Information on the russia probe relating to two campaign advisers. One described as the coffee boy and another dubbed a hanger on. We start with carter page, who met with the White House Intelligence Committee yesterday. The New York Times reports tonight carter page, a Foreign Policy adviser to the trump president ial campaign, met russian government officials during a july 2016 trip he took to moscow, according to testimony he gave on thursday to the house intelligence committee. Shortly after that trip mr. Page sent an email to at least one Trump Campaign aide describing insights he had after conversations with government officials, legislators and Business Executives during his time in moscow. According to one person familiar with the contents of the message. The email was read aloud during the closed door testimony. In march page talked to Msnbcs Chris Hayes about his trip, saying some people said hello to him there. You went to russia in the summer of 2016. Yes. You gave a speech there. You were there for three days. The speech was one day. What did you do in russia . Had some meetings with scholars and professors and students there. There were some people that showed up to my graduation speech and, you know, i said hello to some people, but no material discussions. You know, really International Relations scholars. Did you speak to any russian intelligence officials . Not that im aware of. Well, we also have a new report from nbc news about George Papadopoulos, who has pleaded guilty to lying to the fbi and is cooperating with Robert Muellers campaign. Nbc news reports that papadopoulos repeatedly represented the Trump Campaign, like here in july during the Republican National convention where he spoke on a Foreign Policy panel hosted by the American Jewish committee. Hes sitting on the left of your screen, along with two members of congress, senator bob corker, who is making the statement at the podium, or here, for instance, in a september interview with the russian enter fax news agency. Well show you that in a second where hes described here it is, where hes described as one of u. S. President ial candidate Donald Trumps foreign political advisers since march of 2016. Or even after the election, as nbc reports, he met with israeli leaders during the inauguration in january as a Foreign Policy adviser for the newly sworn in president. Today as the president was leaving for hawaii, reporters asked him about this march 2016 meeting, the one where he is seated at the table with papadopoulos, who has pleaded guilty to lying to the fbi and is cooperating with Robert Muellers investigation. A source tells nbc it was at this meeting that papadopoulos offered to use his russian contacts to try and set up a meeting between trump and Vladimir Putin. Here is what the president said today about that meeting. Mr. President , do you remember George Papadopoulos during that march meeting . I dont remember much about that meeting. It was a very unimportant meeting. Took place a long time dont remember much about it. As this white house faces the daily deluge about Robert Muellers investigation, the president decided today to criticize his own Justice Department and call on it to investigate his former political rival, Hillary Clinton. He wrote on twitter, everyone is asking why the Justice Department and fbi isnt looking into all of the dishonesty going on with crooked hillary and the dems. New donna b book says she paid for and stole the dem primary. What about deleted emails, uranium, podesta, the server, plus, plus. People are angry. At some point the Justice Department and the fbi must do what is right and proper. The American Public deserves it. Talking to reporters later in the day he had he was disappointed with the Justice Department. All i can tell you is this. There was no collusion. There was no nothing. Its a disgrace, frankly, that they continue. You want to look at Hillary Clinton im really not involved with the Justice Department. Id like to let it run itself, but honestly, 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. Okay. To summarize where we are. 288 days into his term with an investigation hanging over his presidency and without a big legislative victory to his name, the president spent today going after Hillary Clinton and the Justice Department. Lets go to our leadoff panel tonight. White house bureau chief for the Washington Post, phillip rucker. Matthew nussbaum and Kelly Odonnell in hong louisiana. Kelly, lets start with you. Youre there. The president there at the beginning of his 11day trip to asia. What are you expecting to happen . Well, to give you a bit of the trip diary, the approximated is right now headed to pearl harbor, where he will place a wreath at the uss arizona, pay his respects. The first lady, of course, is traveling with him. The president spoke briefly with reporters earlier and talked about the fact that he had never been to pearl harbor, had read about it, studied about it as he describes so he was very much looking forward to this part of his trip. It is standard for a president when travel to asia to stop in hawaii for at a minimum a fuel stop but here he has expanded is a bit for a time to pay respects at pearl harbor and also to meet with the pacific japan. All of those countries