nicolle wallace" starts right now. hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. against the backdrop of donald trump's escalating war of words against the late john mccain, stop it for a second, and let that sink in. donald trump today confronted with new reporting that robert mueller's investigators began investigating the trump organization's ties to russia just months after trump was sworn in as president. hundreds of pages of court documents unsealed today in the michael cohen case giving us a rare peek inside the investigation's earliest phase. and offering us tea leaves about what that part of the investigation yielded and what drove the decision to send other cohen cases to the southern district of new york where the president has already been identified as individual 1 in michael cohen's sentencing memo, and is widely believed to face ongoing legal exposure. "the new york times" reports, "federal authorities investigating russian interference in the presidential election obtained search

warrants for e-mails of michael d. cohen, president trump's former lawyer and fixer, beginning in july 2017." that's according to documents released tuesday that provide a glimpse into the earliest stages of the inquiry into the president." "washington post" adds this, "the search warrants unsealed tuesday in cohen's case offer no insight into how mueller and his team handed off a key part of the cohen investigation to federal prosecutors in new york in early 2018 and how much evidence prosecutors already had against cohen even before they searched his office, home, and hotel room in april of that year. the warrants also reveal just how much of the investigation is still being protected today, as we speak. take a look at the pages of redacted material on these documents. most intriguing to us, the bulk of a section titled "the illegal campaign contributions scheme." the judge offering this explanation for these redactions. "at this stage, wholesale

disclosure of the materials would reveal the scope and direction of the government's ongoing investigation. it would also unveil subjects of the investigation and the potential conduct under scrutiny." and that is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. chuck rosenberg who work bed on the staffs of both robert mueller and james comey at the fbi. former assistant fbi director for counterintelligence, frank figliuzzi. betsy woodrough, former chief of staff. former chief counsel, ron klain at the table, and mimi rocah is back. i have to tastart with you, fra figliuzzi because we talk so much, we talk on this show all the time about what mueller knows, what the southern district of new york knows. the answer is mountains and mountains and mountains of things that we don't know about yet.

>> let's continue with the mountain theme and switch it to a frozen mountain, an iceberg. let's say that once again, nicol nico nicolle, we're getting increasing glimpses of the submerged part of the iceberg, the part we haven't seen yet. as that becomes more and more transparent to us, we learned today, this is what popped out at me, that remember what mueller's all about. he starts as a counterintelligence, russian counterintelligence investigation, we know from andy mccabe that mccabe had added an obstruction element in there involving the president and that gets handed off to mueller and what does mueller do? he targets cohen and cohen's records and e-mails and phone records, and he does it early and almost immediately after he stands up his office. so what do i draw from that? i draw from that that russia plays prominently in this concern as well as the possibility of obstruction by the president. and mueller jumped right into that and targeted data coming

out of cohen's office. >> chuck rosenberg, i have never sort of been able to get over the president's reaction on the day of the cohen raids, and i want to play some of it but i want to get you to weigh in first. the president clearly surprised, the president clearly scared, the president thinking he can turn this somehow to his advantage. on the mueller side, this was almost done after a point where they had so much reason to go looking for what they had that they could have done a lot of this investigation even with -- they knew what they were going to get. it's like you always remind us, they ask questions they already know the answers to. is that clear to you from what you see in today's documents? >> it is. you spoke, nicolle, about mountains and mountains. here we have pages and pages and facts after facts which detail the probable cause that the government had to search michael cohen's home, his hotel room,

and his office. what i hope people see from this is the excruciating detail, the remarkable degree of precision that prosecutors and agencies in order to obtain warrants and that all has to be viewed in the following context. the 4th amendment to the constitution requires that the government have probable cause to search your home, your business, your office. probable cause is the lowest standard in the criminal law. if we want to convict someone at trial, it's proof beyond a rm doubt. if we want to detain them pending trial, it's clear and convincing evidence. but the 4th amendment to the constitution only requires probable cause and this is not a technical term, but they had oodles of probable cause. it's just remarkable how much stuff they had and how precisely they laid it out in their affidavits for their warrants, and so the president ought to be scared. i understand his reaction. i don't condone it, but i understand it. there's a lot of stuff that they have and it seems like in part

they're coming after individual 1, the president of the united states. >> i'm going to play that sound as promised because i think it's the biggest reveal for what we're talking about, how scared he is. but i wonder if you can also speak, chuck rosenberg, to the division of evidence, that mueller kept what he needed. we know what he was looking for were whether cohen was actually acting as a foreign agent, back the mccabe central question about, who the trump organization, who the president was working for. russia or the united states, which i will never become numb to the fact that these folks had to ask that question, and what ended up in the office of sdny. what do you think about what we're learning today about where those two diverged? >> yeah. interesting question. we've always spoken about mueller and i worked for the man, so i know this firsthand, we've always spoken about how disciplined he is. his remit as we've discussed is narrow. it was russian interference in the election and those who might have conspired with russia from the trump campaign.

