Was part of a russian effort to aid his fathers candidacy. Good morning, its tuesday, july 11th. Welcome to morning joe. With us, we have columnist mike barnicle, former fbi special agent clint watt, katty kay and author of a world in disarray, and from msnbc news, Mark Halperin. Last night the New York Times reported before arranging a meeting with a russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, donald trump jr. Was informed in an email the material was part of a russian government effort to aide his fathers candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the email. The author of the reported email was Rob Goldstone, a publicist which helped set up the meeting, which took place in june of 2016, before trump became the nominee. The russian lawyer said she had information about purported Illegal Campaign contributions to the Democratic National convention that she thought donald trump jr. Might find helpful. The source doesnt go deeper on moscows attempts to tilt the election and the paper is careful to point out there is no evidence to suggest the information is related to hacking that led to the release of the dnc emails, if youll remember that. So Mark Halperin on the hill, if you look at this story, it seems its just somebody is releasing a little bit of information every day. On saturday don jr. Comes out and says hes talking about adoption, on sunday hes talking about this meeting. Without a whole lot of details, he didnt even know what to tell poor Paul Manafort, hey, just come to a meeting. There was actually email saying this is part of a larger russian effort to actually help your father be elected president of the United States. Whats the response been on capitol hill . Don jr. s lawyer puts out a lengthy statement that doesnt refute the essence of the new times reporting. I talked to republicans and democrats on capitol hill yesterday even before, as mika suggested, the revelation before last night. People are shaken by this and not only are there a lot of unanswered question, but this is one of the biggest revelations so far. Don jr. Is in a very tough place now because every day whoever is providing this information to the times is coming out with somebody else. Either said he knew this story was out there or he didnt and either way that presents a lot of troubling questions for him Going Forward and for the wider operation for him to deal with Going Forward. The defense from some people yesterday was its fine to get help from the russians in a Political Campaign, all take oppo from anywhere it comes from and i do not think that will be a sustainable position if that turns out to be what happened. I actually saw somebody, richard haas, yesterday on another network saying, oh, sure i would have taken help from russians if it was opposition reself. First of a research. First of all, thats a lie. Nobody would. Ive run those campaigns. If somebody said, hey, the russian government would like to get the hell out of my office. Anybody would do that. Republicans were already in full lying mode yesterday. And then last night this story comes out. And so now are the republicans going to follow donald trump and his family down a rat hole to say, why, yes, why yes, i would have taken this meeting if i had known that it was part of a russian government conspiracy led by the kremlin to get me elected president of the United States or congressman of the United States or senator of the United States . Who follows them down that rat hole . Not very smart people. Im sorry, i cant not very smart people. And a not very smart party. So theres both sides here. Coming at that time from both direction, youve got the people of the campaign, the son and others, the fact that they were willing to traffic in that stuff but this tells you more about russia. This is not a onedimensional russian effort to influence the american political market. This could be scratching the surfaced of a multidimention effort to influence the campaign. As Richard Blumenthal said yesterday, he suspected its not this first meeting, katty, its all those that follow. We want every single meeting or any person in this white house has had with the russians. Clearly the kremlin felt that the Trump Campaign was vulnerable to be penetrated or at least targeted in this cam pan. There must have been something that made them think this was worth a go. Mike barnicle, you have this meeting with a kremlinconnected lawyer, a contact comes forward that says, hey, the criminal wants to help you out here, talk to this lawyer. You got Paul Manafort running the campaign, Jared Kushner, the president s closest sayyid during the closest aide during the campaign and then you have don jr. How does kushner forget to put this on any of his disclosure forms thats jared calling. Exactly. With the answer. When he knows that theres been an email sent to the campaign, to don jr. Saying, hey, the russian government wants to help you get elected president of the United States. So youve got Jared Kushner forgetting to put an ambassadors meeting down on his disclosure form, then you have them forgetting a meeting with one of the top bankers connected with the kremlin and the attorney general forgetting to put it down on all the forms. I mean, if youre bob mueller, theres so much smoke, theres got to be fire there but right now you got to go outside to get a breath of fresh air. It is whirling all around this administration. Clearly theres a lot going on here and one of the telltale signs that theres so much going on is its fairly obvious that the leaks, the information from these times stories comes from within either the white house or the justice