are in the region where there are concerns and some are different players in the strategy around north korea. So this is an important trip for the president. Its a notably long trip, and one small surprise thats already taken place. These things are often set in stone or at least glue weeks ahead of time. The president telling reporters on air force one that he intends to extend the trip a bit, spending more time in manila where theres one of the summits that hes attending, so thats unusual for a president to call an audible and say i want to stay longer. Certainly he can do that, but its not the typical thing we find. So there will be a lot of pressure on the president to deal with matters related to trade and north korea. His home, im sure, would be to leave some of this russia drama at home. That, of course, is always hard to do when these questions persist. But hes got a lot of work there with our allies in the philippines and vietnam and south korea and japan and of course putting pressure on china to do what it needs to do with north korea. Phil, let me start with you, carter page, i have to tell you, phil, it becomes harder and harder with each day to ask what the question is other than what is going on with carter page . Well, hes all over the place in terms of being very accessible to reporters, including this network. And, you know, its important to remember carter pages background. Hes not new to russia. He actually lived in russia for a few years a decade before joining the Trump Campaign and worked in finance there. He has a network of, you know, friends and people that he knows, acquaintances in the country that he brought with him to the Trump Campaign when he became an adviser. He was want a major adviser on the campaign, but he was an adviser nonetheless. And i think muellers team and obviously the congressional investigators are going to be looking very carefully at what exactly he wrote in that email back to Trump Campaign colleagues and more details about that trip and who exactly he encountered. Matthew, he talked so much to the media. He spent hours in that hearing without a lawyer. And the strange thing about it is he talks a lot and his story often changes. So you saw what he said to chris hayes about scoreless and i met people he said he didnt meet russian officials or Intelligence Officers and then it turns out that he apparently did meet some russian officials. What do you make of what this is and where its going . And i point out that like George Papadopoulos, like they said about manafort at some point, they all talk about how carter page was a volunteer who was peripheral to the campaign. But all of these peripheral volunteers to the campaign seem to have some ties to russia. Right. And they keep trying to discount him. And i think theyll continue to do that. But it is bizarre how often hes out there talking to the press and the way his story changes. And it changes in one direction, which is, oh, there were meetings with russian officials that were not previously disclosed. And whats important to remember is he is not a unique phenomenon in this case. Done junior, jeff sessions, Jared Kushner all these people have come out and said, oh, there were meetings that i had that werent previously disclosed. And in one instance, okay, maybe that makes a little sense. When this keeps happening over and over again, i think it raises serious red flags. Phil, what kind of red flags is it raising in washington circles that, you know, the president is right is, the indictment against manafort and rick gates did not indicate any collusion with russia. But honestly, everywhere they turn, everywhere the Mueller Investigation seems to go or the House Intel Committee seems to go, they find someone who suddenly had contact with russia who had said previously that they didnt. Thats exactly right. And we should also remember that the Mueller Investigation, the indictments that came down on monday, that is not the end of this investigation. This thing is going to go on for some time likely. Weve not heard yet whats going to be happening, for example, to general flynn, who was the National Security adviser for those opening weeks of the administration and was very influential at the president s side, unlike, say, George Papadopoulos or carter page. And there are a number of other steps that mueller is going to be taking here in the weeks to come. Hes going to be interviewing some senior white house officials when the president and the entourage return home from this asia trip. So theres more information that i think these investigators are working to uncover. And we as sort of laypeople in the media dont really know whats around the corner. Kelly odonnell, when the president took his first trip, when he went to the middle east, there were all sorts of questions about how much of the problem he leaves behind. He certainly has much more control over the press when hes trawling. Traveling. He can choose to have far less interaction with the likes of you if he wants to. But hes got two issues. In addition to the one that he has to deal with while there, the diplomatic, the trade and the military issues, hes got this tax policy that hes just dropped which typically a president has some role in pushing. It doesnt look like hes going