the court s filings and hearings also could elaborate on any plans to hand off unfinished business to federal prosecutors scattered across the justice department, including the powerful southern district of new york, where probes appear to be ratcheting up between the president s business, 2016 campaign and inauguration. the mueller finale now competing for legal peril for the president and his cohorts with that southern district of new york as politico reports and capitol hill, where investigations into trump are gaining a laser focus. house committee chairman elijah cummings is today gearing up for a legal standoff with two trump lawyers over the investigation into the president s hush money operation. the president s legal and political troubles are where we start once again with some of our favorite reporters and friends. phil rucker, white house bureau chief for the washington post, former u.s. attorney joyce vance, betsy woodruff, daily beast political reporter and with us at t
that trip that they are so worried about, but clearly, you can see from their behavior and long after the fact denials they at least believe this is a big deal. i mean, it makes you wonder what they know and and what these re are on to who have been digging into this story and turning up new details about it all the time. joining us now is the reporter who broke the story, daily beast political reporter betsy woodruff. it s great to see you. thank you for being with us tonight. sure thing. i feel like there s two things happening at once. the nra appears to be kind of falling apart. appears to be kind of in meltdown. and they appear to be freaking out about whatever happened between them and russia. is it your understanding that this is about their worries about the moscow trip in 2015? is it about the arrest and the cooperation agreement of maria butina? do you have a big picture sense of what is so concerning to them? what i can tell you is that ironically the trump administrat
take flak from us for not speaking to us but i don t think it s filtering down to voters yet. in the local press here in iowa it hasn t been a big deal. of course i think today the pressure had gotten a little too much. she wanted to combat the motion she was not being transparent and dodging issues. she did speak a little bit but five questions, five minutes, not nearly everything that we wanted to ask her, still lots of stuff out there but at least let off a little pressure that was on her for sure. alex seitz-wald, thank you so much. let s bring in daily beast political columnist editor of citizen jane politics. it s nice to see you today. hey crystal. i wanted to start with this sidney blumen that willthal story, friend of the clintons friend of hillary and also employed by the clinton foundation, sending these memos to her about libya, some of which she forwarded on. it s kind of a feels like a typical clinton story. you can t put your finger on