Worse. What were you doing . I was helping mccray pick up ballots. When all in starts right now. Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes. President trump sat in the National Cathedral today surrounded by former president s for george h. W. Bushs funeral. You have to wonder, what exactly was running through his head . The last time he was sitting that close, as close as he was today to president barack obama the two men were meeting in the white house just a few days after trumps 2016 surprise election victory. And it was on that day that the former president barack obama offered the incoming president , donald trump, two pieces of advice. One, stay vigilant in north korea. And two, do not hire Michael Flynn as your National Security adviser. That latter piece of advice sure looks prussian in anticipated and unanticipated ways. President trump might be wishing he had taken it as he looks over this document here. This was released by the special counsels office last night, a document that repeatedly refers to Michael Flynns substantial assistance, assistance that flynn has offered over the course of 19 interviews. The document refers to several ongoing investigations and it lays them out. The obvious one, b, the special counsels offices investigation. The defendant has also assisted with the fco investigation concerning links or coordination between the russian government and individuals associated with the trump campaign. But there are apparently two other investigations. Michael flynn is substantially assisting with these. A, redacted criminal investigation, an unspecified criminal investigation. Lots of black bars under that one. And even more tantalizingly theres still more, this one, this short indented line indicating a third matter. This one so secret that even the heading is entirely redacted, along with the description below it. So three ongoing investigations. The president , his family members and his associates have to be wondering what is behind all those black bars . Get into the thick of it. Bring in congressman Eric Swalwell, and tim obrien, executive editor of bloomberg review, his latest piece, muellers flynn memo should worry turn near and trump. Congressman, ill start with you, your reaction to what we do and dont know based on that document, what it means for your work in congress. Good evening, chris. Its all the more reason we should make sure we protect the mueller investigation, especially as were on the eve of a potential government shutdown. The republicans cant sort a vote out among themselves to keep the government open. Democrats want to negotiate. But something that i and others would like to see is that the special counsels investigation be allowed to proceed without the president as it gets closer to he and his family interfering in it. Also, chris, flynn represents the quo. Theres a quid pro quo, you know, in every transaction. And you had the russians offering dirt, donald trump jr. Accepting the dirt, and then candidate trump telling the russians if youre listening youll be rewarded if you give us more dirt. So what was the quo after the russians delivered by interfering . Well, flynn represents part of it by telling the ambassador, hold off on any retaliation against us. But the other question that is outstanding, as we learn about the saudis and the turks is, are there other countries and are there other quos . It looks like this president was open to do business with anyone that wanted to help him. Thats a great point. I want to ask you about turkey in a moment. Tim, go to you, though, you wrote this piece that caught my eye. A very Senior Member of the president ial Transition Team directed flynn to make an overture to kislyak about the sanctions vote, the thing he lied about that got him into trouble. And nbc news, kushner was the Senior Member. What does that mean . It means that kushner is an unnamed person of interest in these documents. And i think that theres other shoes to drop on this. And i think the fact that the mueller sentencing memorandum, for flynn last night, actually revealed so little that was new, but also redacted things that were substantive. It should worry the white house and it should worry Jared Kushner specifically because he also had his own direct conversations with sergey kislyak, the Russian Ambassador to the United States. One of them, flynn was in the conversation with him. Another, he proposed to have a back channel in the ambassadors secret chamber. And in yet another he met with a russian banker, a senior russian banker with close ties to the kremlin. And i think, to put this in context, Jared Kushner was in Financial Stress at the time. His family had purchased and overpaid for a skyscraper on fifth avenue. They could not afford to hold onto. And during the prior months to these negotiations he had been negotiating with the chinese and other investors to bail him out of this. He has said, and he told this to congress, that when he met with the russians he didnt speak with them about investments. After he talked to congress he came out and gave a press statement, a fairly lengthy one, in which he actually didnt detail all of his intersections with kislyak. But reaffirmed, i didnt talk about business. I didnt talk about money. That was before Michael Flynn began cooperating. Right. Michael flynn has cooperated extensively. If what he has said runs contrary to what Jared Kushner has said, and if what he has said is backed up by documents Robert Muellers team has acquired, or electronic surveillance theyve engaged in when they were surveilling flynn, which they