and ken delanian, and kristen welker, nbc white house correspondent is with us. ari, start with you. so what you just heard there from the white house, saying this has nothing to do with the campaign. it felt for a moment this morning when we first got word of manafort and his deputy he had nothing about papadopoulos for a while. felt the spin was operative, but this papadopoulos issue, a character nobody was talking about before today complicates the claim it had nothing to do with the campaign. >> exactly right. they're trying to cordon off what happened to the two aides and a plot according to bob mueller's investigation went up to 2016, even 2017, but was about money, not registering as a foreign agent and money laundering's in papadopoulos you have somebody pleading guilty. much farther along than the other two indictments and about russia collusion. attempt by kremlin-linked officials at an early stage to offer clinton e-mails and dirt. >> turns out he was arrested over the summer. we didn't know anything about this. it never got reported. turned out entere

. >> let's talk about this tonight, ken delanian, national security reporter. ken, first of all, that was battlefield stuff from the parking lot across from mandalay bay. second, let's talk about these bump stocks. we asked you to bring one with you on the air. it uses kind of a spring-loaded, quite simple mechanism to change a single-shot rifle into basically a fully automatic. >> that's absolutely right, brian. i've got one with me here. you can see it looks basically like the stock of a rifle. this would fit on an ak-47. it's made of plastic. it modifies a semiautomatic weapon to make it five as if it's an automatic weapon and it squeezes the trigger much faster than a human being can squeeze the trigger. machine guns have been illegal in this country since 1986, some are grandfathered in, pre1984 -- pre-1986 weapons, they're not for sale. but these bump stocks exist for one reason and that's to get around the automatic weapons ban. and it's looking like they are one reason so many people died in this incident. this man was pouring what sealed like automatic

this afternoon, nbc's ken delanian reported more, that steele is also in talks with the senate intelligence committee to meet with them and to assist them in their investigation into potential collusion between trump's campaign and russia. ken will join us in a couple minutes. with steele availing himself to mueller and to the senate intelligence committee, it becomes more likely that the contents of his original report will be further investigated and potentially some of them confirmed. for a glimpse into how that might make the president feel, here's a look at his first public reaction to the dossier. >> i saw the information. i read the information. outside of that meeting. it's all fake news. it's phony stuff. it didn't happen. and it was gotten by opponents of ours, as you know, because you reported it and so did many of the other people. it was a group of opponents that got together, sick people, and they put that crap together. >> now, there are still questions about who paid for the original report, but i spoke to a well-respected former national security official in the uk this mor

ken delanian, we appreciate your time. >>> we've got more to get to. more ahead from las vegas and the mayor of san juan puerto rico will join us live hours after the president visited hurricane-ravaged puerto rico. stay with us. when you have a cold stuff happens. shut down cold symptoms fast with maximum strength alka seltzer plus liquid gels. whentertaining us,es getting us back on track,hing? and finding us dates. phones really have changed. so why hasn't the way we pay for them? introducing xfinity mobile. you only pay for data and can easily switch between pay per gig and unlimited. no one else lets you do that. see how much you can save. choose by the gig or unlimited. xfinity mobile. a new kind of network designed to save you money. call, visit or go to xfinitymobile.com. >>> today in washington d.c. members of congress reacted to the massacre in las vegas. passing gun control reform is a years-long struggle for democrats even after the horrible events in now town, connecticut in 2012. democrats tried yet again to put gun control legislation on

john torres and nbc intelligence and national security reporter ken delanian. ken, before we tackle health care, let's talk about kaitlyn coleman, her canadian husband, her children. after five years in captivity, what do we know? this is a very complex story. >> it is a very complicated story, andrea. they were captured hiking in afghanistan five years ago. they've been held in pakistan by the hakani network, which is a terrorist organization that u.s. officials say has gotten support from the pakistani government. so now we're made to understand that the u.s. intelligence community provided the pakistani military with the location of these folks, this family, and the pakistani military mounted an operation to go and get them. so that's the good news. a complicating factor we learned today, though, is that the family declined to get on a u.s. plane back to the united states. the husband particularly, who is a canadian, joshua boyle, refused to get on a u.s. c-130. it's not clear why that happened and that's raising some questions. overall, and you've covered th

joining us is investigative reporter ken delanian. jeff flake is not running for re-election. did he accomplish what he wanted? >> i think what they are mainly trying to accomplish is sending a message to the american public that the conducted of president trump as they see it is not normal. and you saw that with that impassioned speech by senator flake yesterday. he's not talking about policy. he's talking about character. the question remains to what extent are they going to oppose the agenda. if they choose to do so congressional leaders say this is just a blip on the screen a that they are unified on tax reform. could they really do some damage? >> they certainly could but these are very conservative republicans who support cutting taxes and so that's really the question. are they actually going to vote against him before the senate? john mccain do that in opposing health care reform. whether he'll do it on taxes remains to be seen. >> they were getting criticism last night on the talk shows at night that why wait eight months to come out with this? the president's behavio

