We dont look at the responsibilities we have on the committee differently. I have confidence in richard burr that we together, with the members of our committee, are going to get to the bottom of this. When we started this, we saw the scope and what was involved. I said it was the most important thing id ever taken on in my public life. I believe that more firmly now than even when we started. Were going to get it right. Thank you. There are three ongoing investigations into possible links between the trump team and the russians. The fbi investigation confirmed by director james comey last week in an open hearing, an investigation which will play out largely in secret. Then theres the house investigation, which is frankly in disarray amid calls from every democrat on that committee for the chair, nunes, to recuse himself. And then the Senate Investigation, which will play out at least in part in the light of day, and which appears to reflect, at least as of now, a genuine and rare bipartisan effort to get to the truth. Senator burr, have you personally coordinated with the white house at all on the scope of this investigation, and how do you prevent it from going off track . No, sir, i have not. And its the relationship and the trust we have. Any circumstance which you wouldnt share with mr. Warner, your sources on this investigation . He usually knows my sources before i do. And let me assure you, ive also got his cell phone. If we dont come to some joint conclusion with the manipulation that took place in the election and with the spirit of the American People saying whats going on here, i think we would not fulfill our duty. And warner said there are seven Staff Members dedicated to the investigation. They are already review, quote, an unprecedented amount of documents. Theyre willing to issue subpoenas to compel testimony and that they have made 20 requests for interviews, including five that have been scheduled. Senior adviser and soninlaw to the president , jared kushner, has volunteered to be questioned by the committee, which wants to hear about meetings kushner arranged with the Russian Ambassador including one meeting with the head of russias stateowned development bank. The committee will conduct an interview with mr. Kushner when the committee decides that its time for set a date because we know exactly the scope of what needs to be asked of mr. Kushner. Three sources tell nbc news the committee is also in talks to interview former British Intelligence operative christopher steele, the man who compiled the now infamous unverified dossier alleging a conspiracy involving trump and the russians, and who is trusted enough by the fbi that it arranged to pay him though steele is concerned for his safety and reticent to leave london. The committee is also exploring when to interview three Trump Associates at the center of the investigation. Paul manafort, roger stone and carter page, who have already volunteered to testify before the house. Congressional officials tell nbc news that if any seek criminal immunity in exchange for their testimony, it would be a dealbreaker the committee would not accept. The apparent seriousness of the Senate Investigation combined with nunes much derided performance appears to be bad news for a president whose Approval Rating keeps hitting new lows. Today the Gallup Daily Tracking poll showed that just 35 of americans approve of the job President Trump is doing compared to 59 who disapprove. Joining me now, matthew rosenberg, and former fbi double agent na veed jamally. Matthew, first youve been covering this. The development todawas such a striking difference in tone and approach coming from warner and burr than what weve seen over on the house side. It was night and day. You had two people saying they were going to Work Together who appeared committed. If you noticed, they talked exclusively about going after russian interference and any possible links. They talked about the subject at hand rather than representative nunes, who even before this kind of side show developed, when it was still looking like they might try and do a real investigation, would even talk about were not going to go on witch hunts, would kind of almost limit their scope and their aims from the outset and then, you know, weve seen whats happened with him running around making these claims about the Trump Associates being swept up by incidental wiretapping and running off to brief the president before his own committee members. You get back to the senate, and theyre standing there. We know theyre working together. Ive talked to people on both sides of the committee, and they are making, you know, progress. Theyve got a list of 20 people. Theyre having a hearing tomorrow, which is mostly experts. And im told that that hearing is largely to kind of show the world that theyre doing something, but the real interviews are going to be done in private. Thats going to be the kushner interview and the other 19 people. Navid, one of the questions thats hung around the house committee, and i think it applies to the Senate Committee as well even if its conducting itself in a different fashion is are these committees equipped to get to the bottom of it to use the term of senator warner. Do they have access to what they need to answer the questions everyone has . Yeah, i think thats the core question. You know, look, we still have an fbi investigation going on. I dont think either the house or the senate have expressed concern with what the fbis investigation and the track its taking. You know, i do share concerns, chris, that this has become politicized. At its core, i think the question every american and every