john heilemann, so jeff sessions is now a significant part of the obstruction of justice investigation? >> and i think, you know, in retrospect, as "the times" story notes, it's sort of crazy that we didn't focus on this earlier. people have obviously focused on the relationship between trump and sessions and it's been contentious and sessions has hung in there. you and i were exchanging a private conversation the other day about whether in some long narrative we will eventually look back and say jeff sessions was the hero of all of this, having recused himself when he should have and having resisted trump's pressure. now because of the good folks at "the new york times" and their reporting, we know about the private pressure. i'm not a lawyer. harry litman will be able to speak more eloquently of what constitutes obstruction of justice, but i know the corrupt intent has something to do it. we have focussed on james comey, et cetera. when you're going to your attorney general who has done absolutely the right thing by recusing himself, when you publicly say i need loyalty. this was a h

so john heilemann, it's just lie after lie after lie.re was no spy who was inserted into the campaign. no one was inserted into the campaign. it was not early in the campaign. the money that this professor has received over time from the federal government is almost entirely from the defense department for studies he has done for the defense department, starting in 2012, long before donald trump was a candidate. >> and no information was handed over to crooked hillary clinton as we know of. just the fact that trump invoking "follow the money" in this moment -- >> but it feels like he is trying to get that tweet out. >> yes. >> before the entire story about this guy is very well-known. >> yes. >> and doesn't fit any of those elements. >> i think that's right. and look, i don't know that any of it -- this tweet, you know, conforms perfectly with trump's tendency to try to do whatever it is he is doing and add all this filigree around it that is often maddening to those of us who care about rationality and truth but does adhere to a certain

john heilemann, co-author of "game change" and double down as well as co-host and executive producer of the circus on shoe time. samstein, veteran political journalist. and jill colvin, white house reporter for the associated press. frank, you're the former fed here. we read the statement by latham and watkins. we'll let that speak for itself. what do you make of tonight's development? >> brian, i think we're much closer tonight to seeing what collusion looks like. i think we're much closer to the original core of the special counsel's purpose, which is to determine the extent to which foreign powers have influenced this campaign and influenced this presidency. and i think that michael cohen is much closer to criminal charges tonight, and our president is not going to sleep well this evening because it's going to be very hard for him to assert that he did not know that cohen had this firm setup, that money was flowing from columbus nova, whose biggest client is a russian oligarch, who has written checks to the campaign, who has signed on with columbus nova, who's been interviewed by

john heilemann?n it needed to be from the white house's perspective from gina haspel's perspective. democrats want to vote for her and people in this case want to get back to some bipartisan support for these national security positions. i think they needed to hear from her if she said this in her hearing the other day the letter would not have been necessary. i think they realized that it was probably a mistake for her not just to come out and say this in the hearing but they were trying to see if they could push her through without her having to make the admission and go on the record, but they got there eventually. this is what the democrats needed. they needed this much to say okay -- >> we'll do it. >>> up next, gaza just suffered its deadliest day in years, but our next guest has been digging even deeper, embedding himself in the west bank for his new project, a muslim among the settlers. his findings are next on "morning joe." what? directv gives you more for your thing. your... quitting cable

he's sending every signal to mueller, we're not going to do it. >> john heilemann, cambridge analytica, to take nothing away from the reporting of "the new york times" on this story, it stands to reason, correct, that mueller et al. would be taking a good, hard look at cambridge analytica? >> it does. look, one of the -- now we talk about the mueller probe in rumsfeldian terms. i've heard this recently starting to creep into our dialogue where we talk about the known knowns, the unknown unknowns. one of the known unknowns is that bob mueller is going to issue indictments for sure that relate to the hacking of the democratic party's e-mail systems and the hacking of john podesta's e-mail systems. >> expect it in the next round. >> the question is when. we don't know how many, of whom, how far reaching. we don't know a lot of things about it. but we know it's going to happen. and when you think about that piece of the puzzle, which is the -- you know, he's done a little bit on the social media piece and that influence. but when you think about the breaking and entering part of it, then y

