Formalized meeting. This morning, what did the president know . His lawyer weighs in to nbc. The president did not see any emails relating to this at all. Do you know when the president saw the email . When everybody else did. Plus this hour the president s choice for fbi director gets his hearing on capitol hill, where questions about russia and loyalty are sure to drive the day. The hearing on Christopher Wray starts moments from now. Take a look, live pictures of the hearing room. Our Brian Williams will join us for full coverage. But we begin today with a growing cloud over the white house. Donald trump jr. Trying to explain away that meeting with a russian attorney. President trump insists his son is innocent, but legally speaking that is still an open question. I have not a great team to help me dig into all of this. Lets start with Nbcs Kelly Odonnell at the white house. Kelly, this story seems to be evolving every hour. Whats new this morning . Reporter well, when you look at what don jr. Has said publicly now, its sort of in the category of his curiosity got the better of him. If he were to look at the situation today, he might do it differently. But nothing to see here because the meeting didnt produce anything. Donald trump jr. Spoke on Fox News Channel with sean hannity, a friendly environment where they went through kind of all of the outstanding points. And this was donald trump jr. Claiming that he is being transparent by putting out his emails, even though he did so just after being alerted that the New York Times was prepared to publish them. Here is don junior talking about some of the misgivings that he has now, that hes learned things. Its 13 months later, times are a bit different, even though at the moment, remember the subject line of that email was russia and clinton. Here is part of the don junior defense. In retrospect, i probably would have done things a little differently. Again, this is before the russia mania. This is before they were building it up in the press. For me, this was opposition research. They had maybe concrete evidence to all the stories i had been hearing about but underreported for years, not just during the campaign, so i wanted to hear it out. But really it went nowhere and it was apparent that wasnt what the meeting was actually about. Reporter and so he really makes clear there that there was this interest in finding out what was there. He does not talk about any sort of speed bumps that would have suggested to him that meeting with a Russian National or having potential information gathered by a foreign adversarial government against a political opponent should have raised alarm bells. None of that comes through. His answer to that is that because there was nothing productive from the meeting, there was nothing to report. Thats typically not how it works. President trump, who had backed off and had not done much in the way of publicly defending his son has done so on twitter now. Today he is tweeting my son donald did a good job last night. He is open, transpaurnt and innocent. This is the greatest witch hunt in political history. Sad. Witch hunti has been a phrase te Trump Administration has used, the president has for a very long time. This gets very close to the family with the president s son and soninlaw as a part of this meeting thats getting all this attention. Chris. Kelly odonnell, thanks. I want to bring in robert traynham, hes currently an msnbc analyst, debbie hines is a Trial Attorney and former baltimore prosecutor, phil and with me howard dean, former dnc chairman and msnbc contributor. So whatever you want to call it, robert, speed bumps, he didnt seem to think that much was going on, what do you make of don juniors defense that, first of all, he was naive, he was new to politics, and anyway nothing came of it. That could be partially true. Yes, they are new to politics and, yes, hes never done this before. Whats more troubling is two things. One, is that on the second email he cced Paul Manafort and don junior had a meeting. Paul has been around for many, many, many years. One would think he would not have taken that meeting and said what are you doing, we need to call the fbi immediately. This is not even illegal, this is highly unethical. This is the russians, dawnonald junior, we should not be doing that. So one could make the argument that the gray beard should have said something but didnt and thats very, very troubling. And the president says, this is another tweet from this morning, when you hear the words sources say from the fake media, oftentimes these sources are made up and do not exist. Howard, of course the source here happens to be his own son. But the president has had some success with that whole fake media thing with his base, so strategically what do you make of what the media is doing. Well, his base is going to believe whatever and they dont care that he lies through his teeth every day. Heres what the big problem is, theres three of them. First of all, you dont meet with the russians during a campaign. Thats probably against the law to take aid from any foreign power. Second of all, donald junior lied clearly. He had one story, then he had another story. Third of all, anybody who believes that there was a meeting that had donald trump jr. , Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort the Campaign Manager and they did not orally brief the candidate after that meeting is smoking something. Let me ask you something, because you obviously ran for president so you know very intimately how campaigns go but you also were dnc chairman during another pretty big campaign. How does somebody who and im just talking about the emails that we