The fbi from doing its job . Did he throw his official influence behind efforts to bend justice from the truth . This is the quest that Robert Mueller per sues to see if the president obstructed justice. We start with breaking news from the the New York Times that reveals new details about the materials that the special counsel has requested from the white house, requests that shed new light on the direction of the ongoing probe. We also tonight are following two natural disasters, of course in puerto rico, Hurricane Maria made landfall as a category 4 store, knocking out power already to the entire island. It may be months before its back on. In mexico, more than 200 people are dead after a 7. 1 magnitude earthquake. The death toll is expected to rise of course as the rescue crews continue to search the rubble in the countrys capital city. Well have live reports coming up. First, to the russia investigation and the document request special counsel Robert Mueller has made of the white house. According to the the New York Times, the document request provide the most details of yet and show that several aspects of its inquiry are focused on squarely on mr. Trumps behavior in the white house. They report that the requests include dpoocuments about the president s Oval Office Meeting with Russian Diplomats on the day after he fired james comey, documents related to the firing of Michael Flynn and documents pertaining to the white house response to questions about donald trump jr. s Campaign Meeting with russians last year at trump tower. The Washington Post reports further that mueller ask for further email or document the White House Holds that relates to Paul Manafort. This comes after he learn this week that prosecutors warned manafort that he will be indicted. Joining me is Michael Schmitt, tom ham berger is a reporter fer the Washington Post, paul butler, a former federal prosecutor and natasha bretran is a reporter covering the russian problem for business insider. Michael schmitt, talk about what you see from what documents theres pursuing from the white house at this point, is it centering more on obstruction of justice than initial possible collusion during the campaign . Well all we know about is this request. We dont know about requests that may have gone to the campaign or the transition team. But what struck us about this was how much it was focused on things that have happened since the president has been in office and things she had a direct hand in. The firing of flynn, the firing of comey, how to respond to questions about the 2016 meeting his son and the russians who promised derogatory information about hillary clinton. Mullers investigation to this point has been a bit of a black hole. Weve only known so much. But by looking at these requests we sort of were able to see through his eyes a little bit, see what hes looking at and see the things that he cares about. And for a white house that insisted that the president has done nothing wrong here. It certainly looks like there a lot of things that mueller wants to look at. This is based on the reporting of the president himself, not on manafort or flynn or the others but mainly what did the new president do to use his office improperly. Well naturally the questions going to the white house would pertain to him. But youre right, there is a certain much about that that is directed directly after his behavior. The other thing that struck us was this meeting that he had with the russian officials, the Russian Ambassador in the oval office the day after comey was fired. Mueller is asking for information about that meeting. Why would mueller want to know . We know that in that meeting trump said that firing comey had relieve pressure on him. So is mueller trying to get inside the mindset of why trump fired comey. We dont know. Its also in that meeting that we know that trump disclosed classified information to the russians that had been given to the United States by one of our allies. You know, mike, ive covered politics and been it in for a long time and i look at things simply. I look at motive in a simple way. Self interest. And i look at Robert Mueller who took this job as special counsel, he had been fbi director for many years, a great one. Hes friends with comey who was an fbi director, i believe a competent one. He saw him fired over this issue apparently. He took the case on that basis. It seems to me, let me ask you in terms of your reporting, and the documents now being pursued, it looks to me like hes on the path we always thought heg was on, that the new president , donald trump used his office to protect himself from prosecution and investigation by the fbi. Yeah. I mean, when we look at this document and we sort of try and see this thing, it does seem like he is focused a lot on what trump did. Look, we dont have a document that says that trump is a target of the investigation, that is not in the document of what we saw. But if you look at the request, it is very focused on trump. And this is something that we have thought for a long time. Theres been some indications of this early on, that they were looking at issues related to the comey firing, whether other intelligence officials, the president tried to enlist them to help convince comey to kill the flynn investigation. But this to date is the most details that we have. This is the most that we know. Mueller runs a very tight ship. Its not leaky at all. Its been hard for us to get inside the investigation and try and see what the investigators are looking for. Well hold on there, michael. Lets go to Tom Hamburger who broke the story in the Washington Post tonight reporting that Paul Manafort offered to provide briefings about the dwooen election to a russian billionaire during