People are disappointed in the Justice Department, including me. Also, speaking of the democrats. The dysfunction inside the party apparently is growing as the charges of a rigged primary in 2016 heat up. The dnc should apologize. Could this damage the democrats chances of winning the governors race in virginia . Ill talk to the Current Governor in, democratic terry mcauliffe. Later, meet the president s. Some people think youre talking about monster who eats his young. As meet the press turns 70, the greatest president s hits of the longest running show on television. This is mtp daily and it starts right now. Good evening. Im chuck todd here in washington. Happy friday to you, welcome to mtp daily. Youre seeing now what happens when a criminal probe puts the squeeze on President Trumps inner circle. The prospect of more indinlts fr indictments from him. Hes been secretly cooperating with the fbi. The president s team is portraying him as a Campaign Coffee boy, but thats not how he represented himself. And since word is out that folks are talking to mueller, these Campaign Advisers are suddenly talking to the press quite frequently. The information theyve given us contradicts what he told the congress under oath. Meanwhile, he seems intent on publicly undermining the rule of law, with an assist from folks like him in conservative media. Folks, the president and his allies are facing an investigation that is spiraling. Heres how. George papadopoulos played up his russian connections during the 2016 meeting with mr. Trump and his team of advisers including then u. S. Senator now attorney general Jeff Sessions and suggested setting up a meeting with putin. Important because it contradicts sessions sworn testimony before congress. You dont believe that surrogates from the Trump Campaign had communications with the russians . Is that what youre saying . I did not and im not aware of anyone else that did. I dont believe it happened. Now, we should note another adviser at that meeting is cooperating papadopouloss account but notes sessions quickly shut down the suggestion of a putin meeting. The white house argument that papadopoulos was a lowlevel intern attended one meeting during the primaries and never acted in any official capacity doesnt look convincing anymore. In fact, he spoke to interfact identifying him as a Campaign Adviser weeks before the election in an interview about mr. Trumps russia policy. Days before the election reported in the British Press members of mr. Trumps Team Including papadopoulos were holding very productive talks with representatives from the british government. And after the nomination, an Israeli Group met with George Papadopoulos about the administrations mideast policy, according to the jerusalem post. So as this investigation intensifies the president left for asia today not before urging the department of justice to investigate his political opponents. They should be looking at the democrats. They should be looking at podesta and all of that dishonesty. They should be looking at a lot of things and a lot of people are disappointed in the Justice Department, including me. And those comments came the morning after the president expressed more detailed frustration that he cant simply order our nations Law Enforcement to investigate his enemies. You know, the saddest thing is that because im the president of United States i am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department. I am very frustrated by it. I dont get whats happening with the Justice Department. Why arent they going after Hillary Clinton with her email and the dossier . Hopefully they are doing something and at some point mean were going to all have it out. What the president is doing, intentional or not, undermining the rule of law seemingly to give him some political cover and hes not the only one doing it. This may be one of the most important monologuing i will ever give on this show. Tonight a major crisis in this country. Does america have equal justice under the law . There is zero evidence of trump russia collusion. Zero evidence of campaign collusion. This indictment has nothing where the evidence comes in. What did president clinton, or president clinton wanna oui and president obama know about the scandal . Struggling much to concoct the story cant even decide whos president. This was the end of the beginnings of muellers probe. Its not a question of if more charges, a matter of when and who. Joined by barbara mcquade, a u. S. Attorney serving under president obama. Now a professional at the university of michigan. I want to start with this which is, how should the public understand what mueller is doing and what those monday indictments mean, and i ask it this way because on the surface, the two the intimes of manafort and gates, neither one of them right now it looks like wa theyre charged with has anything to do with the essential question of russian collusion. So explain what you believe muellers strategy is here. Well, it seems these are probably just the first in, the first step of this investigation. Even one of muellers prosecutors xpros prosecutors said this is a small piece of a larger investigation. A classic page out of a prosecutors playbook. Which is to charge lower level individuals in an investigation in hopes