department. This has choked off whatever small pieces of progress the Trump Administration has been making. They continually revise their statements. Donald jr. s tweet yesterday belittling the fact that he met with the russians, ill tell you what, ive covered a lot of c campaigns, i know a lot of people who worked in campaigns, if someone comes into the office to see the Campaign Manager or brother or son of the candidate, you know, i have some great stuff from the russians, you call the clintons. This is part of a bigger scheme to influence an election. Again, if somebody on my staff said we got this russian guy connected with the russian government, i would say, okay, call the fbi and ive got to go vote. No question about it. Exactly. Its all pretty shocking and horrifying, especially for the Republican Party, but what are the real questions here from your perspective, clint . I think its this silliness about its okay to just meet with russian businessmen and there are no consequences with this. Is it okay to use the word collusion . Collusion. So they keep parsing this out. Does collusion mean i take or coordinate with an online persona to get Hillary Clintons emails out or Opposition Research out there . If a consultant in florida gets them and posts them online, is that collusion . A russian operative knows how to push this. Theyre going to do exactly what were seeing here, theyre going to go all the way around the periphery to everyone in the family, everyone politically connected and business interests and try and put leverage on them. Whats of interest to bob mueller there . The connections now in the business realm. The one thing you cant hide are financial connections. Thats what you see him staffing out a team with. Hes bringing on a lot of prosecutors with white collar experience. The other thing hes going to do is bring these people in for interviews and see where theres interconstitue inconsistencies in their stories. How many inconsistencies have we had in three days are they looking for connections with putin directly or russian banks or r. T. Or what . Youll three. Youre going to look at r. T. , how were connections used and these political efforts. And stupid of don jr. To go on twitter when he is clearly in legal jeopardy. This time yesterday morning everybody knew he was clearly in legal jeopardy. He goes up on twitter again yesterday only to be undercut by the New York Times last night because people inside his own white house, inside his own administration are leaking on him. Well, the president s been silent on this. He tweeted out on a lot of topics yesterday but not on this. But you have to imagine that he and his legal team have to be trying to figure out not only whos leaking this stuff but what else might they have . You think about who would have access to this email . The times didnt print the email but his lawyer didnt deny it exists in a long email. Perhaps it was intercepted or perhaps someone has turned it over. Thats a private email to a american citizen who has now had the New York Times characterize an email, which is really the biggest single document i think that has come out i think in this entire investigation of the potential russian influence. This is an email allegedly to a Family Member saying the russian government has an effort to help your father get elected president during the campaign. Assume the best case for the others involved, that don jr. Is telling the truth, he didnt tell Jared Kushner or Paul Manafort what this is about. Eventually theres going to have to be an accounting of that meeting. If his account is different than what hes given so far and if there are subsequent meetings, this is as big a thing as has occurred in this entire story. Youve spoken with several republicans, many of whom have defended donald trump every step of the way and you said even would back george w. Bush but yesterday they said something quite different, didnt they, that this was different from everyone else that had gone before. Just assuming the facts that are already known, theres a lot of unease about where this could go because of the nature of the communication and because of the series of times stories. This has a different feel for some republicans yesterday and the president s silence on it is making people wonder what is he thinking about all this . Where does he think all of this goes . Donald trump jr. Now has an aattorneying writing in my view, this is much ado about nothing. Late may and early june 2016 was an intensely busy time for don jr. Robert goldstone contacted don jr. In an email and suggested that people had information concerning alleged wrongdoing by Democratic Party frontrunner Hillary Clinton in her dealings with russia. Hes saying he knew it was t the russian government. The money came from russia. Don jr. Had no knowledge of what specific information, if any, would be discussed. Further at no time was there any understanding or commitment that he or anyone else would find the information to be reliable, credible, of interest or would either survive due diligence. That lasted nothing. And the meeting lasted 20 or 30 minutes. Oh, wait, that was about the same amount of time as what, Mark Halperin . Its exactly the same length of the Loretta Lynch meeting and the accounts of that meeting have never changed from the bill clinton side but people want to know what was actually portrayed. Its a long meeting as it was characterized. And if you look, richard, at what was said in that statement, actually preReince Priebus, in of his most embarrassing performances ever, if you go back and look at it, its one false statement after another. This statement is