know. These are the emails that donald trump jr. Himself put out. This is somebody he really didnt know he said who it was, although it does say, and shes denied it, that essentially a russian kremlinrelated attorney, how does someone whos just an acquaintance set up a meeting and not just with one of the people closest to the president but a second person, Jared Kushner, close to the president , and the Campaign Manager if you essentially, you know, are just doing a favor to somebody. And again by his own words on sean hannity last night, he said things were going a million miles an hour so they were pretty busy. These guys dont tell the truth, right . Heres how the meeting was set up and this is well documented by lots of sources and theyre not sources say, theyre documented, spoken sources. There was a russian that was involved with the Miss Universe pageant which was staged in moscow in i think 2013. That is the connection. Hes very close to trump, all the trumps, but particularly trump senior and that is the connection that this woman who was very close with what used to be the kgb, the Russian Intelligence Services and very close to putin, that is the connection that they used to get the meeting. The New York Times runs down a list of the possible legal liabilities here, the challenges that donald trump jr. Could face, collusion, conspiracy, election law violations, illegal oh, we lost her . So weve lost her for a minute. Phil, im going to go to you and hopefully well get back to her about the legal part of this. But the politics of it is really unbelievable. Every time it seems that the president thinks hes making progress, Something Else happens here. You write about a category 5 hurricane, the president being very frustrated about the coverage hes getting and then let me play for you what Sarah Huckabee sanders said yesterday. I have a quick statement that i will read from the president. My son is a high quality person and i applaud his transparency and beyond that im going to have to refer everything on this matter to don juniors counsel and outside counsel and wont have anything else to add beyond that today. Whats happening inside that white house, phil . Well, what you saw right there is theres not really a willingness to get out there and forcefully defend donald trump jr. , and thats in part because a lot of these aides in the white house dont want to create any legal exposure for themselves. My colleague, ashley parker, and i spent the last couple of days talking to a lot of white house officials about the environment and the situation, and we really struggled to get anybody to be willing to defend him and to be willing to talk about what happened in that meeting because none of these aides wants to become a target of the Mueller Investigation themselves. But the Bigger Picture inside the white house is you have a president whos really frankly furious that this russia cloud continues to hang over his presidency. There was a feeling that he had a successful foreign trip and then he got home saturday night and all of a sudden these headlines started appearing in the New York Times and its distracted him personally. Hes been watching a lot of Television News the last few days to take in all of the scandal coverage. Well, thats not new. Hes always watching the coverage. But its impeded his agenda too and become a problem inside the white house. We now have a lot of backbiting and suspicions among the senior staff about whos leaking to whom, who can you trust and its really a toxic environment. Debbie, let me go back to you since weve got you back now. The list that the New York Times put out about possible legal jeopardy for donald trump jr. Is collusion, conspiracy, election law violations, illegal hacking, what do you say . Oh, my god, he is facing so many different issues its almost like a prosecutors dream dealing with it. First, on the Campaign Finance laws, no american can accept anything or solicit anything from a Foreign National and russia is a foreign adversary of the u. S. So what he thought he was going to be getting is like getting the best Birthday Gift ever or having christmas come from christmas in terms of the election, so theres Clear Campaign violation laws there. But is naivete or not knowing about these laws a defense . You know, i love that question because im asked that question by my clients very often. No, ignorance of the law is never a defense. The fact that you did not know that you were breaking the law is not going to be a defense, despite what the trumps may think. So theres just a myriad of problems here. But in addition to just donald trump jr. , theres also the issue of the campaign itself because these three individuals were there not on a personal agenda, they were there on a campaign. So with regard to all of the issues set forth about donald trump jr. , the campaign is facing its very own issues. The only thing thats missing from the list which would take a lot more than just the emails was the big t word, treason. They were all three of them trying to Work Together to undermine our democratic process. Forget what theyre saying about the Hillary Clinton emails, it was democracy that was being attacked. And we havent even gotten to the fact a lot of people questioning why Jared Kushner, given the series of revelations, still has his security clearance. More to come on this. Well be talking about it throughout the day. Coming up in just minutes, the confirmation hearing for the man who could be the next fbi director. That will be getting under way, and my colleague, Brian Williams, picks things up on a very busy news day. Tech when you schedule with safelite autoglass, you get