Worry, thats so silly because its somebodys version of the truth, not the truth. He didnt have a conversation truth is truth. I dont mean to go no, it isnt truth. Truth isnt truth. Truth isnt truth. Its an ironic phrase that comes as the New York Times revealed that Donald Trumps white House Counsel, don mcgahn, cooperated extensively with special counsel Robert Muellers inquiry. The times published a separate report saying trumps lawyers do not know what mcgahn told mueller during 30 hours of interviews. After mr. Mcgahn was initially interviewed by the special counsels office in november, mr. Trumps lawyers never asked for a complete description of what mr. Mcgahn had said according to a person close to the president. This hour trump will move off topic. Any moment hes going to take the stage for his event being billed as a salute to the heroes of the immigration and Customs Enforcement and customs and border enforcement. Lets start the hour with geoff bennett. Geoff, over the weekend, the president brushed off the report on twitter saying that he allowed mcgahn and all. Others to fully cooperate with the special counsel. What message are they pushing today . Reporter well, theyre pushing that same message. The administration is backing up the president on his assertion that he has nothing to hide following this revelation that the white House Counsel is cooperating extensively with the special counsel. Of course this really followed the strategy espoused by the president s first team of outside attorneys. Remember, the president said time and time again he wanted the russia probe to wrap up quickly, so ty cobb and john dowd took him at his word that he did nothing wrong and really suggested this open book strategy. The other things that don mcgahn as a government attorney who represents the office of the presidency and not donald trump himself really had no choice but to cooperate and answer questions truthfully. Those questions that were posed by investigators. Had he not chosen to do so, mueller certainly could have compelled him to do it. So you hear the president , you hear Rudy Giuliani, you hear Top Administration aides all make the point that don mcgahns cooperation wont pose a problem for the president. Of course we dont know that to be true until mueller finishes his work and issues this report to congress. It sounds like giuliani isnt sure what the testimony was about. Giuliani continued to make headlines yesterday. One thing he said is about a shifting story about the 2016 trump tower meeting. What happened there . Reporter well, he completely misrepresented the record surrounding this now Infamous Trump tower meeting between don junior and the Upper Echelon of the Trump Campaign and the russian lawyer and other russian advocates. Take a look at what he said. The meeting was originally for the purpose of getting information about clinton. The meeting turned into a meeting someone said i have information about your opponent, you would take that meeting. If it happens to be from the russian government . She didnt represent the russian government. Shes a private citizen. I dont even know if they knew she was russian at the time. All they had was her name. Oh, my. Reporter now, remember, the president and his allies initially said that meeting was all about russian adoptions. Rudy giuliani just there said the meeting was really about getting bitter on hillary clinton. The russians didnt provide it so we werent interested. Thats a huge moving of the goal posts here. The other thing, to say that the Trump Campaign didnt know what the meeting was about, well, remember, the subject line of the email setting up the meeting that don junior accepted was russia clinton, private and confidential. I think giuliani is just having fun with us all just to see if he can spin us around in circles. Geoff, good to see you as always. Geoff bennett for us at the white house. All of this stuff, what does it mean for special counsel Robert Muellers investigation . Joining me now, elliott willi s williams, in the Justice Department under president paum and nick akerman, special watergate prosecutor and now a partner at dorsey and when it no whitney. Let me start with you, nick. In the end mueller has what mueller has and we are probably seeing the top centimeter of that iceberg. So what do you make of this whole mcgahn talked to mueller for 30 hours . I think thats quite amazing. Because we dont know what was said. It sounds like trumps lawyers dont know what was said. And i know the press has been playing this up as part of what mcgahn knows about the obstruction of justice. You know, which is true with respect to the firing of comey, what happened with flynn. But i think what everyone is missing here is that also mcgahn was privy to statements by trump that relate to the underlying crimes. Correct, right. So that to me is probably the most significant part of this, because once mueller has what trump said to mcgahn and then is able to juxtapose that and compare it to all the other evidence that hes developed, we dont know where thats going and it doesnt sound like it could be going very well for the president. Elliott, a lot of things we dont understand. Don mcgahn is the white house attorney and he has said before that his job is to protect the presidency, not necessarily the president. But the white house didnt assert executive privilege on him talking to muellers team 30 hours. I dont know how much of that is taken