and so when he was looking at michael cohen as a possible foreign agent, possible foreign agent of a -- i'm sorry, possible agent of a foreign power, excuse me, whether he decided he couldn't charge that, whether they decided they didn't have the evidence to support it, for whatever reason, once that wasn't there, once it wasn't any longer within mueller's specific remit, he gave the rest of the case to the southern district of new york. it's precisely what he should have done, and so, again, you see somebody disciplined following the rules that he was provided. it's really a very, very good window into his soul. >> is also a good window, frank figliuzzi, into the multiple frames of legal peril facing this president. we have a giant redabltredablgt the president's allies say the deepest what that he's standing is in sdny. those redactions would seem to support that theory.

>> right. and these are still, for the most part, dynamic, pending investigations. judges -- judge still saying i don't want this out yet, it's going to reveal too much and reveal names. and for those who say, you know what, we shouldn't believe cohen and his testimony because he's a convicted liar, let's look at what we've learned today. that is that these mountains -- this mountain of evidence is such that you almost don't have to believe cohen because prosecutors, the special counsel, the southern district of new york, the fbi, have so much evidence to back up what they do that you could almost discount public testimony from cohen and realize that the data is there and the data will win the day. >> and that -- let me show now, finally, that this video, mimi, because it always brings me back to at the end of the day, one of the lowest moments of this presidency, but also where he was just laid bare in all his terror of all of the dead bodies

he had michael cohen bury over the course of their professional relationship. let's watch. >> so i just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys, good man, and it's a disgraceful situation. it's a total witch hunt. i've been saying it for a long time. i've wanted to keep it down. i heard it like you did. i said, that is really now in a whole new level of unfairness. this is the most biased group of people. these people have the biggest conflicts of interest i've ever seen. they only keep looking at us. so they find no collusion, and then they go from there and they say, well, let's keep going and they raid an office of a personal attorney early in the morning. and i think it's a disgrace. it's an attack on our country, in a true sense. >> so, a few things there, i

mean, one, cohen was still a good man. when he got raided, he was still a good man. he got the wrong witch hunt. this was not a raid that ended up producing evidence for the mueller probe. this was mostly siphoned off to the sdny. and he called them biased people. i mean, that office, we now know, run by a political appointee, jeff burman. >> right. seeing that clip now on the day that we see the search warrant with the mountains, paragraphs, pages of evidence referenced, shows how horrible it is that he does this kind of attack, how baseless it is, right? because you see in these pages, as chuck was saying, as frank was saying, this is based -- first of all, i think they probably could have done a complaint at this point and actually arrested people. that's how much evidence there is in there. and i would go out on a limb and say as to the redacted portions, my guess is they already had the campaign finance crime at that point as well. just because of the length of it. so by the time they're going in

and doing this, you know, search that is an attack on america, they have enough evidence that they could probably be arresting people at that point, but instead, they're laying it out for a judge, they're going in, they're getting more evidence and what should scare donald trump is that we still don't know what else they got. we know they got a lot more evidence in that search, but they already had quite a bit at that point then they got more and we still don't know, he doesn't know, what mueller had in those original search warrants that led to the search warrants of the g-mail accounts of cohen. >> right. >> which is what sort of kicked this whole thing off. so for him to attack the investigators like that when, clearly, search warrant after search warrant, they're doing more than complying with the law, and that is what everyone should expect from their department of justice, and that is what happened here, and almost none of those materials were found to be privileged by two judges, one sitting and one retired. so the whole -- >> that's right. that's right. that's right. the idea -- look, i'm struck by so many things. i don't have the legal eye for

all the intricacies that you have, but i'm struck, one, just the human drama of all this. he was still a good man the day that his office was raided. michael cohen was still fixing things for sean hannity, for donald trump, and god knows who else. he -- he also -- you're right, we didn't know, and he didn't know, that they already had the hush money scheme probably enough evidence to begin charging people, but ron klain, what's so striking to me is that at every turn, if trump manages to open up even a question about how the prosecutors function, the door would be slammed shut. they are so conservativconserva are so cautious. they're always one step ahead of trump and his predictable attacks. >> they are. trump is also one step ahead in temple terms of outrage and indignation. i don't think it's a coincidence that a couple days before today when this new material came out, we saw this twitter meltdown from the president over the past weekend.