democrat and republican wants to know is did the russians, not the trump campaign, but the russians attempt to interfere with our election. If they did, what exactly did they do . I believe strongly part of what the russians did was try to recruit u. S. Persons. I think that is something that, you know, theres a lot of different ten tackles to look at. That shouldnt be a partisan esti. It should be something that both republicans and democrats would want to know the answer to. Navid just mentions the fbi investigation and its still such a stunning moment just a week and a half ago when director james comey says in an open hearing, yes, ive been given the okay to say this. We are currently conducting an investigation. Matthew, theres reporting i thought today was pretty interesting that comey had tried to reveal the tampering months before the election. Of course hes come under tremendous criticism for the letter having to do with Hillary Clintons emails, the fact that the fbi seemed to waive the New York Times off a story about the russians. I wonder what you make of this bit of reporting as a link in the chain. Well, you know, i think you have two things in play here. First, everyone assumed hillary was going to win, and thats including the russians. And so the Obama Administration was very hesitant to do anything that would be seen as tipping the scales. At the same time, especially in the final month of the campaign, you had trump making noises about how its going to be rigged. Theyre going to try and steal it from me. And inside the administration, they really thought what was going on here was the russians, possibly trump were trying to set it up so it looked like it was being stolen. On election day there would be some kind of disorder or a postelection kries skpis they wanted to head that off. Thats why they wanted to be quiet about it. Obviously the election did not turn out the way everybody thought it would. That is a great point. Ive had conversations on background with officials that echoed that. Navid, to your point about the sort of investigation at the core of this, you know, theres so much effort theres so much attention to the possibility of collusion understandably because in some senses, that would be this kind of explosive smoking gun, bigger than watergate, et cetera. But in other ways, it also seems to be often as we watch the timeline of this that its not even clear that collusion would ve been necessary for implicit signals to be sent from the campaign to a foreign adversary that is knowingly penetrating these accounts, basically sending a signal. I mean the now president looked into a camera and said hack Hillary Clintons emails. Right. Youre absolutely right. Look, my experience with the russians is they hold their cards very close to their vest. I dont know that youre ever going to have this gotcha moment where youre going to have a tape of a surface of a russian Intelligence Officer saying to someone, if you help us with this, well help you with the election. That would be really shoddy trade craft. I dont believe that happened. However, that does not belie the point that its very clear that russians met with people in the trump campaign. Now, is it possible that you could have someone who is just laundering money and is not a russian spy . Of course it is. But the likelihood that the russians were attempting to do something with that contact, i think that is something we need to focus on. As americans, having a Foreign Intelligence Service intervene and try to recruit americans is something we should all be concerned about. And i think theres plenty of evidence that they tried to do that. All right. Matthew rosenberg and navid jamali, thank you both. Thank you. If there was some conduit, a guy who secretly worked for Paul Manafort would be a prime candidate for scrutiny at least. Manafort is now facing a string of new allegations tied to potential Money Laundering, including questions about his new York Real Estate deals as well as his business dealings in the island nation of cypress where nbc news broke the news last night. A bank is now investigating manafortlinked accounts. Here to bring us up to speed on the latest. Pulitzer prize winning columnist david j. Johnson, also the author of the making of donald trump. David, manafort is so central to all of this in terms of the fact that he is the Campaign Chairman and also the person with the longest history of relationships both to proputin figures in ukraine and putinaligned oligarchs that all of these new questions about his Financial Transactions has me thinking at the very least, he must be lawyering up to the hilt right now. It may very well be at this point that Paul Manafort has been turned by the fbi. His actions make him vulnerable to a whole series of very harsh laws, good laws in my opinion to protect the National Security of the United States that could strip him of every single dollar he has, including money he may have passed on to other people. So he and general flynn are the two people over whom the fbi would have the most leverage. And among the things the fbi is very good at is using leverage to get one person to tell about other people. And that is the reason that i keep coming back to manafort and flynn, and particularly the reporting about these real estate transactions, which again theres no facial evidence of impropriety. Its simply theyre structured in such a way that resembles people will structure Money Laundering in other contexts, that, you know, these are the people at the center of this entire thing. If you get anyone talking, that seems to me like things start to break open. Well, hopefully. I mean, you