the campaign. Briefings in this business tend to be another way of lobbying. Telling somebody whats going on. You ared ed advising them what do. Investigators believe that the exchanges that reflect manaforts willingness to profit from his prominent role alongside trump created an opening for russian interest. Manafort offered to give that briefing to the billionaire was contained in a batch of emails turned over to congressional investigators. By the way his spokesman confirmed the authenticity of the emails to nbc news and calls the exchange innocuous. Thats not the way i look at it. People in this town make a lot of money, the big insiders on a quarter retainer basis in many cases. If youre going to brietting a from the man whos sharing the president ial can Dates Campaign who may be the next president , youre going inside. Your thoughts. Whats this men, what you got . Its another example thats emerging, one of several thats emerging from the big batch of emails thats been turned over to investigators that shows there was more communication with russians and with some very prominent russians than we knew before. Now Paul Manaforts spokesman said as you just quoted, that us innocuous, simply an attempt he confirms by Paul Manafort to use the position he had as Campaign Chair to try to recover some old debts from the region. He had been very active as a consultant in the ukraine, former soviet union felt he was owed money and wanted to be sure that those who owed him were aware of his new position in the campaign and the good press he was getting. This is tricky because weve heard reports or been given reports in the major papers that this guy, manafort, also owed Something Like 17 million to his oligarchs. What is going on . Theres huge amounts of money going both ways. Your thoughts. Your reporting. Paul manafort is among the targets of the special counsel. We know that Paul Manafort along with general Michael Flynn are two very prominent targets. And not just because they have some connections to russians and they were top advisers to the campaign, but also in both cases there are potential legal liabilities for them. If Paul Manaforts case, he was an International Businessman who had tens of millions of dollars flowing through investment accounts that he had around the world. Hes already a target, an interest of manafort. One of the theories is that im sorry, of bob mueller. And one of the theories is that the special counsel will hope to press Paul Manafort with piling up charge and hope to flip him, hope hell have information that he can deal that will implicate the president or members of his team. Seems plausible as hell. Thank you so much for that great reporting for the Washington Post. Thanks. Let me go back to Michael Schmitt and paul but her and natas natasha. What do we make of the fact that theyre fielth ghting in a restaurant, ken vogel is sitting next to them a block from the capital. Im start with you, michael. Hes sitting there and he overhears a conversation between two lawyers for the president , one is dodd and one is ty cobb. And theyre talking about whether to release documents or not. It seems to me like this is heated up right now based on your reporting and vogels. This is right at the heart of the president. In watergate should there be a limited hangout or stone wall. These are phrases i was brought up with. Your thoughts. There is tension in the white house among the lawyers on how to deal with the requests from mueller. Should they hand over as many documents as possible . Thats sort of cobbs point of view. The idea is get as much of this to mueller as possible because weve got nothing to hide, we shouldnt put executive privilege on them. The white House Counsel is more conservative on that point and concerned about the precedent of waiving executive privilege and handing this stuff over to the white house. But theres issue between cobb and mcgann about how mcgann is going to be handled by the special prosecutor. Mcgann needs for cobb and the president to make a decision about whether the president is going to exert privilege over mcgann or allow mcgann to freely speak with the special prosecutor. Mcgann is important to all of this stuff because his was involved in all of these decisions that were in the list of information that we wrote about today. The firing of comey, the firing of flynn, how to deal with questions about russian meddling in the election. And if someone like mcgann can speak to what the president was thinking but at the same time its hard to believe that a judge would ever allow you to use a lawyer to speak to the intent of someone. So its a difficult question and something that the folks in the white house are continuing to wrestle with. Well these are Box Office Reports tonight. Very little time for paul and for natasha but i do want your thoughts as a prosecutor paul and one who covers business. Each of you quickly. Give me your assessment of what youve heard tonight in these two reports, basically the one that seems to be focused on on instruction of j obstruction of justice by the president. Tens of thousands of documents subpoenaed, two grand juries impanelled. Hes looking at three issues all involving President Trumps dishonesty. First, why did he create the false narrative about the donald trump jr. Meeting with the russians. Second, why did he hang on to flynn when President Trumps affiliates told him flynn was dirty. Trump hires him and tries to protect him afterwards. And then why fire comey. Why did he try to get Rod Rosenstein to jen up a reason when we know the reason. Why is he lying . Why is he creating a false narrative if the intent is to impede an investigation thats a federal crime. Natasha, im looking at the same thing that the expert