>> i appreciate your candor, sam nunberg. i'm going to do a little bit of legal analysis with maya wiley, roger stone, his dealings potentially with wikileaks and julian assange, this is how trump aide stone has addressed those questions. >> you know, i was very specific in that i said that i had communicated with mr. assange. i never said that i met with him or that i spoke with him. we have a mutual acquaintance who is a fine gentleman. i happen to be one that thinks that assange is a hero. >> the atlantic's natasha bertrand talking about wikileaks and how stone tried to keep this communication open. i wonder the view of where stone fits into all this as a former trump aide, and was he in doing other things helpful and also what you heard from mr. nunberg and that in his view these mueller investigators are sharp. >> i'm going to start with the second question first. >> sure. >> which is the attorneys that work for the united states department of justice are attorneys that could be in private practice making a lot of money

the last thing that sam nunberg was saying was he was worried about what michael cohen is going to sayhen he's called in by somebody like andrew weissman about the payouts. that sounds like he's talking about the stormy daniels payout to not say anything about her sexual relationship with donald trump and possibly other payouts, and there's been speculation that robert mueller would be interested in that. what's your reading of that? >> why wouldn't he be. there does seem to be a series of them. sam nunberg is kind of a charming rogue here and he's on record saying it's a den of thieves, everybody lies about everything, but cohen obviously everything he has said about stormy daniels and others has had a fishy smell to high heaven. and he's going to be very hard pressed. you know, mueller just remember indicted a lawyer, alex van der zwaan for lying and serving notice that lawyers like cohen, like don mcgahn may well be in trouble if they lie to him. but cohen seems to have been the bag man for these sorts of things for many years and he's got a lot to tell if he chooses to. >> i can ju

. >> sam nunberg worked with the campaign a year before the election. so the social counsel's office is not commenting on the interview or its substance. nunberg is important because he was let go from the president's team in august of 2015 after a media report about racially charged posts on his facebook page. he was prominent in the michael wolfe book about the administration's first few months. and on another network, nunberg took fire against paul manafort and john kelly saying that they absolutely met with russian officials. >> i have never met paul manafort. i respect him. that doesn't mean i respect kelly ann or the vice president. >> he worked close with steve bannon after he left the white house in a rather dramatic fashion, shep. >> shepard: we're also learning more about the special counsel's cause about paul manafort. >> the document remains under seal. we talked about it yesterday. a source said the new charge relates to bank fraud. as a result, the special counsel will likely seek to change or increase manafort's bail. manafort was charged

whether or not people like it or not, you can say, oh, sam nunberg, oh, he's just an israeli. i'm a supporter of israel. there's no bigger benefactor of iran, after vladimir putin -- >> let me play for you. >> his predecessor was worse. you know obama was worse. >> on russia -- >> no trump's wrong. >> let me play you talking about this on russia and this whole issue of the relationship. take a listen. >> i believe an easing of tensions and improved relations with russia from a position of strength only, is possible, absolutely possible. >> we hope for better days. for better relations with russia. >> but you show me where during this current administration where donald trump has done anything that's been positive or proactive or productive for vladimir putin. if anything, if vladimir putin thought he was helping elect donald trump, he must be feeling he got scammed somehow. what has he gotten? >> but donald trump is not enforcing these sanctions brought on by obama. >> but he won't do the sanctions. >> you're saying on record he should enforce the sanctions? >> 100%. i don't w

but since those first charges were filed, steve bannon, jeff sessions, jim comey and sam nunberg have all spent time in the special counsel's office space in washington, d.c. what sorts of pieces of the story might steve bannon, jeff sessions and jim comey and sam nunberg who was a trump campaign official, what sorts of things could they have shared -- what threads could they have pulled that would have revealed additional crimes on the part of the president's former campaign chairman and his deputy? >> well, nicolle, these could all be independent tracks. i wouldn't necessarily draw a straight line from sam nunberg and jim comey, for instance, to rick gates and paul manafort. what we've seen from the special counsel as the submarine surfaces from time to time, is that there are many different aspects to the case. i imagine that continues to be true today. >> and let me ask you, larry lit man, you wrote a piece before today's guilty plea about mueller's momentum and you wrote, there's greater cause for hope this week than last that the full contours of the story, whether it involves a

i'm join the now by sam nunberg a early political consultant and an adviser to the trump campaign. it is great to see you. >> thank you very much. >> why does donald trump eckive okay on spousal abuse and never defend her or she. >> in this case, today, when he is president of the united states, it was unmitigated mistake. i don't know why he did that. if i interpreted knowing him, if he says something like that, he means i'm not here to defend him -- he said he was innocent, we didn't know the full facts, we didn't have the pictures, i didn't know about this. that is how i interpret it. >> you were listening just then. before donald trump was president of the united states he also defended the him and not hers. why does he defend him and not her. >> friends of his. >> so if it is a friend of his. >> mike tyson he was successful and had championship fights at trump casino. >> does that make it okay. >> it doesn't make it okay. i'm not defending this. i'm telling you my interpretation and perhaps i'm wrong. >> um, i'm going to raise this because you've raised it. not because i think

