chuck rosenburg was chief of staff at the fbi to james comey and u.s.ttorney for the eastern district of virginia he was appointed to the job by president bush anding that the u axelrod, former senior federal prosecutor, number two at the justice department to the deputy attorney general and former acting attorney general sally yates. gentlemen, thank you for being here tonight. we never do this. >> it's unusual for me. i'm rarely in new york. >> i'm glad you can all be here. before i talk about the things i meant to start talking to you about, we have a little bit of breaking news i get to get your immediate response to because it has just become known. this is the tape that became known to the public just a few days ago. it is a recording reportedly made by michael cohen who is the president's long-time personal attorney. although the president had previously denied that he had any knowledge of any payment having been made to a woman named karen mcdougal, a sort of hush money payment to keep her talking about her alleged affair with president trump. i

joining us is chuck rosenburg, a former senior official at the fbi and the justice department. mr. rosenburg, thank you for joining us on zero notice. i appreciate it. >> it's my pleasure. >> you've heard my efforts to sum this up. let me ask your first reaction to the importance of this report tonight. >> extraordinarily important. but at the same time, not terribly surprising. >> in terms of the legal liability for the president here, putting aside the question of how this came to light, just taking it at blunt force face value, if the president knew overtly if he was advised in front of other people that this was the russian government offering negative information on his opponent in order to help him in the election, he weighed that, approved taking the meeting and accepting the information directly on that matter are, there legal implications for that? >> absolutely. so a really important question here is you know, did he know the russians were coming? did he know they were coming with dirt? and if he knew they were coming with dirt, did he know where they got it from? so the

. >> that seems to be a theme among federal prosecutors, i don't believe in hunches is what chuck rosenburg told me earlier today or federal investigators i should say. there's also this. it's interesting, as well talking about trump campaign official or someone who was in contact with trump campaign officials talking directly with guccifer 2.0 who this indictment names, as well as a russian. the conspirators posing as guccifer 2.0 communicated with u.s. personas about the release of stolen documents on other about august 15th, 2016, the conspirators posing as guccifer 2.0 wrote to a person in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of donald trump. thank you for writing back. on or about august 17th, 2016 they added please tell me if i can help you anyhow. it would be a great pleasure to me. ken, back to you for a moment. that's roger stone, right. >> yeah, and we know that because roger stone this has been reported ob previously and roger stone took it upon himself to release screen shots of these messages still on the web. you can find them. they read verbatim li

it, chuck rosenburg, fbi chief of staff. matt axelrod. gentlemen, thank you all for what turned out to be kind of an exciting breaking news night here. it's really a pleasure and honor to breaking news night here. it was really a pleasure and an honor to have you all here. >> thank you, rachel. >> now it's time for "the last word" with lawrence o'donnell. good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, rachel. good thing you had a bunch of lawyers around for the release of the cohen -- cohen tape number 1. there's going to be many more. we're going to play it in its entirety for people to decide what it is they're hearing here. but let me begin by telling you who's not going to be on our show tonight. rudy giuliani declined to come on and explain what his client donald trump is actually saying on that audio that we're going to play in a moment. but michael avenatti is here and he has a novel take on what's going on with these tapes. adam schiff was here already to talk about what rudy giuliani's been saying about the president possibly cooperati