investigative reporter michael isikoff was -- is joining us tonight to talk about the man at the centerf both last night's allegations, last night's reporting from "the wall street journal," and this new reporting tonight. peter smith, mike isikoff has some very interesting information on his background that might tell us a little bit more about what we might expect about whether he was tied to the trump campaign. isikoff joins us next. noo introducing the easiest way to get gillette blades text "blades" to gillette on demand text to reorder blades with gillette on demand... ...and get $3 off your first order >>> you may not know this, but i use a teleprompter on this show, and every once in a while, the tell -- teleprompter just goes to cartoons, and watergate, remember troopergate? a real scandal at the beginning of bill clinton's presidency, but now we all have to remember it for a second because now troopergate is important now for the scandal we're involved in with this presidency. so refresher. >> two troopers stepped forward to renew allegations that mr. clinton had engaged in ex

investigative reporter michael isikoff was -- is joining us tonight to talk about the man at the center night's allegations, last night's reporting from "the wall street journal," and this new reporting tonight. peter smith, mike isikoff has some very interesting information on his background that might tell us a little bit more about what we might expect about whether he was tied to the trump campaign. isikoff joins us next. who hugs a friend. who is done with treatments that don't give you clearer skin. be the you who controls your psoriasis with stelara® just 4 doses a year after 2 starter doses. stelara® may lower your ability to fight infections and may increase your risk of infections and cancer. some serious infections require hospitalization. before treatment, get tested for tuberculosis. before starting stelara® tell your doctor if you think you have an infection or have symptoms such as: fever, sweats, chills, muscle aches or cough. always tell your doctor if you have any signs of infection, have had cancer, if you develop any new skin growths or if anyone in your house needs

joy reid, >> miguel goldberg and michael isikoff and michael schmidt.things have happened, officials channels have been squeezed. state department, which is a huge deal for the rest of the world, daily briefing where the indonesian press and saudi press, that's been put on the shelf. those briefings -- all of these official modes of communication squeezed. it is all back channel stuff, and then that back channel stuff is easier to booby trap or weaponize and leave people in a false direction. >> we used to think the worse situation was a house of card, ail take a drink when you're right. you figure it is, okay, it is going to be hard to get information but the information is legitimate. when you have different factions in the white house who are trying to make you look bad -- >> right. >> -- reporters have to worry about being weaponized against who they work for. >> that's right. >> it is like, i'm going to use you to take down the "new york times," i'm going to use you to take down cnn. it is not a verbal war against the press. it is an actual intelle

michael isikoff, really appreciate you being here. >> okay. >> that does it for us tonight. we will see you again next week. we will see you on monday. that's right, july 3rd, uh-huh. it's time for "the last word." ari melber sitting in for lawrence tonight. good evening. >> just one question. what have you been up to since the '90s? >> you know what? i'm going to have to look into it. i have a feeling if anybody knows, michael isikoff does. >> we're going to have a little bit on that story as well. thank you and have a great weekend. >> thank you. appreciate it. >> i am ari melber in for lawrence o'donnell. we have more on that breaking news, "the wall street journal" adding details to that big report yesterday about a republican activist effort to, according to him, obtain hillary clinton's e-mails from hackers linked to russia. but first republican majority leader mitch mcconnell did promise republicans would continue to work on repealing obamacare. senator mcconnell in kentucky, and their own deadline to come up with a plan has co

jim acosta, april ryan, michael isikoff and david axelrod are back with me.anted to weigh in. jim was saying how much longer the concern would be, how much longer republicans in washington would put up with this. go on. >> yeah, and i just want to offer a little bit of reality check. the fact is that as we sit here today, donald trump's numbers overall aren't particularly good, but his numbers among republicans are very strong, and they've been pretty consistent throughout. the base has stuck with him. there hasn't been as deep an interest in this story among his base. there's been more of an inclination to believe his story, and there's much more of an interest in other things that he's doing -- supreme court appointments and trade and immigration and some of the issues that fire up that base -- fighting obamacare. so, the real question is -- i think there are plenty of republicans on the hill who are dismayed, who would like to walk away from the president, but they're not going to walk away from a president who has 85% approval numbers among republican vot

