared kushner waged a war against him behind his back. lining up allies at the highest levels of the trump campaign and in front of the future president, himself. at one point, saying that his father, charles kushner, never should have been prosecuted,

that the family and the rabbis could have dealt with it. "it" was a criminal conspiracy that involved escorts, sex tapes and blackmail. anyone who knew the u.s. attorney from new jersey would have known that the family and the rabbis were not going to cut it. former governor chris christie authored the new book, "let me finish: trump, the kushners, bannon, new jersey, and the power of in-your-face politics" joins me now. congrats on the book. >> thank you. >> jared kushner, how does he feel about the book? >> i haven't spoken to him yet, but listen, as you see from reading the book, i just tell the stories. i mean, you know, i experienced a lot over this period of time. i kept quiet about it. continued to help the president because he's been my friend for 17 years. and i have great affection for him. but people have to stand up and be accountable for what they did, and this book, if i was going to write a memoir, and i wanted to, r it hit has to incl that stuff or it's not going to be honest and i think, you know, you haven't heard anybody say anything about the book yet because it's an honest book.

>> so let me be honest. you savaged jared kushner and he deserves it. but you don't lay a glove on donald trump who empowered and empowers jared kushner today. >> i don't think that's exactly accurate. i say in there the president has real weaknesses. i say in there the president surrounded himself with convict felons. i thing that's pretty direct stuff. i do what a lot of other books don't do, i point out his strengths. i know him in a way other people don't know him because i've known him for 17 years so i had a lot of personal time with him where i've gotten to see him as a father, and talk to him about fatherhood. i put that in the book. i talk about, you know, his sense of humor. and the fun that we had, myself, mary pat, he and melania, socializing together over the last 15 years. so who i'm trying to give a portrait of when i talk about the president in this book is the total person. not just the political actor. not the, you know, "apprentice" host but the guy i went out to

dinner with, the guy i went out to lunch with, the guy that i got to know over the last 17 years. >> you were right about jared kushner, who nbc news reported on friday his security clearance -- the intelligence community tried to block it. do you know what that's about? >> i don't. most of the time,vy vi have a l of great friends at the white house including the president. most of them never spoke to me about jared. >> what sort of ongoing problems could jared have if his security clearance was blocked and somebody cleared it, anyway? i -- only abbe lowell who he upgraded to, a criminal defense attorney, what sort of ongoing problems could jared face? >> listen, i think it's why the intelligence folks overruled, who overruled the intelligence folks? we know the president has the absolute right to do that if he wants to, he can grant security clearances to whomever he wants regardless of the opinion of the intelligence community. i don't know if the president did it or how the exact

operation worked. we know general kelly had concerns about this. as a result, not just with jared, with other people, ended the idea of temporary, you know, temporary clearances. so, you know, i don't know. i don't think that in the end this is going to be anything that's debilitating to his ability to continue to advise the president because the president wants to be advised by jared. >> let's talk a little bit about jared's tenure. on the campaign, he aligned himself with paul manafort, now awaiting sentencing and he overruled your decision to really oust mike flynn from senior national security positions. you've been warned by president obama and you had your own concerns about mike flynn. >> i did. i did. listen, mike flynn from the time i met him from a train wreck and i say that in the book very plainly. we -- i had met him a few times then we went to an intelligence briefing. as the two staffers to the then-candidate trump. and he was outrageous in that briefing. interrupting. demeaning. and just showing off in a way

that was just immature and ill-tempered. and he left separately after that meeting and i spoke to donald for a while about this and i just said, this is not a guy who you can give a senior position to. i know he's supported you. i know you like him. but he's just not temperamentally fit to do this. and this was one of about a half a dozen conversations i had with the president. you know, between june or july of 2016 and election day about mike flynn including -- up to and including the day after election day when i saw the president for the last time before i was fired as transition chairman where i said to him, this is a big mistake, if you do this with flynn. he told me he was doing it. he said, you just don't like him. i said, you're right, i don't like him. you want to know why? he said yes. because he's going to get you in trouble. >> he's going to jail in part for lying about his conversations with russian

