we re into the realm of informed speculation, ari, at this point. that s what i do, baby. the new york times has reported and nbc news has not confirmed about another trump tower meeting where the emirates where erik prince of blackwater fame who was also at the seychelles meeting was there and they offered essentially to help the trump campaign. and so the question here is were they helping during the election? did they step in after the election to try to broker a back channel so the russians could essentially seek to extract the concessions that they were looking for in exchange for the help they provided the trump team during the election. these are all questions that we think the mueller team is asking. betsy? i think one thing that s really important about this story that is sort of buried several paragraphs down is there was a separate counterintelligence investigation specifically looking into the influence operations that the emirates had in place going into the
sort of playing bureaucratic, just making a bureaucratic move to get the white house off its back, fleece temporarily. that is how it s being widely interpreted, i think. to circle back to the first point you make. this is the president of the united states whose own campaign is the subject of a counterintelligence investigation. it s well established. we ve known that for over a year. summoning two of the people supervising that investigation to intervene in that investigation in the white house, right? it s really interesting. look, the president is the chief executive. the justice department is a part of the executive branch. so he s got to meet with these guys. but in this context, it s pretty weird. he is meeting with them a day after he has essentially ordered an investigation of the investigation of his campaign. that s pretty weird. and it s also fairly unusual for the president to have any kind of interaction about specific investigations. even if it didn t have to be the
folks. whether they re right or not is sort of the question. but everyone s acting, the more we learn, they think that. they do. and i think they have good reason to think that. according to the new york times report, after this august 3rd meeting, the trump campaign embraced mr. nader and they met frequently with jared kushner and michael flynn. i will note one thing. the president broke with tradition by making saudi arabia, of all places as his first trip as setting president. it was year ago that he posed in front of the orb. how did that meeting come about? why did he break with tradition and go to saudi arabia first? we may learn more than as we learn moring these meetings. thanks for joining us. thank you. a campaign message to take back government and it s all about donald trump and corruption. plus, bill gates returns to the show in tonight s thing 1, thing 2, next. little things can be a big deal. that s why there s otezla. otezla is not an injection or a cream. i
with russia and how important it was. we know about the seychelles meeting there are some internations that they had some financial role in possibly transferring some of the money around, but it s pretty mysterious and the fact that donald trump responded to vehemently, first on twit. and also with this extraordinary demand that you discuss to have had department of justice suggests that he is really upset, really worried about this in particular. so maybe there really is a lot in this room. we should note, right, one of the arguments that the president tried to make in that tweet and other defenders, there is no collusion with russia, but there is tremendous overlap two. of the people in the meeting are erik prince and george neighborhooder who is a bizarre figure who has a child pornography plea that he plead to in the united states and a child molestation charge in prague who is a fixer for various sort of strange interests in the middle east. it s george nader who show up
post for more on what happened in the meeting with the president and justice department officials. what do we know what happened in that meeting today? i think one point about what happened in the meeting today is president trump personally wanted these guy there s to answer these questions. i think that s particularly significant. so what happened? rod rosenstein, chris wray, dan coates go over to the white house there is some talk about this document request. congress has been beating the drum for the justice department to turn over documents about this confidential source who brushed up against the trump campaign, as part of the russia investigation. they come to an agreement, which is pretty surprising. the justice department had seemed to draw a red line over turning over documents about this source. but the agreement doesn t exactly make them do that. they agree to come back for another meet which john kelly will apparently spearhead, and they ll provide information to some law