. >> so michael isikoff, he said nothing with being handed a folder in this meeting. what can you tell us about the contents there? what might be being done with it right now. >> all we know is what what rinat akmetshin said. that the lawyer natalia did have such a folder. it related to hedge fund contributions to the democratic national committee. that she had been researching this for years. now, we know they were going after bill browder. the former hedge fund guy who now lives in london on. who basically ginned up or, the magnitsky act. he lobbied very strongly, u.s. congress, to go after human rights abusers in russia who he believed had killed magnitsky. i think we can surmise that what natalia was talking about were hedge fund contributions associated with bill browder's financial business. but rinat said he didn't see the folder. he didn't work on it. he doesn't know the contents of the folder beyond what natalia told him. can i take a step back here? to some extent, i think this is all sort of fascinating little details about who was at the meeting. but there

michael isikoff, really appreciate you being here. thanks very much. >> okay. >> that does it for us tonight. we will see you again next week. we will see you on monday. that's right, july 3rd, uh-huh. it's time for "the last word." ari melber sitting in for lawrence tonight. good evening. >> just one question. what have you been up to since the '90s? >> you know what? i'm going to have to look into it. i have a feeling if anybody knows, michael isikoff does. >> we're going to have a little bit on that story as well. thank you and have a great weekend. >> thank you. appreciate it. >> i am ari melber in for lawrence o'donnell. we have more on that breaking news, "the wall street journal" adding details to that big report yesterday about a republican activist effort to, according to him, obtain hillary clinton's e-mails from hackers linked to russia. but first republican majority leader mitch mcconnell did promise republicans would continue to work on repealing obamacare. senator mcconnell in kentucky, and their own deadline to come up

michael isikoff, really appreciate you being here.very much. >> okay. >> that does it for us tonight. we will see you again next week. we will see you on monday. that's right, july 3rd, uh-huh. msnbc live is next. >>> good morning. i'm dara brown at msnbc world headquarters. it's 7:00 in the east and 4:00 out west. it is day 163 of the trump administration. repeal immediately and then replace it. the president's backup plan should the senate not pass its health care bill. pushback on request for voter data from the 2016 election, state officials telling the trump administration just say no. >> this is an alarming request. i don't know where it's coming from. >> so close to a major victory in the fight against isis. what needs to happen to drive the terror group out of iraq.

samuel bule and michael isikoff, thank you both. really appreciate it. >>> coming up, donald trump's lawyers really, really, really want to keep him away from jared kushner finally. each year sarah climbs 58,070 steps. that's the height of mount everest. because each day she chooses to take the stairs. at work, at home... even on the escalator. that can be hard on her lower body, so now she does it with dr. scholl's orthotics clinically proven to relieve and prevent foot, knee or lower back pain, by reducing the shock and stress that travel up her body with every step she takes. so keep on climbing, sarah. you're killing it. dr. scholl's. born to move. so we know how to cover almost alanything.ything, even a coupe soup. [woman] so beautiful. [man] beautiful just like you. [woman] oh, why thank you. [burke] and we covered it, november sixth, two-thousand-nine. talk to farmers. we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪ for years, centurylink has been promising fast intern

samuel bule and michael isikoff, thank you both. really appreciate it. >>> coming up, donald trump's lawyers really, really, really want to keep him away from jared kushner finally. each year sarah climbs 58,070 steps. that's the height of mount everest. because each day she chooses to take the stairs. at work, at home... even on the escalator. that can be hard on her lower body, so now she does it with dr. scholl's orthotics clinically proven to relieve and prevent foot, knee or lower back pain, by reducing the shock and stress that travel up her body with every step she takes. so keep on climbing, sarah. you're killing it. dr. scholl's. born to move. jack knocked over a candlestick, onto the shag carpeting... ...and his pants ignited into flames, causing him to stop, drop and roll. luckily jack recently had geico help him with renters insurance. because all his belongings went up in flames. jack got full replacement and now has new pants he ordered from banana republic. visit geico.com and see how affordable renters insurance can

joining me now, michael isikoff who just broke a story a few minutes ago that according to two sources, trump lawyers were informed of the e-mails back in june. >> the president has said a couple times now this week that he only learned about the russia meeting in the last couple days. in fact as i'm reporting, his lawyers, the chief lawyer in the russia investigation, and allen garden, they are both informed about the meeting in the third week in june. this is shortly after they are discovered by jared kushner's lawyers. jared kushner revises his security clearance form. sf 86 for the second time on june 21st. he is interviewed by the fbi for the second time on june 23rd. and the president's lawyers are informed about this. what we don't know was whether they alerted the president. it certainly raises questions that he only learned about this in the last couple days. >> do you find it plausible that they wouldn't have notified the president? >> i find it not it was a meeting designed to help elect donald trump and i believe they would have reported it to him. >> this string of events

