here's andrew weissmann speaking to the judge.gn polling data being sent to blank who the defendant conceded is extremely close to the senior leader in russia, is in the core of what the special counsel is supposed to be investigating. another new document. newly unredacted. manafort lied to the government about his sharing of internal trump campaign data with kilimnik. that would be konstantin kilimnik, a long time business associate of manafort who they say is a russian intelligence agent. last month, the u.s. government asserted manafort did share those documents with kilimnik, and he shared them with russian intelligence. we have long known the broad outlines of this part of the story but we now know from these newly unredacted filings that number one, manafort lied to prosecutors about the nature of the data he was sharing. he insisted it was no big deal. it wasn't internal valuable material. it was all just stuff you could get publicly anyway. that was a lie. also, he lied about whether he was giving it to someone who he kne

with me now is nbc news white house correspondent monica alba, sahil kapur, and andrew weissmann. o begin with you, andrew, to try to put some context around what does this special grand jury convening mean, what tea leaves are you reading here? and what is the significance of the manhattan d.a. and state attorney general essentially combining some grand jury resources? >> well, i do think it's important to put it in context. because just because a grand jury is convened doesn't mean that there will be an indictment. but here, there's a lot more. to remind viewers, you have the manhattan district attorney has won two supreme court cases to get the accounting records of the trump organization. he has brought in in a way that is quite unusual outside experts, an accounting expert from fti, an outside accounting firm. a partner from paul weisz, who is an expert prosecutor and defense lawyer, and now, as you mentioned, chuck, people from the new york attorney general's office, who have been conducting at least a civil investigation into apparently tax and related charges from a civil p

>> here we are again, andrew weissmann.ich another now criminal investigation turns and i pulled out that old dni report that said this. we assess president putin and other senior russian officials were aware of and probably directed russia's influence operations against the 2020 u.s. presidential election. for example, we assess that putin had purview over the activities of andre derkach, a ukrainian legislator. derkach has ties to russian officials as well as russia's intelligence services. you spent many months of your life investigating paul manafort and others and their trump campaign's ties to russia and here we go again. >> absolutely. i think it's important for your viewers to -- when they -- i think it's important for the viewers, when they think about ukraine, they really need to be thinking about russia because ukraine, for decades, is torn between the east and the west and the influence of the east and russia is because they have essentially ukraine by the energy stranglehold, so they have enormous kmuns there.

let's bring into our conversation andrew weissmann, former fbi general counsel and msnbc legal analystof desantis smuggling blond-headed donald trump out of mar-a-lago but what does this mean, practically speaking, andrew weissmann? >> well, it actually could get quite complicated, nicole, because there is a florida statute, many states have similar ones, that impose a duty on the governor to extradite. however, that statute doesn't require the government -- sorry, the governor to extradite, and it also does provide that the governor has the ability to investigate the extradition papers, which is a long way to say that if desantis wants to and trump wants to delay this, there might be ways to do that. however, florida would act at its peril because one of the things that florida wants is it wants to have its own extradition papers adhered to when they are seeking fugitives around the country to be extradited back to florida for prosecution, so if they were to sort of play games with this, other states could, you know, retaliate. >> i mean, look, i don't have any of the legal expertise,

joining us to discuss, nbc's chief white house correspondent peter alexander and andrew weissmann, former fbi general counsel and former member of robert mueller's special counsel that investigated russia's interference in the 2016 election. now, lucky us, nbc legal analyst. peter, let's start with you. what do we know. >> "the new york times" is reporting the state's attorney general's office in new york has been criminally investigating allen weisselberg for months over tax issues. the office of letitia james notified the trump administration in a letter in january it opened that criminal investigation related to weisselberg according "the times." more specifically they're examing whether taxes were made on fringe benefits trump gave mr. weisselberg, cars, tens of thousands in private school tuition for one of weisselberg's grandchildren. previously the ag's office was conducting what was only a civil investigation into the organization, which means it could sue the company or seek fines but not criminal charges. for his part the former president tore into prosecutors, including letitia

. >> andrew weissmann and kerry sanders keeping a look at this matter.>>> the supreme court announced it will take up mississippi's ban on most abortions after 15 weeks which had been struck down by a lower court ruling. the law is considered a direct challenge to roe v. wade and the announcement is a boon to abortion opponents who wanted the new conservative-leaning court to take up the issue. joining me now is nbc news justice correspondent pete williams. pete, what more do we know about this case? >> here's why it's a direct challenge to roe v. wade, because the supreme court has consistently, since that decision in 1973, said that women have a constitutional right to seek abortion services before viability, which is generously considered to be 15 weeks. they passed this law after 15 weeks with very few exceptions, saying states need the flexibility to decide if that viability date has changed because of medical advancements. so that's the argument here. so it really does get into the core of roe v. wade, and that's why it's so important that the supr

. >> i want to talk, too, about what is now so public and andrew weissmann raised this idea of pardons and not having the power to pardon. a way that donald trump at least from the outside seemed to corrupt the mueller investigation was by john dowd reported to have dangled pardons in front of subjects very early on. he can't do that. weisselberg is a grandfather and the exposure detailed by the ex-daughter-in-law who knows what the reality is in terms of his state of mind but not people that donald trump can dangle get out of jail free cards in front of why what do you make of the carnage of the way he's operated and the way his presidency exposed everyone who helped him to now criminal liability? >> i think most of these people are probably taking a look at this and they're saying there's nothing that the former president can do for me. i need to save myself and in the case of weisselberg he's demonstrated that he is not willing to engage in perjury to protect donald trump. here we talk about much more serious potentialities for allen weisselberg and so i think that they are going to

andrew weissmann has written a book.ncy and the fbi was war for him. what do you make of a potential sting operation to try to out fbi agents? >> it's extraordinary. when i read this article, the first thing i thought was this was something we would see the russians doing or cubans doing. it was really well resourced. veritas was getting $4 million donations, and this operation they rented a $10,000 month home in georgetown with views of the potomac river and paying $10 soorks a piece to cozy up to mcmaster and fbi agents to get embarrassing statements out of them. i can't speak for general mcmaster, but the average fbi agent will have no desire whatsoever to talk about politics with somebody they juss all the training. they trained them to resist interrogation and have cover stories. have uber drivers drop them off blocks away, to not get mail there, this had all the hallmarks of an intelligence operation but it was a private entity trying to dig up political dirt on trump ed perceived political opponents. >> you tweete