Election. That trumps possible obstruction of justice in asking the fbi director could itself have been a collusion with russia. According to the New York Times, quote, Law Enforcement officials became so concerned by the president s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of russia against american interests. Specifically investigators wanted to know whether the president s actions were, quote, a possible threat to National Security. And whether, quote, trump was knowingly working for russia or had unwittingly fallen under moscows influence. On sunday came another bombshell story. This one from the Washington Post. Revealing how, quote, President Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with russian president Vladimir Putin. Both the times and the post exposes are highly damaging, obviously, to the president , as he tries to escape the historic reckoning that may soon come from special Counsel Robert Mueller. When asked point blank this weekend about the New York Times story, trump didnt deny being an agent of russia. Are you now or have you ever worked for russia, mr. President . I think its the most insulting thing i have ever been asked. I think its the most insulting article i have ever had written. And if you read the article, you would see that they found absolutely nothing. Trumps failure to give a direct answer to that fundamental question even raised alarm among his allies. According to the associated press, quote, white house aides expressed regret that the president did not more clearly and forcefully deny being a russian agent. It was clear by early today, however, that trump had to give a direct answer. Mr. President , yes or no, have you or are you now, have you ever worked for russia . Yes or no. I never worked for russia, and you know that answer better than anybody. I never worked for russia. Not only did i never work for russia. I think its a disgrace that you even asked that question. Because its a whole big fat hoax. Its just a hoax. Im joined by Michael Schmidt, who broke the story for the New York Times this weekend. Iamec alcindor, and greg brown and a former federal prosecutor. Michael, an amazing story. The story is National Security interests, the fbi agents, not politicians, but fbi agents, were looking into whether this president was working for the russians. What was their concern . Heres why this matters. Our collective understanding of this from the beginning has been the president facing a criminal obstruction investigation. The fbi, we now know a year and a half ago, was not comfortable with his relationship with russia. They could not understand why he fired comey. They thought there was something more there. There was enough to take the extraordinary historic step, a historic step to actually open this investigation into the president s ties to a foreign adversary. They were so unnerved in the aftermath of the comey firing, they didnt understand what he was doing, they didnt understand what he was saying. It led them to this point. Haupt we dont know is what mueller did with it. But what we do know, mueller and harris investigation, as recently as november, he wanted the president to answer russia questions. So did the president , who responded in writing, actually provide answers to a counterintelligence investigation of himself that he didnt even know about . As the New York Times reports and your report, there were clear occasions when the president linked his decision to fire comey to the russian investigation. And did so publicly. When Deputy Attorney general Rod Rosenstein drafted a letter to justify comeys firing, which didnt include the russia probe, he directed mr. Rosenstein to mention the russian probe anyway. Regardless of recommendation, i was going to fire comey, knowing there was no good time to do it. And in fact, when i decided to just do it, i said to myself, i said, you know, this russia thing with trump and russia is a madeup story. This russia thing, well then the day after comeys firing, the president hosted Russian Diplomats in the oval office and told the russian visitors, quote, i faced great pressure because of russia. Thats taken off. So why did trump want the world, including moscow, to go he was trying to kill the probe into russias 2016 mischief . I want to follow up with you, michael, in this. Thats what grabbed me in the story, the constant effort by trump to tell the world, anybody listening, hey, i wanted to stop the russia investigation. Why did he want anybody did he want russia to know he was stopping the russia investigation . Thats what it smells like. That was part of the investigation. We learned of this is that why the fbi jumped on him . They think why is he blasting out the news that this was for russia . Correct. Was the president trying to fire comey as a way of slowing interfering with the investigation, the larger investigation into russias meddling in the election, to help russia . That, the fbis general counsel testified on capitol hill, was the National Security concern of the firing. They saw the firing as a counterintelligence issue, an intelligence issue. Not just a criminal thing, not, hey, lets make a case. Its hey, lets use all the authorities and powers we have to figure out whether the president is tied to russia and firing comey to stop the investigation. You know what grabs me in this reporting . That we thought a long way for months now, more than a year, that the investigation by the fbi is whether trump was protecting himself through obstruction of justice. Now comes the report he was obstructing justice to protect the russian role in the 2016 election. He was