know they were doing for a period of time, that could come back to haunt kushner legally. Tim, you bring up the point about the way in which Jared Kushner, Senior Member of the administration, was open to compromise by a variety of foreign interests. And congressman, you just mentioned that as a kind of theme here that may expand out past the russians and on that i want to read you this New York Times story which is basically about the fact that it could be the case that one of those redacted investigations is actually about a turkish angle to this. As the flynn case winds down and investigation of turkish lobbying persists, it says that special Counsel Robert Mueller has referred to the Eastern District of virginia a criminal investigation due to turkish influence. What do you think of that . Again, it aligns not only with candidate trump and his familys dealings and then we saw during the transition a number of meetings that they took that were unusual for a Transition Team to meet with foreign nationals and foreign dignitaries. But National Security adviser flynn who was open for business as well, he had gone over to russia in 2015, sat next to vladimir putin, had these deals he did not disclose ongoing with turkey. I think that made people qualified to be on the trump team, that they had these other dealings and that they too saw American Values as transactional rather than being rooted in democracy and human rights. Tim, this, to me, is where this is where the sort of rubber hits the road. This is the sort of nexus point. Follow the money. Follow the money. Foreign interests, compromising a candidate and then an american president , possibly russia, possibly others. Well, and also, you know, remember that old saying that the fish stinks from the head. For the first half of 2016 we now know that trump, Michael Cohen and felix sater were trying to get a real estate deal done in moscow. The president himself was very the candidate at the time was happy to wear two hats, running for office and trying to do business deals on the side. Hes admitted as such. We know that Paul Manafort was doing the same thing. Thats right. We now know that Michael Flynn was trying to do the same thing with the turkish government. All of them were on the make. I dont think any of them thought donald trump was going to get elected. I dont think they thought about the consequences of their actions at the time, whether it was meeting with russians, saying they had stuff on hillary clinton, or cutting Side Business deals, that any of this would come back to haunt them and be the subject of inquiry from someone as formidable as Robert Mueller. Congressman Eric Swalwell and tim obrien, thank you for joining me. And joining me now, mimi rocah, Deputy Assistant attorney general, coauthors at the nbc news think piece, a bribery scheme involving russia. Bribery is a word with a specific force. As someone who came up covering chicago politics, you know a thing or two about this. Whats your argument . In chicago politics, the bribery here doesnt necessarily involve a bag of cash. This is bribery a bribery scheme is the way to look at it. It ties into what you were talking about in the first segment. Just being a candidate who is pursuing business in russia in and of itself may not be criminal, may, may not. But if youre doing that, and expecting something, you know, giving something in return for that, once or expecting to give something in return for that, once youre in that official position that youre trying to get. Right. That would be a bribery scheme. So if he if trump is getting thinks that hes going to get the ability to build trump tower in moscow in exchange for sanctions relief for russia, that would be a bribe scheme. Thats a bribe. The bag of cash is trump tower and the official act is the sanctions. Theres a lot of facts that need to be filled in. Im not saying this could be charged or proven right now. But theres a lot of evidence that we already know about, things in the public record, that point to this may be where this is going and that different other Different Actors around trump may have played parts in this scheme or conspiracy. And one thing thats important, harry, here that i think was people havent quite sunk in, in the importance of this in the cohen plea, russian Vladimir Putins office was the one Michael Cohen was dealing with and they were the ones giving the green light. Its not like youre trying to build a building somewhere, and youve got the local zoning board. This was Vladimir Putins going to say yes, you can do this or you cannot do that. To your analysis that seems to count for a lot. Yeah. Buddy boy, well get putin to bless this and well get trump elected as felix sater, cohens consort here, said, thats right, he was dealing with, officially, a press Office Person who we know in the overall kremlinology as sort of number two and has a direct line to putin. And this is trumps dearest sort of imperial ambition. Hes been thinking about this for years. And, of course, on the other side nothing dear, potentially, to putin, than the lifting of the sanctions. So its an enormously attractive deal for both sides. When you frame it in a criminal Law Violation you hit the little snag in the road that trump, at least as of june 2016, is a serious candidate. But not the nominee. Right. A nominee is impeccably an official under the law for bribery. But as a matter of saying, this is the deal that were going to set up, felix sater, donald trump, that states a conspiracy and trump just has to make the next step of becoming the nominee. But thats the