paul butler is that the president of the United States did not want to be investigated and he used the power to prevent it. Your thoughts, your reporting. I completely afree. Todays reporting puts everything that weve heard in the past couple of weeks about ty cobbs disagreements with other members of trumps legal team in context. They feel that President Trump is very vulnerable when it comes to the possibility that he might be charged with obstruction of justice. And even if hes not charged with the crime of obstruction of justi justice, mueller is building a strong case that he can bring to congress and recommend impeachment which will be a political question, not a legal one. Youre so smart. Im sorry. Im not patronizing. You thats the bullseye np in the end this special counsel can present a pile of evidence against this current president. Im not counting on the regular constitutional processes with this republican crowd who seem to be so institutionally and almost automatically loyal to trump even when theres no reason to do it expect theyre in the same political party. Sorry to cut you off. Its been a long session with a lot of news. Thank you paul butler for the expertise and natasha, thank you so much. Paul hamburger as well. Well get back to the politics in a minute but coming up, the latest on two major natural disasters. Theyre catastrophes, first a deadly earthquake in mexico right now that happened yesterday, the death toll is going to rise as rescue crews continue to comb through the rubble. And Hurricane Maria, the big storm devastated puerto rico knocking out power across the entire island. No more leg tris pi there. The strongest hurricane to hit puerto rico in 90 years. A live reportmenting up live from puerto rico. Obamacare on the brink. Republicans are trying one last time i think to repeal the Affordable Care act but theyve got pretty big opponents in talk show Host Jimmy Kimmel and a lot of governors. Kasich is one of them and he joins us tonight. Finally let me finish with trump watch. You dont like this one but he is playing this game. Thats donald trump and this is hardball where the action is. Hes on his way to work in new mexico. Willie and john both work for us, a business that employs over 90,000 people in the u. S. Alone. We are the cocacola company, and we make much more than our name suggests. Were an organic tea company. A premium juice company. Weve got drinks for long days. For birthdays. For turning over new leaves. And all of our products rely on the same thing we all do. Clean water. Which is why we have john leading our efforts to replenish every drop of water we use. We believe our business thrives when our communities thrive. Which is just one of the reasons we help make college a reality for thousands of students. Today, Companies Need to do more. So john and willie are trying to do just that. Thank you for listening. Were listening too. Welcome back to hardball. At least 200 people are dead after a massive 7. 1 magnitude earthquake that struck mexico city yesterday late afternoon. Less than two weeks earthquake off of the coast of mexico city. In terms of perspective, this is the big one in in 1906 in san francisco, that earthquake had a magnitude of 7. 8. Heres a glimpse of what residents experienced. Imagine being there. At least 44 buildings collapse and thousands of people were forced to evacuate their office. But as you can see, look at that, rescue crews worked throughout the night and spent today searching for children trapped under a collapsed school where at least 25 people, i guess a lot of the kids were killed. Im joined by ron mott in mexico city. Reporter we got some good news today on the death toll. It was reduced downward by two. Thats good news. In terms of the school, this is not the school but in terms of the school theyre looking for upwards of three dozen School Children and adults. They were able to get two young people out of that school rubble today. Thats good news. Now here behind me, this was an Employment Agency so it was packed to the gills yesterday with people looking for jobs, especially young people. And we understand that there are a number of people alive in the rubble behind me. A six story building. I dont know how well you can see it. There is a group of safety individuals on top of the building and their plan is to get to the fourth floor. Theres a group of people on the fourth floor. Theyve managed to get messages to those friends and families of the folks inside. But they have not managed to get them out. So they are going to work through the night to try to find a way, a tunnel to try to get them out of a fourth floor conference room, what theyre calling is essentially a triangle of life. The floor above them collapsed at an angle, left them enough room to breathe and the back side is a wall thats holding up at this point. As far as i can tell, the ground as remained relatively stable today. If there had been aftershocks in yesterdays quake, they have been mayinor. They managed to get a lot of people out here. 40, 41 structures that have collapsed here in mexico city. Most of the deaths have come here in mexico city, the capital. The quake itself was centered to our south and east and one of our team members who lives here in mexico city said there this was a pretty scary quake yesterday that went on for a long time. If youve never been in one they are quite unsettling if you will. This scene is going to go on through the night. We imagine the same is going on south of town where that school is and then a number of other areas where people are trapped still in buildings but obviously every minute counts now and the longer we go, were 25 hours plus now. The less likelihood of getting people out alive. What a human report y