mark mazzetti, welcome back to the program. so tell us what th the latest information is that the "times" is reporting on connections, contacts between the trump campaign, family and russian officials. >> last night the "times" reported the existence of an email that showed that the meeting that was brokered in june of 2016 showed an email to donald trump, jr. showed that the offer of damaging information about hillary clinton came from the russian government or was purported to come from the russian government and that donald trump, jr. very eager riresponded that he was very interested, and it seemed to raise the stakes because it was no longer just private information from a lawyer, but something that seemed to come from moscow and the kremlin. this morning, we reported on the actual e-mails themselves, what the e-mails contained that show the long thread that led up to the june 9th, 2016 meeting between these various players, and at the same time right as we were about to publish, donald trump, jr. put out the e-mails himse

joining us now is mark mazzetti, the washington investigations editor for "the new york times."t means he's the man who has been editing this incredible reporting over these last few days. mr. mazzetti, really appreciate your time tonight. i imagine it's a very busy time and you probably haven't had much sleep lately. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me on. >> so let me jump right into the deep water here. had donald trump jr. published these e-mails that he publish today alone, in the absence of your reporting that apparently pushed him to do it, i think a lot of people might have felt like it was sort of too good to be true from an investigations perspective, in terms of links between the campaign and russia during the campaign, but your reporting on what happened here not only pushed him to do this, can you tell us if your reporting here comports with what he published, that you uncovered similar information to what he published? >> yes. what happened was this morning, we had a story prepared that basically documented a lot of the e-mails in question that we'd been

. >> yang: for more on the russia file i am joined by mark mazzetti, washington investigations editor the "new york times," and john sipher, a 28-year veteran of the c.i.a. who was based in moscow in the 1990s. he's now with the consulting firm cross lead. john, mark, thanks for being with us. mark, the defense from the white house from donald trump, jr. is nothing came out of this meeting, no useful information as far as they're concerned. but in the broad scope, in the context of what's going on now, this investigation into russian meddling into the election, what's the significance this meeting even took place? >> i think the significance is that it shows that the trump campaign was at least open to the idea that russians miffed some damaging information about hillary clinton and that they agreed to have this meeting because -- kind of on the promise of that. it was sort of a hastily arranged meeting in june of last year and donald trump, jr., the president's son, brought in the campaign chairman and also jared kushner, his so son-in-law, and there was at least a belief there might

robert: we explore it all with mark mazzetti of the "new york times," amy walter of the cook political report, michael scherer of "time" magazine," and ashley parker of "the washington post". >> celebrating 50 years, this is "washington week." funding is provided by -- >> we've all been affected by cancer some way, somehow. dana-farber cancer institute is pursuing breakthroughs every day to help end cancer, like identifying genetic mutations for targeted therapies and teaching your immune system to attack cancerous cells. by constantly using information in completely new ways, we're cracking the cancer code. learn more at discovercarebelieve.org. >> additional funding is provided by -- boeing. newman's own foundation, donating all profits from newman's own food products to charity and nourishing the common good. koo and patricia yuen through the yuen foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. once again, live from washington, moderator, rob

mark mazzetti is the washington investigations editor for the new york times.igations into donald trump's links to russia. hejoins me now from dc. can ijust start by asking you, doesn't this meeting injune 2016, and the fact that these people in trump tower seemed so keen to take it, suggest there was no pipeline or formal connections with the russians until this point? i mean, i wouldn't draw eye conclusions either way necessarily. certainly there were contacts, there was a relationship going back several years before —— between donald trumer and the man several years between donald trumer and the man associated with the miss universe pageant in 2013. i would be careful and i would caution everybody else to not draw direct conclusions either way about this meeting, and to not go beyond where the facts are. we know based on the reporting of the last several days that this meeting was brokered because donald trumer believed the russian government had damaging information about hillary clinton, and was very eager to take the meeting. we're still trying to figure