just like he had that meltdown that you just played the day that this search warrant was served. >> right. >> he's always known that he is incredibly vulnerable from the material that michael cohen has, and the material now that bob mueller and ultimately the sdny has. he knows that crimes were committed. and when that tape was made that you just showed, him talking in the cabinet room, he was still at the same time writing hush money checks -- >> that's right. >> -- as president of the united states to reimburse michael cohen, the good man. and so, you know, he was in the middle of a criminal conspiracy as president of the united states. he knew that. no wonder he blew up then, no wonder he blew up now. >> it's such a good. it's so instructive to sort of put ourself in this time capsule and that's right. when michael cohen's offices were raided, donald trump was still engaged in the hush money scheme for which michael cohen has pleaded guilty, in which donald trump was named individual number 1. it doesn't feel like hyperbole

when people say it's sdny that represents this true legal peril. not to say mueller doesn't but operating under the belief that mueller will report his findings to congress and leave the political process to deal with that. sdny has made no such commitment. >> part of the reason that people in trump's inner circle have such a unique and specialized concern about the southern district's investigation is that they feel they know a lot less about it than they know about mueller. for the most part, mueller's a black box. he's spoken through his court filings. we've talked to, of course, a number of people who've talked to him. because he's spoken to so many washington insiders who love chatting with reporters, we have a lot of visibility, thanks to great reporting, into what he's doing. the southern district investigation is different because it's focused so significantly on documents and because in many cases, we just don't know what's in the tranches of material that mueller has gathered up. that the southern district has gathered up.

>> right. >> they just don't know. if you're somebody working closely with trump and you know, first off, the financial stuff is a problem, evidence number one of that is the fact we still haven't seen his tax returns, and second, the southern district is working quietly, efficiently, and way below the spotlight, that investigation keeps you up at night in the way the mueller investigation wouldn't necessarily do. >> chuck rosenberg, can you jump in on betsy's good point there and can you also, you've said on this program before that you believe robert mueller likely has donald trump's tax returns. they're shared within -- the fbi's the fbi. the federal prosecutors -- would that lead you to believe that prosecutors and the investigators in sdny also have access to donald trump's tax returns and any other financial information? >> nicolle, it's hard for me to imagine having been a white-collar prosecutor, if you're doing a white-collar case in a district as sophisticated as the southern district of new york, you wouldn't have the tax returns as wuone of the first things in your investigation.

it's not that hard to get. there's a federal statute that specifically presides for it. i imagine that's precisely what agents and prosecutors did in this case. i wanted to expand on one very important but subtle point that mimi made, if i may. she talked about the 18 redacted pages in h the cohen search warrant affidavit. that is only information in the cohen search warrant affidavit. it's probably not the full extent of the information that the southern district of new york or the fbi has on that particular scheme. and remember, too, that cohen when testifying before congress said there's some things he couldn't talk about. that was specifically one of them. so this is probably a piece, maybe a large piece, but just a piece of the information that federal prosecutors have about that illegal campaign finance scheme. this is only one document pertaining to one person, pertaining to several searches of his stuff. i'm sure there's more. >> let me play for you, frank

figliuzzi, congressmaning about changes to the law that could increase the president's legal jeopardy. >> i don't think any person should be above the law. what concerns me is right now the president may escape criminal liability because he could win a re-election and the statute of limitations could run. so if the policy is you can't indict a sitting president, which i don't agree with, we should rewrite the law that says that if a policy like that prevents you from getting indicted, the statute of limitations can continue to run so once you're out of office, you can be indicted. >> are you writing that law? >> we're working on that, that is in the works. i believe there are indictments waiting for this president. >> do you think, frank figliuzzi, it's amazing to put this question together to someone like you, do you think if the law is changed that donald trump should seriously be concerned about a criminal prosecution? >> oh, absolutely. i think he seriously concerned right now, and for the record, i'm for anything that supports the notion that no one is above

the law. and -- and i think it also needs to be crystal clear that there are variations among state laws about statute of limitations. i don't believe any state addresses this issue, and of course, we've never been confronted with this issue at a state level or a federal level, so if we can change federal law to ensure that no one is above it, that statutes don't run, that the unsealing of an indictment can begin that time period, absolutely supportive of that, but the notion that the president should get worried if such a law were to be changed, if he doesn't veto such a law, he should be worried right now because the worst decision he's ever made has been to accept the nomination of his party for presidency of the united states. he's looking at the destruction of his organization, his foundation, certainly his presidency, and his legacy and possibly even criminal exposure for family members. he should be worried every day,

