Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes. Tonight a new detail that might help explain why our America First president is innics publicly focused on rescuing a Chinese TelecommunicationsCompany Whose products our own National Security agencies called major Cyber Security threat. Youll remember this was the tweet sunday morning. President xi of china and i are working together to give massive chinese phone company zte a way to get back into business fast. Too many jobs in china lost. Commerce department has been instructed to get it done. Get it done, get zte back into business fast which is weird because it was the Commerce Department that just last month barred american tech firms from doing business with zte for a period of seven years. So why now is the president so gung ho to save a company his own administration punished for violating u. S. Sanctions against iran and north korea . Its hard to believe he cares about saving chinese jobs. A real unemployment is anywhere from 18 to 20 . Dont believe the 5. 6. They cant get jobs because there are no jobs because china has our jobs. Were limping through the greatest jobs theft in the history of the world. Theyre stealing our jobs. Theyre stealing our companies. Theyre taking our money. Okay. Lets rule out the president is very concerned about chinese jobs. Today there are a number of possible explanations for trumps brandnew position. One is that this could be part of a potential trade deal. A chinese delegation visited with Trump Officials today to continue negotiations. According to washington post, the president has been told in recent days relaxing restrictions on zte was a prerequisite to get the chinese toes engage if discussions. Yesterday, the president s own commerce secretary told reporters zte would not be part of trade talks with china. It also wouldnt surprise me if they would bring up the zte but our position has been that thats an enforcement action separate from trade. Within hours the president directly contradicted the commerce secretary tweeting zte buys a big percentage of parts from u. S. Companies reflective of a larger trade deal we are negotiatinging with china and my personal relationship with president xi. Which is it . Who knows. Another possibility is the president is trying to curry favor with x jinping ahead of next months summit with north korea. The u. S. May think it needs china to keep pressure on north korea to come to the table and get a deal and preparations for the summit hit a major snag today when the north suspended is talks with south korea denouncing joint military exercises between south korea and the u. S. So maybe thats why the president cares so much about keeping the chinese happy. Or maybe just maybe it has something to do with the fact that last week just three days before the president started tweeting about zte, his Business Partner on a Massive Development project in indonesia which includes trump branded hotels, condos and a golf course announced the project has secured up to 500 million in u. S. Dollars in wait for it Chinese Government loans. Now, we dont know if thats the real story because the white house wont talk about it. Explain the administrations perspective on how this wouldnt violate the emoluments clause and b, how it wouldnt violate the president s own promise that his private organization would not be getting involved in new foreign deals while he was president. Ill have to refer to you the Trump Organization. The Trump Organization cant speak on behalf of the president as the president , the heads of the federal government, the one responsible who needs to assure the American People. You dont have that responsibility. Youre asking about a private organizations dealings that may have to do with a foreign government. Thats not something i can speak to. Today the white house canceled its Daily Press Briefing without explanation. Im joined by senator richard blumenthal, one of dozens of democratic lawmakers suing the president for allegedly violating the clause of the constitution. The deal that was enough of influenced in which the Chinese Government will give half a billion dollars in loans, is that to your mind a violation of the emoluments clause on its face . It stinks. It fails to pass the smell test and on its face violates the emoluments claus. Theres no need for quid pro quo for it to violate the claus. Weve already included that indonesian deal in our lawsuit. And that lawsuit bloominthal versus trump, im the lead plaintiff, was filed a year ago almost to the day, june 14th of last year. It will be argued in court june 7th. Were going to add Additional Details to that lawsuit. I think they will figure prominently in this legal action. If the white house was set on convincing you there wasnt anything stinky about there, that it wasnt a quid pro quo, what could they do to convince you of that . Well, the president for one has to come forward to the congress and actually provide the details. So far, hes refused to do so. The congress has to consent to these kinds of foreign benefits or payments and this deal is only one of numerous such deals that we name in the lawsuit that involve the president violating the constitution. Theres no question that the president of the United States is defying the constitution and breaking the emoluments clause. The fact were asking these questions shows how he has shattered the ethical norms and violated basic principles of law by failing to come to congress and seek its consent. I hope the judge will