working for moscow. Thats what stunning about this. Whats stunning about this, and mike, as someone who is your former colleague, this was a remarkable, remarkable report. Something thats going to go down in history. When i was reading it on friday around the table with other reporters, our mouths dropped because youre like, oh, my god, the fbi is as alarmed as you think americans are. For months now, or maybe now for years, you had people say we really dont feel comfortable with the way President Trump deals with putin, that helsinki summit where i was in the room when the president was talking about whether or not he believes russia over u. S. Counterintelligence, and he basically took russias side. People sat back and thought this is a moment. Why is the president not standing up to Vladimir Putin . Now we know all the things that maybe people thought, experts, other people thought, that the fbi itself, the place thats supposed to be dealing with this the most, they were as alarmed as everyone else. That to me is remarkable. Greg, the question is, by most people on all sides of this fight, why didnt he deny it . It would have been awfully easy to say no or of course not or anything like that. Its hard to understand why he couldnt deny it. Whats important about the reporting is that it, according to the reporting, it confirms at least senior fbi agents did think there was enough to predicate an investigation, and presumably, the lawyers across the street at doj agreed or at some point later, at least, agreed. We just dont know when we wont find out until the mueller findings are made public, exactly what happens in response to the development that michael and adam and others reported on. Was thinking all along, we put these things, and everybody who is a journalist here knows, in two kettles. One was one bucket or kettle, whatever you want to call it, is the question of collusion. The other question was did he obstruct justice . What i get from your reporting, which is so stunning about it, is it was a continuum. He was working for the russians, and theyre back and forth during the campaign, if its all true, and second, he was working for the russians and covering up their role in the campaign, as the second phase. It was all part of one continuous effort of the fbi investigating the russian role in 2016 and coming upon the role played potentially by the president. In that work. In other words, it was like back when they picked up nixon, back with dealing when the 68 election. They picked it up by they were bugging the south vietnamese and they picked up nixon. They werent bugging nixon, but they caught him dealing with the south vietnamese. I think thats a pretty good parallel. If youre a counterintelligence agent at the fbi, and you started this investigation, you worked on it, how do you see the president s most recent comments . How did you see helsinki . How did you see the comments about afghanistan that lined up with the kremlins talking points about why the ussr invaded afghanistan . How do you walk away from an investigation like that when the president continues to say things like that . Let me go to Jackie Speier of california. Im going to ask you a big question. Youre on the intelligence committee. I had a pretty open attitude about a couple things trump was saying on the campaign. I wasnt against him personally. I thought there were real problems, but lets put that aside. I thought maybe, maybe, what this guy was going to do is cut a big bargain, a grand bargain with moscow, dealing with, of course, fundamentally or essentially with syria, and work out some deal in the middle east that really was going to be history making. That would be a motive for a lot of this. But this motive in backing russia on every account, as Michael Schmidt just pointed out, how else do we account for his kowtowing to putin except that putins got something on him or they got something together . How else do you account for it . Its kompromat. Thats what it is. I would say we have to go back to the comments made by the trump boys earlier, where they said we dont need u. S. Banks. We get all the money we need from russia. There are lots of clues that have sprinkled along this path that added together probably had something to do with the opening of this counterintelligence investigation. I think we dont know the half of it. And were just trying to grasp at various elements. But for them to for the fbi to start a counterintelligence investigation in the first three or four months of the Trump Presidency is pretty remarkable. So i think they maust have something we dont know about. What was your reaction when you read the times story. When you read about the whole question, the fbi agents going after trump because they thought he was part of the russian effort in 2016, trying to help them cover it up . What did you think when you read that . Well, frankly, i thought theres something here that i dont know about. I think that its either youve got a useful idiot or youve got an unwitting participant or agent here. But for trump, it all comes done to money. Im convinced that it had to do with the fact that he had so many of his condos that were purchased by russians, hundreds of them, there were so many of the llcs that we believe have russian addressed. So the combination of all of that, the comments by his sons, i think that all will come together in a nice big fat package at some point. Well, today, donald trump, the president , is responding to the revelation he was investigated as an agent by the fbi, by blasting the fbi as, quote, dirty cops. This is james cagney stuff. You dirty rats. He says theyre