and there's certainly evidence from his behavior that he is. >> frank's absolutely right, mimi, and there's also sort of a low rumble in political circles that the decision to run for re-election, should he still be there to make that decision, is rooted in part in avoiding criminal prosecution. >> well, look, if that's the case, if that's true, we clearly need to re-evaluate this whole system because no one should be president or be motivated by that. but, look, to this point, i mean, i think it's great if they enact legislation that makes this a clear issue. it's not clear right now as a legal issue whether the statute of limitations would run or wouldn't run. but the point here is that i think what all of us are saying is it just seems, you know, trump can say witch hunt, witch hunt, about russia, but a the end of the day, the southern district, new york attorney general's officer, the manhattan d.a.'s office and lots of other offices and parts of the department of justice are uncovering, it seems clear, criminality after criminality that this president was involved

in for probably decades, and you can't just throw all that under the label of witch hunt. you know, it just isn't going to work, and it's going to come out. i mean, the facts and the truth are going to come out. i believe he's going to be held accountable in some way. >> chuck, the witch hunters aren't that coordinated. what do you make -- have you ever seen anything like this before? not just in the white house. i can answer that. we have not. but have you ever seen an individual in public life who in the spotlight shines on him, when you turn the rock over, there's so much criminality, as mimi said, so much corruption, and so much obstruction? i mean, i understand it's entirely possible that what robert mueller presents congress with is a litany of attempts to obstruct these investigations, to tamper with witnesses, to throw sand in the gears at every turn. have you ever seen anything like this? >> i've seen all sorts of criminals do all sorts of desperate and foolish things

including obstruct justice and tamper with witnesses. i don't think i've ever seen such a concerted and prolonged effort. and so, yes, on one hand, it's very easy to answer your question by saying i've never seen anything like this because nobody's ever seen anything like this, but on the other hand, having been around criminals for a really long time, as a prosecutor, i have never seen such a concerted effort. it is stunning. by the way, it's also evidence. it's consciousness of guilt. when somebody speaks this way, or acts this way, or tweets this way, sometimes, believe it or not, it's music to the ears of prosecutors because intent being the hardest thing to prove, we appreciate any help we get, and the president seems to be helping. >> all right. mimi rocah, chuck rosenberg, thank you for starting us off and spending time with us. after the break, unhinged or incompetent? donald trump on the attack against the late great john mccain again today. the late senator's daughter goes toe to toe with the president and holds her ground. and the hot war between the

president and the husband of one of his top advisers moves into surreal territory today with one man calling the other total loser. the other responding by tweeting the definition of a malignant narcissist. welcome to 2019, folks. also ahead, lenders remorse. the bank that financed donald trump's business for decades now admitting there were red flags. you don't say. those stories coming up. storiess rather than worry about how to pay for long-term care. brighthouse smartcare℠ is a hybrid life insurance and long-term care product. it protects your family while providing long-term care coverage, should you need it. so you can explore all the amazing things ahead. talk to your advisor about brighthouse smartcare. brighthouse financial. build for what's ahead℠

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mr. president, why are you attacking senator john mccain? >> very unhappy that he didn't repeal and replace obamacare, as you know. he campaigned on repealing and replacing obamacare for years, and then he got to a vote and he said, thumbs down. and our country would have saved a trillion dollars. we would have had great health care. so he campaigned, he told us hours before that he was going to repeal and replace, and then for some reason, i think i understand the reason, he ended up going thumbs up. and frankly, had we even known that, i think we would have gotten a vote because we could have gotten somebody else. so i think that's disgraceful. plus, there are other things. i was never a fan of john mccain and i never will be.