time for more life. This family wanted to keep the game going. Son hey mom, one more game . Tech with safelite, you get a text when were on our way. You can see exactly when well arrive. Mom sure. Bring it tech im micah with safelite. Mom thanks for coming, its right over here. Tech giving you a few more minutes for what matters most. Take care family bye kids singing safelite® repair, safelite® replace. When a fire destroyedwith us everything in our living room. We replaced it all without touching our savings. Yeah, our insurance wont do that. No. You can leave worry behind when liberty stands with you™. Liberty mutual insurance. Only tylenol® rapid release gels have laser drilled holes. They release medicine fast, for fast pain relief. Tylenol® whats going on . Oh hey thats it . Yeah. Everybody two seconds dear sebastian, after careful consideration of your application, it is with great pleasure that we offer our congratulations on your acceptance. Through the Tuition Assistance program, every day mcdonalds helps more people go to college. Its part of our commitment to being americas best first job. Well, good morning once again and welcome to our special live Coverage Today of the confirmation hearing in the u. S. Senate for Christopher Wray, age 50, to run the fbi. If confirmed, hell be known here after as Donald Trumps man to run the fbi, the man who followed james comey at the top of the fbi. Well be talking about this and watching this hearing all day. Senate Judiciary Committee, you see the camera crews and still photographers and reporters awaiting his arrival at the witness table. Kasie hunt is on capitol hill for us, part of our huge group of correspondents and analysts to cover this story today. She will lead us off for this part of our coverage. Kasie, set the stakes for everything well be seeing today. Well, brian, i think the stakes really are centered around everything weve been talking about, about donald trump jr. , the latest news about his meeting with this russian lawyer, his knowledge that they wanted to talk about Hillary Clinton, saying that he would love that, and that really sets the stage for the scene here where youre going to have an fbi director nominee who is pressed repeatedly about the president , who of course as we know has been almost in hiding the last couple of days, not Holding Public events. This is a post where he had asked the previous fbi director for loyalty, according to the previous fbi director, and now this, of course, his pick to lead that agency. So i think youre going to hear quite a bit of pressure from senators on that question. I think more broadly around the capitol, brian, were actually down here waiting for paul ryan, the speaker of the house, who has not yet commented on what has unfolded the past couple of days, this drama with the president s son. He hasnt had anything to say about it yet. I pressed Mitch Mcconnell about it yesterday and he said, look, these investigations are going to work themselves out, wouldnt comment beyond that. So hopefully well get a chance to at least put that question to the House Speaker today, and we will also see if there is any new information that unfolds as those senators start to question the fbi director, if there are senators who are involved in the investigations that are unfolding up here on capitol hill. We also know, brian, that this is the week that Senate Intelligence is starting to talk to witnesses in their investigation. That is a major new phase in the work that they are doing and clearly they have Additional Information to go on, considering the events of the last 72 hours. Brian. Indeed they do, kasie hunt, thanks. Well be checking in with you today. Over to Kelly Odonnell at the white house. Kelly, we were talking about this on the broadcast at 11 00 eastern last night. This truly is no ordinary time for this white house. We have not seen a briefing on camera thus far this week. The president going three days without Public Events posted on the schedule. Weve kind of heard from the president this morning on his twitter feed, reminding his followers that the work we do here is fake and any time they hear sources say, at least in large part we have made that up. So having set the stakes like that, how closely will the white house be watching this hearing . Well, it is high stakes because, of course, the responsibility to carry much of this forward would rest with the new fbi director. And there is a bit of a bunker mentality here, in part caused boy the failure to get the Health Care Law passed. That would have been a big agenda item they could be talking about. Thats gone nowhere. We talked about the g20 where he believes he had some successes. Theres a lot of controversy about his meeting with vladimir putin. And tonight he leaves to go to france to accept the invitation of french president emmanuel macron. So there is a Holding Pattern with not much agenda to fill it. At the same time, we know the president s nature is to be very attached to whats happening on television, whats being talked about related to his administration, and were in a new iteration where it is really about his own family, his own name sake, and of course his soninlaw, Jared Kushner, one of the most trusted advisers the president has, who was also in that meeting. Perhaps some of the most perilous time for donald trump jr. Could come not in whats in those emails but when he has now consented to go and speak before congress under oath, investigators, said very free lein his interview on the Fox News Channel that he would cooperate fully and that would mean if he is not fully truthful, if he does not give a fully disclosive account, thats where so many