First indications how prosecutors are getting help and using it to tie Paul Manafort the former chairman of the president s campaign directly to a russian operative. Attorney general Jeff Sessions rejecting calls from republicans on capitol hill to name a Second Special counsel to investigate the fbi and the Justice Department. At least for now. However, he is revealing that a top federal prosecutor is, in fact, investigating allegations that the fib february abused its power to surveil a Trump Campaign adviser and looking into political bias in the investigation of Hillary Clintons handling of classified information. President trump appearing in its first public event all week, talking up his plan before a crowd of Union Builders in ohio and joking act his past as a real estate developer. I think better than being president , i think i was better at building. I think i will be better as President Trump. It was vintage Campaign Style trump. A lot of what he said to the crowd is flat out wrong. We will take a look at that for you. Lets get to the breaking news in Robert Mueller in the investigation. I want to go to cnn sarah murray. What more can you tels tell us . . Reporter i think he expected he would flip on Paul Manafort and the Campaign Chairman of the Trump Campaign. One of the things my colleague has been learning from her sources is that when Robert Muellers team the prosecutors on his team were talking to gates, they said, look, we dont really need you to help us win over manaforts cooperation. What we want from you is cooperation and information that helps our core mission. We know from mueller that means investigating russian meddling in any kind of potential russian collusion with Trump Campaign officials. That tells you mueller is very much looking into collusion. He believes rick gates could be an asset in that case. How is that camming to light now . Reporter part of the sources have been telling cnn. Now also there is this case coming out, not in the manafort case, in the case of another lawyer that worked for manafort and gates pled guilty to lying to Robert Mueller. One of the things he lied about is rick gates interactions with a russian intelligence offering. He is not named in the filing. They found out this was contan teen kalinik. He says rick gates was in contact and knew this guy was a russian intelligence operative when he was in touch with him. What is it that gates could know . What kind of information might he have access that mueller would be interested in . Reporter again, we looked into the silo of his relationship with Paul Manafort, that was important. He was running the president and close to the president. This is a guy that stuck around after manafort was fired. He also developed a close relationship with one of President Trumps close friends, so after the campaign ended, he stuck around and he helped around the inauguration with one of trumps campaign, the other thing to remember even if rick gates wasnt in these meetings we talked so much about. That trump tower meeting Paul Manafort attended with a number of russians. He may have heard about it or found out if the russians were with anybody else in the building. They say he may not have been in the top strategy meetings but made is his business to know what was going on. Thank you so much. We appreciate that. We will bring in analyst Carl Bernstein and john dean and cnn Counter Terrorism analyst phil mudd. John, huge nooudz news tonight what do you think this tells us about the real target of muellers investigation . I think he is back looking where he started with is collusion, i thought gates was a powerful potential witness, given the teal made for gates, it was a very good deal. And it had to be more than nailing his former partner manafort. So i think hes given them a lot of information and he has a lot of information and hes an invaluable witness and could change the whole dynamics of the case. Mueller and his team didnt need rick goetz to flip on his box one of the contact with russians and potential collusion. What does that tell you . A couple things him one is that a personal level i spent four. 5 years working besides director mueller. Hes a linear guy. He was not brought in to investigate financial crimes. He was brought in to determine not collusion, done, whether something inappropriate was done between russia and the Trump Campaign. Those are facts and those are time lines. When he has gates flip, hes not asking, i dont think he would ask gates anything about collusion. He wants to know, who said what about meetings with the russians, about Financial Transactions. What do you know about the meeting othen date, about how the Trump Campaign was arranged and who would have been involved in conversations about meetings with the russians. The American People keeps talking about collusion. I dont think thats the conversation with rick gaits gates. The conversation is about what do you know about the Russian Ambassador. Thats what i think is going on here. So its a good time to talk about the scope of the investigation, charm. One of the criticisms weve heard from President Trump and supporters throughout this investigation is mueller is outside the bounds of his authority or that the indictment so far, small fish, for crimes that have dug to do with the campaign tore president. Do these new arguments destroy that argument . That argument has been destroyed for a long time. Donald trump is involved in a coverup for all things russian for more than a year. Whether they sister to do with his businesses, his finances, his campaign and now we are beginning to see why he has presided over this coverup. Look, whats at stake here is the following question. Did members of trumps family, Business Organization, the president , himself, his campaign associatess come under russian influence in the campaign . Either wittingly or unwittingly or before the campaign and were they subject to manipulation, either wittingly or unwittingly by the russians and we are seeing real suggestions that that might be the case. And we are also beginning to understand very clearly why it is that donald trump is determined to bury this investigation, why he has wanted to fire mueller, see that his investigation never sees the light of day. And we are heading towards a real clichlths because ollision looking see the where the facts lead. What about the tactics . He appears to be methodically driving towards a conclusion tightening the screws as he goes. First thing weve learned is he operates in a black box, hes not leaking, hes very consistent. Hes very persistent. Weve watched him march forward and get cases developed that we had known that werent going to happen until we saw them in court. I think thats the way he plays it, is weve had special prosecutors and independent counsel in the past who played these things in the public. And that doesnt fly as well as the professionalism we are seeing with mueller. While all this is happening the president is still operating with, what is essentially a oneman legal team and constitutional lawyer jay seculo. Is there anyway, charm, he could possibly be prepared for dealing with all of this . Yes. He needs to get some people into his orbit, legal orbit, who can provide real assistance, who have experience in this area, but there is a great disadvantage hes had as follows. The white house turned over more than 20,000 emails to the Mueller