that in exchange for admitting their guilt and cooperation and leniency, you can get information about bigger fish in the investigation. So does this mean its more likely that were going to see probably a handful of more of a similar type targeting where if we assume more indictments are coming soon, that they will be folks that are on the periphery, that may have information but are charged with Something Else . I think so. Again, its hard to say what information Robert Mueller has. I think all were surprised by the charges against George Papadopoulos. He was someone i didnt know about before monday, but a classic case also. Charged with making a false statement. Clearly has some information, so based on the plead documents that have been disclosed, it appears hes also cooperating and is cooperating, and providing information to the mueller team and so depending on where that information leads him, i think we could and probably should expect to see more charges coming down the road. Im curious. The president is lamenting that he cant order the Justice Department to order an investigation. If the Justice Department on its own decides it does need to open investigation, is the president s words now, actually undermined their ability to actually conduct an investigation if they want one, because hes already meddled in it . Yeah. I dont think so. I have a lot of faith in the career prosecutors in the department of justice to do what they think is rice, look at fact and evidence and when they think sufficient predication to investigate theyll do that, but i worry is undermines Public Confidence in the department of justice and that is critical to have the legitimacy of our crim gnat Justice System intact and when the president is talking about directing the Justice Department to investigate his political rivals it does undermine that Public Confidence, i believe. Is it too absurd to believe we might have people in the public, say in your old job, served a subpoena, someone says, forget this. You guys are just on a witchhunt here. What i hear all the time from washington anyway. I mean, im being a little facetious here, but at what point does it undermine sort of the basic blocking and tackling of what federal prosecutors do for a living . Yes. I would hope people would still respect a subpoena or some sort of Legal Process but i do think the general public loses confidence in outcomes, and ultimately wonders, why should i comply with the law if other people dont . Im curious, want to go back to the manafort and gates indictments here. When pursuing on one hand, you want to perhaps squeeze snob get more information out of them, but at the same time you have to, i guess, continue to pursue on two tracks. Is it how difficult is it to manage one investigation, if youre a prosecutor and have to keep going with manafort and gates at some point . Does that go to trial, perhaps, while youre still doing the russia investigation . Or one thing that cant happen on parallel tracks . No. I agree. I think it is likely there are parallel tracks and can be complicated. Its muellers task to manage all of those different tracks. But youll note that hes got Something Like 16 prosecutors working under him. My guess, theyre assigned to teams and each one of those teams is working on a discreet issue or group of targets. And that they get together on occasion to make sure theyre sharing all of the information and that theyre working in tandem and coordinating each task in their case so it makes sense and its improving the overall strategy. Certainly some prosecutors will have to spend a lot of time working on the manafort and gates case preparing for trial you may note a note from the judge, they have time to focus their attention on other matter. Curious about the may timeline. Does that give hints at how long muellers probe is going to take . I think it does. Its no surprise that this is a complex case that involves financial records from all over the world and im sure the defense team needs time to educate themselves to prepare a good defense. The complexity of this case reflects the complexity of the overall investigation. I wouldnt expect it to be over soon. I was surprised we had these indictments already. Only five months after Robert Mueller was appointed. These cases take a lot of time and reading through that indictment, i think you can understand why it involves complex Financial Transactions and its important to move quickly, its even more important to do it right. And thoroughly for sure. Barbara mcquade, former u. S. Attorney, thanks for coming on and sharing your views. Tonights panel, msnbc political analyst and global editorial director at the huffington post. And politicos chief International Affairs columnist and the president of Latino Partnership and himself a former team under bush 43. Welcome all. Harold feinman, youve covered Paul Manafort for a long time. Yep. Do you think he breaks . I think, yes. You do . You think this to put a caveat there, if theres something to be broken. Yes. If theres something that he can ultimately give the prosecutors, given the rather tough situation hes in politically, hes denied any wrongdoing. Lets say that. But its a sweeping case, and knowing some of the people on the staff of bob muellers team, including adam