>> john mccain died 206 days ago. a life exceptionally well lived in service to his country, and yet all these months after john mccain's final farewell, donald trump has decided to strike. at a person who's no longer capable of striking back. sadly, that was just the latest attack on mccain in recent days. today the topic was health care. over the weekend it was this, trump tweeting, "so it was, indeed, just proven in court papers last in his class annapolis john mccain that sent the fake dossier to the fbi and media hoping to have it printed before the election. he and the dems working together failed as usual. even the fake news refused this garbage." and after lindsey graham came up well short of a full-throated condemnation of trump's depra depravity, the duty of defending mccain's honor fell to his daughter who didn't pull any punches. >> he spends his weekend obsessing over great men, he knows it, i know it, all of you

know it, he'll never be a great man. >> yeah. >> and so, he is -- my father was his kryptonite in life. he's his kryptonite in death. when my father was alive up until adulthood, we would spend our time together cooking, hiking, fishing, really celebrating life and i think it's because he almost died, and i just thought, your life is spent on your weekends not with your family, not with your friends, but obsessing, obsessing, over great men you could never live up to. >> yeah. >> that tells you everything you need to know about his pathetic life right now. >> yeah. >> joining our conversation, kimberly atkins, senior correspondent for boston's public news station wbur and phil rucker, white house bureau chief for the "washington post." lucky for us, both msnbc contributors. let me start with you, phil rucker. i got a few theories, but take me through the relapse into mccain derangement syndrome from the man in the oval office. >> well, i'll see if i can do that, nicolle. i mean, trump has been nursing a

grudge about john mccain for more than three years now. go all the way back to the first big controversy of trump's presidential campaign in august of 2015 in iowa where trump made a really flippant remark about mccain, saying "i like heroes who weren't captured" and he got tremendous heat and blow-back on that including from the republican national committee and throughout the party establishment, and trump instead of apologizing to mccain and commending his war service just dug in and ever since then, mccain has been sort of a ghost in trump's mind, somebody he can't shake. he was really bothered by that health care vote, obviously, but it's been other things. i was with president trump in hanoi, vietnam, just a couple of weeks ago and trump was there for the summit with kim jong-un, but the summit was within walking distance of the hanoi hilton. the historic prison where mccain spent so many years in captivity and trump didn't bother to show up and visit the prison, which is now a historical site that

lots of tourists go to, but he also didn't make any comments about mccain or even recognized his service or the valor of so many other americans who died in hanoi. >> all right. so, kim, hearing ghosts, if he were your crazy uncle l, you'd convene a family meeting. let's show what phil is talking about. >> he's a war hero. >> he's a war hero because he was captured. i like people who weren't captured. okay? i hate to tell you. one vote away. one. one vote. one vote away. and except for one senator who came into a room at 3:00 in the morning and went like that. unfortunately, one senator decided to put the thumb down late in the morning, and that was not a good thing when he put that thumb down. that was a very sad day for the country, when that vote was cast, that final vote was cast. a thumbs down. i remember it well.

>> and, pete, my former colleague, writing this about donald trump. "a damaged soul and a disordered personality, whether the worst scenarios come to pass or not is right now unknowable. what we do know is the president is a person who seems to draw energy and purpose from maliciousness and transgressive acts, creating enemity among people, and for attacking the weak, the honorable and even the dead. donald trump is not well. and as long as he's president, our nation is not safe." >> well, look, i don't know how unwell he is, but it is clear from his behavior as phil said over the past three years, not just with john mccain, he cannot seem to let anything go when the slight seems to be to him. he takes this personally. this isn't a fight over what he saw john mccain as doing as bad for the country or improper policy. he went against him. he voted against him on that health care bill. he went against him when he, you know, had deemed to reveal the

steele dossier. he went against him -- >> the fbi already had. >> which the fbi already had. and also, it also, donald trump reveals his insecurities in the things that he gets upset about. for example, military service. we see how he touts the military. he wants to have a parade, you know, in the style of kim jong-un and other authoritative nations, but he, himself, knows that he did not serve. in fact, he got five deferments and put him against a war hero, that is what he attacks when it came to john mccain. and these, you know, this -- these -- this insecurity goes so deep that it transcends death in this case. it's really remarkable. >> well, look, i think there's a personal element and political element. on the personal side, meghan mccain says john -- that donald trump is not a great man. i would say what we saw this weekend shows that donald trump is barely human. i mean, to go after and attack john mccain, a national hero, months after his month, is just -- it's subhuman.

