colbert and listen to our latest podcast, talking about the crucial work that goes into crass roots organizing and why it's key to any 2020 democratic hopeful. the rachel maddow show starts right now. good evening, rachel. chris, i am super excited about your green new deal town hall thing. >> i am, too. it's in the bronx, in the hospital i was born in which is in alexandria ocasio-cortez's district. >> i have to find about these things watching tv. jeez, you know, i work down the hall. >> well, you're welcome to come if you want. although you got to a show to do. thank tuesday you at home for joining us this hour. we've got a lot to get to tonight. you can always tell that when my desk is piled up like this before we even started talking about anything. but we're going to start with something that arrived in today's news as a surprise.

about a week and a half ago "the washington post" filed a motion with the federal court in washington, d.c. that was handling a criminal case of president's campaign chairman, paul manafort. and that motion from "the washington post" called on the judge in the manafort case in d.c. to release unredacted filings and transcripts from manafort's case. so that "the washington post" and by extension the american people could get a gander at those documents. specifically "the post" motion called for unredacting a whole bunch of materials from manafort's case related to how he broke his plea deal when he repeatedly and the judge ruled intentionally lied to prosecutors. the motion also called for the release of an unredacted version of the sentencing motion on manafort that was filed with the court. large parts of it looked like

that. so "the post" filed to have all that stuff unsealed. and this is actually an important dynamic to watch. you know, today we got the public release of all these hundreds of pages of documents from the michael cohen trial. we'll be talking about a little later on. the reason we got all these documents released today was because of a motion filed with the court by "the new york times." "the times" asked the court to unseal all this stuff which is what drove the news cycle all day. in the manafort case, it was file would the court by "the washington post." see, this is why you need to subscribe to more newspapers. they are doing good work with your money. subscribe to your local paper. subscribe to national papers that you read. heck, if you've got the money to do it, give people gift subscriptions to those papers whenever it comes time to give a present. you will feel great about it. your country needs you to do it. half the news that we've got is stuff that newspapers dig up.

but about another half of the news that we get is stuff they pry loose by other means. anyway, in the manafort case today it's "the washington post," and they're telling the court please unseal all this stuff from manafort's case. so the judge, when she got that motion from "the washington post" a week and a half ago she set a deadline for the prosecutors to respond as to whether they had any objections to unsealing that material, whether they wanted the judge to continue to keep under seal all the redacted stuff about what manafort lied to it prosecutors about and how they wanted manafort sentenced because of it. the judge set that deadline for mueller's office to respond as thursd thursday. so the day after tomorrow is their deadline. surprise mueller's office today warned the judge that they don't think they're going to be able to make that deadline. and do you know why? this is amazing. this is what they said today, quote, on march 7th, "the

washington post" filed a motion under local criminal rule 57.6 for public access to certain unredacted access, specifically it seeks related to this court's determination of whether manafort breached his plea agreement and the government's unredacted sentencing submission. the government's spngs is presently due on march 21, 2019, the day after tomorrow. the government respectfully requests an extension of time to respond to the motion through and including april 1st. so they want to be extended to a week from monday. why do they want this extension? quote, the counsel responsible for preparing the response face the press of other work and require additional time to consult within the government. the counsel responsible for preparing a response, they face the press of other work.

you do? tell me more. i mean this is the special counsel's office saying this. it's signed on behalf of robert mueller by michael dreeben, the top appellate lawyer on the mueller team. also by another lawyer. what is this press of work they're facing right now this week that prohibits them from getting a motion into this judge by two days from now as it pertains to unsealing stuff from manafort's case? and why would filing the special counsel's motion on that subject require, quote, additional time to consult within the government? i mean, at a surface level i don't think anybody much cares about whether we're going to get the mueller's team response about unsealing all of manafort's stuff by thursday of this week or by april 1st which is a week and a half from now. i mean, this filing today from the special counsel's office in fact says even "the washington post" doesn't mind about this delay at all.