diplomat sergey kislyak about sanctions. jeff sessions, who you're also pretty hard on in the book, lied about his contacts. >> right. >> with russian diplomats. paul manafort lied about all manner of things, but a lot of his book of dirty business was favorable to russia. i don't know of anybody in the president's orbit who lied to any other -- who lied about contacts with any other country. away your 17-year friendship with donald trump and why would so many people tell so many lies about russia? >> well, what i'll tell you is what i said to someone earlier today. in my experience, bad people and stupid people lie all the time for no reason at all because it's just who they are. and if you look at this list of people -- >> jeff sessions is bad and stupid? >> well, i don't think -- i don't think jeff was bright enough to be in the position where he is. >> so just stupid but not bad? >> no, i don't think he's a bad person. i like jeff on a personal level. i really do. >> you think he lied about conversations with kislyak out of stupidity? >> yeah. i do. absolutely. and i think -- >> and it happens to be the same

lie told by mike flynn, paul manafort, george papadopoulos, and everyone else that's been charged by mueller? >> listen, we don't know the bottom of this yet, okay? we don't know what else bob mueller is going to uncover. i'm telling you, i think there's another consistent strain to consider in addition to russia. that is that sometimes dumb and bad people lie and i couldn't tell you, nicolle, how many times when i was u.s. attorney i'd see people come in and lie over stuff that just was ridiculous. why lie about this? there was no logical -- >> i don't disagree with that, but these weren't random lies. these weren't dumb liars lying about all sorts of -- it's not like one lied about venezuela, another lied about saudi arabia. they all lied about russia. >> let's explore another potential theory as long as we're going down this road. you know, i think a lot of them -- and this is the dumb part -- maybe thought that what they were doing was inappropriate. when it really wasn't. having conversations with kislyak, even having conversations with kislyak about sanctions was not illegal at the

time they did it. >> exactly. so why lie about it? >> well, you know, if you think it might be, right, if you're getting questioned -- >> no way he didn't know the lies. he'd been -- he was the national security adviser. >> if you think that it might be illeg illegal, you might lie about it. you know what i'm saying? if you don't know the law, you don't understand the law. now you're all of a sudden being questioned by fbi agents. that makes you think immediately i must have done something wrong. maybe i shouldn't have talked about that. and he lied to mike pence about it, too. like, why lie to mike pence? you know, i mean, there's somebody who's the number-two person in the country. so that's why -- understand your theory, and you might turn out to be right. >> it's not a theory. i read the newspaper. 19 people have been charged for lying about their contacts with russia. >> it's a theory that those lies are because something is connecting all the russian stuff. and i just don't know that. so as a prosecutor, always tryu time when they'd come and present a case to me, i'd start pushing back at them, they'd say, come on, boss, you know he's guilty.

i'd say, no, i don't. what i care about is not what i know, it's what i can prove. >> i get it. >> beyond a reasonable doubt. >> so it's been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that michael cohen is both bad and stupid, is that fair enough? >> i would say that's pretty clear. >> what do you think of the southern district of new york, a good office? >> aggressive office. great lawyers. i will tell you as a new jersey guy that we often had conflicts with the southern district because we called them, as most other offices called them, the sovereign district of new york because they believe that they're in charge of the entire justice department. >> it bears -- i worked in the white house where the president that we both worked for appointed -- you were known as both those things, aggressive as well. >> so i'm not saying -- listen. i don't want to give the complete, like, you know, wet kiss to the southern district of new york. >> you don't have to kiss them. >> what i'm saying -- let me finish before you try to nail me on this. i have absolute confidence in the fact the overall majority of the people in that office do a very good job. very credible job.

i know the guy who runs the fbi, who runs the new york office, he was a corruption investigator for me in new jersey. >> which you did a lot of. >> yes. he did a great job for me. and i think he's a guy of great integrity. so, with him leading the investigations in the southern district of new york, and a lot of the good people in southern, i'm pretty confident -- i've said it right from the beginning, thinking when i was governor, i would come on this show, that i think that the mueller investigation is not the president's biggest problem. and that the southern district of new york investigation has always been much more dangerous and has much more hazard to him than does the mueller investigation. >> so the southern district -- i mean, i asked you what you thought after the office because the southern district of new york has sponsored an allegation about the president. they allege that individual 1 directed a hush money scheme that michael cohen executed. do you accept that, that the president is accused of directing hush money scheme? >> well, i accept he's accused. i don't know if he's guilty. i accept he's accused.