a nothing burger because in the statement youre saying we got this email saying the russian government had information and was going to try to defeat Hillary Clinton and get involved in this campaign, but we didnt even know if anything would come of it. We didnt know whether the blackmailing information or colluding information was even good information. We wanted good collusion and we werent sure if we had it. Two things. One is it reinforces the historical lesson that its always what you do at the time and how you react to what you do and thats when you get into the obstructions, the perjuries and management of the past. Theres as an achilles heel here. One of the areas the republicans had split was over the russian angle. How do you think john mccain, marco rubio, how do you think i mean, i would hope rob portman, how do you think bob corker are going to respond to don jr. , Jared Kushner and donald trump saying, organization yes rkoh yes, of course we got an email said they were going to influence the election, of course we took the meeting. How are we going to respond . That changes this into a fundamental National Security question and it gives republicans cover behind that to challenge the administration. Lets make no mistake. One other thing, mika, don jr. Went into that meeting, lets strip it down. He went into that meeting expecting help from the russian government. Stop. Stop. Full stop. Full stop. Thats why the lawyers statement, the attorneys statement is so misleading because all it says is people said they had information. Take out people and say the kremlin said it had information because thats really what were talking about, thats what don jr. Understood clearly going into that meeting that they were talking about. You talked about the financial side of this and thats what bob mueller is going to be looking at. I was wondering about don jr. And he knew it was the russian government, arent we no longer looking at just at Just National dealings because clearly this is different . Whats going to happen as they go into the interviews, what was this transaction, what was this interaction, what was all of this about. When a russian attorney, a Russian Oligarch shows up at your door, theyre acting as an agent the russia. Im tired of them saying, well, were so new at this, we didnt know. If you dont know this, maybe you shouldnt be leading this country. Paul manafort certainly knew. I found the white houses position fascinating. Look at this. Im saying that the president s campaign did not collude in any way. What do you say about that, don jr. , the names coming out. I would certainly say don jr. Did not collude with anyone. What about flynn . To my none, he did not collude with anyone. Our position is clear, no one within the Trump Campaign colluded in order to influence the election. The response from the president s legal team was brief and word for word the same answer to the times article that came out sunday, quote, the president was not aware of and did not attend the meeting. Thats the most quiet hes ever been. He has. Looks like the lawyers are silencing him now. The lawyers comment was a purely lawyerly comment. It said nothing really. Said absolutely nothing. The interesting aspect of this in terms of the Ongoing Investigation i think would be partially donald jr. s tweets, especially the one where he describes the meeting about to take place and says he did not know who he was meeting with. So whats the motivation for a meeting . And there are consistent statements during the exact same time saying, russia, if you have these emails, we would like to see them. Hes essentially confirming whats going on behind the scenes. President trump said if president obama knew about this effort by russia to get me elected, why didnt he do something about it . We should be asking, President Trump, if you knew, if your son knew russia was trying to get you elected, why didnt you do anything about it . Why would your inner team even entertain any of this . Whats your sense about the source of these stories, the leaks of these stories, whats your sense . It makes no sense to me. I am tired of hearing about this deep state leaking intelligence. Theres only one way to get all these dots connected and you have to have someone in the center. We hear about nsa, a memo being there, the dni memo being there, the comey having memos about being pressured. That comes from the center. Its very difficult to get sources that want to give up their entire career and potentially go to jail in six or seven locations in the intelligence community. I dont believe our intelligence professionals are coughing up this information. I believe its in Donald Trumps house. This does look like its coming from the inside and i dont know, who is that . Whos trying to Mark Halperin, who is leaking all this from the inside . Whos trying to get john jr. And Jared Kushner out of the way . Im pure lily speculating bu dont agree with clint. Im speculating its the Intel Community and most likely the russians. And coming up, keir simmons sits down with the russian lawyer at the center of this explosive story surrounding donald trump jr. Thats coming up at the top of the hour at 7 a. M. Plus the Ranking Member of the house Intel Committee, congressman adam schiff joins us here on set and democrat joe manchin. Youre watching morning joe. Well be right back. Trust 1 doctor recommended dulcolax. Use dulcolax tablets for gentle dependable relief. Suppositories for relief in minutes. And dulcoease for comfortable relief of hard stools. Dulcolax. Designed for dependable relief. Binders, done. Supercool notebooks, done. Thats mom taking care of busin