this is a fight worth having but it has to be done intelligently. >> john heilemann? asked you for a status update about a column you wrote back in february which i believe may still be the most read thing you've ever written on the "new york times" site where you talked about the piece that ended with the kicker, the biggest threat to the integrity of our democracy today is in the oval office speaking of president trump and in that piece you talked about how he seemed ready to undermine our most important institutions, the fbi and the justice department to keep his compromised status hidden. you said then, this is code red. so now we're almost four months later. what code are we at now? >> john, i'm writing code red two for this wednesday because i think we're in an even more dangerous situation. these midterms are soon to be upon us and i have one piece of advice for people. you have to vote for a democrat because -- and i say that as someone who -- i have very conservative issues on a lot of things, i'm pro business. but the fact is the worst democrat running if th

terrorist countries one of the world's largest exporters of steel to the united states there is john heilemann has more on this now from mexico city. after the u.s. put the squeeze on a busy trading i'm always mix going canada imposing steel doesn't believe tariffs retaliation quickly follow both amounts dollar for dollar surcharges the u.s. if these tariffs are totally unacceptable canadian prime minister justin through though and his foreign minister chrystia freeland denounce the u.s. is actions this is sixteen point six billion dollars of retaliation this is the strongest trade action canada has taken in the post-war era first of all mexico's economic minister called this the worst case scenario and said the country would put tariffs on some u.s. steel products apple's grapes pull and cheese today that we take action. to compensate sadly it would be that mr gone to mexico exports from this dilemma but this dispute was the last thing either country wanted with a powerful and until recently mostly friendly neighbor the kind of that the terrorists will hit particularly hard about ninety perce

>> and if hillary clinton -- i'll go back to it again, john heilemann.s of hillary clinton's campaign or organization were going over to russia and delivering speeches that con democrat it had united states and were making contact and if southbound that hillary clinton told the "washington post" was helping run her foreign policy in the came got drunk and started bragging to australian ambassadors like papadopoulos bragged then republicans would rightly say that the fbi was not doing their job to at least try to get the temperature here and see if the clinton campaign was letting the russians interfere with her campaign. even richard burr and the senate intel committee split from the house intel committee and said the russians were trying to interfere with this campaign. >> there's a lot going on here with the choice of language. even kasie used the word "surveilled." that verb suggestions a certain kind of activity that we have no evidence that there was, that it kind of suggests bugging the phone taps, other kinds of surveillance that don't necessarily

i want to ask you the question i started the show with with john heilemann. what was lost today? and what is the hope for, you know, somebody like bob mueller who is keeping his head down and doing his work getting the last word when we just see boundary after boundary crossed, when people who are concerned about donald trump's conduct don't see a lot of evidence of any checks on anything that he's doing, on any of the on lit railed norms, on any of the trespassing and trampling on the way things are supposed to be when you're under investigation by the justice department, a counterintelligence investigation, even more serious in that serious national security questions. what was lost today, and what is the hope for regaining it or salvaging it through the mueller investigation or any other avenue? >> so i'm getting even more depressed listening to you recite the litany. >> no, you're supposed to bring us back up. >> but here's the real conundrum that we face and jeremy knows this too from the administration that we served in together and earlier ones. the criminal justice system

john heilemann, everything just seems to keep exploding out there, surrounding.en, more stories coming out about pay offs to michael cohen. michael aven michael avanatti releasing it. where is all the information coming from and secondly, how impactful is the $600,000 pay off to michael cohen and who cohen passed the money through and how does that impact at&t in the merger? >> a lot of questions there. the first thing i would say to answer the question where it's coming from, joe, i don't know the answer. i will say this, having spent some time with michael avanatti on "the circus" as a human observation, you walk around new york city, washington, d.c., los angeles with the guy and he is being treated by a fair segment of the public as a hero. he's become a celebrity and, in the same way you have seen bob mueller venerated by the half of the country that wants to see donald trump thrown out of office, you have a popular view that this guy is, like bob mueller, their hope for changing the country. when you get that kind of popular support, where there's people ou