up by logistics or ill get you this file next tuesday or whatever. What do you make of this news . If you look at the New York Times article, theres dispute within the trump camp as to assert executive privilege or move forward. Setting that aside, to me the big issue here is that you have someone with a Corner Office in the west wing ultimately having to lawyer up and decide what degree of personal liability to take against a president that ultimately might have thrown him urn under the bus. This is an incredibly difficult position. Youve got to decide which law firm youre lihiring. And even staffers that are enabling this madness every day are having to make a serious calculation about what kind of risk theyre willing to take on for themselves, their career, families and futures as they might be sukbjected to liabilit. Nick, the New York Times has a quote about how trump really may not have an understanding of what mcgahns role is. In fact mr. Mcgahn laid out how trump tried to ensure control of the investigation giving investigators a mix of information both potentially damaging and favorable to the president. Mcgahn cautioned to investigators that he never saw mr. Trump go beyond his legal authorities, though the limits of executive power are murky. What do you make of that . Well, first of all, there is no Attorney Client privilege here. Why is that . Because its not his personal attorney. Mcgahn is not his personal attorney. Theres also no executive privilege here because this doesnt relate to National Security, it doesnt relate to diplomacy, it doesnt relate to topsecret information. This relates to a criminal investigation, which is not covered by executive privilege. So they could have claimed it, but it wouldnt have gone very far. Certainly mcgahn didnt want to be caught in the vice where trump was going to throw him urn under the bus. The New York Times quotes Elliott Burke saying they dont quote them, theyre saying mr. Mcgahn and mr. Burck feared that mr. Trump was setting up mr. Mcgahn to take the blame for any possible wrong doeg so they embraced the opening to cooperate with mr. Mueller in an effort to demonstrate that mr. Mcgahn had done nothing wrong. Its all fun and games until you realize that someone ha youre working with and need to trust to get the work done of the American People might be wearing a wire or as we learned last week, might have a tape recorder in her purse. These folks to some extent cant do their jobs effectively if theyre constantly having to look over their shoulders because of the risk that the president has put them under and the mess that they have created of their own doing, starting from the top of the white house. Nick, you and i have often talked about Rudy Giuliani and whether hes helping or hurting the cause. His conversation with chuck todd about what did or didnt happen on that june 9th meeting, look, none of us need to be lawyers, experts or investigators. We know what we know and that is that there was an email that states this meeting was about what it was about. So for giuliani to say otherwise, whats he trying to achieve here . Its totally crazy. The email was very clear it was about russias efforts to help trump win his election. The fact that it was talking about adoptions doesnt help. That relates to the magnitsky act which relates to sanctions which was likely the quid pro quo that the russians wanted in return for helping the campaign. They wanted the sanctions dropped from magnitsky and the ukraine invasion. They wanted all of the sanctions gone. So for Rudy Giuliani to dance around that and say, oh, adoptions, adoptions is the code word for sanctions. What does sorry, go ahead, elliott. Well, it was a remarkable interview yesterday morning because of the number of falsehoods that Rudy Giuliani gave. A big one being that they have to stop this investigation somehow immediately before september 1st or else theyre going come down like a ton of bricks. Theyre misleading the American People about that fact. I know i dealt with this when i was a u. S. Attorney. Nothing stops the Justice Department from continuing investigations through an election season. It just so you dont get scared by the ton of bricks thing . No. Its not just that, the Justice Department shouldnt issue indictments or take public actions during elections season but they dont go dark and stop doing their work between september and november. Theyre misleading people as a means of throwing people off the scent. You can win the pr campaign but that doesnt mean that youre correct on the facts and the law. Simply using the mayor whos a former United States attorney and doj official to mislead like that, its hard on the American People. Guys, thank you so much. Elliott williams and nick akerman. We are on verdict watch in the first trial for the special counsels investigation. The jury in the trial of Paul Manafort has now been deliberating for more than 20 hours. Theyre in their third day of deliberation. The jury first got the case of the former Campaign Chairman last thursday morning. So far they have sent two notes to the judge and one of them was to ask to go home early on friday afternoon. Pete williams is at the alexandria courthouse for us. Any news, pete . Reporter none. But, you know, i wouldnt place too much into trying to figure out what this means at this point. Think of the numbers here. This was almost a twoweek trial in terms of the governments presentation. Something like 