they put it in an indictment. so they've accused him of that. now, what the import of that is, did he know what he was doing? did he understand that what he was doing was illegal? there's a lot of different things to prove a crime there. but do i agree that he was accused? yeah, you can't -- >> so, michael cohen ran operations at the direction of the president, though. let's take this case aside, you understand the cohen/trump relationship pretty well. you and i've talked about it. >> yeah, listen, cohen was around for a long time. >> would donald trump have wanted to take someone like cohen to the white house with him? >> you know, i don't know whether he would have wanted to or not, but what i will tell you is that somebody like don mcgahn would have never accepted him. >> did he try? >> you know, don would have to talk about that, but in the end, what i'll tell you is i know don mcgahn really well, and if you look at the quality of the lawyers that were in white house counsel's office under don mcgahn, they're among the best in the country. i don't think michael cohen would fit that bill. >> i don't disagree with any of that. do you know donald trump made an effort -- did he ask, say to don

mcgahn, hey, i'd like to find a spot for michael cohen? >> the answer is i don't know. the president never said that to me. >> did you hear it from don mcgahn? >> i don't talk about my conversations with don. don's an old friend, a new jersey guy. we have a jersey bond. we don't talk about the conversations we have. what i will tell you is don was amongst the most careful, smart lawyers i've met in my career. and what don was trying to do his entire time at the white house was to make sure that the people i kind of talked about -- >> yeah. >> -- were either kept out of the white house or were controlled if they were in them. that was a full-time job for him. >> he didn't succeed, though. mike flynn came in and ran -- he was the president's national security -- >> he didn't -- >> jared kushner outlasted don mcgahn. >> that's very true. but, you know, the bottom line is, flynn was out in 24 days and i do feel some sense of vindication over that because not only was he not successful as national security adviser, he was the single biggest failure as national security adviser in modern american history. >> we're going to have a break

in which you can yell at me. i want to ask you one more question. >> i'm mr. mellow now. >> don mcgahn -- we're in the same line of work. >> that's right. >> don mcgahn spent, as far as we know, at least 30 hours testifying to robert mueller. he found himself in the position that you might have found yourself in if you had accepted a job as white house chief of staff. can you imagine going in to serve this president, ending up spending 30 hours testifying before robert mueller? >> not a good day. i will tell you this, that was forced by the lousy legal advice that the president got to waive privilege as to the white house counsel. and i think it was dumb advice at the time. it put don in the position where he had to give all that testimony. and it just was dumb advice from a c-grade legal team. >> all right. what could have been, chris christie as the president's chief of staff, after the break. chief of staff, after the break. . . then i realized something was missing... me. my symptoms were keeping me from being there.

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we're back. at the end of december, you had laryngitis and went into the

white house to talk to the president about serving as chief of staff? >> i did. >> how'd that go? >> we had a great meeting. look, we always do. it was me and the president and the first lady and we had a great meeting. and i'm, you know, then i went home and talked to mary pat about it and thought about it on the ride home and it's not the right time for me. so i called the president next day, and i just said to him, listen, withdraw me from consideration because it's just not the right time for me. we can talk about it some other time. >> did he know what you'd written about his son-in-law? >> i todld him about the book, yes. >> how'd he feel about that? >> i don't think it was his preference i did that. >> did he ask you not to? >> he didn't ask me not to. it was already done. the book was already printed. i made that clear to him. he knew about the book from the beginning. i didn't hide anything from the president. i called hip the day before the book was announced that i signed a deal, told hem, i was writing a book about my life and our relationship and all the rest of that. so i can't imagine that any of

this comes as a surprise to the president because he was there for most of this. that went on. he -- i mean, the story, you know, about jared, you know, intervening the day that he was going to name me transition chairman, the president sat through that entire meeting. >> right. >> none of this is going to be a surprise to the president. >> jared is at the intersection of so many of the flashpoints in the mueller probe. it was his advice to fire jim comey, thought that was a good idea. he sat at lunch with you on valentine's day. we with know from comey's public testimony, donald trump asked comey to see to it to let flynn go. and he said to you that this ends the russia cloud. do you -- have you talked to mueller about any of the interactions? >> no, no, no, i've never been called by the special counsel. >> do you think after writing this you muight be? >> i don't think so. i don't think there's anything in there of any import on this. as i report on the lunch, they fired flynn because he lied to the vice president, and then, you know, the president said, i think this will end this whole russia thing. my impression that day was the president really thought the only person who had spoken to