with us we have national affairs analyst for nbc and msnbc, john heilemann. next to john, pulitzer prize winning historian jon meacham, the soul of america, the battle for our better angels is out now. we'll talk about it throughout the show. i would say, joe, that meachum is the soul of america, don't you think? >> well, either the soul of america or the soul of bell meade, or at least the country club. you know, jon, it's another extraordinary book of your's. and there's a line that i got and i really think it encapsulates this entire project and puts everything in perspective, so much important information for americans out there, but you write in the introduction to know what has come before is to be armed against despair. >> wow. >> you talk about the vanity of the president. we always believed these are the worst of times, but in the words of that great american philosopher, gladys knight as bad as these days seem, these will one day seen as the good ole days by our children. you put that in historical context. we've been through this before. it's whethe

with a device to drain fluid from the brain but in some cases it made their conditions worse john heilemann as part one of this engineer investigation. it's painful feel and look back at the time before she was hit by hydrocephalus a debilitating condition in which excess fluid builds up in the brain it's left her with massive headaches and speech problems. everything changed because i was a sports woman before i spent twenty years doing sports and i sold clothing everything and that she hoped that an operational cruise flagship institute for neurology and neurosurgery would help her but what she didn't know was that doctors would hope with an experimental and the north arise device. and not just her four hundred seventy three other patients who went to the facility so implanted they were essentially guinea pigs in an unofficial trial carried out over a period of fourteen years they never asked me anything before operating they said something to my husband but never that they were going to do an experiment. three doctors working at the institute at the time spoke to al-jazeera it all said t

authorities and doctors told our jazeera it had serious flaws in the second part of our investigation john heilemann examines how this could have happened and the consequences for those involved. over the fourteen years almost five hundred patients were fitted with an experimental unapproved device a top public neurological institute you learned the good at it was among them it was done without her or her husband's knowledge. they asked us to sign a bit of paper but never that it was going to be a valve or a tube that was part of an experiment they never told us anything about that. three doctors working at the institute at the time told out does either that the same is true for other patients who received the implant it was designed to treat hydrocephalus that's excess fluid in the brain by training it down through a chub into the stomach area. this man invented the device and patented it julio sotelo he was also the director of the same national neurology and neurosurgery institute where it was pressed into use despite never being approved by medical authorities in the field there was a recommenda

former sports doctor larry nasser admitted to molesting some of the united states top athletes john heilemann reports . dozens of brazilian gymnasts have accused a former coach of the national team of sexual abuse among them the pan-american games gold medalist but. that psychological pressure on a ten or eleven year old boy he sent for me and when i went to the bathroom and he told me to take a bath or relax ok i took the bath and suddenly he entered into the bathroom and got into the bath like if we were two children playing the accusations emerged in a global t.v. news investigation fernando they cover you lopez denies them he's since been fired from his job in the sports community center. to the point of that kind of accusation i have nothing to say they have to prove that. i know that i have my conscience clean because i never raped anybody i never molested anybody in the way it's been told it comes on the heels of another scandal for me usa team doctor larry nasser admitted that he molested some of that country's top gymnasts more than two hundred fifty women and girls say here abuse th

gripping mexico it would itself is named after two mexican journalists who murdered last year john heilemann has more from mexico city. how about those amid a slava breach with two of the most recognized journalists in mexico and reporters throughout the country were shocked and horrified when they were killed there was a sense that no one was safe anymore which has been building up the years worldwide metzger's journalist murder rate is below only war zones like syria now the united nations is giving out an award in the name of those two reporters to recognize the many others killed and to highlight the risks here mexico is one of the most dangerous counters in the war for dramatists l.s.d. alone in two thousand and seven pm at least a well dramas have been killed because they are in for first four or four months of the year for gross or were killed and being punitive is absent i mean usually the killers and the bills of the people the war good the martyrs they're just i'm pretty sure. the first winner is gone the other area a journalist who specialized in uncovering the abuses of authoriti