agreement. So theres two pieces of news recently. Theres a flynn memo yesterday, and flynn of course pleads guilty about lying to kislyak when he talked about sanctions, he said he didnt and he did. Michael cohen pleading guilty for lying to congress about trying to get trump tower in moscow built. Theres a connection between these two men thats important to remember. The strange story from february 2017, that a week before Michael Flynn resigned as National Security adviser a sealed proposal was hand delivered to his office outlining a way for trump to lift sanctions against russia, those pushing it Michael Cohen, the president s personal lawyer, felix sater who helped scout russia. I sort of you cant keep track of all the details, im sure mueller is. Id forgotten about that detail. Thats important. It puts flynn and cohen, in different orbits, on the same trajectory of get the sanctions lifted. Its a direct connection between the sanctions and the trump tower and, you know, again, i think that the idea is so cohen pled guilty to lying. Flynn pled guilty to lying. The lies in and of themselves are significant crimes. If were trying to piece together, was there a bigger scheme here . Who were the people who were or orchestrating it. Under the law you dont have to know every single part of a scheme. Those are the people we havent seen yet. Maybe there was no one. Maybe there was no one really putting this all together. But it seems a bit complicated for only Michael Cohen to be randomly acting on his own and flynn to be acting on his own. To that end, harry, what ive heard from the prosecutors and lawyers and folks ive been talking to, on and off the show is, these lies, the lies appear to be material to investigations of underlying criminal activity. This was not a lie incidental to the thing being investigated. Both men pleading to lying about a thing that people assume is materially relevant to the underlying crime. And not only that, but serious in its own weight. This is what giuliani just called spitting on the sidewalk. As tim says, everyones on the make. So just take the lie that flynn told. Hes covering up his own business relationship with turkey that hes already made 500,000 from, and he hasnt registered for. And he wants to make a lot more. Trump has personal in addition to governmental interests. Obviously kislyak the same. So this is the lie itself is particularly grave. You have essentially flynn carrying on a kind of rogue Foreign Policy in transition that deals with Nuclear Power for turkey, sanctions for russia, not minor matters that hes fiddling around in for essentially personal business reasons. Its both corrupt and eyebrow raising from the standpoint of National Security. Mimi rocah and harry lipman, thank you both. Tonight, more breaking news and its right in line with what we were just discussing, this one suggesting a Foreign Government has been lining the president s pockets quite explicitly. Dave farenthold from the Washington Post is here with his latest report on saudis spending spree at trump d. C. Hotel. Youre going to want to hear this one, next. Today is the day youre going to get motivated. Get stronger. Get closer. Start listening today to the Worlds Largest selection of audiobooks on audible. And now, get more. For just 14. 95 a month, youll get a credit a month good for any audiobook, plus two Audible Originals exclusive titles you cant find anywhere else. If you dont like a book, you can exchange it any time, no questions asked. Automatically roll your credits over to the next month if you dont use them. With the free audible app, you can listen anytime, and anywhere. Plus for the first time ever, youll get access to exclusive fitness programs a 95 value free with membership. Start a 30day trial today and your first audiobook is free. Cancel anytime and your books are yours to keep forever. Audible. The most inspiring minds. The most compelling stories. Text listen27 to 500500 to start your free trial today. The most compelling stories. Unstopand its strengthenedting place, the by xfi pods,gateway. Which plug in to extend the wifi even farther, past anything that stands in its way. Well almost anything. Leave no room behind with xfi pods. Simple. Easy. Awesome. Click or visit a retail store today. Tonight, where am i . Here, here. Tonight now reporting that saudi arabia used u. S. Military veterans to pump money into a trump hotel. The Washington Post reports that lobbyists representing the saudi government paid for an estimated 500 rooms at President Trumps d. C. Hotel in the months after his election, the total bill for those trips, more than 270,000. According to the post the lobbyists rented the rooms ostensibly as part of a Pressure Campaign to overturn legislation, opposed by the saudi government. The lobbyists offered veterans a free trip to washington if they then went to capitol hill lobbying against the law. Several veterans told the post the trips featured fancy dinners, an open bar frequently extended. One of the veterans said he was confused by the opulent nature of the trips until one of the organizers who had been drinking at the champagne oh, we were just used to giving trump money. One of the Washington Post reporters who broke the story is with me. And former National Security adviser to hillary clinton. Dave, this is a shocking story, 500 rooms in a few months. Thats right. The saudi lobbyists started reserving blocks of rooms at Trumps Hotels starting december 2016 within months of his election. And within 2016 and february 2017 they reserved 500 rooms at trumps hotel. To put that in perspecti