to be doing that for the next 11 days. But hes got the russia investigation. What do you expect to happen. Is he just going to shut down questions on that, and everybody will pick it up again when he gets back . Well, he hinted a different way on air force one tonight. And you played some clips where the president was speaking on camera to the reporters on the south lawn before he left on this trip. But while he was in flight about an hour into the flight he came back to the Small Press Area in the back of air force one and talked for just a couple of minutes to reporters. And he indicated that he would be very visible and accessible to reporters. Lots of opportunities to at least talk with the press over this trip, which will last the better part of two weeks. And so will that be a chance for the president to try to stay on point . We certainly saw during the issue related during the saudi arabia trip and jerusalem, there was the question about the president having perhaps shared too much with the russians in the oval office. He spoke about that standing next to benjamin netanyahu, the israeli Prime Minister back in may. I think the president doesnt always have the strict boundaries that are saying things only about the trip, when theres prominent Foreign Policy issues to be dealt with. I wont be surprised if some of these things come up in a very trump like fashion. Where he references it in some way. Certainly reporters will ask about these things. Theres also the obligation to cover the events in front of us. And that will be important. I expect we will hear something about this over the next two weeks, there will be a lot of other things that draw our attention. And if i could just add one thing about these two figures, carter page, and papadopoulos. When you remember back to the campaign era, and im sure phil rucker recalls this as well. Remember when there was 17 candidates and a figure like jeb bush, he had been able to amass some of the brightest talent in all of these Advisory Councils and so forth, so many of the sitting governors or senators had their teams. Donald trump was often reaching into less well known figures in these sort of advisory or expertise roles. And then you get characters like a carter page or George Papadopoulos, who have not come through the normal channels we would typically see in Foreign Policy as it interacts with politics. Thats one of the factors that a year later is still casting echos in all of this. It was puzzling when it lapped. It was in a Washington Post editorial, where he was asked about the fact that he didnt have a Foreign Policy team, and he started dropping names, names that no one had heard of before, but it had become commonplace for the Trump Administration to do that, just started naming people. And journalists would start to look them up. In the case of George Papadopoulos, it was hard to find much of a record of him anyway it it was an interesting time. Its a good point, kelly. Phil, i want to point out something you wrote tobtd about Donald Trumps renewed criticism of the department of justice, it becomes a perennial situation. The department of justice appreciates a a level of independence. Government lawyers have long sought to enforce a clear lining preventing white house officials from influencing specific investigations or prosecutions to ensure their work is not politicized. For some reason donald trump is back on this kick again. Its an attack on the department of justice, and seems to sort of be a side attack on jeff sessions, his attorney general. Thats right, and you showed some of those tweets earlier today. What trump is doing is playing this out in the open for us all to see. Pressuring his department of justice, which is an extraordinary breach of boundaries here within the executive branch that are set in place to avoid this kind of thing from happening. To avoid the Justice Department and the criminal process from becoming too politicized. But the president has for months now felt very strongly about the Justice Department. Hes been angry, hes been frustrated with jeff sessions. Hes felt like the attorney general has not been tough enough in trying to prosecute Hillary Clinton. In fact, the Justice Department is not trying to prosecute Hillary Clinton right now, which is part of the problem in the president s mind. But he also feels like sessions has not helped insulate the president enough from the Mueller Investigation, the russia probe that weve been talking about. And its created a lot of bad blood between these two and we see it from time to time spill out in the open as it has in these last 24, 48 hours. I just want to touch back on George Papadopoulos for a moment. Here is a sampling of how the Trump Administration has described George Papadopoulos over the last few days. Lets listen. George was a low level volunteer who might have attended a meeting of the Foreign Policy advisory team. He was a volunteer with the campaign, served on one of the committees. Ive never heard of papadopoulos. He never showed up at trump tower. The guy was he was the coffee boy. Can you just explain what George Papadopouloss role with the campaign was . If was extremely limited. It was a volunteer position. And again, no activity was ever done in an official capacity on be