but why is the manafort peeping here really for the first time about some crush of work that they're facing right now this week? why are they peeping to the judge right now about consultations they need to pursue to the government about this matter, consultations that will require more time? i don't know, and neither do you. but we can figure i think a little bit of this out from context. again, this whole thing -- this whole motion filed by "the washington post" is about whether the court will make public some of the stuff that's been redacted and sealed in manafort's case. we know from the wrangling over this issue in manafort's case that when prosecutors told the judge this stuff needed to be redacted or sealed in the first place they said it was because these particular parts of these filings and these particular parts of these courtroom discussions had to be kept from the public because they related to ongoing investigations, and individuals that had been not charged or at least that hadn't

been charged yet. now, we know from context that the sealed material in question relates to manafort's lies to prosecutors. and we know from what we could see in his trial about that that what manafort lied to prosecutors about included his interactions with the guy who handled polling for the trump campaign. we know that manafort lied to prosecutors about a large payment he received from the trump campaign pollster. we know manafort also lied about his communications with a russian guy who prauosecutors s is tied to russian intelligence. also lied about providing complex internal polling data from the trump campaign to that guy linked to russian intelligence while the campaign was under way. well, now today in a surprise the special counsel's office says before it can tell this judge whether information on those matters can be unsealed, they're going to need more time. they need more time specifically

to consult within the government as to whether these matters can be unsealed. and also they're just going to need more time because right now this week between now and two days from now they are crushed with a ton of work. what work? i mean, it's -- it's interesting to see them make this public facing argument. we've never seen them say anything thick this before. i find this super intriguing. i also know we're going to need some expert help to try to figure that out. so we'll have that ahead on the show this hour. but i have to say this is particular surprising and particularly intriguing news because of all the mixed signals we are getting right now about whether or not all these russia related investigations are coming to an end or not. i mean, you have probably seen the headlines over the past week or so about some of the prosecutors and lead fbi agents who have been working for the special counsel. they're now leaving the special counsel's office, and they're taking new jobs.

well, that sort of seems like maybe the special counsel's office is pulling up stakes and wrapping things up. on the other hand, you probably saw the headlines today about the hundreds of pages of michael cohen case materials that were just unsealed today in which among other things the redactions in these documents, in particular, make it seem like there really is some central key stuff that came up in michael cohen's case that isn't over, that doesn't appear to be resolved by cohen going to prison and that may involve other people who as far as we know haven't been charged thus far. we'll have more on that coming up this hour as well. but there's one other piece of this. along these lines, amid all these mixed signals we're getting that things definitely look like they're wrapping up and these other signals we're getting that makes it seem like things definitely aren't wrapping up, there's one other thing going on right now that i think informs our sense of whether or not this thing is coming to an end.

it's not something that's been getting much attention yet, but to me this is something jumping up and down and yelling look at me, look at me and i think it deserves a little more attention. for all the indictments and court filings and the plea deals and the, you know, statements of the offense and all that stuff, for all of it, if you think about it, we haven't had much courtroom action, right? i mean there's been lots of hearings before judges and stuff, but in terms of actual litigation with a jury and a defendant and everything, that's only happened once. we've only had one trial so far. that was when paul manafort took his case to trial in federal court in virginia. didn't work out, well, all right? manafort got convicted there. that's part of why he's now starting his 7 plus year prison sentence. regardless of what happens with the unredactions or not in his case files, which is still a matter of dispute in the court. but paul manafort, his trial, that's the only trial we've had

in this whole skanldcandal thus. that said, another one is coming. the second trial from his whole saug wraur that might not happen, might be a plea deal, might drop charges, you never know. but right now what appears to be coming from this second trial from this whole scandal is another trial that's going to happen in that same court in virginia. a trump transition official charged with conspiracy and secretly illegally operating with a foreign government in this country. he's not a famous guy. what he's known for is having worked with the consulting firm of national security advisor mike flynn. in court paperers flynn is described as participated in some of the schemes kian is

charged. he's not just an associate of mike flynn, but he did go on in his own right to get a high ranking gig in the trump transition. he was on the landing team in the trump transition at the office of the director of national intelligence. remarkably his linkedin page is still up today. and it still has trump transition title, quote presidential transition team's intelligence community deputy lead. according to the associated press including him taking part in sensitive, hiring and policy discussions involving u.s. intelligence. those sensitive decisions included, quote, scrutinizing then congressman mike pompeo before pompeo was named trump's cia director. so that means this guy was serving as a senior official in the trump transigsz, working on intelligence matters among other things in that role he was helping select the next cia