it's not only befitting a president, it's not befitting basic common norms of decency. that's the human aspect of it. from a political aspect, if donald trump really wants to relitigate the vote on obamacare over and over again, my party won a national election in 2018 when the issue was health care. when the issue was whether or not donald trump was going to take away people's coverage for pre-existing condition. so every time donald trump wants to sit in the oval office and say, i wish i'd taken away people's coverage for pre-existing conditions, that's a videotape my party would love to see on tv every day of the week. >> the dossier -- go ahead. >> i was going to make one other comment, aside from lindsey grah graham's attempt, one big difference between now and three years ago is republicans stood up for john mccain and admonished donald trump for the things he was saying about him. the deafening silence you hear from the republican party is -- yes. >> another sign that the sixth sense, dead, and they don't know it. the dossier came up, though. donald trump -- i don't know where -- i think there's enough

questions about his flow. the dossier was not discovered by john mccain. the fbi already had the dossier. it seem s to undergird this freak-out. >> that's right. the dossier has been at the heart of trump, not just trump, but congressional allies including congressman devin nunes who previously ran the house intelligence committee, have used to take on not just mueller, not, of course, just mccain, but the entire intelligence community, right? and much of american law enforcement. they argue that essentially that hillary clinton used some nefarious scheme to sick the fbi on donald trump, and that because she found this -- >> concert with all the republicans there. >> right, exactly. exactly. because she managed to pull off this dirty trick using opo research that triggered a three-year investigation into the president. that's a myth. it's just mythological. it's challenging fact checking these things but the facts actually do still matter and his claims, they are wrong. all right. after the break, donald trump takes on the husband of one of his top advisers. it's the loser versus the

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all right. how about this for a headline? donald trump, the president, for now, is now in a twitter war with a top aide's husband after george conway, after george conway, who's the husband of clanwa kellyanne conway, insisted the weekend twitter tirade was evidence of declining mental health, he got into a vicious back and forth with trump's 2020

campaign manager. that's who trump who was advised to stay out of it entered the fray. calling conway a total loser. so a few hours ago, conway went on the record with the "washington post" telling his side of the story insisting, "he has had a number of notable interactions with trump over the past decade." trump claimed in the tweet he hardly knew him. "offer concerning legal representation and sensitive legal matters. since trump became president." conway described the president as mendacious and incompetent and predicted he would not win re-election. this is too weird for me, ron klain. >> well, it's extremely weird. i'll give you that. it's not unprecedented. >> yeah, there's a historical parallel. >> there's a historical parallel. for fans of watergate history, fans of the podcast, "slow burn," you know a similar dynamic played out in watergate when the president's campaign manager, john mitchell, also the attorney general, and wife, martha mitchell, wound up in the same place with martha mitchell being a principal leaker against

president nixon putting evidence out there about him and nixon tried to have her offed basically and locked up in jail and so on, so forth. i think the challenge here is -- >> wait, wait, you can't -- i didn't know this story until i listened to the "slow burn" podcast. we will devote more time to this, play some of it. you reminded me of this. i wish i pulled it. this is so important because we make these nixon parallels loosely, but this is a nixon parallel in the specific. i mean, they -- she was physically threatened by secret service. she was locked in a hotel. i mean, hopefully with twitter and everything, george conway will call for help. this is someone with a window into trump through his wife's experiences who is literally using twitter to sound a four-alarm fire day after day. >> that's right. it is important to know that george conway is, first of all, one of the nation's most respected conservative lawyers. a very serious and substantial person in the conservative legal community. not a liberal.

this isn't like matwo different political parties. george conway is a very conservative legal figure who's been consulted by donald trump and legal matters. >> right. >> when he says this, it's not just him repeating household talk that he's had with his wife, kellyanne. his his personal interaction with the president by a conservative lawyer. >> that's right. >> that's very, very serious testimony, if you will, about donald trump and kind of what he's doing as president. >> phil rucker, he came to your newspaper. take us inside this interview today. >> yeah. well, you know, president trump sort of invited it, himself, by being so undisciplined to send that tweet this morning and, of course, the tweet was factually inaccurate, as many of the president's tweets are, and so george conway simply went on the record with my colleague, josh dawse yshlgts dawsey. yes, he does know george conway. has known him more than a decade. he helped with a condo board dispute in 2006. trump wrote a fawning letter to george conway thanking him for that. they had many interactions

during the campaign and in the beginning of the administration, including a ride during the transition period where trump asked george conway whether he ought to fire preet ba hharabha then the u.s. attorney in the southern district of new york. fast forward to washington, george conway was slated to take a top job in the justice department and actually backed out of that job. the president's allegation made by his campaign manager was that george conway didn't get the job, wasn't offered the job and is, therefore, bitter. in fact, george conway backed out of that job. he told josh dawsey because he was uncomfortable with the fighting between the white house and the justice department. so it just goes on and on and on and it's george conway really trying to protect his own record and reputation against the lies of the president. >> frank figliuzzi, it is a rare example of a republican calling out a republican president for his war on justice. >> it is, and i'm thankful to see it, and i think thegrateful