russians at that point was mike flynn. >> but jared kushner tried to set up a back channel so he could not only speak to russians but speak to russians without the american government knowing about it. >> that's what i've read. so, you know, i don't know that. i was not clued in on that. >> he didn't ask for your help? >> no, he did not. >> it was your job to deal with -- on top of being in charge of transition, you dealt with foreign governments. did you ever deal with russians? >> never. >> so they took that from you even in your role as dealing with foreign governments. >> yeah, although, you know, listen, i didn't ever ask for that role. it was something that really got foisted upon me because as head of the transition, some of these embassies and ambassadors started to call me to ask if i would sit with them once i got made chairman of the transition. i never got any contact from anyone involved with russia. >> you are -- as your friend, it's hard to see the displays of loyalty in this book and see them so unreciprocated by the president. how is your relationship with the president right now? >> it's really good. i mean, listen, like i said, like you just said in the last segment, i mean, we sat and talked about me being white

house chief of staff five weeks ago, so, and i have a great relationship with him. i have a great relationship with his wife. we went, you know, to the white house -- >> what does she think of him? >> of who? >> the president. >> she loves the president. >> and what does she think about stormy daniels being a household name? >> listen, you think i'm asking -- >> you were in the trump tower when the "access hollywood" came out, i'm asking ining what you think -- >> listen -- >> he embarrasses her. >> she put out a statement after the "access hollywood" tape whacking them around for it. >> most people don't have to do that. >> i understand. most people are not married to someone who's running for president and when that happens, you know this, that a lot of folks have to put out public statements about things when you're running for president that normally would just be talked about in the privacy of your own home. listen, people misunderstand -- i've told you this a dozen times. people misunderstand the relationship between the president and first lady. the first lady is a strong, smart, tough woman. she speaks her mind. she speaks her mind to the president. she speaks her mind to others. some people learned that when

she was firing some people of late. she's not someone to be trifled with. someone roll their eyes at her, they're not working there anymore. >> right. >> i have enormous respect for melania and there's this depiction of her as some kind of victim or captive. she is not in any way. she loves her husband. she understands their relationship better than anybody in the outside pretends to. and after having socialized with them for 15 years, i'm very confident that melania trump is who she is and it's where she wants to be. >> you make it clear at the end of this that you're not done, the title, "let me finish." are you going to run again? >> i don't have any plans to. >> that's how it always starts. >> but, listen, how else do you answer this question, right? if you -- if you say no, right, and then circumstances arise later on that make you change your mind, they replay the video of you saying no. if you say yes, they say -- >> do you think that's still the case in the tame of trump? >> yes, i do. >> he says grab them in the bleep and gets elected, anyway.

>> yeah, i do. i think the rules are different for him than anybody else. with me, they'd definitely play it back, right? i'm 56 years old. so i'm not going to preclude myself from doing anything in the future. i know this much. i love the executive branch of government, and whether it would be in if an appointed position or elected position, that's where i would be. i'm not a guy to be 1 of 100 or 1 of 435. >> not running for senate. >> not senate or the house. >> i want to ask you about one more thing, you write at the very beginning about the first years of your marriage. i felt -- former fbi director comey writes a lot about parenthood. it gets lost in the book. i don't want that to get lost in the politics of it. talk about that section. >> mary pat and i got married when we were 23 and 22. i was in my second year of law school. she graduated from college and was starting a career on wall street. and, you know, i think the theme of that part of the book was, you know, when people write about marital troubles, they write about infidelity or inattentiveness.