Investigation and the Government Service administration turned over almost a million pages of documents that the prosecutors have had for months now. And there is no way that a new team or the existing team can ever process those documents the way muellers team already has. And the reason mueller has been able to squeeze so many people and i think we have many accounts of people who have been before mueller coming out saying, oh my god, he has everything that weve said, its been a frightening experience. Theyve talked as a result of it. As a result of socalled perjury traps and there is really no way for the Trump White House in anyway at this point to catch up with this investigation. But the underlying fact is, if there is no there there, if there is no quote collusion or manipulation, or anything of the kind, donald trump should welcome muellers investigation, because mueller is the kind of guy who will issue a report that says there is no there there. But that seems very unlikely at this date. Phil, it looks like you want to responds. What do you want to say . Agree, i sat behind mueller for 2,000 meetings. I never saw him sweat or say anything political. I dont think hes saying this at all. I think what you are looking at is a methodical investigation. You start to interview dozens and dozens of people. You review millions of financial records, email records, phone, text records. Then you go in, in a conversation with somebody in the white house, maybe even the president of the United States. You know what will happen, don . You got a timeline over months that you know everything thats happened. You tell the president , what were the conversations in the campaign about meetings with the Russian Ambassador and the president says, i never heard anything about that. The investigators by the time they walked into that meeting, they already know what the answer is. This is complicated. This is methodical and the president ought to be cautious if he ever goes into the conversation. Dont ever mess with director mueller. Hell crush you. The other thing mueller has are the Business Records and tax returns of donald trump for a good number of years. You think he has tax returns, carl . There is no question in my mind whatsoever. Am i 100 . Id say 99. 9 sure and thats been suggested to me by people who should know not in muellers office, you got to remember, this investigation has been going on for a good while. I dont think there is any question about it. I think all of these business transactions, if donald trump jr. Once said, most of our money, i dont want to misquote him. I will paraphrase him about how much of our money in the Trump Organization has come from russians, ethnorussians from russia. This has been the source of the financing of the quote trump empire as it were for years and years and where all this is leading is this question of whether or not there was influence over people in the campaign or in his, in trumps family or Business Organization by the russians and mueller is meth thodically methodically going through, we are seeing interaction between russians, ethnorussians, people close to trump high in his Campaign Organization and we have phone for a while the person named work for manafort and for rick gates was a russian operative. We have known that for a good while. This has been pointing in this direction for a long time and now we will see how the republicans react and will they continue to defend trump blindly in saying, oh, there is no evidence of collusion here. Hey, john, i have to get to the brake. Something that carl said before that keeping up, there is no way that trumps team can keep up with mueller and the number of people he has. Do you agree with that having dealt with a similar situation . I do, i do. One of the great handicaps nixon faced is he never had effective counsel. He didnt hire a competent criminal lawyer until he left office. It was too late and president s who have done the reverse have done very well. A great conversation. I will keep you guys. Stick around, Robert Muellers team is using help from rick gates, investigating the Trump Campaigns contact with russians. Also ahead, the attorney general Jeff Sessions rejecting calls from the Top Republicans to appoint a new special counsel to investigate the fbi and the Justice Department. He reveals a top federal prosecutor is investigating allegations of misconduct at the agency. We get so busy, day to day. We dont get the chance to connect. 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I want to see your laptop, your cell phone, if you tell me in terms of your contact with the russians, i want to know whether it is reflected in your calendar to your laptop. There is a bigger question, its not only what contact rick gates had with the russians. I want to know in conversations with him. Clearly, he is cooperating. Who else was aware of these conversations . Who else was in contact . Was there a tone around the campaign that said its appropriate to talk to russians before we get into office about some sort of trade in exchange for relieving sanctions with them . He could be a goal mine of information beyond just Financial Transactions that may relate to Paul Manafort, if im on the mueller team, i want to know everything about the Campaign Campaign but about who else drebled it, who else spoke and was involved in conversations about Foreign Policy in the campaign. If muellers team is telling gates that they didnt needs him to flip on manafort, does that indicate they have everything they need to potentially bust manafort, carl . Look, manafort, theyve got so many criminal violations, Money Laundering that goes back many years. There is no question about how vulnerable manafort is to, many, many years in prison unless there is prosecutorial misconduct and an Appeals Court would overturn a conviction. Lets look at one other aspect here. That is the political aspect. This is not happening in a vacuum in which the political world is uninvolved. And donald trump has made clear, he wants to bury this investigation and what we are seeing now are more and more of the reasons to expect that he is going to try to do it he is going to bury this investigation, he is betting his base will follow him. Even though he he might invite impeachment or an obstruction charge or a vast narrative that mueller is putting together of a coverup and quote collusion that hess base he said i can shoot somebody and walk down fifth avenue, trump once said, perhaps his base is so cultish, so willing to go along with their belief in him and his dem goingry and authoritarianism i would add that they are his insurance policy ultimately. We are in a real cold civil war in this country. If they do, its more about them than about donald trump. Does this impact whether President Trump will sit down with mueller because he has said he wants to, do you think it makes it more or less likely . Well, i think the fitting of his legal representation may make it more likely that hes going to have to sit down and mueller will make that decision, not donald trump. He has one option if he doesnt want to testify. Thats the fifth amendment. If he tells him hes going to take the fifth, its certainly going to be a political disaster for him. But other than firing as carl suggested, he doesnt have a lot of options at this point that those somebodys are real. They can resolve that pretty quickly. Does mueller need to