director while prosecutors say he was also allegedly at the same time illegally serving as a paid secret agent of a foreign country. oh, what could possibly go wrong? well now as that guy's case is heading to trial in july, now the reason that mike flynn still hasn't been sentenced, the reason his sentencing has been delayed for another couple of months at least is because flynn might be done cooperating with the special counsel's office, but he is still working with prosecutors in this case against kian. he's due to be in the prosecution this summer. and that is turning out to be a very newsy interesting sticking pint in terms of the way all these cases are wrapping up and the way all of these guys' ultimate fates are being decided. and the defense team by rights get access to any evidence the government plans to use against

their client. and in this case seems like quite a lot of the evidence the government plans to use against their client is going to come from mike flynn. so now kian's defense team is mounting this stand in federal court, which i think deserves a little more attention than its getting. because what they're demanding of the court is that they get access to everything, the fbi and the special counsel and all these other prosecutors have obtained from mike flynn since mike flynn started cooperating with the government. and that's a lot of stuff they want access to. i mean, flynn has been cooperating since 2017. the fbi produces a formal record every time they do an interview with a subject or witness or cooperator, i guess. in flynn's case there are apparently at least 19 different 302s from the fbi. specifically about flynn because he has been cooperating with them for so long on so many different things.

kian's defense team wants all of those. they want the ones that relate to his case directly and the illegal lobbying work for the nation of turkey that he's charged with. they want everything on that subject matter. naturally that makes sense. but they also want everything else. they want the whole universe of everything flynn has said to anybody from the government including the special counsel since he became a cooperating witness. and they had a big fight about it in court on friday. we have obtained the transcript of that. i'll read you a little piece of it. quote, from the defense lawyer, quote, your honor, this is not an ordinary case by any means. the judge, right. k the office of special counsel has disclosed they interviewed mr. flynn who's the key witness ins this case 19 times. that's at least 20, probably more than that. quote, the reason that we are here before the court is that mr. kian has a great deal of work to do to put together a

cross-examination of mr. flynn. there's a great deal there. and in order for us to be effective, your honor, we have to understand what it is. so that's the defense team pleading to see everything mike flynn has told prosecutors in the special counsel's office. then the prosecutors get up in court to make the opposite case, to tell the judge that, judge, listen, there's no way that we can let people see all of that information we've gotten from flynn. even opposing counsel representing this defendant who's on his way to trial, even opposing counsel, no, they can't see all the stuff that flynn has given the government. it is just too sensitive. it's about cases that are still ongoing. prosecutor, quote, your honor, we're not trying to hide the ball here at all. in addition to all of general flynn's 302s having to do specifically with this investigation, we're also willing to produce redacted portions of of any 302 of the

general's, of general flynn's that were collected or made in the course of the special counsel's investigation that do relate specifically to this case. your honor, we do draw the line, though at a fishing expedition into everything else the special counsel might have been investigate. and of course it is a sensitive investigation and also there are pending investigations hat concern the subjects that would be revealed by an unfettered view of his 302s. what we are objecting to is a frolic through everything else that the special counsel's office produced in connection with entirely unrelated matters. so this is -- we've only had one trial so far for mueller. this is likely the next trial that derives from the special counsel's investigation. mike flynn is going to be part of it. he's apparently the key witness against the defendant in this trial. mike flynn's cooperation has been extended. his sentencing has been delayed again in part because of his role in this trial. because he has a role in this trial the defense wants access to everything flynn has said as a cooperating witness.

but prosecutors are saying, no, no, no way. flynn's cooperation involved matters that are still pending investigations, stuff that's still live. now, that's where it was with this pending kian trial and the fight over mike flynn's information. now it's getting to be even more dramatic because now kian's defense has sent this letter in relation to this fight in the government. they've sent this letter to the u.s. attorney's office, to the prosecutors who are handling this matter. and this is sort of their next offer. saying in this letter basically, well, if you won't give us everything, if you won't show us everything flynn has said to the government, at least give us everything you've got on flynn on these eight specific matters. and they lay out all these things that they want information about when it comes to flynn and flynn allegedly lying, and flynn's bad behavior

and behaving unethically. and in that lis of bad behavior they say they want information about they reveal a brand new allegation that i don't think we've ever heard before. do you remember that weird meeting in the in the islands with, the story they broke is during the transition there'd been a secret meeting in this luxury resort between eric prince, the brother of education secretary betsey devos, a meeting between him and a russian guy close to vladimir putin who's the head of a russian state controlled investment fund. a guy named karol demetriav. they described that meeting as an apparent effort to establish a back channel line between moskow and president-elect donald trump. now, eric prince publicly