mueller. >> and john heilemann, the parallels of what mike pence is saying right now and what richard but part of the madness for donald trump, he's so used to everybody being a day trader, everything he sends out immediately getting a response on twitter. somebody close to him said sometimes saturday mornings he's just bored and he'll send out tweets not just for the headlines, he loves to see the immediate response, the attacks, the back-and-fourth, robert mueller is maddening because he does the opposite. >> there's a number of things trump is intemperate, but one of the things he's done in time of politics is he's not just lashing out, he likes to -- he believes by attacking people in certain ways he gets inside their heads and unnerves them. he did it to marco rubio and ted cruz and various of his opponents in the '16 race. >> but organisms adapt. mueller has adapted. michael avenatti attacks him everyday and habsn't been attacked by donald trump. >> it makes trump crazy. all he gets is more avenatti in his face. it's like there's a double teamed yin/yang thing going on that i th

my thanks to jonathan, donny, john heilemann. that does it for our hour. i'm nicole wallace.right now. hi, chuck. >> you feeling golden? are you readying for round four? >> you know, i'm not engaging. we shouldn't fight about sports. >> come on, it's the only thing that we can at least bring people together on. >> it's the only thing that america has left. >> warriors and celtics in the finals, warriors win in a sweep. >> ouch. >> prediction. >> i agree with you on a celtics sweep, but the celtics won't be there. good-bye! if it's tuesday, the constitutional crisis alarm bells are ringing, but is anybody listening? tonight, fatal distraction. are the president's systemic attacks on the justice department undermining the rule of law as

. >>> tonight's last word is from last night's episode of john heilemann's show, the circus, on showtime trump's a factor. and the only similar sensation that we've ever felt to this were the final two years of the nixon presidency, which ended the way it ended. there's never been anything else that feels like that. but nixon was a rational man compared to trump, and therefore to a certain extent, predictable. this is completely unpredictable, and everyone who issues predictions in this thing is faking it. >> the circus gets tonight's last word. one of the writers of a new "washington post" story that reveals what it is like inside robert mueller's grand jury room will join brian in "the 11th hour" with brian williams, which starts now. >>> tonight inside the russia investigation as robert mueller enters year two as special counsel. ashley parker of the "washington post" standing by with details of her story based on 22 sources. >>> plus, five days and no white house apology to john mccain after mocking his fight with terminal cancer. instead, the president calls the leakers of the comme

and a number of doctors believe it had serious flaws in the second part of his investigation john heilemann explains the consequences for those affected. over fourteen years almost five hundred patients were fitted with an experimental unapproved device a top public neurological institute you learned the good at it was among them it was done without her or her husband's knowledge. they asked us to sign a bit of paper but never that it was going to be a valve or a tube that was part of an experiment they never told us anything about that. three doctors working at the institute at the time told how does it or that the same is true for other patients who received the implant it was designed to treat hydrocephalus that's excess fluid in the brain by draining it down through a chub into the stomach area. this man invented the device and patented it. he was also the director of the same national neurology and neurosurgery institute where it was pressed into use despite never being approved by medical authorities that we could mean that there was a recommendation i would see a demand that you had

the health continues to worsen at this point hopes of getting better or for justice a fading john heilemann al-jazeera mexico city. an explosion in gaza has killed six members of hamas is military wing because some brigades the blast which injured three others happened in a residential neighborhood over that house says those involved were trying to deal with an unexploded israeli weapon dating back to the two thousand and fourteen war . iran's president has criticized the ban on a popular messaging application a son rouhani says blocking the app telegram is quote the opposite of democracy it was banned earlier this week by the conservative run judiciary state t.v. says it was to protect national security iran has been considering the move since january when protests over the colony spread across the country official say some of those rallies were organized using telegram. tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of paris to protest against french president the new and mccrone one year into his leadership that a stranger is carried and team a complex cards at effigies of the for

officials have told al-jazeera that they often have to buy their own supplies including bullets john heilemann reports from mexico city corrupt inefficient and in some cases even in league with crime not surprisingly many mexican simply don't trust their police officers but there is another side to the story a survey of. policemen and women found that many especially at municipal level a badly paid back the basic equipment to do the job this office in one of the most violent towns in the country told us they aren't supplied with enough bullets regularly have to buy their own. it's not just alms elsewhere francisco escovedo had to retire of the damaging his spine push starting his police truck every morning he says he spent a year asking superiors for a new battery to implement and they were told me the same he says put up with it or buy one yourself ngo counselling commune who surveyed offices across the country found some police paying for uniforms car repairs and petrol all out of their own low salaries so if you could have police that badly trained and not paid the right amount what are the