be, there's something called the spousal privilege that can be invoked by either spouse as to what they said to each other, whether they can testify against each other, because that would be fascinating. we've got somebody, not just a republican, not just a conservative, but somebody who has been on that inside, knows trump, knows him personally, and then continues to have kind of a perception that's developed every day through the work of his wife. but i'm telling you as a law enforcement career guy, what i'm focused in on is that the constant drumbeat of the mental health issues here. >> yeah. >> if this were somebody else, what i would be thinking about would be what behavioralists talk about as the pathway to violence. there's a flashpoint that has warning signs and indicators before it occurs and it involves obsessive behavior and bruting on one issue. the inability to step back and see reality for what it is. the finding of an enemy and constantly finding enemies and

targeting them, even in the case of john mccain, after death, and then the language of desperation is something we key in on if someone's headed toward a flashpoint. that phrase, witch hunt, witch hunt, is a form of desperation, i can't do anything about this. where is this going? i'm concerned about where it's going because on a workplace violence level, it would be headed toward violence. if you're president of the united states, that flashpoint could look like something that is completely unexpected on the world scene, or on the national scene, and that's what should be troubling us about what conway is warning us about. >> the job conway would have had at the justice department was heading the civil division which handles all the lawsuits against the administration. he would have been one of the top defenders of trump. the travel ban, the ban on transgender people serving in the military, everything that trump gets sued for would have been george conway's problem and it's an interesting irony of history that he went from potentially being one of trump's top defenders, to being one of his top antagonists.

in addition, conway's criticism of the president very much speaks for a huge swath of the white collar legal community particularly in d.c. trump has had a terrible time -- >> super important point. >> -- getting lawyers. >> give me one more beat on that because that's absolutely correct. >> good lawyers don't want to work for trump. he doesn't pay them and doesn't take their advice. it's been a problem throughout his entire career. he has always struggled to get competent counsel and a good piece of evidence of that is the fact that his current lawyer, rudy giuliani, basically can't go on tv anymore because the last time he went on, he made things worse for the president, not better. the reality is, people who practice the law who are nerdy about it, who dedicate their lives to it, who care deeply about these law and order and rule of law issues, look at president trump and feel he's radioactive. >> all right. phil rucker, congrats on the interview with george conway. fascinating drama. no signs of ending. >> congrats to josh dawsey. >> your colleague. after the break, the bank behind the donald, its reckless

lending practices. new reporting today on the red flags over trump org. that's next. ♪ ♪ ahhh, ha. ♪ ♪ oh yeah, baby. ♪ ♪ like a fool i went and stayed too long. ♪ ♪ now i'm wondering if your loves still strong. ♪ ♪ ooo baby, here i am, signed, sealed, delivered, i'm yours ♪ applebee's 3 course meal starting at $11.99.

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only on verizon. i'm giving to the committee today three years of mr. trump's personal financial statements from 2011, 2012, and 2013. which he gave to deutsche bank to inquire about a loan to buy the buffalo bills and to "forbes." it was my experience that mr. trump inflated his total assets when it served his purposes. such as trying to be listed amongst the wealthiest people in "forbes" and deflated his assets to reduce his real estate taxes. >> the fact that donald trump exaggerated his own wealth, apparently did not deter deutsche bank from doing business with him. the "times" reports today, "over nearly two decades, deutsche bank's leaders repeatedly saw red flags surrounding trump. there was a disastrous bond

sale, a promised loan that relied on a banker's forged signature. wild exaggerations of mr. trump's wealth. even a claim of an act of god. time after time with the support of two different chief executives, the bank handed money, a total of well over $2 billion, to a man who nearly all other banks deemed untouchable." things changed when trump won the presidency and the bank went into damage control mode. the "times" reporting, "the bank commissioned reports to figure out how it had gotten in so deep with mr. trump. it issued annen usual edict to its wall street employees, do not publicly utter the word, trump." it's a relationship of interest to many. both congress and new york prosecutors are investigating the president's ties with deutsche bank. frank and everyone are still here. betsy, how did we get here? >> it's a great question. trump always had trouble getting access to capital. one of the key problems for his business after he went bankrupt a bunch of times and lenders realized if they lent him money, they might not get him back.

deutsche bank wanted to move into the american market. they're a german bank. they saw trump as a way of taking a big risk, potentially doing well, potentially not. he was somebody they could use to get a foot hold in the american market and to that extent, he was a helpful means to market and ameans to an end. this bank had all sorts of problems. regulators in the uk and new york state find it i believe in the course of one year, upwards of $1 billion for failing to take the steps that banks have to take to prevent money laundering. in this case, russians laundered allegedly $10 billion through deutsch bank. you take money and maybe it's cash in the suitcase and maybe gold bars. not the kind of thing you use to buy chalets, but you move it into the financial system so it looks like it's legal money. big banks like deutsch bank with scores of lawyers are supposed to have steps in place to keep that from happening.