contradicted that. he gave denials in which he said, yeah, he took that meeting but it was just him being a private businessman. his presence there and his taking that meeting had absolutely nothing to do with the incoming trump administration at all. he told the house intelligence committee under oath this was just a chance encounter over a beer that took place on the side lines of some totally unrelated business meetings he was having. prince told house investigators, quote, it was a matter of, hey, while you're here there's a russian guy we've done some business with in the past, it would be interesting for you to meet him. except as it turns out that doesn't appear to be true. a year after its initial reporting on that meeting "the washington post" was still developing the story further reporting this time last year that mueller was investigating this matter. and quote, a witness cooperating with mueller has told investigators the meeting was setup in advance so that a representative of the trump transition could meet with an emissary from moskow to discuss

future relations between the two countries. and there's always been this mystery surrounding that meeting and what may have been discussed between erik prince and this high level emissary of the russian government. particularly because it seems erik prince has not been telling the truth about that meeting. now in the filing which suggests that russian guy close to putin wasn't just randomly having a beer with erik prince. he might not have been the only one in the trump campaign to have secret contact with him during the transition. kian's lawyers now say in this letter they want more information on, quote, mr. flynn's contacts with russian officials including dmidmitrev.

trump's national security advisor had contacts with that guy, too, the money guy close to putin who's everyone been lying about talking to? we've never heard this allegation before. we know he website out of hiways to publicly praise mike flynn during the transition. he praised him for flynn's willingness to have an open dialogue with russian. but as far as we can tell from public reporting there was never any known contacts between mike flynn and this russian guy. there were never even any public allegations they'd had any contact. now, i should say this is just an assertion by bjon kian's lawyers. asserting is not the same as proving it in court. we might be wrong. but this is isn't something isn't true and they're just blowing smoke, but if it is

true, if trump's incoming national security advisor was also meeting this guy close to putin who's this money guy also meeting with erik prince and he wasn't forthcoming about that, if this is true this is whole new element of the trump-russia scandal we didn't know about. this is whole new contact between the trump campaign and the trump transition and the kremlin that we didn't know about before. why would the trump transition at the highest levels be secretly communicating with the guy who runs russia's sovereign wealth fund for putin? we reached out to kian's lawyers today to try to get clarity on this bombshell assertion. we haven't heard from them. mike flynn's lawyer declined to comment to us on this matter today. but if this assertion is true, this would be a whole new kettle of fish on the central issue that the mueller investigation is supposedly all about. and it arrives today, at a time when we keep hearing there's

definitely no more fish in any of these kettles. it's definitely all coming to an end. it's definitely all wrapping a. with all this new stuff coming out now, it doesn't feel like it's wrapping up. stay with us. lots to come tonight. ing up ayst with us lots to come tonight son - "wow"] ♪ ♪ baby i'm not even in a gown ♪ and the only thing u have to say is wow ♪ ♪ make you're jaw drop drop say oh my drop drop drop ♪ ♪ make u say oh my god my drop drop ♪ ♪ make you're jaw drop make u say oh my god ♪ ♪ and you never felt this type of emotion ♪ ♪ make you're jaw drop drop say oh my drop drop drop ♪ ♪ make u say oh my god my drop drop ♪ ♪ make you're jaw drop make u say oh my god ♪ you wouldn't accept from any one else. why accept it from your allergy pills? flonase relieves your worst symptoms including nasal congestion, which most pills don't. flonase helps block 6 key inflammatory substances. most pills only block one. flonase.

what do all these people have in common, limu?oug [ paper rustling ] exactly, nothing. they're completely different people, that's why they need customized car insurance from liberty mutual. they'll only pay for what they need! [ gargling ] [ coins hitting the desk ] yes, and they could save a ton. you've done it again, limu. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

the matters.ar... introducing the all-new 2019 ford ranger, it's the right gear. with a terrain management system for... this. a bash plate for... that. an electronic locking rear differential for... yeah... this. heading to the supermarket? get any truck. heading out here? get the ford ranger. the only adventure gear built ford tough.