our story was immaturity. we just were too young to get married. as it turns out. and we separated twice, as i write in the book. someone asked me today, who left who? and i said, well, i left the first time then i came back and she left. so, you know, we were equal-opportunity leavers. i mean, but the reason i thought it was important to put in the book was, one, i wanted to be honest with people about who i am as a person and how i've become who i am. secondly, life is filled with defeats, and it's how do you respond to those challenges? and the way we responded to that challenge was we both went to counseling, both together and separately. we went through six months, six different months of separation. and we ultimately said we're fighting for this marriage. we're fighting for this marriage and going to try to save it. and we did. now 32 years later and 4 great children later, we feel incredibly blessed, but we know it wasn't a gift. we fought for it. when my political career was said to be over at 33 years old, when i lost a race for county

office, and the front page of the state newspaper saying, once promising political career is over, i didn't give up. i fought. i came back. became u.s. attorney, became governor. when governor was at its heights, we didn't say, like, oh, it's over. we kept working. when it went down, we kept working. what i'm trying to convey in this book on the personal side of things is, that anything in life worth having is worth fighting for and that you never give up. and so let me finish is about me never giving up. vy a lot to contribute to this country. i really believe that. and i love this country and i'm a patriot. and i'm a nerd, too, on this kind of stuff. right? we've talked about that. and so i'm ready to do what needs to be done to help the country, but i have to serve my family, too, and that's why i wanted to talk about my wife and my children in a very personal way so that people understood just how lucky i feel like i am and how important they are to me. >> we're never going to agree about donald trump. >> no, i don't think so. >> and the direction of the republican party.

i love what you wrote about marriage. i love what you wrote about being a catcher and having to sit in the dugout for an entire season. >> yeah. >> i love what you wrote about your journey with weight and i love the personal things that you wrote. i think if you run for president again, there's a lot more in here for people to sink their teeth into. >> i appreciate that. i'll tell you this, like, i also think it's important to understand that people who gain great notoriety, all right, for whatever reason, they're always much more complicated than they seem and there's always much more to learn about them than you can learn. and that's part of the effort of this book is to let people no go there, say whatever they think of the youtube governor, whether they think i'm the bully of bridgegate, whether they think i'm the hero of sandy, i'm neither, right? i'm neither. it's much different. and people need to read the book to understand that. i hope they do. >> i hope so, too. thank you. >> thanks, nicolle. >> for sending some time with us. we're going to sneak in a break. we'll be right back. we're going to sneak in a break.

we'll be right back.

we are back. i officially lost control. donny is back. >> governor, i have to tell you, i love the last thing you said. this is so nuanced and people don't understand this. i am not the bridge bully guy, not the saint from sandy, i am neither and i'm both. i thought that was a wonderful thing. if you are running again, i think we need to hold onto that. impart of the 17 year club with trump also. i have known him a long time. people ask me was he different, is he the same. and he is different. you clearly have to acknowledge, i'm not going to is he fit for office, politics aside, a very different human being today than ten years ago. >> what i'll acknowledge is he is much more preoccupied today and distant than he used to be. i attribute that to the office and responsibility of the office. you know when he used to come to a dinner table, meeting him at a restaurant, he would be loaded

to go the minute he sat down. and the commentary would start and you would be waiting for the waiter to come to interrupt it so everybody could get a breath. you know, the president now is not that way when he sits at the table. i have always taken, i don't know why, what i have taken it to be is this guy after two years is starting to feel the weight of the office and the weight of the pressure of the office and the responsibilities that come on his desk and on his watch all the time and i think it's made him different. so i would agree with you that i think he is different. that's what i attribute it to. >> fit for office? >> i think he is, yes, absolutely. fit for office is -- so much of that has a strain underneath it of politics because the way you look at it depends if you agree with what he is doing tomorrow or not and how you approach things. >> listen, i was on the plane with bob corker when he was

trying to become vice president. >> two years ago. >> donald trump in his manner of governing is no different now than he was two years ago in that respect. the tweeting, the outrageousness, impulsivity, he displayed those in full force in the campaign and everybody saw it. >> the difference is there's no more isis. >> he says there's no more isis which we disagree with but what i'll say to you is that they're not doing -- he said he is pulling them out of syria, now he's not. you have to watch not just, with donald trump, it is important to watch in my experience not just the words but the words coupled with the actions because sometimes they're opposite. >> so we're never going to agree about the president. i will say this, your

relationship with trump is like trump's relationship with putin. you're affection at to trump in an inexplicable way. here is something you're not, jared kushner. kushner didn't dump you because he didn't like you and what you did to his dad but he wanted to get a competent person a u.s. attorney out of the way to engage in dirty business in the purity of the transition. how plausible is that theory? >> listen, i think he understands, in fact i don't think, i know because he said it to me. you're one tough prosecutor, you're one tough guy. you don't look away at anything. he has said that to me in an unsolicited way and i would say yeah, you're right. he would say that's based upon his experience with me. listen -- >> he is walking through the transition with saudis and others he wants to make money with. wants to talk to kislyak for a