if someone rolls up with a duffle bag full of cash, you don't say look s good to me. they didn't take those steps and as a result they have become one of the preferred financial services centers for russia organized crime. that's important. >> you don't have to take our word for it. steve bannon said to fire and fury author that the money laundering that andrew wiseman was a money laundering guy and follow the money to andrew and jared. he would make a capable partner. >> deutsch bank goes way back with shady dealings with russia as well. while there is a strong theory that has been articulated that deutsch bank saw dollar signs in an american market in their eyes and wanted to do that high risk loan or loans. two billion over two decades to

someone who couldn't get a loan because was risk. that could be it certainly. i'm also here to tell you that overtime, deutsch bank has been linked to money laundering and russian-organized crime and russian intelligence. the theory could also be no evidence articulated yet, but with the strong ties and the criminal experience to trump maybe somebody was saying go ahead and do the loan. we've got it. here it is. we will back it. that's another possibility as well. you can't help but make the comparison to everyone surrounding trump is trying to capitalize on trump and access to trump and we even found a bank, especially his own bank that enable and facilitates and gets into the american market. >> i use that word. enablers. >> it's that everything that trump does, there is a sort of

connection whether it's money and you have people who have things over him. he acts in the interest of his financial and political interests. if it's in his financial interest to do something, that's what he will most likely do. when you have open outstanding questions, why does he kotsds russia so much? all of these open questions. there very well could be that connection. we don't have a firm connection to russia, but we don't know. even beyond collusion, inflating one's value and worth to secure a loan or get coverage are felonies. if that is found to have happened, that's a big problem for the problem. >> more felonies. >> for comes back to where we started the hour. the real pertoil trump may not be the russian collusion, but the investigation of his finances and going on in sdny. earlier in the show, betsy

called the mueller thing the black box. that's pandora's box for donald trump and filled with horribles and awful things and when that box is opened, a lot of bad stuff is going to come out and have to answer for it. his line to all kinds of people about his finances and banks to forbes magazine, that's all going to come due and is inside pandora's dockbox. >> whatever cohen said, they can corroborate by going to deutsch bank and other institutions. >> perhaps the biggest lie of all that michael cohen turned over to the committee that we know is in there is this claim that the trump brand has a name for $4 billion. there is no better monument to the man's ego mania than the idea that his name alone is a $4

billion thing. >> the reports that were flagging him were saying one of the problems is demagoguery. that was identified back then by deutsch bank. >> we will sneak in a break. we'll be right back. >> we will sneak in a break. we'll be right back. i knew about the tremors. but when i started seeing things, i didn't know what was happening... so i kept it in. he started believing things that weren't true. i knew something was wrong... but i didn't say a word. during the course of their disease around 50% of people with parkinson's may experience hallucinations or delusions. but now, doctors are prescribing nuplazid.

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pg&e wants you to plan ahead by mapping out escape routes and preparing a go kit, in case you need to get out quickly. for more information on how to be prepared and keep your family safe, visit pge.com/safety. we haven't even talked about congressional investigations and now they are moving full steam ahead. >> i'm looking for a fallout from the meeting behind closed doors that nadler had with whitaker last week.

we had countings of that meet skpig expect to see more in the coming days about new detailing and the different versions about what went down and will he have to go back and consider more questions under oath and in writing? >> not a lot of whitaker defenders. that will remain a flash point. >> he's a flash point, but i will say this. we spent 2.5 years waiting for the strong-jawed marine and it may be a short lawyer from new york who turns out to be the historical figure. he is not restrained by those things. he has thousands of pages of documents that. may be where the real action is in 2019. >> we will have to see what the speaker of the house has to say about that. >> you can investigate without impeaching. >> this idea that there is no there there at the end. we will see if that moves the needle at all. >> for won't be boring.

that does it for our hour. thank you for watching. "mtp daily" starts now. hi, chuck. >> hello, nicole. how are you? now that i know what day of the week it is. >> here to serve. >> thank you. if it's tuesday, norms! good evening. i'm chuck todd in washington with jokes that people over 30 are meant to get. it left me speechless which is hard to do in an age where it seems like we have seen it all. an american president teamed up to do the follow. attack the free press and attack the campaign opponents and a