Robert mueller and his investigators believe that the president is part of this larger conspiracy. That the president , his family members, as well as the trump organization, his company. All of this really brings home the point that if you didnt think so before friday, it is plainly clear now that prosecutors believe the president is a target of this investigation. And so we shall see where that goes. But back to the number 16. Thats the magic number now that we have reached. This is the number of people as a result of our reporting, reporting of other news organizations, we can now say have had some level of contacts with russians. If you remember, during the campaign, even after the president took office, we heard from the white house, we heard from people, that they didnt have any contacts with russians. And these are the number of people that we have now established did have those contacts. Everybody from donald trump jr. , who is involved in that trump tower meeting, where they were trying to get dirt on Hillary Clinton, all the way down to Jared Kushners assistant, who attended one of those meetings with the russian ambassador, when Jared Kushner was not available. So, from having no contacts to 16 People Associated with the president , who had those contacts, brooke. Evan perez, got it. You laid out the reporting for me perfectly. And while the white house is certainly downplaying these new Court Filings and what it means for this president , a top House Democrat is talking about the possibility of jail time for trump. My takeaway is theres a very real prospect that on the day donald trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him. That he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time. With me now, cnn chief political analyst, Gloria Borger andset barnswise, so welcome to both of you. And i want to hone in on the legal first. So, seth, starting with you, on there are differing opinions on this. Can you just can a sitting president be indicted . Well, probably not, because the Justice Department has an informal, internal policy stating that they will not indict a sitting president. Now, there are academic arguments one way or the other, as to whether or not that as applied is correct. But thats the reality of the environment. And i think that the painful irony of that is that these strategies that apparently the president deployed in 2016 to get to the white house, the success of those are really creating this shield that he can enjoy, as a result of the fact that these strategies worked for him to be able to get into the white house. When you take a look at the filings that happened late last week and all of these developments, you really see a pathway of lies and felonies that are stretched all the way to the front door of the white house. And when you look at the two basic categories of what those lies are, they either have to do with sex or money. Sex in terms of the felonies for violating the Campaign Finance laws, for all the essential consultant transactions and everything that happened down that pathway, or the lies with regard to trump tower moscow and the purposefully deceptive testimony that was coordinated with the white house and then was delivered on capitol hill by Michael Cohen. So its the very lies that created that pathway to the white house that now may be creating some sort of immunity from the president for being indicted at this present time. Well, you heard you know, we played the sound with schiff, saying that he could face the prospect of jail time. Hes referencing the hush money payments, the illegal hush money payments. But seth, one more to you and then i want to come to you. What constitutes an Impeachable Offense . Lets go there. Can you define that for me . Sure. So in the constitution, an impeachable defense is constituting what are referred to as high crimes and misdemeanors. So lets take a look at the two laws that we just talked about a moment ago. Down the channel of the payments for the allegedly illicit sexual activity, thats a violation of Campaign Finance laws. Thats a felony. For the purposeful decepton to investigators in the congress and all the people that are surrounding that, thats a conspiracy and a violation of the false statements act. These are felonies that constitutes what is an Impeachable Offense under the constitution. And then it really drives into a political question of whether anyone on capitol hill is going to do anything about it. Yes, which leads me perfectly to Gloria Borger. Lets talk jerry nadler, right . Hes expected to be the chair of the hueshouse Judiciary Committee and heres what he said on precisely that. Well, they would be Impeachable Offenses. Whether they are important enough to justify impeachment is a different question. But certainly, they would be Impeachable Offenses, because even though they were committed before the president became president , they were committed in the service of fraudulently obtaining the office. That would be the that would be an Impeachable Offense. You dont necessarily launch an impeachment against the president because he committed an Impeachable Offense. There are several things you have to look at. How important were they . Do they rise to the gravity where you should undertake an impeachment . An impeachment is an attempt to, infect, overturn or change the result of the last election. You should do it only for very serious situations. So thats always the question. So it kind of sounds like were at this place where, okay, which Impeachable Offense is important enough . Well and i know this comes down to votes, right . Well, its a political issue. Because youre nullifying an election. And remember, with bill clinton, he lied to the grand jury, but it didnt so he was impeached in the house, not in the senate. The political reality is you would have to get about 20 you know republicans to go along with it and in the senate, i dont know that that would happen. But i think this story has yet to play out. We dont you know, its still its still unraveling. And i think what jerry nadler is saying is right. Okay, the president committed a may have committed thesefulnethese felonies, lied about it to the public, and the question is, did he lie about it to mueller . We dont you know, we dont know the answer to that. We dont know the particular answers to his questions, to the special counsel. So, this still has to unspool itself. So, what i think nadler is saying is, look, right now, if we took this to the American Public and said, yeah, he lied about payments to these women and coordinated it with Michael Cohen or directed Michael Cohen, they could yawn and say, okay, well, we knew this about donald trump already, lets just move on. But theres a lot more happening here. Were just in the foothills. Right. Im sorry to tell you this, but, right, we are. And so we have to we have to hear more about what the president told the special counsel about it. Right, because then once we move past the foothills, then, perhaps, if theyre thinking impeachment on the senate side, to get the 67 votes, it would need to be something perhaps more egregious. And were there more of his contacts with russians . In all of the Michael Cohen paperwork, we saw that there were conversations with trump about meeting with putin, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So you know, we have to kind of watch this unfold. And see if the president is among those many people who were lying about this. The other kind of complicating factor to all of this is the statute of limitations, seth. So i pivot back to you. The statute of limitations, Campaign Finance violation, five years. So its simple math, right . If this happened in 2016 and if trump wins in 2020, serves another four years, equals statute of limitations has run out. So if he is reelected, seth, would that be his essentially his get out of jail free card . Well, it could be. But i will tell you what the counter legal argument is. They will obviously Rudy Giuliani and company will argue that that is just going to be literally a get out of jail free card and that thats going to beat the statue of limitations issues. However, there is a legal doctrine called tolling. Which states if somebody creates a wrongful situation that is inequitable that causes a delay in their facing justice, such as a ceo committing fraud and concealing crimes against people who are then victims, the statute of limitations could be tolled for the period of time for which they are artificially protected. So the question is this. Can the prosecutors allege successfully that the statute of limitations is tolled for a sitting president , because he has created a felonious pathway to the white house in a manner that artificially protects him under the statute of limitations. I think thats a legitimate legal issue. Its never been argued, but i think it will be teed up at some point, potentially. Again, were in the foothills, but this is just perhaps foreshadowing. One thing, gloria, that was overlooked on the whole friday news dump was on manafort and the fact that he had been in touch with the white house as late as spring of this year. I know you dont have the answer to this, but im just going to ask you, anyway. I want it. Who do you think who do you think he could have been talking to . You know, its were as you know, brooke, were reporting this right now. Were trying to figure out with whom manafort communicated. And we just dont know the answer to that yet, so im not even going to hazard a guess. But what i can tell you is, what was he communicating . Here are the questions we need the answers to, also. Was he communicating with the white house in an effort to get their stories straight and let them know he was cooperating so that perchance he might get a pardon at some point . I mean, the substance of those conversations is almost as important as the name of the person he was speaking, because we need to we need to know, first of all, he lied about it. But why did he lie about it . Well, it must have been really important enough he had to know he might get caught, right . They had Text Messages and everything else. So was he doing this to protect himself and to coordinate . And to then get out of jail free . Get a get out of jail free card . And we dont know the answer to that, either. But we have to ask those questions, because they make a lot of sense. Keep digging. Gloria borger, seth, thank you both so much. Great conversation. As the president faces all of this mounting legal pressure, he is also trying to convince someone to take the job as his new white house chief of staff. Already, several of his closest allies have declined. Also, the u. S. Is teaming up with russia and the saudis as part of this effort to weaken the Global Response to a dire Climate Change report. We have details on this major scientific setback. And thousands and thousands of women could be missing a key genetic test for Breast Cancer. Why researchers are now saying the current screening guidelines are totally out of date. Do not miss this. Well be right back. 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And Meadows Office later released a statement saying serving in the role would be an incredible honor. Three others on trumps short list, nick ayers, steve ma nu mnuchin and Mick Mulvaney all say no thanks. Olivia nuzzi covers washington for new York Magazine and she was actually in the white house, in the thick of the oval office and with nick ayers and discussing who could be the next chief of staff. And so well get into that in just a second and all your reporting. But first things first, being the chief of staff, its kind of a majorly soughtafter job. Previously. Previously. On previous episodes of the administration. Is it trump . Is it, you know, just what theyd be walking into . Is it both . Why are folks not as interested . I think its, c, all of the above here. I think previously, its not really worked out well for chief of staffs in this administration. We saw what happened to reince priebus. We saw what happened now to john kelly. These are two people more so with john kelly, who came in with great representations, were considered very respectable and now being the subject of all of these palace intrigue stories. People attacking john kellys character. I think hes leaving with a really diminished respectability. And i think that people dont want to come in to this very High Pressure job and be under attack. Its one of the most highprofile jobs in this white house. And they know that they will be the subject of all sorts of palace intrigue stories. And also, of trumps irritation. People who are around him tend to be viewed less favorably than advisers on the outside. He always wants what he cant have. He wants hat he cant have. What about so nick ayers, you and i were talking not too long ago about you had spoken with him yourself. And you can tell me about that conversation, but 36yearold, you know, maybe not that household name, but someone who has a pretty impressive resume, apparently wanted the job. And then has now turned it down. What do you know about that . Well, my dish started to hear that it was overstated how badly trump actually wanted him in the job. I do know that he was offered the job in late june of this year. That is something that the president and nick ayers both deny to me during my Oval Office Interview with trump in midoctober, but i believe that to be the case, nevertheless, regardless of what they said. He also said that there was no chaos in the white house, that john kelly would stay on through 2020. I think its a very High Pressure job, he has a young family, but i also just think that trump i had begun to hear that he was a bit frustrated that nick ayers was kind of putting himself out there as a likely frontrunner, the likely choice, when that was not necessarily the case. Weve seen this happen before, where trump gets very frustrated when things are reported as hes made a decision. And then will seek to undo whatever the decision was or make a different choice, so that he doesnt confirm the reporting, it seems like, at times. One of the pieces we have at cnn, a source tells cnn there was resistance to nick ayers, specifically, being appointed because of Melania Trump and members of senior staff. And we have talked before about, theres some folks within the white house who are not big fans of nick ayers, but one of them being Melania Trump, which is just interesting factoring in, she had spoken up about a different position within the last two months, and you know, you cover Melania Trump as well, and im just curious what you think of her impact or her influence. Well, i think that she is certainly someone who the president speaks to. I think she has more influence than maybe weve previously thought that she did. Ill defer to cnns reporting on that. I dont have anything to confirm that myself at this moment. But it doesnt surprise me. He doesnt have very many people around him anymore who he trusts. Hes lost a lot of close advisers over the last year, year and a half. And it doesnt surprise me that she is having a lot of influence on his decisionmaking. And the timeline, youre hearing, for replacement is . I spoke to a white house official just before we came onair here, and im hearing that they believe that it will be anywhere from this week