tom made his fortune doing busi in the middle east. todayhe times says barrickame a bridge between trump and the crown princes of saudi arabia and the united emirates. and the times report spells outs something i've not seen anywhere else with such certainty. citing people familiar with the that the special counsel probe is examining whether the emiratesies and saudis helped sway the presidential election in mr. trump's favor. potentially in coordination with the russians. really? not just russia interfering in the election to help trump but russia and the uae and saudi araby potentially working together to do that. joining me to kirkpatrick correspondent for "the new york times." i appreciate you being here tonight. >> my pleasure. >> i'm not going to guess how you obtained these emails from tom barrick which made up the spine of your story today. but can you tell us about the process of -- of putting these pieces together, figuring out that the mueller investigation is looking to other countries to see if there was potential cooperation with the russian erence

all of that, to my knowledge, does not involve tom barrick.re earlier trying to build a bridge as you between the trump campaign and the arab leaders. when we were doing the nader reporting, i wondered how is it the uae and saudi arabia can feel so positive about trump that they would send this emissary to the trump campaign to offer their help. some of that is clear when you look at the communications that tom barrick had with the ambassador. >> he also had a relationship with paul manafort, as you reported. he's credited with bringing paul manafort, a fringe figure in republican politics, onto the trump campaign where he became chairman. what role does p manafort play in this part of the invest >> i don't know any specific role. but there's an interesting part of this where tom ick tries to set up a meeting between paul manafort and then the deputy crown prince of saudi arabia, mohammed bin salman. it was discussed between the emirati ambassador and tom barrick as a prelude bringing mbs together. it's an advanced effort to took up the campai