you know reliable support when you have it, and that dependability is what we want to give our customers. at comcast, it's my job to constantly monitor our network. prevent problems, and to help provide the most reliable service possible. my name is tanya, i work in the network operations center for comcast. we are working to make things simple, easy and awesome.

four days before the election in 2016, the friday before we all voted on the following tuesday, when a team of reporters at "the wall street journal" published this scoop, that donald trump's friend, publisher of the protrump super market tabloid the national enquirer had agreed to pay $150,000 to a former playboy model to keep her from telling her story of an alleged affair with trump. then a year into his presidency it was again "the wall street journal" who broke the news of another payment reporting just before the election trump's personal attorney michael cohen had arranged to pay a different woman, a former porn star who also was alleging an affair with trump. and then less than three months later federal prosecutors were raiding michael cohen's home and office and hotel room and safe-deposit box and seizing his electronic devices and blah,

blah, blah. and by the end of summer last year michael cohen the pled guilty to multiple crimes including campaign financeally ens in which he said the president was essentially a coconspirator. the president was the person who directed those conspiracies. so at one level, case closed. but today we learned maybe not case closed. today we learned a lot more about cohen's case, even as he heads off to federal prison. when prosecutors investigating cohen decided last year that they wanted to raid his home and his office and seize his electronics and all the rest of it, they had to apply to a judge for warrants to do that. and when prosecutors make those kind of applications they have to lay out exactly what premises they want to raid and what devices they want to seize and why they want to do so. exactly what they're investigating and what evidence

they think they'll find in those places that will be material to their investigation. well, today a judge released all the warrants and all the supporting material that led to those warrants on the raids on michael cohen. they released hundreds of pages in request to a response from "the new york times." but if you're hoping to learn more specifically about the investigation of campaign finance violations, about the payments to those women, about that hush money scheme, you're actually out of luck in these documents today, because that section of these documents is 18 1/2 completely redacted grayed out pages. and we don't have to guess why those 18 pages are redacted. the judge told us why in his order releasing them. quote, 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, the full volume of the nature of the evidence gathered thus far and the sources of the information provided to the government. accordingly the portions of of

the materials relating to cohen's campaign finance crimes shall be redacted. 18 1/2 pages, nothing. nothing on campaign finance. nothing on the hush money payments. but that's how we learn in black and white today that the campaign finance investigation is still ongoing, one way or another. i mean, we know it's not ongoing when it comes to michael cohen. he has pled guilty already. he is headed to prison among other things for those crimes. so what else is still being investigated when it comes to those crimes? what's ongoing? i mean, according to the these warrants we got unsealed today prosecutors expected to find information of a conspiracy on these hush money payments. i know you can't conspire a loan. so does that mean if these cases are ongoing that other people potentially involved in these crimes should be concerned that

the judge is saying this stuff needs to be kept from the public even now because this is still an ongoing matter. he's one of "the wall street journal" reporters who first broke the story of the hush money scheme. did you learn anything substantive and surprising in the cohen stuff that was unredacted today? >> well, what we did learn that was interesting is that the campaign finance investigation started actually in april or between february and april of 2018 after robert mueller turned over the cohen investigation to the prosecutors in the southern district of new york. so up until that point they'd been investigating cohen for various financial crimes, potentially foreign money, money laundering, bank fraud. and then in february of 2018, which is after you and i were sitting here first discussing those stormy daniels payments, they sent it to new york, and a couple of months later prosecutors in new york reveal,

okay, now we're investigating campaign finance, we've uncovered some new evidence. so the investigation took a turn when it got to new york and after we had revealed that. >> just to be clear and to make sure i understand your point, it's not that mueller and his team said there are indications that there are campaign finance crimes here, hey, sdny, you go check it out. this is something sdny decided to do after they referred to -- >> right. and they had requested his e-mails several times from google, his icloud account. they never cited a campaign finance investigation through july 2017 until the end of 2017. only after it got to new york did they cite that as a possible crime. >> what do you make of the fact that this is redacted and we get the judge's explanation of why all the campaign finance stuff is redacted. honestly from your reporting and from other stuff that we have figured out about this through cohen's case, it seems like we