. >> michael isikoff, the refrain is there is no evidence of collusion.ast evidence? >> there's certainly evidence of discussions of collusion. where it went from there, you know, we just don't know. but i think it's -- by the way, i should say, emin agalarov, he's given a number of interviews over the past years in which he said he stayed in touch with president trump, even both he and his father congratulated him on his election in november. got a nice message back from the president. in fact, he even said, the president is somebody who remembers his friends. >> now we're heading into the point where you're going to have a congressional committee and they're going to be calling the people they want who are obvious, and the question is going to be, bob mueller, the special counsel, where is there a conflict, and who's going to get immunity. we haven't heard from general flynn in a while. i'm curious about that. >> the questions of the russian cloud will continue to hang over the white house. thank you for joining us. >> the news continues on cnn right af

joining me michael isikoff.hat do you make of the possibility that three of the people in that much talked about meeting, three key people closest to the president while he was still a candidate, could be talking to people in the senate both on intel and judiciary next week. >> couple of quick thoughts. number one, the fact that the kushner hearing, if you could call it that, will be behind closed doors, informal, with mostly staff present, is a problem. to the extent that people are looking for answers about the many questions that were raised about this meeting. in addition to answers about kushner's own failure to report this and early meetings on his security clearance form and yet he still has an interim security clearance. we're not going to get those answers from -- we're not going the get kushner's version of it because it will be behind closed doors. as far as the hearing with trump junior and paul manafort, that is scheduled to be in public but we'll have to see. donald trump junior has indicated he wa

>> i think what happens is -- on the other side, we know from michael isikoff and the washington examiner, a woman working for the dnc solicited information from ukraine against paul man for the and president trump. she actually got it, and she sank manafort's position. would you start prosecuting people from the dnc for having done that in january? >> that's a false equivalent. that's not quite the same as russia, who is about to be med 88ing or has been meddling into the election. and who the intelligence community would later show they wanted to sway the election in trump's favor. >> that's certainly our assumption. and let's face it, from an optics viewpoint that is different. from the viewpoint of law and what bob mueller has to prove -- i feel sorry for him. he has to prove this is different from solicitation. i'm not sure that's going to be easy to do. >> the law and politics, sometimes not always on the same page. thank you very much. appreciate your time, sir. thanks for coming in. >> most relations on capitol hill refuse to break ranks with trump on the russia investigation unti

michael isikoff reported that yahoo news reported within the last hour that mark kasowitz apparently received those donald trump jr. e-mails three month s ago. which if true raises some real questions about why the white house so spectacularly mishandled the management of the meeting and the disclosure of the e-mails themselves. the president's lawyers are his own choice. but it is also unfortunately a choice that is going to matter to all of us as a country as we plow through this scandal to its and and hopefully come to closure as a country when it is over. and i have one last point on this. the top trump lawyer who is not working for the president but is the top law enforcement official, attorney general jeff sessions, he today finally released, because a court ordered him to, a portion of the security clearance that concerned his contacts with russia officials. what they released from the department of justice is one page, almost entirely redacted except for the part on the form where he checked no in response to a question about whether he or anyone in his family had had any for

but michael isikoff is reporting tonight that president trump's lawyers, the president's personal lawyers knew about donald trump jr.'s e-mails about the meeting weeks ago. weeks ago, not a couple of days ago. sources told yahoo news that marc kasowitz, the president's chief lawyer in the russia investigation, and alan garten were both informed about the e-mails in the third week of june after they were discovered by lawyers for kushner. now, we told you here already that we know about these e-mails because jared kushner's lawyers found them. that's how we know about them. the first people to read these e-mails after they were sent last year -- the first people to read them this year were jared kushner's lawyers. consider this package in "the new york times." mr. kushner supplemented the list of foreign contacts three times, adding more than 100 names, people close to him said. so people close to jared kushner are telling "the new york times" about jared kushner updating his security clearance application. team kushner is obviously an invaluable set of sources for "the new york times." bu