340 separate pieces of evidence, more than 22 witnesses, 18 criminal counts. So if the jury is going to be fastidious about looking at all the charges and looking at all the evidence and trying to figure out what it means, you would expect them to take at least this longer to render a verdict rather than simply going into the verdict room and saying, well, what do you think, is he guilty or not guilty on each counti . They want to talk about it, look at the evidence. This is a relatively complicated fraud case. So you have to assume they are doing a job. I think about sitting down inside this courtroom for i think it was two weeks, maybe 20 days, it just seemed like 20 days for the verdict in the trial of zacarias moussaoui. There were a lot of documents involved and the documents were presented as evidence to the jury. They didnt get a chance to go through and go over them. Also thats what they have been doing in deliberations . Thats a very good point because one of the things that the prosecution hasnt liked about how this trial unfolded is normally when you introduce an exhibit, you ask to publish it to the jury, meaning its entered as evidence but can i show it to the jury now . And the judge kept saying move along, you showed one of them, you dont need to show them all. So to some extent this is the first look that the jury has had at many of these actual exhibits so you have to assume this was going to take some time. I hat tip to nick akerman, i didnt realize everything wasnt reviewed by the jury at the time so that does explain some of the time as taking, Pete Williams at the courthouse in alexandria, virginia. Coming up, nearly 200 former intelligence and military leaders issue a strong message of opposition to the president s removal of former cia director John Brennans security clearance. Is the president setting a new precedent . Im going to talk to someone who says trump isnt the king. Ahoyhoy. Alexander graham bell here. No, no, my number is one, you must want two two, i say like my father before. [telephone ring] like my father before. Ahoyhoy as long as people talk too loudly on the phone, you can count on geico saving folks money. Fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. If your moderate to severeor crohns symptoms are holding you back, and your Current Treatment hasnt worked well enough it may be time for a change. 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Introducing chase ink business unlimited with unlimited 1. 5 cash back on every purchase. The bipartisan outcry over President Trumps decision to revoke former cia director John Brennans security clearances is growing louder. Today 175 Top National Security officials added their names to a statement put out by a group of retired Intelligence Leaders last week saying trumps decision was politically motivated and an attempt to stifle free speech. It includes anthony lake, sean okeefe, admiral james tavridis. Their goal is to send the message that donald trump is not a king. The president essentially has accused mr. Brennan of the crime of criticizing the monarch, tantamount to treason. This relic of the days when kings were deemed divine remains on the books in some european monarchies as well as nations like saudi arabia, where a critique of the crown is considered terrorism. The writer of that piece, joins me now. He also wrote legacy of ashes and enemies, history of the fbi. Also with me is mary mccord. She was one of the people who sien signed the letter supporting the statement made by the former intelligence chiefs. Mary, tim writes on friday in the oped that the letters are designed to send this message to donald trump that hes not king. This is more than people thinking the president is petty and vindictive, the question is if the president gets away with this, there are a lot more roads that are open to him. Well, i think it does it would set a very bad press denti precedent, as you indicate. It sends the message dont speak out publicly, dont criticize me, dont cross me, it sends the message to people who are in government doing their jobs, dont cross me. Dont do anything that could harm me. And thats very damaging to our government, its very damaging to the rule of law. And i think what youre seeing today with this letter after the other letters over the weekend is a very large group of former National Security and Law Enforcement professionals from both sides of the political spectrum joining together to say this isnt right. There is rule of law. There are processes, National Security clearances are important. People who do the National Security work and Public Safety work in this country have important jobs to do and its not a clearance is not something that should be used as a threat to get your way. Tim, in your piece you write the president aims to rid the government and the air waves of his real and imagined enemies, especially anyone connected with the russia investigation. Somewhere Richard Nixon may be looking up and smiling, but above ground the special counsel is taking note. Im sorry, this is from the oped. Richard nixon may be smiling, but the fact is he might also have been smiling at barack obama and george w. Bush, all of whom pushed the envelope a little on president ial and executive authority. There is a danger to letting president s continue to do that. And this president in particular, ali. The walls are closing in on donald trump. Hes growing more erratic, more angry, more frequen