can name or point at a lot of the people who seem to have been involved in this scheme. the fact it's being described as an ongoing matter in a legal context, does that indicate that the other people who may have been involved in this scheme may still be in legal jeopardy? >> it's possible. although we don't have a sense there are imminent charges. but we know that the government has said it's ongoing. and it's possible they're just tying up loose ends. but as you said, we know there were several trump organization executives involved. there was the president obviously who was implicated in a federal crime, although it's unlikely he would be charged while he's sitting as a president. so, you know, those are basically the cast of characters here. >> let me just deposit something to you that you don't have to answer. i'm just asking crow this as somebody who knows more about this than anybody else i know because of your pioneering role in reporting it. if prosecutors in the southern district looked at the evidence they had against president trump

in regards to these two felonies and they spelled it out in court that they believe he directed the commission of these felonies, that he was involved not only in the decision to handle it this way but also in the cover-up of it, that obviously he's the person who benefitted from it in the end, there's evidence from prosecutors that his business was used essentially as the organization that kind of -- that covered it up if not laundered what happened to these funds. if prosecutors took all that evidence and decided, you know what, justice department policy says we cannot prosecutor a sitting president but we're going to indict him and keep it sealed until he leaves office, would they need to keep all this stuff sealed in the way that we saw today in these documents in order to protect that future prosecution of the president? >> i would think so, yes. i mean, i'm not saying that's what happened, but definitely i would think they'd want to keep that sealed if that were the case. >> michael rothfeld, thank you so much.

appreciate you being here. all right, coming up a progress roreport of sorts. stay with us. progress roreport of sorts stay with us for a while there, mom was a little worried about my growth... so she tried everything, including pediasure. my doctor said it's great for me and it's got protein for muscles, dha for brain and eyes, antioxidants for immune support, and 25 vitamins and minerals. all clinically proven to help kids grow. so mom likes it. and in case you didn't notice, i love it. almost as much as i love beating these guys. pediasure. grow for it!

little things can be a big deal. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not a cream. it's a pill that treats plaque psoriasis differently.

with otezla, 75% clearer skin is achievable. don't use if you're allergic to otezla. it may cause severe diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting. otezla is associated with an increased risk of depression. tell your doctor if you have a history of depression or suicidal thoughts or if these feelings develop. some people taking otezla reported weight loss. your doctor should monitor your weight and may stop treatment. upper respiratory tract infection and headache may occur. tell your doctor about your medicines, and if you're pregnant or planning to be. ready to treat differently with a pill? otezla. show more of you. ready to treat differently with a pill? dearest britain. we love you. maybe it's your big hearts. your sense of style. welcome to ba100. (ba100, you're clear for take-off). how you follow your own path. you've led revolutions... of all kinds. yet you won't shout about it. it's just not in your nature. instead, you'll quietly make history. cake. beds. poetry. trouble. love! hope! and rather a lot of tea.

the best of britain, from the moment you step on board. a lot of people have responded some have said that they're going to, that they want to work with us. some have said they will respond if we give them a subpoena. and we've gotten responses from surprising people. like for instance steve bannon who sent us a few thousand documents.

>> steve bannon sent you a few thousand documents? last night that was house judiciary chairman jerry nadler here on this show talking about what his committee had received thus far. when the deadline arrived yesterday for 81 people and entities who were sent document requests related to all that committee's multiple inquires into president trump. and of course it is intriguing that former white house chief strategist steve bannon gave the committee thousands of documents. we have no idea what those pages cover. we can see from the document request that was sent to bannon that it was more than a dozen topics that he was asked about, so we don't exactly know what he's given them or what it relates to. today politico.com, though, gave us some more numbers showing it's not just bannon turning in thousands of documents. tom barrack turned in 3,000 pages, the nra turned in nearly

1500 pages. one of the guys who went to the trump tower meeting nearly 500 pages. a couple dozen pages from sam nunberg, the trump ininaugural committee has handed over hundreds of pages. that's a lot of material. i think the point of this politico piece is that only a small proportion of the 81 people who were supposed to hand stuff over have turned over anything at all. that may be a little bit misleading. we can report tonight from the committee that there are a number of other people who have also made submissions who have also handed their stuff over to the committee and hit the deadline in order to do it. we're told part of the reason that the records may not have been handed over to the full committeeship, including the republican sources who apparently provided those numbers to politico is because the other submissions that have come in have come in on actual paper other than electronic filings. and whenever you mail physical