agree. What was your reaction to the two zte tweets . My reaction was that this kind of reversal of the United States banning this company which is so clearly betrayed the trust of our government and the norms of International Law is unconscionable and inexplicable. I found it difficult to believe. Now we have some explanation. The timing and circumstantial evidence points to some kind of quid pro quo. We cant really know. You think thats possible . You think its plausible the president of the United States just straight hup one for the other invests in my deal, i will get your company back on the goodside of the u. S. Government . I hope and i really do hope that that kind of suspicion problems to be untrue. The only way well know is for the president to come forward with the details. So far hes refused to do so. I should note one of the president s nominees testified today on the Security Threat of zte. The Intelligence Community is on the record with this committee and the American People with respect to the threat posed by china telecom. He was asked if he would ever use a zte phone and he said i would not, senator and not recommend anyone else would use it. Do you think the fears are justified . The fears are certainly justified. We bound to be not only that ztes products could be hackable by the chinese, could be a Security Threat to our troops and others if they use them but also that zte has concealed evidence about its supposed compliance with an order that it separate senior personnel responsible for the betrayal. So im hoping that we will have our day in court for the sake of the American People that we will show these emoluments could have been avoided had the president divested himself from the Trump Organization. He continues to own the Trump Organization. And thats the kind of emoluments violation that the founders sought to directly stop and they regarded congress as representatives of the American People in enforcing the emoluments claus. Were the only one who have standing to enforce it. Senator richard bloominthal, thanks for joining me. For more on the president s conflictses of interest, im joined by nick contest sorry, reporter for the new york times, chris lu, assistant to president barack obama. Chris, let me start with you. What do you think of this. Well, look, senator blumenthal talked about how much this stinks and the conflict of interest thats inherent in this. There are two other norms the president is violate here. One is that president s do not get involved in Enforcement Actions particularly enforcement action that your secretary of commerce has stuck his neck out on. Whats ironic here is not only did zte trade with iran and north korea, when they were caught on this they ended up lying about it and gave bonuses to the employees who were involved in this. So its the exact reason why you dont get involved in this precisely at a time when the president is reimposing sanctions on iran and companies that do business with iran. So thats another norm thats been violated. The other norm is you dont issue policy pronouncements by twitter. You do it after an orderly prols process. The White House Press office as well as secretary ross were caught off guard by this announcement. It also brings to mind how little we know about the scope of the president s businesses. Will he that one press conference. They showed all the folders with empty pages and thats it. Thats all weve gotten. In fact, we have seen quite a lot and every time we get a glimpse of the president s business or his inlaws businesses its disturbing. Consider the pattern. The Kushner Family trying to raise money with visas in china for the real estate developments. You have a trip to india by the trump kids in conjunction with other things happening in the administration and now this. Every time a new deal pops up, you see people in the trump family making real estate or financial deals on the margins of administration policy. And that pattern is what is so striking. And we cant responsibly connect the two. But the fact that it keeps happen is striking. My question to you nick, as a reporter who works with documents and financial records, what would you need to see to report out and know whether things were on the up and up. You would have to have indepth documentation of when the discussions began for some of these projects, the terms on them. But really you would have to have some inside knowledge of discussions and channels in which the president and his team and the president s family. Slurg and youd have to know what was interesting between official action and private action on the familys part. Its very hard to get. Chris, one of the things the president said in that Transition Press conference with the tritt prop pages of paper which remains one of my favorites, was that he wasnt going to talk to the kids about his Adult Children about the business. Later hes contradicted that. Is there any way to enforce that . He could do whatever he wants to do on this score. Thats what weve learned these norms are invisible guardrails and if you have a president who is intent on running over to the guardrails particularly when you have a congress that is not going to be a coequal branch, no, there is no way of enforcing all this. The hypocrisy on this incredible. In 2009, we had the 800 billion stimulus program. President obama gave funding for Clean Energy Projects and republicans were howling about how we were picking winners and losers among different companies. We were at least picking among