news, michael isikoff, broke the story. he joins us now.ile on my face when i'm saying, this but maybe it's because i'm a little punch drunk. i can't believe this. take us through your sourcing on this and the man, maxim, that you interview. and what this means to you. >> first of all, actually, it was a russian -- independent russian tv station that tracked this guy down. >> right. >> and he laid out this story. the -- what's interesting about him is, he was part of the english language department of the internet research agency. now, that's the same st. petersburg troll farm that has been suspected or believed to have placed those facebook ads, the 3,000 ads, $100,000, that facebook just recently disclosed that it discovered was on its platform. and the english language department was the sort of elite section of the internet research agency. they were more polished, more studied. they spent -- what really leaps out is how meticulous their operations were. maxim talks about how they -- you know, every comma was reviewed by his bosses to m

michael isikoff, sorry. i have to ask you about the "access hollywood" tapes.s one year ago when these allegations. >> yeah, one year ago. actually, there's so much that happened in the weekend a year ago. we call it the 64 hours, the weekend that blew up the rules of american politics. >> weren't you here discussing this as well? >> i'm sure i was. but in rapid succession, you had the obama administration publicly accusing the russian government of interfering in our election, of hacking our election. and then within an hour on a friday of october 7th, you had the "access hollywood" tape with those, which blew people away, which many people thought at the time was going to knock donald trump's candidacy out of the water. in fact, reince priebus -- and we have people talking about this in the documentary -- were telling him if you don't get out of the race, you're going to lose in the biggest landslide of american political history. and then within a half-hour after that the podesta e-mails are dumped by wikileaks. all of that happening in rapid succession. it'

. >> i am joined by michael isikoff. you see sessions there not denying the elections hack. this investigation go when you have the testimony you saw today and since we have you here, what stood out to you? >> well, what stood out to me, obviously, he would not answer the questions about his own conversations with the president relating to the firing of jim comey which is pretty striking, that the white house is consistently said that they want this investigation over. they want to lift the cloud over the president that has been anging over it. relating to that issue. so the president could authorize attorney general sessions to answer the questions relating to this matter. sessions was well aware it would come up. the democrats wrote him a letter anded. this is what we'll ask but in this hearing. and instead, he hides behind this sort of assertion of executive privilege. he just said it is subject to executive privilege. it is all something that he could have answered and he chose not to. and that is only going to fuel the suspicions of those who have a darker view of what

to be sure, the statement received coverage, but as detailed in michael isikoff's new yahoo documentary, "64 hours in october" the russian meddle was not the blockbuster you might have expected. it became buried under two other stories that broke immediately after that the "washington post" revelation of the "access hollywood" tape in which the republican presidential nominee used crude and offensive language. followed by a wikileaks dump of clinton campaign chair john podesta's emails. it was a stunning news psych until a campaign that had many. in retrospect, it seems difficult to believe that the release of the dnc emails immediately after the post broke the "access hollywood" tape, was a coincidence. and both obscured the more serious matter, the effort by a hostile foreign government to determine the outcome of our election. one story involved a verified attack on our national security. with you both of the others appealed to our prurient instincts. the "access hollywood" tape had all the elements, sex, lies, videotape and captured our attention to the detriment of more serious mat

on june 1st, michael isikoff at yahoo news reported that the trump administration tried to get rid ofrussian sanctions the moment they first showed up in washington, d.c. "in the early weeks of the trump administration, former obama administration officials and state department staffers fought an intense battle to head off efforts by incoming by russia. almost as soon as they took office, tasked state department staffers with developing proposals for the lifting of economic sanctions on russia and the return of russia's diplomatic compounds. these efforts to relax or remove punitive measures imposed by russia began lobbying congressional leaders to quickly pass legislation to block what the trump administration was trying to do." that's why that bill that landed on the president's desk with overwhelming support, it was also designed to stop trump from trying to remove existing sanctions on russia, because he had already tried to do that from day one. president trump objected to that bill that he was up against the veto-proof majorities and signed it privately with no pageantry. none o

. >> i want to add into our discussion, michael isikoff, a chief investigator, has said that christopher steele was an fbi asset assisting in the investigation. i want to add your reporting and views to this. donald trump and his allies may wish the dossier would go away. as i've just reported, you have a republican chairman talking about, i want to get to the bottom of this. you have mueller reports, according to reuters, looking at it. which you would expect. and then the politico headline, the hunt for trump dossier, inflaming it. saying two travels to russia there summer trying to -- they traveled to london trying to track down christopher steele. >> i think it is worth remembering from what we know, as christopher steele was working on the dossier, and developing this information, long before it became public. he himself reached out to the fbi. the account he's given is that he was so kerneled about what he was doing finding. he thought the fbi with whom he had a relationship ought to know it. and there are at least two contacts. one in july and one later, august, september time fra

i want to bring in now michael isikoff. also cnn national security analyst juliette kiyem. and susan hennessy. laura cotes and scott jennings. juliette, when last i saw you you were saying that there were going to be some breaks in this investigation. you were expecting them soon. you said before thanksgiving. it is. but i think you were thinking it was going to be closer. is this what you were expecting to start this? >> yes. only because the pace had changed so dramatically in just the last month. a number of people being called in as witnesses a number of people admitting they were witnesses. the number of people that the senate and house were no longer interrogating in public session. plus let's just remember the counterattack by the trump campaign and his sur -- excuse me, the trump white house and his surrogates to undermine mueller. i do not know who is in this indictment and i don't think they all are similar for the white house. in other words, if it's flynn, that seems to me to be very different than manafort, who had a sort of really i'd say funky background befo

. >> michael isikoff, thank you very much for this important and interesting reporting. it's good to have you on, as always. >>> there is a lot of news this morning. what do you say? it's monday, but let's get after it. >>> right now, it's a season of war against a gop establishment. >> if we're successful, mitch mcconnell is fine. if we're not, we're all in trouble. >> trump and mcconnell said to me today as the budget deadline and the possibility of a government shutdown looms. >> don't subsidize something that's never going to work. >> what he's doing is hurting the american people. >>> just because we all made the deal doesn't mean you don't go back and look and say, is it still working. >> the president is using this for political cover. he has assembled a very unconventional game. he is an unconventional president. >> he is not going to permit kim jong-un to threaten the united states with a nuclear weapon. >> this is "new day" with chris cuomo and allison c. >> allison is off. poppy harlow joining me. good to have you. >> making my monday morning all right. >> oh,