know, this really is not complicated to look at. We have donald trump, who as you pointed out called on the russians to hack hillary clinton, getting as his Campaign Manager for roughly a third of the campaign a Foreign Agent who is deeply on the payroll of people hostile to the United States of america. We have a republican Campaign Manager who is in the pay of a hostile foreign power . You know, connecting the dots here does not require some high level of sophisticated thinking. And in your experience having been sort of an investigative reporter, particularly on both the tax and final side, you know, how important ultimately are finances and financial movements in a situation like this . Well, theyre what allow you to track and connect people. And when given the Budget Authority to do so, we have people at an agency called finsen who can literally find a dollar in a haystack scattered all over the world of billions of dollars. In this case, theres a money trail, and we keep coming back to the bank of cypress, to its chairman, who was the head of deutsche bank, the single biggest Bank Donald Trump is known to be in debt to. And all of these russian connections. You know, its not like they were talking to citi bank and hsbc. They were talking to banks that have a history of laundering money for the russians. There will be fingerprints on this. There will be electronic transfers. There will be shell companies, and so theres plenty of records there, chris, to be gotten at about what was going on here. Why in the world do we have a man in the white house who appoints the vice chairman of an utterly corrupt russian more than halfrussian owned bank deeply involved in Money Laundering for the russian oligarchs . Do you think theres any way that the Senate Committee in this case has the wherewithal to get to the bottom of this, or is this ultimately something that the resources you need Law Enforcement resources like the fbi . Well, you need to have subpoena power, and what ive said is we have to have two parallel investigations. We need to have an fbi counterintelligence and criminal investigation,hich comey has told us is going on. We also need to have a select committee of the senate or the house or both in combination where both the Ranking Member and the Committee Chairman have subpoena power. Right. And we need to have public hearings once weve fleshed out the facts. It is absolutely crucial that we have public hearings and testimony. Chris, its very significant that the position may have been taken here that if somebody wants immunity, we dont want to talk to them. No honest investigator would ever say that. Interesting. All right. David cay johnston, thanks for joining me tonight. Thank you. Coming up, remember the time President Trump objected to the suggestion that Vladimir Putin is a killer. Will i get along with him . I have no idea. Hes a killer, though. Putins a killer. We got a lot of killers. What, you think our country is so innocent . Up next, the political activist who was on his death bed just a month ago after being poisoned for a second time in Vladimir Putins russia. Vladimir cara mur za testified in the senate about standing up to authoritarian rule and he joins me exclusively after this break. Vladimir knew that putin is a killer, and hes a killer. He might very well be the next target. Vladimir knew there was no no moral equivalence before the United States and russia. I repeat there is no moral equivalent between that butcher and thug and kgb colonel and the United States of america. Senator john mccain took the floor of the u. S. Senate a little more than a month ago soon after learning that russian political activist Vladimir Cara mur za, who joins me in a moment, had been poisoned a second time. Mccain clearly took issue with President Trump making an apparent moral equivalency. Just days ago, tens of thousands of russian citizens, many of them high school and college students, turned out for antigovernment rally as cross russia. Just hours ago, our next guest testified before the senate, once against about human rights abuses under the putin regime. More than 1,500 people were arrested this past weekend, and there are no indications that the authorities may be prepared criminal charges against some of the participants. But there are, of course, worst fates than imprisonment. In the last several years, investigative journalists, opposition figures, human rights activists, anticorruption campaigners and whistleblowers have met untimely deaths. In what was the most brazen political assassination in russia in decades. Joining me now russian political abt visit vladimir karamurza. Sir, can you explain a bit what it does we keep seeing these stories about figures that are in some ways associated with opposition of Vladimir Putin meeting, quote, untimely deaths. Theres the murder in broad daylight in ukraine. Theres a lawyer who is tossed out of a window. You, yourself, were poisoned twice. What does that do psychologically to anyone that feels the desire to speak out against whats happening in russia . Well, what they want it to do, what the putin regime wants this to do is of course intimidate people, to scare people into stopping the opposition activities, into submission, into fear. Of course there has been an increasing number of people who have been either political opponents of the kremlin or whistleblowers or investigative journalists or anticorruption campaigners who have died one way or another. By the way, both inside russia and outside of russia. And of course just a little more than two years ago, the leader of the russian opposition, former deputy Prime MinisterBoris Nemtsov has bee