you have people like sam nunberg saying here is what we were doing in 2011, 2012 -- neil: every candidateking what they're doing, plotting strategy. >> was making very overt moves. i don't know, i'm not there, but bringing this guy in is kind of interesting. we'll see what happens. the markets are, before, i was planning for a hit about the markets here. the markets are moving off this stuff. whether this is, whether this is nothing or something i can't tell you. neil: we'll have to see. buddy. charlie gasparino. trulicity is not insulin. it comes in a once-weekly, truly easy-to-use pen. the pen where you don't have to see or handle a needle. and it works 24/7. trulicity is a once-weekly injectable medicine . . exercise. it should not be the first medicine to treat diabetes, or for people with type 1 diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis. do not take trulicity if you have a personal or family history of medullary thyroid cancer, if you have multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, or if you're allergic to trulicity. stop trulicity and call your doctor right away if you have a lump or swe

he-- sam nunberg only got to the fourth amendment before trump was pulling down his lip.eal with themselves; one of them is going to run for president. she makes fun of trump's hair. >> but ivanka is going to be the first one to run for president. >> stephen: and then jared has to go. is there something in your book that you went, "i can't believe anybody hasn't picked up on this? like, this was the shocking thing to me that nobody's picked up on-- is there something in here you can't believe nobody's asked about this event? >> you know, and this is less of a funny-- a fundamentally serious thing about this that everybody in the white house had their own press secretary. so, the president has his own press secretary; not sean spicer, but his private press secretary. jared had a press secretary. steve bannon had a press secretary. so there are all these different press operations. so the answer, why are there so many leaks in this white house? that's what they did all day. that's what the operation was. >> stephen: so everyone's spinning their own p.r. all the time. >> eve

we had news made on the show from former trump aide sam nunberg. >> have his investigators called youperating? >> i have not met with them yet. i will meet with them. >> let me ask you about michael cohen. >> i worry about michael. i'm not going to say he's going to lie. i worry. >> donald trump is a personal guy, he screws everyone. jared kushner is a moron. >> the white house is claiming today thatis rough on russia. >> no, he's not. >> we thank all our guests for the wild ride last night. thank you for watching the beat. "hardball" starts now. >>> gun talk. let's play "hardball." >>> good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. in a remarkable get together in the white house late today, real people talked about the real horror of mass school shootings. for the first time, the question of what to could about this continuing catastrophe was taken away from the paidup politicians and taken back by the people. it was an extraordinary meeting and at times a gut wrenching and painfully raw experience

and those that he's interviewing, yesterday he interviewed donald trump's former campaign aide sam nunberg. early on aide, and not somebody who went far into the campaign. but somebody that was there in the early stages helping him craft his positions, helping him say what might appeal to a republican audience, talking about the wall, where he stood on foreign policy. i don't know, maybe where he stood on russia early on in the campaign and why he stood where he did when it came to russia or vladimir putin. when you see this, and you look at who he's interviewed as a reporter who has covered this for a long time, where do you see it going next? >> i think that mueller is trying to answer the big question that we all have about this entire investigation. what accounts for the president's predisposition to favor russia and putin. where did it come from? why did he set out to improve relations with russia and why did the platform change happen at the gop convention over 2016. the answer to that is unknown. there are a variety of possibilities. and the first possibility is he was setting up --

. >> philip, sam nunberg, a former trump adviser, was on today. he was talking about rob porter as it related to the president. let's listen. >> he wasn't really served well by his staff. i don't think he had any idea about this. i don't think an issue about an fbi clearance for rob porter was taken to him, nor should it have been. >> so this is interesting, phil. when the president feels under pressure or he feels cheated or out of the limelight or in the limelight for the wrong reasons, he tends to tweet, he tends to lash out, he tends to identify other people as having failed him. what do you think is going to happen? >> well, ali, tomorrow is saturday, and we know saturday morning is when some of these tweet storms come, so i guess we'll stay tuned. i heard there might be rain in d.c. which means golfing might not be an option, so more likely to have tweets then. talking to people today who have been in touch with the president, he's been venting privately. he's not taken to twitter to lash out at either the media or any of his aides or to com

in addition, mueller's investigators were scheduled to interview former trump campaign adviser, sam nunberg today. he was an early adviser to the campaign, but was fired in august 2015 for racially charged facebook posts. but it's very interesting, in terms of a rick gates possible paralegal, we understand from several sources, he's rejected a few possible deals. however, today, those talks are still noiongoing. so this is still in flux, it could still happen. >> and if he cops a plea, the pressure will build on manafort to do the same thing. we'll see how this unfolds. lots going on, jessica, good report. thank you very much. let's bring in cnn's senior legal analyst, former u.s. attorney, preet bharara. preet, thanks so much for joining us. what do these new charges mean? i assume you've gone through this lengthy document. >> i have. they mean a few things. they mean that bob mueller and his team, if people didn't realize it before now, are incredibly serious, are incredibly thorough, and are going to keep looking. so just because you see charges filed against one person or another, it do