weisman, the real financial follow the money guy here, if they didnt think they had something strong they wouldnt have come out with that sweeping indictment. So if there is something, if Paul Manafort, whos now in his late 60s has a family, has a career to some extent proud of the things hes done over the years. His soninlaw is in the cross hairs, too nap could have a an impact. Very good point. Exposure there as well. I think, yeah. If he knows anything that ultimately could be useful to the prosecutors, i think he will tell them, if he gets something out of it. Susan, in your previous life youve been a criminologist, an actual criminologist for quite some time. What do you make of papadopoulos, and is this part of the russia m. O. . Look in general one can say that the influence campaign, the hacking of the election, was almost a textbook case of russian intervention. This is a playbook not invented for the first time in 2016 in the United States, but is something theyve been, a play theyve been running in countries surrounding russia, in eastern europe, in central europe. They knew the drill at this point, and certainly the repeated outreach to obscure lowlevel characters like papadopoulos is very consistent with the kinds of things in general. The russians, going back to soviet times and the kgb, they wanted to have something on everybody. On every foreigner. That was, my husband and i, our experience as well in russia. Putin is still that way. Just wants something on everybody. I think he is really operating out of the kgb training he had. Thats standard practice. Doesnt mean they knew that donald trump would become the president. Right. They would have been interested in him by the way just as a wealthy american businessman, trying to do business in russia. Alphonso, i just saw you shaking your head a few times during some of these things with the president. You know, why cant he compartmentalize this scandal . Its his personality, right . He needs to talk about it. At this point, the best thing, not to talk about the case. Anything he may say in a tweet, may be used by the special prosecutor to bringing him in for an interview. I dont think thats a good idea. Look, at this point, he should let mueller continue with the investigation and lets remind our viewers what the initial allegation is. Its collusion. A scheme from Trump Campaign executives to coordinate with the kremlin to uprail Hillary Clintons campaign. So far theres no evidence that that happened. By the way, if its a reminder of when you make an enemy of somebody, bob corker decided to put out a statement a few minutes ago. I just, this just in. On the president s comments about the Justice System, and he said this. Likes me most american s hope yu are Justice System is independent and free of interference. The president s pursuit to call for punishment before trials take place are totally inappropriate and undermine our Justice System and erode the American Peoples confidence in our institutions. I think bob corker still likes speaking out there, howard. None of us at the table is naive about politics and the Justice Department. Okay . It happens. Even our viewers understand like on the margin, but, i hate to say that, its fuzzy. Not direct. I didnt get to my but. My but your but . My but is that i have been covering washington a long time. I know the history. I have a law degree. Ive studied the Justice Department, walked those halls. Ive never seen anything like this. Richard nixon did not do this. Publicly. Its like, the nixon tapes just doing it on his own. And that that means that he is blowing trying to blow up the system here. Lets be blunt about what donald trump is doing. He hasnt gone all the way yet. He hasnt fired sessions. He hasnt fired mueller. He hasnt gone that far, but he is undermining the attempting to undermine the credibility of the department of justice and by extension the fbi. Look, frankly, thats every day of the presidency, though. Its hard for us to remember, because so many things happen on any given day. Donald trump already fired the acting attorney general and he already fired the fbi director. That came in his first few months in office. So on some level, right, its not a surprise. On another level, its still shocking. But he doesnt realize how this hurts his case. If the Justice Department ends up investigating hillarys campaign, it doesnt help. Bowe bergdahls sentence got lighter and the just said sunday because of candidate trumps comments. Stick around. Coming up, how much damage will there be from the charge that the dnc rigged the campaign for Hillary Clinton . Could it hurt democrats chances in next weeks governors election in virginia . Ill talk to the states outgoing Governor Terry mcauliffe. If its sunday, tune in to meet the press for 70 years and counting. Well be right back. You might be missing to stasomething. Your eyes. Thats why theres ocuvite. It helps replenish nutrients your eyes can lose as you age. Nourish your eyes to help keep them healthy. Ocuvite. Be good to your eyes. Has grown into an enterprise. Thats why i switched to the spark cash card from capital one. Now, im earning unlimited 2 cash back on every purchase i make. Everything. Whats in your wallet . His family. 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