American Companies as winners and losers. Not picking it Chinese Companies which had serious National Security issues. Theres is the uranium one story which was a favorite on fox news which was a russian acquisition and it had to go through an actual process with a board that evaluated and unanimously said this acquisition is okay and the allegation was pay for play and clintons people could say look, they ran the process and the process came through this way. In this case, he is overriding what the process produced in terms of ztes status. Its worse than that. Look, of all the concessions the president could make to china in what might be an important trade negotiation, to pick the one concession aside from say steel tariffs that also raises a concurrent National Security implication to pick that one and knowing that the chinese suggested that its a prerequisite, if they care so much about protecting this one access to the u. S. Market and u. S. Parts, it should make him wonder why they care so much about this and maybe listen to his own bureaucrats on there question. Theres also the question, chris, however its being receive inside the white house what the clooez are thinking when the goahead is given through a government backed loan to a project they know is connected to the president. Thats a problem. Look, the indonesian project may be completely separate from whats happening with zte, but the optics of this stink. You said that senator blumenthal said it. Its why we have divestment rules and why you dont have previous president whoses have business interests because anytime the president takes action, youre going to question the legitimacy of it. Final question for you, nick. Slightly adjacent to this, you have a story you broke with your colleague about the fbi now investigating Cambridge Analytica, the notorious firm that was hired by the Trump Campaign run by conservative billionaire robert plerser or backed by him. What have you learned about that. The fbi and the Justice Department have opened what may be a separate investigation from the Mueller Probe into Cambridge Analytica and concurrent with an investigation by the uk version of the fbi. And theyre looking at financial practices, at data practices, at violation of European Data laws on the uk side. This appears to be new. Theyve been making the rounds of Financial Institutions that have done business with Cambridge Analytica talking to exemployees. We thought the chapter was over for this company. Theyre now bankrupt and going out of business. In fact, their journey is just beginning it seems. From my gloves your reporting the article i read before i came on air, it seems like a fairly serious inquiry. Thats right. Its not just the fbi making rounds and talking. Theres an actual person who is heavily involved in cyber crimes at justice involved in this. That suggests they are further along than just making the rounds and checking boxes. Im going to need to get full bird watching books to write down all the criminal inquiries and keep track of them when i spot hem. Chris lu and nick, great to have you both. Next mike it will avenatti is tweeting. Thats not good news for Michael Cohen or donald trump. His latest is a doozy. That story which you want to see it coming in two minutes. But im not standing still. And with godaddy, ive made my ideas real. I made my own way, now its time to make yours. Everything is working, just like it should im 85 years old in a job where. I have to wear a giant hot dog suit. What . Wheres that coming from . I dont know. I started my 401k early, i diversified. Im not a big spender. Sounds like youre doing a lot. But i still feel like im not gonna have enough for retirement. Like theres Something Else i should be doing. With the right conversation, you might find youre doing okay. So, no hot dog suit . Not unless you want to. No. Schedule a complimentary goal Planning Session today with td ameritrade®. Stormy daniels lawyer, perhaps you heard of him Michael Avenatti has been teasing a bombshell story tweeting out images showing a qatarry investor entering trump tower with avenatti claiming that investor bragged about bribing Trump Officials. He was indeed in that elevator. Did he meet with trump transition officials in trump tower during the transition december 2016 and then just a short time ago we got this, the daily mail reporting, im quoting here, Michael Cohen asked qatari investor for millions of dollars which he said he would pass to trump family members. That is a huge deal if its true. We dont know if it is yet. The story i should note is sourced to a single unnamed kuwaiti source and the daily mail has a somewhat mixed record. It the did break important stories including rob porters spousal abusal which led to his resignation. To make sense of this and a bunch of other stuff, legal analyst amy rocha, former assistant attorney in the Southern District of new york and investigative correspondent michael isikoff. And michael, lets me start with you. That daily mail story is sourced to a single kuwaiti official recounting a conversation he said he had with this individual after the meeting in trump tower. What do you make of it . Hard to know. Look, as crass, as Michael Cohen has been and its hard to imagine that even he would advertise the fact that he was going to pay off trump family members to a Foreign National. I mean, you know, cohen clearly you know, works at the edges, was pretty crude in the way he shook down American Companies, but you know, advertising hes going to