secure line that the ic can monitor for the administration and the president. that stuff stinks to high heaven, and when people talk about likelihood of various people around donald trump getting indicted, lot of people look at kushner and say this period in transition is the period the dirtiest stuff can happen. does that strike you as plausible? >> it strikes me as something consistent with the seat of the pants way that stuff is managed. if any of that were to be going on and set up, that should be run by the lawyer and it never was. don mcgahn was excluded from so much, both in the campaign and transition intentionally because there was a basic distrust of lawyers being the ones that say no. >> idiot defense as far as collusion? >> i don't believe idiot defense, i believe disorganized defense. i wriete in the book, end of august sunday afternoon i get a call from jared kushner saying how many field ops do we need in pennsylvania. this is the end of august. i said don't we have field ops

in pennsylvania? he said no. >> to me, his dad was dirty, right? >> listen -- >> you sent him to prison. >> i have to be careful. i have ethical requirements. i will tell you i charged charles kushner with crimes he pled guilty to and i have no question that he was guilty of those crimes and deserved to go to prison. >> so he was dirty. well, he is a criminal. >> i am a former prosecutor. >> you put them in jail. looking at the thing, you look at jared kushner's behavior with the eye of a prosecutor, are you like i want to open that case, there's stuff there that smells. >> that's never the way i did it. the way i did it as a prosecutor was say bring me evidence that shows there's probable cause that a crime is being committed, then i'm ready to go. >> i am giving you the chance to beat up jared, you're not taking

it. >> part of the way the book is and people characterize it, i don't call in anything here, i tell the stories. then people can draw whatever conclusions they want to draw from that behavior. >> back to trump a second. people will often say i know him, he is not a racist. after what he said about mexicans and the islamic ban and charlottesville. how is he not a racist or transactional racist? >> listen, i'm telling you, donny, my conversations with him, i have never seen that. >> based on those. >> on television. >> yes, i do. those are my blacks. they're good people on both sides of the kkk rally. >> listen, i said at the time as you know once charlottesville happened, that kind of language by him and statement by him is completely unacceptable and can't be made and shouldn't be made, and that didn't make me particularly popular because he doesn't like that from people he considers friends.

i said you can't say those kind of things because they're not true and they're unacceptable. so i'm not going into the labeling stuff. in the end, for the same reasons i said before, people that hate me call me a bully, even though there's nothing ever proved to make me a bully, people who love me say where's the guy with the fleece, and i'm not that guy either. so i don't get into the labels. when something is done that i disagree with, i say it. i haven't hesitated to say it about this president. in charlottesville he was wrong. and i was sitting over in europe on vacation and tweeted out it was wrong because i didn't want anybody to doubt for a second that's what i felt. same about "access hollywood." >> do you do a donald trump imitation? >> yes. i'm not doing it. >> come on. >> it would sell a lot of books. >> you can't sell enough books to get me to do that on television. you're not jimmy fallon. he got me to do dad dancing. i said to my son, we got

millions of hit. he said dad, if you are a public figure and willing to humiliate yourself -- i am about to head to colbert show. >> i am not going to say if i have seen it or not, on things i have heard, there are bad trump imitations and i have been told his is very good. >> his is very good. >> we are in the 17 year or more club. >> let me ask you a last question. you have four beautiful kids, an incredible wife. do you look at donald trump and say to your in our kids there's a role model? >> no, no. i try to be a role model for my four kids so they don't have to look at anybody else. i don't believe children should have to look beyond their parents for inspiration.

because if their parents disappoint them in that way, it is very hard for them to believe in anybody else. so my job every day is to act and be their role model, and i wrote an inscription to my dad in this book, i was thinking what are you writing to your father when you write a memoir, i wrote dad, you've always been my role model. he said that's the greatest thing you ever said to me. that's what it is all about. >> the book is great. do you have the same friends now that you had when you were young that says a lot about somebody. my thanks to you, to donny. the book is let me finish. you won't regret reading it, even if you throw it at the tv. "mtp daily" starts now. hi, chuck. >> hi, nicole. many thanks. >> does chuck want an autographed copy of the book? >> we're going to