things it has to go through a series of bureaucratic hurdles in which it gets screened for anthrax and stuff like that. it seems the judiciary committee is getting a ton of stuff, some electronically and some on paper. obviously they're just getting started. we've got a lot more on who may not be getting started but who's wrapping up ahead. stay with us. started but who's wrapping up ahead. stay with us us as people. they see us as profits. we're paying the highest prescription drug prices in the world

so they can make billions? americans shouldn't have to choose between buying medication and buying food for our families. it's time for someone to look out for us. congress, stop the greed. cut drug prices now. turn up your swagger game with one a day gummies. one serving... ...once a day... ...with nutrients that support 6 vital functions... ...and one healthy you. that's the power of one a day. with its billions of records, dna test you could learn you're from ireland... donegal, ireland. and your ancestor was a fisherman. with blue eyes. just like you. begin your journey at ancestry.com

the follow up cat scan showed that it had gone to her liver. we needed a second opinion. that's when our journey began with cancer treatment centers of america.

one of our questions was, how are we going to address my liver? so my doctor said i think we can do both surgeries together. i loved that. now my health is good. these people are saints. ha, they're saints. cancer treatment centers of america. appointments available now. brenden vangrak, my favorite name in the whole trump-russia probe. honestly if there wasn't someone named you'd have to invent one. he's the special prosecutor who joined the special prosecutor's team early on. he worked on the case against paul manafort and mike flynn. but in october last year we learned he had left the special

couns counsel's office and returned to his old job in the justice department. he was not the first to go, but lately the pace of departures seems to be speeding up. just this the beginning of this month david archie left to go run the richmond fbi field office. also andrew weissman, also leaving the investigation. npr had the scoop he's leaving to go teach at nyu law. and then we got another just yesterday. another counter terrorism prosecutor, she worked on the flynn case. she also has gone back to her old job. and, yes, the special counsel is basically done with mike flynn in terms of his cooperation. but that is not the only case she was working on. she's also been part of the mystery case involving mueller's office and some mystery corporation we're not allowed to know the name of that's run by some foreign country we're not

allowed to know the name of either. that case does not seem to be done. she was part of that but nevertheless she's leaving the special counsel's office. and what do we make of these departures? i mean, it's been argued that in some cases more was made of these exits than should have been made. but there's now enough of them they're sort of starting to feel like a critical mass. whether or not mueller is wrapping up and how would we know? it's also seeming relevant that the mueller team is starting in some important ways to shoal their work to the public. today we got these hundreds of pages related to the michael cohen case that were just unsealed by the court. what does that tell us about how they have been approaching this work thus far, where they might be in the course of their work? and specifically, are we right to look at the stuff that was released today and that's being released in other parts of these investigations? are we right to look at the stuff that's being made public now and to check the stuff that's still redacted as a sort

of key into what's ongoing and still pending in terms of future prosecutions or existing prosecutions that we the public don't know about yet? joining us is former senior fbi and justice department official. chuck, it's great to see you. thank you for being here. >> my pleasure. thank you for having me. >> let me ask you that last question first. i am self-conscious about the fact i am reading a lot into the redactions, that when prosecutors tell the judge or when judges explain that some stuff needs to be kept from the public and needs to be held behind those black boxes or conducted under seal because it relates to ongoing investigations and uncharged people. my layman's eye reads that as something that is intriguing, that there might be additional prosecutions. there might be live cases that we don't know about that explain why that stuff is being held from the public. is that a fair supposition? >> absolutely. i read it the same way, rachel. those redactions, the 18 pages

are significant. now, it doesn't mean the mueller team is going to handle that prosecution, but it's one justice department and one fbi so someone's going to handle that prosecution. so i think you're reading it correctly. >> as we see the announcements over time and there's been a few of them recently sw sowith some the prosecutors leaving mueller's team to go back to the justice department. working on people who aren't registered as foreign agents as we see another leaving apparently to go to somewhere else in the justice department. weissman apparently leaving to go back to academia. does that give you a sense things are changing fundamentally at the special counsel's office, they may be handing off nonrelated stuff? >> it's not binary.