. >> michael isikoff, it is inward and always about them. people can debate whether it is a reprieve or not that the health care bill was voted so dramatically down by john mccain early this morning. but it certainly was not pushed over the line by a white house communications director who could only talk about himself and other people who work in the white house. to say nothing of the fact that he is worth $40 million, trying to figure out his sale of his company, and he's attacking bannon who is worth between $20 and $50 million and they're all talking about each other and not about health care. >> there are core questions about the functioning of the government here. just to state the obvious. the president doesn't have a homeland security secretary. in fact, it is not clear who the acting secretary will be. there's no issue more central to his agendas than immigration. dhs is the department inharg c of implementing that agenda. he has already got a beleaguered attorney general in limbo. so just in terms of central questions about having

michael isikoff wrote this, "he initially filed his sf-86 and his lawyers have said this was inadvertentmaturely hit the "send" button for the form before it was completed. within 12 hours, kushner said that he would make amendments. first off, submitting a form is not as simple as a mouse click. you have to click, enter password 28 times in order to e-file. secondly, it took four months from the allegedly inadvertent filing to send in a revised form. thirdly, that revision, the one that four months later didn't include the meeting kushner attended at trump tower on june 9, 2016, with trump junior, paul manafort and the russian nationals. you know, the meeting at the center of the week. that was done on june 21st. joining me now, sabrina siddiqui and michael steele. let me start with you, michael. 9 existence of that e-mail has changed the way i feel about this. and you've got to think that the senators and republican congressmen on capitol hill know that they are watching themselves. >> they do. they are nervous about it, angry about it. they realize that there's very little they can do

so, why would donald trump jr., michael isikoff, give all of these different versions about these meetings or this meeting knowing that there was an e-mail out there? >> well, clearly he's not getting very good legal advice because if there's an e-mail and it was seen and circulated, it's something that the white house and the lawyers would have had access to. this had to get turned over and, you know, that gets to, you know, a larger point here, which is that regardless of how this all plays out, this is a totally self-inflicted wound by the white house because they should have seen and dealt with this e-mail months ago. it's been clear since january that there's going to be investigations in the house and senate and then later, soon it became clear by the justice department as well, into all this and the first thing a white house counsel's office would do would be do some sort of internal review, collect every e-mail, collect every document and figure out what potential exposure you have. you know, my understanding is this didn't surface until late june when somebody noticed the e-mail t

because according to michael isikoff at yahoo, your colleagues marc kasowitz and john garden found outut more than three weeks ago. can you say when you were made aware? >> i can't give you conversations that we had as lawyers with each other regarding information because that's protected by attorney-client privilege. i can tell you this. the president was not aware of it as he said until very recently that was right before it happened which was last week. you tend to lose track of time these days. but just last week. and that's when the president was aware of it as the issue came out. so what conversations counsel has had amongst themselves and other co-counsel, that's not something i can discuss with you. you understand that. we're lawyers. we have to respect the attorney-client privilege. >> thanks. i always respect the conversation. >>> senator rick santorum, cnn legal analyst jeffrey toobin, bob baer and matthew whittaker. jeff, what is your reaction to what jay said? >> i think what is interesting is how the subject matter has changed. for months, the president and everyone invol

investigate at this reporter michael isikoff, $25 hou25 house democrt to declare the president incapacitated and under the 25th amendment force him out of office. why the urgency now? has donald trump suddenly taken a turn for the worse or is his offensive behavior just more of the same old trump that we've heard many, many times before? >> i'm automatically attracted to beautiful women. i just start kissing them. it's like a magnet. and when you're a star, they let you do it. you can do anything. >> whatever you want. >> grab them by the [mute]. >> when mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. they're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. they're rapists. >> she gets out and starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions. and you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her -- wherever. >> written by a nice reporter. now the poor guy, you got to see this guy, ah, i don't know what i said, ah, i don't remember. >> so we talk about the media and by the way, some of the media is terrific, but most of it, 75%, is absolutely dishonest, absolute