just out to get him. Here we go. The president doing his Street Corner response. The people doing that investigation were people that have been caught, that are known scoundrels. I guess you could say theyre dirty cops. Well, it follows an avalanche of attacks the president offered up on twitter this weekend, all attempting to scapegoat the fbi. However, as we have seen since the outset of this investigation, trump has used one excuse after another to deflect blame and discredit the work of real Law Enforcement. I call it the russian hoax. One of the great hoaxes. Its a democrat hoax that was brought up as an excuse for losing an election. It is incredible the deep state where they dont even look at her. Isnt it incredible . It is a witch hunt. If you look at the fbi statements with strzok and his lover, lisa page. You look at brennan, clapper, hayden. I think bruce orr is a disgrace. Some of the people at the top were rotten apples. James comey was one of them. During the course of the election . How many times do i have to answer this question russia is a ruse. I have nothing to do with russia. Theyre investigating something that never happened. Lets talk about being human beings. An american, most americans, i think, are patriotic in different ways and different ways they express it. If youre accused of being a foerb agent against this country, your reaction would be, i think, personal. You would begin to say, let me explain to people who are listening to me, i was trying to cut a deal with the russians. I wasnt going to be knee jerk. I didnt want to do all the diplomatic professors were doing, falling back in the trap with the cold war. I was trying to work nice. I was trying to a couple things. Trying to explain, if hes innocent, but his defense has been, screw you. His defense has been to trash the people going after him, including all kinds of government bureaucrats and good fbi agents. He doesnt act in a way, it seems to me, most normal i want to get to greg on this, most normal people do if theyre accused. You also have to remember this was a president who ran on being a law and order president. He calls himself a nationalist because he says its a patriotic term. And he also said his Campaign Slogan was make America Great again. I would think he would offer that as someone who understands media and messaging and saying i love america. This is what i believe. Instead, it took him more than 24 hours to say i dont work for russia. Thats pretty remarkable and its telling that even people inside the white house were saying you need to get this answer right, and when we put you out on the white house lawn this morning, you better answer that question in a very definitive way, which is what he did. A great movie many years ago called no way out with kevin costner. At the end of the movie, he turns out to be the agent. I sometimes think were getting near that. Hes going to Start Talking to us in russian, yelling at us. You have dealt with defendants. Is there a normal way a defendant behaves when theyre innocent . Thats a good question. Most arent, of course, in criminal cases. But it is one thing, of course, chris, as you mentioned, for the president to criticize the men and women of the fbi and doj the way he has. But what hes in effect doing oftentimes is criticizing his own appointees. Chris wray, director of the fbi, and Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney general. They have been part of much of most of this investigation, at least in recent months. It makes no sense at all for him to criticize them. Whats striking about that criticism, its not surprising at this point, but whats striking is that we hear nothing from capitol hill. We hear nothing from otherwise very, very supportive members of congress, supportive of the fbi and doj and of Law Enforcement generally, criticizing the criticism that the president has levied against those public servants. The last time i remember that happening, when george bush senior who passed away defended the fbi because, and he quit the nra for a while because they called them thugs. The republicans should be for Law Enforcement, i think. The u. S. Congressman Jackie Speier, thank you for joining us. Michael schmidt, congratulations. Another huge story. Yamec alcindor, always great to have your analysis. Another explosive report. The Washington Post is reporting President Trump hid details, hid the details of all his five meetings with Vladimir Putin from his own staff. He confiscated notes from his interpreter in one meeting and told him not to tell any other government official. This is the president of the United States. Dont tell anyone else in my government what he and putin talked about. So what did happen behind the closed doors between trump and putin . Well get to that, and that is one hell of a story. Stick with us. Thats coming up. This is hardball, where the action is. E action is. Bipolar i disorder can make you feel like you have no limits. But mania, such as unusual changes in your mood, activity or energy levels, can leave you on. Shaky ground. Help take control by asking your Healthcare Provider about vraylar. Vraylar treats acute mania of bipolar i disorder. Vraylar significantly reduces overall manic symptoms, and was proven in adults with mixed episodes who have both mania and depression. Vraylar should not be used in elderly patients with dementia, due to increased risk of death or stroke. Call your doctor about fever, stiff muscles, or confusion, which may mean a lifethreatening reaction or uncontrollable muscle movements, which may be permanent. 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