it's not as if the mueller shop is fully open or fully closed. all of these people particularly the ones remaining in the justice department can be recalled to work on bits and piecess of their investigation that that remain. mueller's remit 22 months ago was rather narrow. it was russian interference, and links a coordination associated with those trump for president campaign. mueller is a marine infantry officer. he's going to take the hill in front of him if told. he's going to hand off and i think properly so, things that fall outside of that, that's exactly what we saw with these documents unsealed today, that handoff, particularly on the campaign finance matter involving cohen and others, including individual one, the president. >> in terms of the documents unsealed today, is there anything else that spoke to you in terms of what it showed us in

terms of how they've been doing their work? >> it sure did. i was struck by the level of professionalism, the diligence. in order to get a search warrant, you need to show probable cause, that standard comes out of the fourth amendment. it's the lowest standard in the criminal law. you need proof beyond a reasonable doubt. at a detention hearing, you need a moderately high standard of clear and convincing evidence. for a search warrant you only need probable cause, and yet you see hundreds and hundreds of pages documenting their investigation, and establishing their probable cause to the extent anybody claims this is a witch hunt or a hoax, they ought to read these documents and you'll see the level of diligence, the amount of work that went into establishing probable cause to get the search warrant is extraordinary, rachel. >> chuck rosen birg, it's great to have you here, thanks.

>> my pleasure, thank you. [zara larsson - "wow"] ♪ ♪ make you're jaw drop drop say oh my drop drop drop ♪ ♪ make u say oh my god my drop drop ♪ ♪ make you're jaw drop make u say oh my god ♪ guys go through a lot to deal with shave irritation. so, we built the new gillette skinguard with a specialized guard designed to reduce it. because we believe all men deserve a razor just for them. the best a man can get. gillette.

cancer, epilepsy, mental health, hiv. patients with serious diseases are being targeted for cuts to their medicare drug coverage. new government restrictions would allow insurance companies to come between doctor and patient. and deny access to individualized therapies millions depend on. call the white house today. help stop cuts to part d drug coverage that put medicare patients at risk. but prevagen helps your brain with an ingredient help stop cuts to part d drug coverage originally discovered... in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. but i can tell you liberty mutual customized my car insurance so i only pay for what i need. oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no... only pay for what you need. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

your control. like bedhead. hmmmm. ♪ rub-a-dub ducky... and then...there's national car rental. at national, i'm in total control. i can just skip the counter and choose any car in the aisle i like. so i can rent fast without getting a hair out of place. heeeeey. hey! ah, control. (vo) go national. go like a pro.

you have your sirostratus, your altostratus, nimbostratus. there's the plain old stratus clouds. there are cumulus ones and strato cumulus. there's altocumulus.

my favorite ones to say are the cumulonimbus clouds. if you know all of those, you know this is something else entirely. something that is a lot less friendly looking and for a very good reason. and that's story's next, stay with us. and the quit rate is twice as high for them. here's a hack: make sure there's bandwidth for everyone. the more you know.

early sunday morning a storage tank filled with an ingredient for camp fire fuel leaked and burst into flames. the fire was not alone, took place at a chemical storage facility belonging to the intercontinental terminals company, about 20 miles east of houston. when the first tank went up in flames, the fire spread to other

nearby tanks full of chemicals. tanks filled with chemicals that make gasoline, also, nail polish remover and glue and paint thinner. it was sunday morning this all started. it's still burning tonight. firefighters said today they have no timetable for how long it will take to contain this inferno. they have to wait for all of the chemicals in all these tanks to burn off before they can control it at all. . the fire marshall said today it's anybody's guess when that will be. as dear park texas waits for those chemicals to burn themselves out, this was the view over dear park texas today. a big black chemical smoke plume that sprouted out of that fire and spread across the entire city and started stretching for miles. way beyond where the fire first started. dear park is 20 miles east of houston, the smoke cloud billowing out of that

petrochemical fire has stretched all the way across houston and even toward the austin area. despite how massive this thing is, and despite the fact that it is made up of burning chemicals. officials are insisting there's nothing in that smoke that's too toxic. the air quality is safe as long as the cloud remains high enough above land. but as that plume continues doing this continues to creep across texas and with the chemicals still burning tonight, can you not blame people for how they're feeling about this right now. now it's time for the last word with ali velshi filling in for lawrence. >> thanks, rachel. coming up tonight, kushner inc. the author of a new book on jared and ivanka, explains how a new york city high rise could be key to understanding jared kushner and president trump's relationship with dictators in the middle east. and as the president continues his attacks on the husband of a