. >> reporter: we were just talking, i don't know if you had a chance to hear ken delanian, but whene these additions, they allow guns to turn into semiautomatic weapons, and that was certainly the case here. when you see the signs at the airport in las vegas saying you can come to our gun range and you can fire automatic weapons, when you hear about their advertising and the advertising says, you know, this is for the enthiasist, this is for a lot of guns, what do you say to this? >> it's not the gun that causes the violence, but you don't use an automatic weapon to go out deer hunting, and i don't know any other use than what you've seen here yesterday. >> it's not new to nevada. nevada has talked about this, obviously, in the past. is there a way, though, do you think, to get around what is this cultural divide to convince people that this isn't about taking their guns away? because ultimately, and i've talked to a lot of folks who do love guns, and they say, look, i think this is a slippery slope. we let you do one thing, the next thing that happens is that all of our guns are go

joining us now from our washington newsroom, nbc news intelligence and national security reporter ken delanianrats were not first to commission this dossier, right? >> that's right, it was the republicans, as yet unidentified never trump republican group that hired fusion gps to do research on donald trump. that is utterly unremarkable. opposition research is a standard feature of every campaign and presidential campaign. sometimes candidates do it on themselves. the only exotic thing here, we've never had a presidential candidate with these kinds of international entanglements and specifically with relationship in an adversary country. >> and ken, when did former british spy christopher steele get involved in this effort? >> my understanding as of today is that steele was not hired by fusion gps until after the democrats took over the payment of the dossier sometime in april when it became clear trump was going to be the nominee. the republicans had no reason to conduct the research anymore. the democrats picked it up, fusion gps hired christopher steele because he had an expertise in russia.

national security analyst in washington, nbc news intelligence and national security reporter ken delanian. and a former bush/cheney senior adviser. also msnbc political analyst. you've taught me everything i know about the dossier. follow the money, not the sex. tell me about the significance, though, of the dossier still being a body of the investigation, of the set of questions, set of proof points that is still being pursued by the congressional committees and that we learn today from a reuters report is also being pursued by the mueller probe. >> i think it's really significant, because of the explosive nature of the charges in the dossier which go to the heart of what this is all about. it alleges a close and continuing conspiracy of cooperation between the trump campaign and russia. and it's absolutely the case that senator richard, but the chairman of the senate intelligence committee said they reached a wall. he says this yesterday. in trying to confirm every aspect of the dossier because its author, christopher steel, is so far refusing to talk to the committee. they don't know t

thank you so much, for the great work you're doing on this, as well as ken delanian, digging into onef the main players. this george ppapadopolos. his role extremely limited, sarah huckabee sanders said that today a volunteer position, but big enough for a shout-out from donald trump himself back in march 2016. listen. >> george papadopoulos, he's in oil and energy a consultant, excellent guy. >> ken, a lot going on here. let's talk a little more about george pop dapadopolos and what know. >> because this was released about 90 minutes after "the meddler" and gates indictments, it took a while to understand. now that they've looked closely it's amazing and particularly current and former intelligence officials look at this, plain and simple, the russian intelligence trying to infiltrate the trump campaign. to be clear, the documents don't describe the russians involved with papadopolos as cutouts or handlers, the term former officials are using on our air today, but everybody an expert who'd looked at this said is going on. a low-level campaign functionary all of a sudden is being sort

ken delanian, thank you for that perspective. it. >>> coming up next, this story may have flown under the radar. attorney general jeff sessions says that transgender workers were protected under workplace rights. we'll talk about the outrage from activists and politicians over the rollback and what it means for transgender workers. with my advisor's help along the way, it's finally my turn to be the host. when you have the right financial advisor, life can be brilliant. ameriprise our recent online sales success seems a little... strange?nk na. ever since we switched to fedex ground business has been great. they're affordable and fast... maybe "too affordable and fast." what if... "people" aren't buying these books online, but "they" are buying them to protect their secrets?!?! hi bill. if that is your real name. it's william actually. hmph! affordable, fast fedex ground. but on the inside, i feel like chronic, widespread pain. fibromyalgia may be invisible to others, but my pain is real. fibromyalgia is thought to be caused by o

this afternoon, nbc's ken delanian reported more, that steele is also in talks with the senate intelligenceommittee to

he joins me along with nbc's ken delanian. gordon, talk to me about the gravity of this hack and what it means for not only 2016 but for the future. >> yeah. it's a significant discovery that they made in 2016 that this contractor had absconded with material from the nsa campus, put it on his home computer, it was running this software which we now know enabled russian hackers to potentially suck it out of the computer and make copies of it. it's significant because it demonstrates the power of russian hacking in some of -- with some of the america's best kept secrets. these are sources and methods and they show the russians hackers a lot about what can be -- what the u.s. capabilities are. >> and, ken, what's the government doing about it? >> well, they're saying that they're stepping up internal security in nsa, katy, but as you know this was the third major breach at the national security agency, the nation's digital spying agency. my sources are telling me it's particularly devastating because edward snowden leaked a lot o