my thanks to jonathan, donny, john heilemann. that does it for our hour. i'm nicole wallace. "mtp daily" starts right now. hi, chuck. >> you feeling golden? are you readying for round four? >> you know, i'm not engaging. we shouldn't fight about sports. >> come on, it's the only thing that we can at least bring people together on. >> it's the only thing that america has left. >> warriors and celtics in the finals, warriors win in a sweep. >> ouch. >> prediction. >> i agree with you on a celtics sweep, but the celtics won't be there. good-bye! if it's tuesday, the constitutional crisis alarm bells are ringing, but is anybody listening? tonight, fatal distraction. are the president's systemic attacks on the justice department undermining the rule of law as we know it? >> if they had spies in my campaign, that would be a disgrace to this country. >> plus, the swamp thing. >> the swamp has never been more foul or more fetid than under this president. >> president trump has become the swamp. >> have democrats found a drain the swamp message too? >>> and stacey versus stacey. how t

but a health continues to worsen at this point hopes of getting better or for justice a fading john heilemann al-jazeera mexico city. still to come on this. threat. of breaking. with. the european union. blueprint. gold smuggling. ring green bacteria in a. gas escaping from volcanic well. this is really. in the for. two experiments. and. i'm the guy in. the i just have to. thank you manchester city will be handed their premier league trophy in the next hour after the final whistle in the match where it's still male male with about her . off an hour left to play but they were also looking to rewrite the history books say city can win they will break the record for the most points and the most wins in a premier league season the team also needs just two more goals to break chelsea's all time record of one hundred three meanwhile also will be paying tribute to the outgoing manager also vanga at his final home match everyone will be given mercy also in shirts for the game against burnley banga stepped down last month after twenty two years in charge he won three league titles and a record seven f

fifteen years doctors told al jazeera it had serious flaws and in part two of our investigation now john heilemann asks how this could have happened and what the consequences are for those involved. over fourteen years almost five hundred patients were fitted with an experimental unapproved device a top public neurological institute you learned the good at it was among them it was done without her or her husband's knowledge. they asked us to sign a bit of paper but never that it was going to be a valve or a tube that was part of an experiment they never told us anything about that. three doctors working at the institute at the time told how does it or that the same is true for other patients who received the implant it was designed to treat hydrocephalus that's excess fluid in the brain by draining it down through a chub into the stomach area. this man invented the device and patented it. he was also the director of the same national neurology and neurosurgery institute where it was pressed into use despite never being approved by medical authorities that it could mean that there was a recommendat

john heilemann reports. dozens of brazilian gymnasts have accused a former coach of the national team of sexual abuse among them the pan american games gold medalist but. that psychological pressure on a ten or eleven year old boy he sent for me and when i went to the bathroom and he told me take a bath and relax ok i took the bath and suddenly he entered into the bathroom and got into the bath like if we were two children playing the accusations emerged in a global t.v. news investigation fernando they cover you lopez denies them he's since been fired from his job in the sports community center. to the point of that kind of accusation i have nothing to say they have to prove that. i know that i have my conscience clean because i never raped anybody i never molested anybody in the way it's been told it comes on the heels of another scandal for me usa team dr larry nasser admitted that he molested some of that country's top gymnasts more than two hundred fifty women and girls say here abuse the the allegation

health authorities doctors say many patients still don't know they were part of the experiment john heilemann has part one of this al-jazeera investigation humans and it's painful for you lunda to look back at the time before she was hit by hydrocephalus a debilitating condition in which excess fluid builds up in the brain it's left with muskie of headaches and speech problems. everything changed because i was a sports woman before i spent twenty years doing sports and i sold clothing everything and that she hoped that an operation at mexico's flagship institute for neurology and neurosurgery would help her but what she didn't know was that doctors would hope with an experimental and an alter ised device. and not just her four hundred seventy three other patients who went to the facility we're also implanted they were essentially guinea pigs in an unofficial trial carried out over a period of fourteen years they never asked me anything before operating they said something to my husband but never that they were going to do an experiment. three doctors working at the institute at the time spoke